It is certainly a factual claim that if you do not exist you do not suffer. — I like sushi

Hmmm. Seems to me if something doesn’t exist then any reference to this non-existent thing makes the thing some theoretical thing. It’s not a real thing (because it doesn’t exist).

So the new ethics of AN demands we be ethical towards future potential beings who actually don’t particularly exist; and in the meantime we suck at being ethical now (not for the future) towards actual human being who actually exist.

Or, I wonder “if you do not exist, what do you do?” Obviously you do nothing, nor can you do anything because “you” in the first place are a fiction, a possibility at best. Why would a fiction suffer or certainly not suffer, or do anything?

It’s not a language game. Who or what is relieved of suffering but our imaginary friends who we spare from living in the first place?

If I, who now exist, died, it can be said that I do not suffer. I’ll accept that (although there are various ways to dispute that as well, including my own argument against un-procreated beings). But you can say I don’t eat chicken anymore either, or play music, or stub my toe, or have a toe. You can say lots of things about me that are over now. That’s because I existed, and knew suffering and had all of these things about me to lose with my life. There is an “I” from which things that go along with this “I” can be removed, like my suffering, or my toe.

But if there is no one there to exist, no “you” as in a “you never existed”, there is no one saved from suffering. No procreation ends human life, and no human life means no humans suffering (or playing tennis); but you cannot particularize this and say “YOU or HE or even IT never suffered” about a “you” who never existed.

Because you cannot particularize this prevention of suffering in a particular “you” who doesn’t suffer, AN is acting ethical towards no one, no one who ever exists.

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin. And certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place. — noAxioms

You couldn’t give the example of how a pumpkin is not a distinct object if there were no distinct objects. You certainly couldn’t covey such a thought to me from your mind if you didn’t place an object, like a pumpkin, translated as “pumpkin” into language, but otherwise able to be thrown in the direction of my head, in between us. You could have said “gourd” or “cheese sandwich” but you made reference to a distinct thing instead.

You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds.
We seem to be in agreement then. — noAxioms

That contradicts this:

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they?
— Metaphysician Undercover
Only to an idealist. — noAxioms

Unless you, like me think, some distinctions are ideal, and others are physical.

You just want an example of a physical distinction, but one separate from words. And you want me to use words here on this forum to demonstrate it.

How about this word as a physical example of a physical object that has no words attached to it: hgtiigumsolee. There an object of light and dark distinct from everything else you read. Here are two distinct examples of an object defining itself before your very eyes, out in the world that has no words to it, something you cannot even conceotualize but here it comes again twice: hgtiigumsolee. hgtiigumsolee

Idealize that. It’s only particular. Like a pumpkin might be.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese.
— Fire Ologist
Per your weird assignment of terms, it would be an attempt at a pizza with dough but without the cheese and sauce, except that the dough seems undefined without sauce on it. — noAxioms

But dough, then, like the whole pizza, becomes the whole object, with its own extension, idealization, and language. Just as you just used language to distinguish your weird assignment from my weird assignment (and mine was more weird.)

You can’t say that extension (which is a concept) without putting it in something extended (like dough). The ideal and the extended are of the same distinction.

Minds are obviously "real" and so their relationships to things, including demarcating them, seem like they should be plenty "real enough" to define individuals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t know about “all distinctions”. There is no reason there can’t be physical distinctions. They would work well to explain the difference experience of getting up from chair and realizing my back and knees hurt from sitting. It is just an experience, a phenomenon, something epistemology hasn’t settled yet. But no physical distinction? Seems to me if there exists anything physical at all, whether it be one physical thing (say a giant ball of clay), you have distinctions and really many physical objects to distinguish.

So we minds may only work through the medium of our idealized distinctions, but it does not follow that all distinctions are ideal. The world may itself have physical distinction in it (and I don’t mind simply assuming it does, like any physical scientist has to assume.)

This is all a battle between motion and stillness. Or between fixed identity (objects) and change (not finding any objects). Motion seems to overtake everything that was once still and is now gone, including any non-ideal sense of stillness. So stillness, like the “object” noAxiom is trying to find in matter, seems the weaker component, and possibly only ideal (so not real, like motion is real).



