But this doesn't mean to me that objectivity is the world, is reality, is where everything ultimately ends up to. — Angelo Cannata

I agree with that. There is more than objectivity, so much so that many think objectivity can be abandoned or ignored.

Still, I think that efforts are worth doing: — Angelo Cannata

I agree as well. I see a lot of effort to clarify the postmodern. I think the pendulum has swung too far, too long, and more effort is needed to admit the fixed, the unchanged, and the objective.

The revolution is over. Dogma and the dominance of reason is over. But we keep making rules and using reason to argue with each other; we should just admit there is dogma we can’t escape and it is worth the effort to see if we can find agreement on any of it.

My topic is about the absence of convention — noAxioms

Then you need to use a chalk baord that doesn’t need chalk. Or a board. Or somrthing we can talk about together.

What you can feel now is not an object, because it is entirely exclusive of you and of now: — Angelo Cannata

“What” you can feel now. Sounds like an object.

he difference is that the feeling of other people is in our imagination, while your feeling your self now is not imagination: it is a direct feeling, that actually you cannot even describe to yourself. You are feeling, now — Angelo Cannata

Sounds like an object. The feeling is objectified by “me” feeling.

even if my feeling is just a result of my culture and language, this doesn’t destroy my personal feeling of it as something that is happening to me now. — Angelo Cannata

“My personal feeling of it as something that is happening.” Like an object might happen.

but as more similar to an instinctive scream, that is something completely subjective, completely questionable. — Angelo Cannata

But you are not questioning it, even in the face of all of the content your feeling is comprised of being an illusion, you aren’t questioning the fact of the feeling. “Feeling” as an act, regardless of what is being felt, becomes the content, becomes the “what”, the object.

the moment you are distracted by other thoughts, you automatically become a machine, an object, a computer, you do not exist anymore; what exists is just your body working like a machine, the same way when you die you do not exist anymore and what exists is just your corpse. — Angelo Cannata

So we are back to the world. Objects. Though unaware of their own objectivity, but “body” and “machine” and “likeness” and “the same way” and a “corpse”. The world of objects from which the feeling of subjective experiences inherited its own objectivity.

I have absolutely no way to check what you really felt — Angelo Cannata

If someone says something that you would say about how you felt, but you didn’t say it, then isn’t this a measurement of whether two people have the same sense, the same feeling about something? I say 2+2 equals my feelings, and they say “I know what you mean. I feel 3+1.” Without saying “4” Both can see something of what the other feels. They objectify subjectivity together, by using different words to demonstrate the same feeling.

I don’t know about anything I said either…

A number of people seem to have conceded my point that the demarcation of an object is strictly an ideal, a mental convention. — noAxioms

We never sense an “object”. We sense a “this object” like for example a “tree” and an “apple” and we abstract the idea “object” as either of those, and so neither of those as “object” So “object” lives on the mental side of the demarcation you made. “Matter” is like that too. No one has ever seen a bucket full of matter. It’s full of something particular.

But then there is the question of the particular. You are saying “tree” is just as conventional as “object”. And the difference between “tree” and “apple” is just as conventional as the difference between “object” and “thing” or “ideal”.

If there was nothing there until we perform the convention of constructing an object, our objects would be in total disarray, incommunicable, unspeakable to another object-maker. There is a medium, an objective, convention independent world of objects. We are all usually wrong about what these objects are and wrong about how we talk about them, and wrong about what we think others are saying, but unless there is a world of objects, communication is both impossible and pointless.

So my answer is, I accept that there are many objects so that we can communicate and maybe somehow triangulate on a definition of one of them someday. And the fact that you were able to read this far in my post here means you accept that there are separate objects too. Whether we want to admit it or not. Once we accept they are there, we can agree to start setting the demarcations.

I think a moral compass is the most vital and important aspect of normative ethics--it is the kernel so to speak. Being a moral agent, in the sense of embodying what is good and not what is bad (by doing at least morally permissible and obligatory actions), is of central and paramount importance. Any theory that posits otherwise seems to be missing the point of normative ethics entirely (IMHO). — Bob Ross

Fully agree. All of that is true. It is our duty to find the moral rule, to develop our own consciences, and then live accordingly.

But the moral compass is off if you think that, all other things being equal, you must sit idly by when you could save some people from dying. Inaction isn’t the cure all for moral agency, and action isn’t the immediate imposition of responsibility for breaking particular moral rule. You need to include intent to find something to judge morally.

You are intending to uphold the moral law, but destroying the reason the moral law is good, which is that moral law promotes life.

An act doesn’t immediately correlate to any specific intent, and it is intention that most of all makes one a moral agent, not the act.

One guy says “I don’t care who lives or dies, I’m not turning the wheel.” Another guy says “I’m not defying the moral rule not to intentionally kill, so I have thoughtfully decided I’m not turning the wheel.” These are two different acts because of the intent alone.

A third guy says, “I want to kill Dora” and turns the wheel to kill Dora. A fourth guy says “people are going to die, but I can at least avoid some of their deaths and turns the wheel.” These are two more different acts, different because of the intent.

The moral compass is there to uphold the lives of the moral agents, not to merely forbid acts like some sort of bureaucratic check-box. Our actions can’t contradict the moral laws, but our moral laws can’t cause actions that contradict the purpose and use of moral laws and being moral. Morals are for the good of human lives. They aren’t in themselves the goal. We are the goal. We don’t live for the sake of morals. Morals are for the sake of human lives. So, in some circumstances, the moral thing to do is to grab the wheel and point the vehicle where less people will die, and only kill those fewer people. The intent here is to reduce the number of deaths - in this circumstance you aren’t intending anyone die.

If you can find a valid proof of the existence of any damn thing that does not include its conclusions in its premises, then you either won't have noticed that it is so contained, or you won't have noticed it's invalidity. — unenlightened

Exactly. There is no proof of existence. Only proofs about existing things that we lodge into the premises of our argumentative proofs.

These guys named Peter, Mark, Luke, Matthew, John - they saw a guy hung to death on a cross, definitely dead, and buried, and then saw his body was missing from the tomb, and then saw him walking around talking. This was after seeing a whole bunch of crazy things like walking on water. So those guys have “proof” I guess.

That does us absolutely no good here.

But, can you prove the existence of say, your own body, or Donald Trump (his skin color makes me wonder if he is a mannequin), but can you prove the existence of mannequins?

“Proof for the existence of….”
…has always been a misplaced exercise.

We prove how existing things relate. Proofs sit in between existing things. We have to take the existing things for granted before we can start to prove the reasonable relations their existence entails.

Like you prove in a right triangle that the squares of the two shorter sides equal the square of the longest side. Give me the two short side lengths, and I will tell you the length of the long side, and I can prove it to you over and over again. But you can’t prove there is a single triangle out in the world, or prove there is a long side, or prove the existence of anything. (Descartes thinks he proved he alone existed. Maybe. But that doesn’t prove to me that Descartes existed.)

I put it as, we prove things about the essence of things. We don’t prove existence.

Like if you assume God exists, you might prove he can’t be mortal (but then Jesus’ death throws a wrinkle into that picture), or that God must be capable of doing anything (so why would we suffer)…….bottomless pit without any revelation or experience. No real proof available.

You would be better off trying to pray for the answer. Then you might have your own experience if God chose to drop by. Then you would have objects to “prove”.

Experience first. Then proof about what you experience.

We should ask, how do I get experience with God?

What would happen if someone proved that Jesus was God - wouldn’t that mean we better immediately make sure we are doing everything the Bible says? If Jesus was “proven” with absolute scientific certainty - like proof the Big Bang was the first event of this universe, and it was caused by a person with power to cause such things. All of a sudden scientists, news media, everyone “we have absolute, scientific proof, God exists and created this vast universe!” And further absolute proof that Jesus was this God who decided to become a human being so that he could tell human beings about who he was, and what we can do with our lives to live forever. Proof. Imagine this as proven.

Now what? Do I immediately give all possessions away to charity and focus on living a simple life of service and making sure everyone knows this “good news”.

Do we really even want proof? It would mean something in our lives.

Can you prove it is exhilarating to parachute jump for the first time? Prove it. Prove the feeling of exhilaration.

Or instead, I can just go up in a plane and jump with parachute for the first time.

Can you prove God exists? No. But maybe you can experience God and see for yourself.

Keep asking for sure. Don’t mean to discourage the place where the question comes from if it is an honest question.

As soon as you find God it will be in the last place on earth that you would expect, that will be your proof.

And that proof will only be for you, and it will be precariously held onto by faith.

When you expect God to be a powerful giant, he comes as a beggar, in need of your assistance. If you think God must be love and joy, He will be terrifying power. If you think God is completely other than you and incomprehensible, you will find God in yourself, intimately a part of your very life.

God is not what anyone can sum up, or prove.

There’s another thread on here trying to see if anyone can demonstrate the existence of an “object”. With questions like that in the mix, we aren’t going to prove any god exists.

I am trying to find object in the absence of language — noAxioms

The biggest hurdle to this this task is fundamentally you are trying to find object in the absence of language, but you have to use language as an instrument to do it.

In the above quote you state that "this" and "that" are requirements for a connection to exist.

I disagree. I think that "this" and "that" are illusions created by the connection. — Treatid

Ok, but in order to make a disagreement, isn’t it “that” illusion being made discrete from “this” connection? You still have this and that. You still make a distinction.

This illusion is only here in distinction from some other that (which other can be an illusion as well, or anything, as in comparison to “this” particular illusion, the other need only be a “that”.)

An illusion is all the content one needs to have a “one”, or a “this”, but now so be it, there is this content just as well.

And I agree that “this or that” can be illusions, or just false, as if there is no truth, just like the “connection” between this and that can be an illusion. I just think these are the predicaments of epistemology. We never stop seeing “this” and therefore “that” as well.

We have a more simple, more immediate need for “this” and “that” not just to be logical, not just to think at all. We wouldn’t think of this or that in the first place without a distinction to be made and that “distinction being made.” We now think, because epistemology has made us all amateur skeptics, that therefore, all thought, all metaphysics, like fantasy, is illusion, like the distinctions and the connections, never was nor will be; but even still, we think this, as opposed to thinking “that”.

When we are thinking, we are the distinctions, this is true; but we are still really thinking, because thinking really is a distinct way of being in a world of other distinctions like “flying” or “swimming”. Birds make nests, we construct philosophical critiques. Experience is as real as the experience-able.

The distinctions we construct are as real as we are real distinction constructors. Like stems making flowers and thorns, we use words to say “this” is not “that” at all times.

Can you imagine the possibility of some other universe existing with only relationships? Are objects a requirement for a universe to exist?

For my part, I can see your assumption of the primacy of objects over relationships. — Treatid

I imagine this world, this universe, is one where relationships cannot be without their objects, AND where objects cannot be without their relationships, AND neither can take primacy because neither ever is where the other is not equally present. Identity and relation are equally fixed and in motion as both cause and have the effect of the other.

Paradox is. So I don’t agree that objects take primacy over relationships. Just as I don’t agree relationship is the real basis.

These can be boiled down to stillness and motion. The stillness of objects is sustained against the motion of relationships. Motion is as ubiquitous as the stillness it moves against and neither objects nor stillness nor relationships nor motion is first, or last, or the essence, or the true being. Because they are all at once in the paradox, which is the being, the substance, the related ones.

the epistemic meaning of the sense data we perceive is dependent on the nature of our conceptual schemes. Do you agree with this? — Joshs

Just to make sure I follow you here. You make three distinctions:
1. Sense data
2. Epistemic meaning
3. Conceptual schemes

Correct?