Objects are still. The moon treated as object is the moon never changing. Visible mostly at night, white and grey, appears to reflect light and not generate any light to my eye - the moon. Fixed. We all know about it. The same moon.

But the moon moves and is slowly minutely always undergoing massive changes; so because of change, the still object referenced in the “moon” is really an ideal moon, because the actual moon isn’t a still object. Like every physical thing, nothing is a thing for long.

Unlike an object, which has a clear definition, clear border delimiting it and distinguishing it as a particular “it”, motion changes things, undoes their definitions, and reveals the ideal moon which appears fixed, is not quite accurate.

But we are smart. We can reference the moon anyway, holding it still with our minds, knowing it is changing and might not remain the moon for long. And while we hold the spinning, decaying moon still, we can show it is distinct from the sun (another moving target, but always moving distinctly from the moon).

So distinctions can be in the world, but right before our eyes they just don’t last as long, unlike the idealized distinctions we can make right before our minds that say “moon”.

Physical objects, holding themselves together for a time, is what the world looks like. Whether the distinctions last long is another question. Whether the distinctions we see and idealize create useful references, that are translatable to language like “natural satellite” instead of “moon” is another question. But whether physical objects exist is another question. And once you admit the physical, you’ve simultaneously admitted physical distinction.

not the objective limits of a thing's extension. — noAxioms

I think you’ve given yourself an impossible task maybe.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese.

These “components” as I’ve called them are inseparable, so not really components. (Unlike a pizza so it’s tough to make a metaphor for something that would apply to a single pepperoni as it would the whole pizza). We make concepts out of things and can think of them as components, but like “mind” and “concepts” might be distinguishable as two concepts, when is there ever a concept without a mind? Are they inseparable, are they interdependent in order for either to be?

So separating a physical “object” may require a mind like an idea requires a mind. That doesn’t mean there is no dough, no extension. That doesn’t mean there cannot be natural kinds that would be distinguished and separate individuals without minds, but it means that because I happen to have a mind, when I point to a distinct object, I am always adding my own mind to the state of affairs, and that addition is now a “part” of the “object” distinguished.

↪Dogbert Dude, you propose an answer that merely begs the question (i.e. precipitates an infinite regress). Argument from incredulity – lack of imagination – is also fallacious. Talking out of your bunghole, Dude. "That's just the way it is" – brute fact of the matter – suffices. — 180 Proof

How about the question “how” instead of “why?”

How is that?

Your final answer still: It just is, so don’t ask again.

the … experiential transformation from typical matter into a human is literally unimaginable. — Dogbert

I agree. The individual human experience, with its questions, explanations, and willing beliefs, is impossible. Yet it is.

We will never be satisfied with “it just is” when what we see it just is, is impossible to be. The absurdity of reason in the face of the impossible demands some homecoming, some reunification with “it just is that way” because the way it just is cannot be, and yet it is.

Accepting the impossible with “it just is” is ignoring the problem, not resolving it.

What I’ve learned is that I must use more than reason to justify reasons. And instead of justifying it, I have to justify myself seeing this paradox. I am a paradox, so if all for me is paradox and unresolvable, it is because of me and not because of it. So I must understand something else besides the rational; take myself out of the picture and keep myself out of the picture, in order to see where I fit in the picture.

But everything is connected, or nothing is. — noAxioms

In order for everything to be connected, you have to have separate things that connect. So saying everything is connected, is saying everything is separate as well. Otherwise you are saying all is one thing and nothing else.

My liver is connected to my brain but my liver is separated from my brain. Maybe we have to keep moving the lines as we define the point where these separate things connect, but we don’t need to see that my liver is my brain.

1) If humans came here naturally, then anything can be justified as it came about from humans, which came here naturally so anything we do is technically "from nature".. reductio. — schopenhauer1

So do antinatalists believe we humans came here UNnaturally? What did ethics come from then?

Look, I think we are talking past each other.

My wife was just scratching our dog’s neck telling him how good he was with my daughter’s dog who he hates who just spent a few days over the house. Finally went home today and my dog is happier than ever. My dog of course had no idea what my wife was saying just that it sounded soothing as she massaged his neck and ears. All he knew was all of his suffering was gone, he was master of his house once again and feeling at peace staring into my wife’s eyes as she gently petted him. That happy 30 seconds was worth hours of suffering (which of course it took to build), and was just a dog’s life.