I'm asking if something that to which meaning cannot be conveyed still perform as designed. — noAxioms

Like face recognition. A device that sets boundaries.

The boundary might cut off an ear, but it is a device that makes distinctions to carve out a separate (separated) thing.

There is no device that can be pointed to a 'thing' that will tell you the boundary of that thing, despite all the fictional devices that do exactly that. — noAxioms

Yes there is. A word is a device that can carve out a boundary. We can call them fictional but you are still reading some of them right now and using them to make points that others are agreeing with. So “fictional” seems dramatic. How about words themselves having no clear boundaries.

Without any boundaries either in physics or carved in words, or both, how can anyone speak?

what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it. — noAxioms

We all can’t start or have a conversation without making distinctions and understanding what these distinctions refer to. Saying “pipe” in the first place so that two people who say and hear “pipe” meaningfully requires some basis outside of the two people (where each can point and say “pipe” for instance.

Whether they are both hallucinating or having some sort of deluded experience, or pointing to a physical thing may be another question, but some sort of distinction exists and basis for that distinction exists or else we wouldn’t get past the word “pipe”.

Only assuming we all know what a pipe is can we then imagine cutting it in half longwise and ask about some new thing we might call “half-pipe” (which has a basis in the whole pipe, or call it “gutter” which refers to another context.

So it’s true that words are conventions in themselves, but the fact that they function to communicate things between people is because they make distinctions in a context as a basis for those distinctions. I am fine assuming the basis for the naming convention “pipe” or “gutter” has a basis in a physical reality we might call “the physical world”, but regardless, we can’t speak without standing on some basis that grounds the function of those words.

I didn't answer because it's a non-sequitur. This isn't a debate about abortion. An antinatalist is not entailed to believe anything regarding abortion, but certainly, one who believes that the fetus (qualified perhaps by a certain time period of gestation), is not a person yet, would think that abortion is permissible. — schopenhauer1

So an antinatalist can say it is impermissible to procreate, to create a new fetus, in order to prevent suffering, but it is ok to kill a human fetus.

Got it.

I don't see this as a knock on his position. Birth control isn't natural, but it's not immoral. — RogueAI

It’s a more clear blow than my same point about it being unnatural. It just means you can’t be a naturalist if you want to be an antinatalist. You couldn’t have drawn the ethic from nature. Some other influence, like a god as an easy example whispered “no more babies lest you cause all their suffering.” If the antinatalist doesnt want to have a deity, fine then - but where did they get the idea of a universal morality that wipes out procreation was a good?

I still say it makes no sense to prevent suffering in another by eliminating the other (through never making the other). You never have the prevention if you never have the other to prevent from something.

That someone DOES NOT exist to suffer is the ethically good outcome. — schopenhauer1

This is two parts: 1. That SOMEONE does not exist. And 2. “Exist to suffer”.

You are talking about the child as if actual, not potential. You did a much worse job of making this about the parent. The ethically good outcome has to be about the parent, the ethical person acting ethically. Not someone else. Be they “not exist” as a potential child or “exist to suffer” as an actual child.

Again, category error to input ANY ethical thing to nature. Humans are too plastic for this kind of thinking. Did nature intend us to have computers? No, nature intended nothing. Nature has nothing to say on nothing. Once you have degrees of freedom of deliberation, it is up to us to figure shit out and not go bad faith and say, "What did nature want?". As nature a) isn't something that can confer morality and b) nature doesn't tell us about morality. And any use of "appeal to nature" can be to justify anything because we are brutes and we do ethical things as well.. it is up to us to deliberate on what to sus out as the correct view and action. There is nothing to fall back on. Even if we did, it would be your interpretation of it. Or at best using descriptive ethics to justify normative ethics. — schopenhauer1

Don’t really need to reply here. I’m not talking about nature like it’s intentional. It’s causal. Mother Nature is a metaphor for causality, or natural necessity. Like a biological function. Like procreation. Like, in the case of humans, ethics. Ethics came from humans and humans came from natural processes so ethics sits directly in nature in us humans. Antinatalism would be nature’s human ethics that requires by natural necessity humans unnaturally stop procreation, which ends the ethics that sits only in humans which formerly sat in nature. Total mess.

They aren't moral onto themselves like suffering prevention is. — schopenhauer1

Suffering prevention. Is this the highest ethic, the only ethic, a foundational ethic to all that are built on it? Or just another ethic where someone might hold some other ethic higher while keeping suffering prevention close, just not central?

I think you have to say it is up there pretty close to your highest ethic. All other ethics might add some suffering to the world.

Antinatalism sort of is a one size solution fits all human immorality solution.

humans aren't around to keep ethics going — schopenhauer1

What a phrase.

And I know you don’t care about this but it means ethics is as meaningless as your suffering, your life, and your precious preventative sentiments. Why be ethical? It’s a different question, but antinatalism does not promote a good sense of meaning and purpose behind being ethical. It rids the world of the life out in place that would do the preventing of procreation.

What are you intending a new person born to get out of life? — schopenhauer1

Who knows? No one can influence what a person gets for themselves out of this life. That’s up to them to get out of it what they can. To the ones who are born to us we can only give them things out of life - it is up to them and their intentions to take these and get things out of life. All we can intend is the same thing we can physically provide - an opportunity. It’s called procreation.

how is this not paternalistically assuming — schopenhauer1

There’s nothing paternalistic by banning all babies? It is an ironic use of the term “paternal” but “thou shalt prevent suffering and never have children.” Just as wide open to derision for “paternalism”.