Happiness is so much more than suffering; moments are worth a lifetime of suffering. Moments of human happiness are worth millions of years of evolutionary struggle for survival.

We show this in our choices and lives all of the time. We don’t suffer only because of life. We suffer because of what we want, we suffer on purpose when we work towards something we suffer to achieve, we struggle to realize, we wish we knew before but we know now and we are glad we at least know this at all. All for those fleeting moments where now is joyous, where our work is done, when we’ve achieved our goal, as we realize our vision and know enough to say “good”.

We all say “good” everyday. I defy you to get through one day without saying “good”.

Life is suffering? How could you know this if life was not good?

I agree that life includes suffering, but I don’t agree suffering is bad.

Like the antinatalist just asserts as a given that life is suffering and suffering is bad, I simply assert life is a series of joyous moments and these things are good, and good enough, not at all like suffering, and not bad at all.

Don’t you see that at all? If not, can’t you let someone else wish that joy upon everyone, wish that they get to experience a moment of joy that would fill a hundred lives? Uou really think no one could feel this way in this life, this life is so bad?? Can’t you let someone have that? Let them have their joy along with their suffering?

Now back to the syllogism.

If the suffeting in life is what counts most for you, then fine, find your ethics in the prohibition of suffering, and build your ethical behavior out of ceasing procreation.

But if suffering is just one of those things, a stumbling block to a lifetime understanding even the concept of “bliss”, where suffering is just a challenge you’ve beaten so many times by simply living, if you can make a trifle of all the suffering in the world when compared to the good life also brings, then the whole antinatalist argument fails. It is a syllogism in which “life is suffering” is the main premise, linking procreation with unethical failure to prevent suffering, so if you just don’t care about life’s suffering to the point where it’s prevention is the highest good, the whole argument fails.

That’s my starting point - life is good. Suffering is a part of life, but so what? Life was good first and still good now that I suffer while living my life.

Even though without this first premise the antinatalist argument fails, I recognize that I haven’t proven that life is NOT suffering, or given you any reason to abandon your position that life is basically suffering. That’s up to you to prove your premise is valid. You also haven’t proven to me that life is NOT good, or its goodness cannot dwarf its suffering.

But now you know, if you want to convince me of the soundness and validity of the antinatalist argument, you should be convincing me that life sucks. Otherwise the rest of the argument will fail for me.

If you did convince me that life sucked so bad it was worth considering an ethic that held “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented in others”, you would still have to convince me that preventing procreation is preventing suffering. Suffering only has a chance to be suffering after there is a person who suffers. The person in whom you might prevent suffering, therefore had to exist before one can prevent suffering, because suffering doesn’t exist until after the person suffers. So never procreating is not preventing suffering, it is preventing a person. Period. Unless preventing a person is some other good ethic, nothing good is done by preventing a person from existing. They haven’t existed yet; you haven’t prevented suffering yet. You may have a rule “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented” but you can’t apply that rule to any actions that do not involve other existing beings who actually exist and therefore can actually suffer (if not prevented). Potential, future beings do not actually suffer; so if you prevent a potential future being from existing, you prevent no suffering at all, since there is no actual suffering that could possibly be prevented, as there is no actual person who could possibly suffer.

I know you don’t like this argument but it sits in the bigger question: why would anyone even care to be ethical in their treatment of other people, if procreating other people is not a good? Who are we being ethical for? Ourselves? Will we suffer any less as we go on living? All that we’ve done if we stop procreating is we assert our judgment that the existence of people doesn’t matter as much as the ethical rule “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented.” But ethics is for people (which you have said), not people for ethics.

Lastly, even if you could convince me that the suffering outshines the joy as the essential feature of life, and even if you could convince me that by procreating, we are doing anything specific toward any specific person, let alone by not procreating we are preventing anything specific in any specific thing (like a person), you still could t convince me that the rule “all suffering that can be prevented should be prevented.”

I’m not going to go into it again but suffering isn’t what is bad in life to me. Evil and sin are. Unethical choices are. Suffering is a consequence, not a raw material, of life, but not always a consequence, and sometimes non-existent in life (for moments, many moments).