You never responded to this:

Antinatalism promotes no more babies because making a baby is the infliction of suffering on that baby. No one wants to inflict suffering on a baby, because it is just wrong. If that is the right way to live, and someone gets pregnant, the pregnant couple would have done wrong and inflicted suffering on another (or be in the act of inflicting suffering on another growing into such person).

What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?

If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. That’s worse than inflicting suffering.

But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesn’t think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isn’t a person.

Doesn’t an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon? — Fire Ologist

Well?

In denying moral naturalism you must necessarily be appealing to some form of supernaturalism. Think of it in terms of the microcosm: if your ethic is directly contrary to evolutionary survival, then it must be coming from something above and beyond evolutionary survival. — Leontiskos

Interesting point.

An attack from a different flank.

I’ve been pointing out that if the ethic was indeed a product of nature, it would be nature developing an ethic that led to the demise of all ethic agents and so the demise of ethics itself; the ethic that was naturally born would then have to turn and destroy itself to be an antinatalist ethic. I’ve been trying to show it is internally self-defeating - living things using their lives to end living things that use their lives ethically.

But destroying itself is not what life naturally does. It’s just the opposite. Living things may devour their surroundings and destroy things, but life does so to live and to endure destructive forces from outside nature.

This all just further supports your argument that antinatalism is not natural.

So again, for another time, the point is about the act of the parent, not the child. Do YOU (the potential parent) want to prevent suffering for another, if you can? — schopenhauer1

Wrong. YOU are still talking about the child too. You should be saying something like this: Do you, the potential parent want to be a person who inflicts suffering, do you want to walk around being an unethical person who inflicts suffering, or do you want to be be ethical? Takes the child out of the equation. If it’s not about the child then it is not about preventing suffering “for another”.

You can’t make your arguments without committing the same error you accuse me of making.

It’s not an error. You need two existing subjects before you can judge the actions of one upon the other as ethical or not. The best you can say is the present world would be a better place if it was filled with people who acted according to principle and and acted according to ethical principle. If one of those principles happens to mean all people will cease to exist, the world is still better today because all of us principled antinatalists inhabit it.

That’s your argument. But you said “for another” anyway.

This is just rhetorically hollow argumen — schopenhauer1

Almost as hollow as thinking we humans, the sole source of ethics, came to be this way by a natural process that was unethical all along.

Don’t you think there is as long a list of great things that happen to people as your laundry list of dirty laundry? You need the clean clothes first before you can get stuck with the dirty laundry. You need life first, apart from suffering, free from suffering, to later suffer anything.

what are you willing to allow another person to be exposed to in your pursuit of X? " — schopenhauer1

What are you willing to take away from another person in your pursuit of your ethical ideals? Take away parenting? Take away loving your children. Take away pride in how those children endure and learn from suffering and are charitable with their sacrifices?

Life does include suffering. Everyday to some extent, for everyone and every creature who lives, there is suffering.

I also don’t want to inflict any more suffering on anyone to make matters worse for them.

But, what is the point of being ethical when being ethical means there will no longer be beings being ethical?

Antinatalism is anti-ethics.

Which is why earlier I said antinatalism puts ethical principals above the people who are being ethical, and does so having the effect of there no longer being any people. So what is the point of being ethical when ethics itself is being used to destroy is, to harm the species, to inflict upon the world a world without any ethics (without people)?

It’s all backwards and confused. Like murdering someone for their own good.

You still haven’t paid attention to preventative vs mitigative. — schopenhauer1

It get it, antinatalism is a preventative act in your mind. Analogies to mitigative acts don’t impress you. These distinctions don’t impress my view of antinatalism.

You still don’t pay attention to much else I’ve written as well.

Nature doesn’t care whether the species dies or you or I fell off a cliff. — schopenhauer1

Neither does nature care about any ethics at all, be it telling you to have 20 babies or 0. Neither does an unborn baby care what you inflict on it or not. Neither will anything care that there once were these ethical creatures who were so ethical they wouldn’t wantonly inflict their ethicalness on life anymore.

I disagree that life is suffering. False premise.

I disagree that procreating is an act upon a person - we don’t “inflict” anything when we participate willingly in the natural act of procreation. We aren’t acting for or against any particular human being when we procreate. The particular human being comes afterwards because life is prior to all of this ethical speak and life is prior to the harm of inflicting suffering by anyone or any process. Procreation is a choice to accept new life - not a choice to make nature do nature’s thing. Nature does the procreating - we accept it. We don’t inflict it (even in vitro).

I disagree that it is always wrong to inflict suffering on another person. Just not a solid, clear, ethical basis to wipe out procreation. Inflicting suffering can be the most ethical thing to do.

It is wrong to take what you are given and squander it, waste it, hoard it, and wrong to not share it, to not give it freely to others.

Don’t have children if you think life is so terrible that no one should be forced to exist.

Look down on people who do have children for their breaches of your ethics if you want.

But Antinatalism is unethical. It misses the point of ethics entirely, which is good human life.

P1: Life is suffering.
— Fire Ologist

This is definitely the most arguable aspect of the whole thing. — AmadeusD

I agree. But the rest isn’t fairly arguable?

It is whether or not causing people to exist is ethical. — AmadeusD

Yes.

But there’s no reasonable quarrel with “procreating is inflicting, and inflicting suffering because it inflicts life which is suffering?” Seems subject to scrutiny, and potentially analogous to “feeding is inflicting suffering, and opening a window to let in some fresh air is inflicting suffering”, because all of these promote life, like procreation promotes life which is suffering. I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person.

And no need to consider what other things we cause by not procreating? As long as we don’t inflict suffering we will be doing good in this world, be good for this world - not arguable?

If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking your life is, on balance, purposeful and happy, you will reject this premise — AmadeusD

Getting a little emotive here, which you criticized me for above. You mean, one person who would reject this would be someone satisfied with experiences of purpose and happiness instead of suffering. You can call this one person deluded. Maybe they are. But then who is anyone to judge someone else’s self delusions and their effect on the balance of their own suffering? Must we stop the delusional thoughts of others with our own better thoughts? Like the wonderful thought of antinatalism?

And why are happiness and/or purpose, as you frame the delusion, the only counters to suffering? If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking life is, on balance, suffering, then you would reject anyone who viewed any life as on balance, not suffering. Screw purpose. I’m enjoying just trying to argue with you here.

Maybe you are right that the suffering in life is the most arguable premise, but the other premises utterly rely on suffering and can be shown almost as anrguable even granting that life is suffering.

We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming — AmadeusD

Antinatalism analogized to, ironically, a life guard, keeping people out of the dangerous waters. That’s backwards. Antinatalism would eliminate the lives to guard, not merely keep lives on the land to live safely. A lifeguard would inflict a riddance of the ocean to those safely on land, not a riddance of living, like antinatalism would.

Living is simply different than suffering and cannot be summarized as only suffering.

Bottom line to me, in a raw, physicalist sense, life is prior to suffering, and life is more than this conversation about suffering and what to do about it. Procreating, consuming, growing, secreting, growing some more, always dying as newness is always born in each living moment - these are the experiences of living, not just suffering. And now life is thinking and writing or reading, not only suffering. Antinatalism isn’t just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. It’s an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action.

Antinatalism, might simply be something psychological, a justification for suicidal tendancy applied on a universal scale.

Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it “good ethics.” Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called “life.” With our “ethics” no less.

Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? — AmadeusD

That’s interesting.

Antinatalism promotes no more babies because making a baby is the infliction of suffering on that baby. No one wants to inflict suffering on a baby, because it is just wrong. If that is the right way to live, and someone gets pregnant, the pregnant couple would have done wrong and inflicted suffering on another (or be in the act of inflicting suffering on another growing into such person).

What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?

If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. That’s worse than inflicting suffering.

But this is interesting. The antinataliat who doesn’t think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isn’t a person.

Doesn’t an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon?

But who or what exactly is doing the hoping? And on whose behalf? And what will it see? And, to what end? And. How? How, any of it without a body? — ENOAH

Same kind of combination of eventualities that is asking these questions. Same place I am directing my answer. Nowhere else in the universe.

I have heard no good reason to believe in an afterlife, so the idea isn't coherent enough to be concerning. — Tom Storm

I would agree, and simply say there is no reason to think we live beyond death. If there is an afterlife it is as improbable as is a full explanation for this life.


I don’t find either a life after death, nor a death after life, scary. I find them both unknowable now, while we experience only life after life and death after death. The idea isn’t measurable in any way. Why be scared of what we can only imagine to describe or experience, and if we die when we die (which makes the most sense by all empirical evidence) then we will not exist to even experience anything of it, so why be scared?

And if eternal life is like infinite time, and life after death is like life for 1 quadrillion years, again, what is there to fear but our imaginations of what those years would be full of?

I don’t belittle the question. I just don’t see an empirical way to approach an evaluation. Immortal souls may make sense to some, but I find souls existing right here and right among us, whether they die with the body or not, to be perplexing enough.

It is only the ego, never alive to begin with, that finally becomes obsolete. Nothing feels nor experiences that loss. And, nothing was there to begin with. — ENOAH

My only quibble is that this is most likely, probable, and apparent by all evidence true, but asserting any of this with certainty, like “the ego, never alive to begin with,” is as treacherous as asserting the ego is alive beyond death of the body. None of this has been laid bare enough to say “never” or phrases like “was there to begin with.” Maybe. Maybe we’ll see. Maybe we won’t see. Maybe now, we won’t see. Maybe we do see and don’t understand. Maybe we understand and haven’t seen. Maybe we won’t see……. But I hope we do see, and I believe there is still room for this faint, improbable hope.

st at their locations — Michael

Locations are in physical space. This isn’t a math problem yet.

Sensors are placed after 100m, 150m, 175m, and so on. — Michael

So you never finish placing the sensors. The race never starts. You can’t ask what the screen will display. It’s not a math problem about distance and time.

Or it’s just the same math problem as the other paradoxes, that are only really intriguing because of all the people in the stands watching that tortoise go!

and, a response directed at the wrong party. If you want to end suffering, end mind's constructions, and attachments thereto. Why end a species? — ENOAH

See, that reads to me like a breath of new air in the conversation. Sort of procreates some breathing space.

Reminds me that we are talking about making a rule that must guide my actions. It’s not just an analytic exercise with suffering and ethical rules as its parts. The argument for antinatalism is also about my response, like where you said it was a response directed at the wrong people.

After we’re done with the logical analysis, antinatalism is a call to action. It says if we work hard enough together, maybe in a few generations, we will finally all do the ethical thing and choose to be antinatalists, then, the human species will be gone, and with it, gone is all suffering, and those last people can say “we, now the most ethical generation, the ones who have inflicted the least suffering on others, we bid to those who discovered antinatalism our humble gratitude for showing us the ethic, and bid everyone else, including ourselves, I guess, good riddance.”

While I think we mean different things when you say “end mind’s constructions and attachments thereto”, I would use those same words to point to the fact that all ethics is in our heads. Ethics is about what we physically do when we interact with other people in the world, but the ethical parts of those actions exist only in my head, in our heads. We must construct all of this, and together for it to be ethics. I would also instead use some of your words to say, “while we are always attaching and detaching from constructions, to be ethical is to take care of what you attach to and detach from.”

But we need both the analytic approach, and this raw, more contextual (aware of aware-ing) view to find an ethical norm.

My attempt at the analytic syllogism:

Life is suffering.
No one should intentionally cause suffering.
Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering…
Therefore, antinatalism.

Negatively put, we should not inflict suffering, so we should not procreate. Or more positively put, it is right not to procreate, or else you would intentionally cause suffering.