So there is no need to convince me that I am wrong. You can if you want, but then you would have to show me I don’t really mind the suffering enough to justify discarding the joyousness.

I admit I have been focused on the logic to try to convince you that you are wrong. Beat up the premises to snap you out of the conclusions. But it’s up to you to see for yourself.

I can’t make you see the good that is life and how suffering can be minimized and defeated. All I can ask is that you honestly answer this: if someone thought life was good, in fact amazing, would they be immoral to want to share this with as many people as they could, including by hoping for children and doing everything they could to raise children?

Or if someone thought ethics only applies between existing moral/ethical agents, that ethics can’t apply to the dead or the uncreated, then wouldn’t an ethical rule forbidding procreation because of its infliction of suffering be misapplied? Or Maybe even unethical in its ignorance towards actual people as opposed to potential people?

Or if someone thought suffering could be something so important in the shaping of who one actually is in this life, that suffering was sometimes good in itself as something not only to be accepted, but embraced and promoted at times, wouldn’t a rule that ended all suffering by ending all people seem opposite of the good one sees in other people, in other lives, and in life itself?

If you grant me my premises, am I still wrong to think procreation is a great good?

And I think I’ve said my peace. Antinatalism seems unneccesssry if it be based on simply suffering, seems anti-ethics while it puts ethics above ethical people, and simply ignores the joy in life.

And the boredom. Life is boredom - we should all kill each other in a final bloodbath just for sake of some excitement in these otherwise insufferably boring lives. Ridiculous? Not if life is only boredom.

Life is way more than suffering. Maybe only human beings can recognize this. Why kill ourselves off because of a little suffering?

Yeah and again, no humans, no ethics needed. No problem. — schopenhauer1

But humans came here naturally. So ethics, which tells you how to live good and rightly, came here naturally.

We kill all humans off, and ethics is gone, who’s to say nature won’t evolve a new species of sentient, ethical beings. By ending humans you are leaving the world empty of ethical beings who could have prevented nature from spitting out more sentient suffering. Totally irresponsible of you.

That's not reification. Reification is this:
Reification is when you think of or treat something abstract as a physical thing. — schopenhauer1

Like reifying an abstract “good not to inflict” in the physical act of procreation.

the unique thing about procreation is it is completely preventative — schopenhauer1

So we are allowed to inflict lots of suffering throughout our lives, but the rule not to inflict suffering is super important when looking to consent to the naturally produced function of procreation. Got it.

It’s completely preventative of ethics too. No more ethics along with no more suffering that the ethical ones couldn’t stomach inflicting on others (except they could stomach the risk of inflicting suffering by every other act they take besides procreation).

That is a weird reification to me. — schopenhauer1

Antinatalism is a weird reification of being ethical, of the “good” as in a good choice being choosing not to inflict life with its suffering.

we often have very unpleasant experiences in the present that we often smooth away later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the unpleasant experience. — schopenhauer1

Then we often have pleasant experiences in the present that we rough up later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the pleasant experience. That’s all psychology.

All of this interestingly points out that no one can judge another’s suffering, or that they are suffering at all.

It is false to say life is insufferable. Just way too much whining about the day you stubbed your toe. Way too much discounting of the day you saw someone you love happy and laughing, or laughter itself.

It is false to say we are never right to inflict suffering. Just not a tailored ethic anyone could ever follow. We can follow a rule to not steal. We can not lie or murder. But never inflict any suffering?? We would need to not ask anyone to ever do anything. We couldn’t tell someone we loved them for fear this would burden them and increase their suffering. Teaching someone about antinatalism could inflict tremendous suffering on them - the meaning of life and all their plans dashed because they involved a family and kids. It is NOT true that “Happiness is not obligatory, whereas preventing suffering is.” Neither happiness nor preventing suffering are obligatory. You reify your ability to reduce suffering, and the ethical rule that tells you this is the highest good.

We lost sight of the twig because of the tree. How is that different? — noAxioms

No you didn’t. You said “twig” and then said “tree” and then noticed how they were “touching” which still sets out two separate objects in order for “touch” to make any sense either. THEN one can look closer at the two things touching and learn they are so connected they might be one thing, in which case you are just back to the same starting point where you said “twig” or carved out and identified one thing.