We’ve constructed out of suffering this new ethic. (It had to be new because people had to be here first to construct it, it is newer than us at least.)

Now of course antimatalism is more that. And granting the premises, it’s a sound argument. That may be enough for many intuitions.

But what can we know and say about this syllogism?

P1: Life is suffering.

Maybe. Maybe because of life, we have something to compare suffering with in order to identify that life includes suffering. Without something good in life to compare to, how would we recognize suffering. We had to have a happy finger first before we could say that on prick was suffering. But then, does that mean the good and happy finger is a cause of the suffering too?

But maybe life is living. And living is many things, with the many things we live with. One of them is suffering. One of them is ecstasy. One of them is sleeping. One of them is a pin-prick, or reading. Life is reading, right now.

Also, this premise is where we assume a sub premise “suffering is only bad.” Suffering is bad, but it is not only bad. Some suffering is called work. Some called really hard work. Some called loving. Some called longing. Some longing is suffering deeply. Some longing is not.

I think many are willing to say there is enough suffering assured in life that it’s not worth breaking it down into how much or how little there is that it would start to change the calculus of the syllogism. Many would argue life pivots from suffering too much to suffering enough, and therefore “Life is suffering” is a valid premise, period, end of discussion.

So we’ll move on, under protest.

P2: No one should intentionally cause suffering.

Sounds like a nice sentiment from the start. But it depends on your view of what suffering is from P1 if you would make this an absolute. If all suffering is bad, then yeah, absolutely no one should inflict it on anyone else. But many of us have had suffering inflicted upon us without our consent, at great cost, causing deep suffering, only to later count the experience as a a good one. That’s the constant life of a child. Some suffering can lead to tremendous things that would not have been what they are without the suffering. So if not all suffering is bad, what is wrong with causing it in another?

So this premise only works if all suffering is bad. So my protest from P1 is rearing its head.

That means to me I should try to tailor P2 to keep the argument flowing.

How about new P2: “No one should intentionally harm or injure another for the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.”

Sounds stronger, and accounts for the good of inflicting valuable suffering, but this will be a problem when it comes time to choose whether to procreate. Now with new premise 2 we have to have a baby already born who we can physically “harm and injure” before we might unethically do so for “the sole purpose of causing them to suffer.”

I just disagree that intentionally causing suffering, the heart of this ethical rule, is necessarily something that should never be done, it’s not clearly a universal. It’s not self-evident.

It needs work, as does my argument against it, but let’s press on.

P3: Procreating is intentional infliction of suffering.

This conflates begetting, or giving new life, with infliction on a subject. When we inflict, we inflict upon. There must be an object that we inflict something specific like suffering upon. But that object is missing in the syllogism. Take the antinatalist negative approach and flip it, and you see the hole, the missing object when one tries to inflict something onto the unborn, the non-existent.

If we do not procreate we will not inflict suffering upon……..who? (I get it, the answer is: on the possible child that would have been had you gotten pregnant.). But really, who benefits when I do not have a kid so I can not inflict suffering? Can I say I benefited 10 babies because I was going to have at least 10 kids, but now since I’m an antinatalist, I benefited 10 people? That seems really odd. But if making up some number of never-existing people as beneficiaries of my good antinatalist deeds is odd at all, so is saying I benefitted one person. There is no one person who benefits if you conflate the Infliction of suffering with procreation and respond by not procreating. I’m just procreating. There is no one there to enjoy my mon-procreation with, as there is no one to say “thanks for not inflicting suffering on me” because I didn’t create any such life.

Secondly, there is a bias in the word “inflict”. We don’t inflict levity and happiness. We inflict pain and suffering. To procreate need not be an “infliction” of anything at all. Maybe it is another place to reword the premise better.

But thirdly, premise three is kind of premise 1 reworded. To say procreation is inflicting suffering is like saying life is suffering. Life, the tug and pull of being and becoming, or just the becoming of being, or just the “ing” of suffering. If life is suffering procreating is building new suffering or inflicting suffering.

This just goes back to the arguments against premise 1, that life can’t only be suffering for suffering to be distinguishable as a feature of life at all - life is more than suffering, and more than enough good to enable appropriate attachment to other features of life besides suffering. And suffering isn’t so bad that you must never cause it in another.

But, Conclusion: Antinatalism.

Logically flows from the premises as they are meant by the antinatalist. Suffering is truly excruciating and life is suffering, so since procreating makes new lives of suffering, we should not procreate. Certinly uses logic.

But only compelling if you think suffering is so bad, that suffering is the definer of becoming a human being, that we can’t see any good in suffering, that we can’t see other things besides suffering more valuable to us, that we can’t use our suffering to construct other things, and that if we inflict suffering it is never for good, it is always an unethical act. I just disagree with all of those observations. Together they mean an end to procreation is wildly inappropriate a response. It’s an emotional response to suffering, not something clear enough to construct an ethical norm.

It’s a slap in the face of the Dionysian. Mother Nature inflicted humanity on the universe, why would we judge her so harshly and end her creation, for the sake of each other not having each other?

I don’t see wisdom in turning against life itself because of suffering.

We should turn against the suffering, not the life that begets it or not even the ones who inflict it.

The law should be, because life involves suffering, we should give relief and kinship, so that others can know life with less suffering, but others can know life.

My arguments don’t seem compelling enough yet either. But that just means I need to keep searching for the words, suffering through the birth of better words, constructing something to attach to that accounts for more than the last attachment.

Hotel rooms is nonsense then. There is no such set imaginable.

Just because in mathematics we can distinguish natural numbers from irrational numbers and real numbers, and place certain references to infinite sets in relation to these other concepts, doesn’t mean we can imagine “countably infinite hotel rooms.” You see the hallway there with the room numbers? Or do you see part of the hallway? What floor are we on, if it matters?

If this is a mathematics conversation then why are we ever referring to stairs, lamps, hotels, switches, starting lines at races??

Look, if in an argument, the premise includes a task that can’t be completed, and the conclusion includes completion of that task, then there is a contradiction, and this contradiction refutes the conclusion. If that is the sticking point then you are right, and I was wrong.

That’s not enough though.

In the supertasks article, they mention a “hotel with a countably infinite number of rooms”. Right there, at the premise, what does “countably infinite” point to? That’s nonsense. That’s a square circle. We don’t get out of the gate. The infinite is by definition uncountable, so any conclusion based on a premise that includes the “countably infinite” could be said to be irrelevant, because you can’t create a logical connection between the conclusion and a nonsensical, unimaginable thing like the “countably infinite, whether that relation is said to be contradictory or otherwise.

An infinite number of stairs. How is that possible to imagine, to state as a premise, to even picture?

The arguments in these thought experiments don’t get off the ground once you think them through. We have to give the premises some credibility as containing complete thoughts in order to move towards a conclusion. I grant you that if you give the premises credibility (somehow), the conclusions of these arguments may be contradictory, but that is only because of us accepting a picture of infinite stairs, or a race where one of the participants must take infinitely smaller steps.

I’ve addressed all of these premises before. There is no half until after there is a whole. You don’t travel half a distance first then travel the second half and thereby complete the whole. To call a distance “half” you first call another distance “whole” and then cut it in half. The whole always comes first. So when Zeno says Achilles must first travel half, he forgot that Zeno already accounted for the whole so he could claim whatever shorter distance to be some fraction in relation to that whole. So Zeno, like Thompson, and the others, tried to make mathematical relations between numbers correspond to the physical relations between objects. They don’t.

Like you said, you can’t have an irrational number of apples in your fridge, you can’t have a countably infinite number of hotel rooms, or switch a light on and off every half the interval of time prior, or travel any fraction of distance without knowing the denominator (whole distance) first.

I wouldn’t argue with you that I’ve made arguments based on emotion in here. But there is a basic premise that suffering qua suffering is only bad, so inflicting suffering on another is only bad, and inflicting suffering on another is unethical. These notions arise out of emotion, and raw experience (unless there is some heretofore 11th commandment that the antinatalists dug up.). Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isn’t a non-sequitor.

But, true, I’m not just building analytic proofs here.

1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people, — Fire Ologist

The ethics are to do with our actions now. Not unborn people. — AmadeusD

Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular — AmadeusD

Schop said, and I agree, that ethics only exist where people and exist, and in particular, where more than one person exists. The ethical rule at issue is: it is always wrong to inflict suffering on others and/or to do so without consent. And the ethical solution is to stop making people.

While I disagree with the rule (and I don’t thereby think inflicting suffering is good, just that it is not universally always wrong to inflict any suffering without consent), leaving the rule as is anyway, there is a distinction between an ethical rule that prevents harm to people you don’t know in particular, and a rule that prevents harm in people people that don’t exist.

It is true that, if all suffering infliction is wrong, the unethical behavior is “to do with our actions now” and the unethical person is the one who exists, inflicting the suffering. But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm. The antinatalist isn’t looking out for the fetus who will be a person; the antinatalist is urging no one gets pregnant. There is no person existing that is the one towards whom the ethical act is directed. There is only the antinatalist claiming ethical treatment of the beneficiaries of that ethical treatment, namely beings (I guess you can call them human beings) that never come to be. There is not only no particular subject of the antinatalists actions, there is no potential ethical subject.

Too leave the glass on the playground is potentially inflicting harm (not necessarily, whereas necessary suffering is part of the antinatalist solution) on anyone who plays there. The people who might or might not play there actually exist while I consider whether or not to remove the glass. The non-procreated are not beings at all. So if two ethical beings must exist for there to be an ethics between them, those beings exist in the playground scenario but do not exist in the antinatalist world. We can’t prevent suffering in someone until someone exists, at least any reason we would have to prevent further existence is not a matter of ethics towards that further existing being, because there is no one or thing there to be ethical towards.

If I use the playground analogy, the antinatalist reasoning to me would lead to solutions like “there should be no playgrounds” or “because children at play can cut themselves on glass, there should be no children.”

Truth is antinatalism solves every math problem, every philosophical conundrum, every imperfection - all of gone to history. Problem is, people like playgrounds, despite the glass. All ethics and logic and suffering be damned when there is good sliding board around.

in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important — schopenhauer1

That is not absolute. I’m not a utilitarian for instance. And antinatalism isn’t tailored to preventing suffering, it prevents everything, including weighting the importance of suffering over happiness.

If you allow me that, we can use the following analogy...

There is a state of affairs whereby I can put someone in harms way by X action (it need not be procreation). — schopenhauer1

I don’t see this as analogous here, because you are dealing here with existing people who are put in specific harms way and existing people who are putting them there. Antinstalism is dealing with existing people who are potentially putting people in harms way, and non-existing potential people. The scenarios are too far apart. It’s not close enough of an analogy to be instructive.

How is it not compelling to prevent suffering when one can? — schopenhauer1

In a world of suffering and happiness, it is not compelling to prevent suffering by eliminating all people and all happiness as well. We don’t all agree that “in matters of ethics, preventing suffering is weighted more important.”

Many would agree that disallowing procreation would cause great suffering in existing people. Some people are born moms and dads and they know it. Is their suffering as they live our antinatalism worth the good of a future world without humans to you? Antinatalism also causes suffering of existing people now who want kids and whose kids will love them.

You don't CREATE the situation of palliative ethics by bypassing the preventative part. I don't CREATE your suffering so that I can help you fix it. — schopenhauer1

You don’t prevent MY suffering if I never exist either.