The process didn’t eliminate difference and identity, it just shows how it can be harder or easier to observe and delineate.

Proof only exists in mathematics, which is never about the physical universe. Therefore, it is impossible to prove anything "concrete". That is not how proof works. — Tarskian

100 %.

We don’t prove existence. We prove relations among the existing things we posit, or assume, or hypothesize, or believe, or know. You don’t prove the existence of a premise; you need a premise first to prove something in conclusion. Or you aren’t doing proof.

We might be able to prove a god wouldn’t struggle, or a god wouldn’t need sleep, but we can’t prove that struggle-free, always awake god exists.

Midas touches a twig. What turns to gold? The twig, branch, tree, forest?
— noAxioms

That's an easy one; it would be the tree in its entirety that turns to gold. Not the branch nor the forest, for neither of these are standalone things like the tree is, unless the branch is broken off the tree. — NotAristotle

Right. Just because everything is touching, like the tree touches the forrest floor, touching the whole Forrest, etc, etc, doesn’t mean you lose sight of the separate things that are touching. You need separate things to have a question about where to draw lines where separate things touch and overlap. You can’t lose site of the trees because of the forest either.

To - some - degree, i get what you're saying. — AmadeusD

Mission accomplished.

This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional — AmadeusD

Really? You don’t use metaphors to make the text more interesting? Ok if you think that’s “delusional” of me how about simply:

Arising by the necessity of chemistry on earth, life began. This led to animals, which by the natural necessity of evolution led to animals on land, which by necessity led to humans, which by necessity led to logic and ethics, which by necessity led to antinatalism, which, if practiced well, necessarily leads to the end of all of this living necessity (at least of the ethical kind). The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.

Basically, all the rest of the living things by necessity procreate, as procreation is part of the very life that has now spit out ethics, and our ethics is to end life itself, unlike every other natural, necessitated living thing. Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our “ethics”. Or, just

overwhelmingly: suffering. — AmadeusD

seems like it’s based on a preoccupation with suffering too much maybe?

Not quite sure how to respond, in this case. — AmadeusD

But it hasn't anything to say about antinatalism. — AmadeusD

I really don't know what you could mean here. — AmadeusD

Can I use these statements too? In response to the other things you said? :razz:

The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean. — AmadeusD

What?

most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life. — AmadeusD

Wow. Philosopher king hath spoken to the little suffering people. Is anyone ever “wrong” when they judge what is right or wrong about the quality of OTHER PEOPLE’s lives? Maybe wrong anbout some of the “most people”? Isn’t it THEIR lives? It’s none of my business to say your life is suffering, just like it’s none of your business to say my life is anything. Maybe “most antinataliats are wrong about the quality of their lives.” Possible? Killing off all procreation might be a little rash?

The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this. — AmadeusD

So by procreation, you have to mean conceiving, growing the fetus, giving birth and feeding/caring for a new person. So it is wrong to “procreate” in this sense because only after some or all of these steps has suffering been inflicted on a person. Not just conception. This way, conceiving a fetus isn’t yet procreating, and we can kill the fetus if we want, without inflicting suffering. But then, a man could have sex and conceive many fetuses and never brake the rule of antinatalism. It is only the woman alone who can complete the steps it takes to inflict the suffering of procreation. The man inflicts a fetus that can be killed on a woman (or maybe inflicts is harsh, but antinatalists know how to read “inflicts” between the lines), but only the woman chooses not to kill it and inflicts suffering on a new person, eventually. Right? To be consistent with the notion procreation inflicts suffering, much harder for men to break the antinatalist rules? If ever?

I think that certain topics can be objectified more easily, while other ones are more exposed to completely losing any connection with them. — Angelo Cannata

I completely agree with that. And we should treat with a skeptical eye anything objective that is said of those types of objects of study that can be buried in jargon completely disconnected from the initial inquiry.

But the fact that certain objects of study, like metaphysics, or the reasoning, knowing mind, can easily lose connection from the seeming source of the inquiry, should not banish them from serious study. Not that you are saying that they should be banished - it’s just the thrust of postmodernism seems to me leaves them as parlor tricks and exercises in futility only. There will always be a metaphysic. We should seek it, carefully, but seek it.

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!