It is ethical to prevent actual suffering in actual beings. It is wishful thinking to prevent potential suffering in non-existing beings. You might also be preventing the evolution of bliss and paradise on earth. You will never know if antinatalism was the right prescription for suffering, because they will be no one who could thank you for your ethics.

So now I have three problems with antinatalism.

1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people, so an ethics that is called good for its treatment of non-existing people is misguided at best if not non-ethics. Its resource management policy - not enough happiness to go around so let’s eliminate the number of suffering people.

2. Suffering is not enough a reason to eliminate all humanity. My guess is the vast majority of people suffer 33% of their conscious time. The vast majority would rather live this life than no life at all. The suffering in the world still isn’t enough to justify ending the world.

3. Antinatalism is not directed at preventing suffering, as it prevents everything. It’s an over broad solution to a narrower problem
Imagine you have a magic wand that allows you to prevent procreation. People In two neighboring villages are constantly inflicting suffering on each other. You can’t solve so many disputes and you see that the suffering will never end, so instead you make it so those people can’t procreate and just let them live out their lives suffering. Soon there will be no more suffering inflicting going on in those villages because there will be no more people there. In another two neighboring villages, the people are always stealing from each other and bullying each other. There are times when the people are back in their homes laughing and relaxing, but at some point, everyone is stealing and bullying so at some point everyone is a victim of theft and bullying. No way to address the stealing and bullying, so you wave the wand and solve the problem eventually.

Antinatalism isn’t tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering.

I’m claiming that because supertasks are impossible, anything posited about some state of affairs after they are completed is irrelevant and non-existent in relation to the task, so it cannot be evaluated for its contradiction or otherwise.

I agree they are impossible. So why do you disagree with the other things I’m saying?

Am I saying annything inconsistent with the fact that completing a supertask is impossible?

So what am I getting wrong with you? Why are you arguing with me?

Do you think supertasks can be completed?

Do you think there is “finishing” in an infinite task?

Ok, so supertasks can’t be completed.

Did you think I was saying anything to the contrary?

And supertasks didn’t come up until later in the post and really another way of incorrectly claiming there is anything relevant to the lamp problem at two minutes.

Is this a joke? — Michael

I’m just trying to get to one minute with you, step down the first step.

The concept of the “super task” is not essential to anything I’m saying.

Is there any same page or common ground you see in anything I’m saying?

I still don’t know your point if your point is based on refutations of the basic things I’m saying.

Find the common ground so we can walk together or take me to your point. Why do we need to talk about this under the concept of “supertasks” if you think I’m missing something?

Do you mean “after we finish pushing the button” because people get tired and time presses on? Or do you mean after we’ve pressed the button an infinite number of times? Because there can be no such time, and it would certainly not arrive at two minutes.

They claim that it is possible to have completed an infinite succession of tasks in finite time. — Michael

I am not going to add confusion and complexity to this by starting to discuss “super tasks”.

I do not claim it is possible to complete this task. “Task” speak is about physical, finite things like lamps and switches, and actually switching the lamp and marking each time it switches as “at one minute” and “at a minute and a half”.

We are not in the physical world. We are using physical world pictures to demonstrate a purely theoretical, mathematical function. To hell with any introduction of actual tasks and actual lamp states at actual times on actual clocks.

If you make a a mark at one distance or one time period and call it “1” and then make a second mark at a further distance or further time and call it “1.5” and then use this pattern to make a further mark at 1.75, you can continue this exercise if you are so inclined to do so infinitely and you will never mark “2”.

I agree actual tasks defined as “finishing” or “completed” that include functions involving infinitely available steps are absurd.

The odd thing is, I think somewhere in here we are seeing the same thing, just not saying what we see so the other sees that we are seeing the same thing.

You need to give a little bit to me to bring me to see your point because nothing I’m saying seems refutable, and isnt being refuted by you.

after we finish pushing the button — Michael

THERE IS NO AFTER WE FINISH PUSHING THE BUTTON!!

We are supposed to be pushing the button at half of the prior interval. This is infinite. If you end up at 2 minutes, if you finish, you’ve failed the thought experiment or added some new premise.

Why do you need to redefine the premises? We are getting nowhere over and over again.

It’ time zero and two minutes later that are the limits. Two minutes later is a theoretical, because it is never actually reach by halving the prior interval starting at zero time, one minute time, one and half minutes time, one and three quarters, etc.

Precisely two minute lamp is outside the scenario. Period. Whatever state or non-state you assign or can’t assign to it, is not a function of the half timed lamp switching scenario. You are ducking the issue. — Fire Ologist

P1. Between 22:00 and 01:00, nothing happens to the lamp except what is caused to happen to it by pushing the button — Michael

I think you mean between 22:00 and 23:00, assuming the two minute mark is 0:00.

Why do you need to redefine the premises? We are getting nowhere over and over again.

It’ time zero and two minutes later that are the limits. Two minutes later is a theoretical, because it is never actually reach by halving the prior interval starting at zero time, one minute time, one and half minutes time, one and three quarters, etc.

Precisely two minute lamp is outside the scenario. Period. Whatever state or non-state you assign or can’t assign to it, is not a function of the half timed lamp switching scenario. You are ducking the issue.

Not only is no state deducible from the premises, no state is consistent with the premises. — Michael

But no state being consistent with the premises doesn’t create a contradiction. At two minutes, the lamp becomes a duck and flies away. That doesn’t contradict the premises, because the premises never touch the lamp at two minutes. Two minute lamp is utterly a new whole scenario, needing new premises to start being discussed at all.

The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X". — schopenhauer1

This is different than the theoretical potential person that is discussed pre-procreation. In the above scenario, not knowing the identity of the particular person who will be put in harms way doesn’t mean the present existing state of affairs does not include already existing people who are actually putting people in harms way and actually going to be harmed.

The above is just not helpful here.