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.

Leontiskos methodically demonstrates that antinatalism turns on the premise that, if there is any human suffering, there is enough suffering to justify ending the human race.

When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldn’t we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule “one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.”

Is there no happiness in the world?

If that is our new rule, it becomes ethical to ask everyone to procreate as much as possible. Which would also be absurd as it would tend to deprive everyone of happiness if everyone was cranking out and trying to manage babies all of the time.

This highlights something else. There is not really any duty one way or the other to non-existing potential people. Antinatalism is good for potential people who will by design never exist. Ethics arises between two existing, actualized people. We can act today thinking of its impact on future people, but until those future people are actual, our present actions can’t be seen as ethical, or not ethical. The ethics of the actions only arises where the people arise, actually.

Also highlighted and not addressed in antinatalism, the world isn’t just suffering, or even enough suffering to contemplate a need to end all human beings. It’s just not compelling.

We don’t need to solve the problem of any suffering. We will want to solve the problem of the individual actual person who is actually suffering greatly. But because of that person’s existence, and because other people experience happiness at times, we don’t need to end all people.

Your argument is something like this:
"If there are no humans, the ethic cannot be followed". — schopenhauer1

No. My argument is if there are no humans around there are no ethics around. Your argument is if the ethics is antinatalism, there would be no humans around. You just just don’t see the absurdity of keeping the ethics in place without the humans to place it there.

Why must there be humans there to uphold it in place? — schopenhauer1

Because as you said “Ethics is present because humans are around.”

Not only is no answer to the second question deducible from the premises (unlike the answer to the first question), no answer consistent with the premises is possible. — Michael

That’s what I was saying about the lamp a couple weeks ago and you were disagreeing with me and telling me how time works and how lamps work.

If we are using a limit within which there is an infinitely decreasing time interval, or infinitely decreasing distance interval, then, regarding a question about some state of time or some state of position at the limit, “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

That’s it. No one can give a crap about the lamp or time or lights on or or off at 2 minutes, at 7 minutes, because it is nowhere in the universe of the premises. You don’t even need to fix the limit at precisely 2 minutes. It can be slightly before two minutes and the premises will still not admit of the existence of that limit.

Any discussion of the bottom of an infinite staircase, of the state of the lamp at two minutes, or whether Achilles can beat the tortoise, cannot be deduced from the premises.

It’s like we are approaching agreement, but you are quibbling about half of what I say, and then we approach agreement again and you quibble about half again.

Or you are very simply not explaining yourself.

You clearly understand the facts - time in minutes and seconds, halving fractional functions, the difference between on and off. You do understand infinity.

But you seem to disagree with how these facts must clearly relate to one another in order to make some point about “completing super tasks” and “contradiction”.

If you are saying the lamp must be on or off at two minutes because that’s how time works, and that’s how lamps work, then you are not recognizing that “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

You are assuming something that you are not stating, not stating something clearly, not defining supertasks, or wrong about one or more of these things if you think the lamp has to be on or off at 2 minutes because that’s how lamps work.

And because lamps are either on or off at all times, but you can’t deduce the state from the premises, we don’t have a contradiction. The premises of switching a lamp on and off at ever decreasing intervals of time simply do not speak to the state the lamp will be at when two minutes or more elapse. It just means that from your infinite fractional function “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

As a side note, you’ve proven that reasoning with you about how infinity works is a supertask.

Therefore, Thomson's lamp proves that all supertasks are impossible. — Michael

Now this conversation can resume towards its ever ever-approaching, but never accomplished, conclusion.

You didn’t really address this:

“The fact that the ethics, summarized as anti-natalism, [only] arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained, [must both be true and ethical, is absurd.]
— Fire Ologist”

The two sides of the “AND” above defeat each other. So we must exist in order to not exist, by enacting a rule that must not exist unless I exist. This is impossible to live by. I am making a rule that says I should not be making rules.

Why should it matter if the ethical rule disappears though? — schopenhauer1

Because it undermines its enactment in the first place when it results in no ethical beings.

If humans disappear because all humans follow the rule, and with humans the rule disappears, then such humans would be being ethical for sake of a world without ethics.

Maybe it is because of my own limitations that I am suffering to make my point and why I can’t logically show why antinatalist ethics is absurd, but that is because this really boils down to the amount and depth of suffering in the world. If we all thought life was only suffering, and unfulfillable, longing desire, without any satiation or anything else, we would be inventing ethical rules to justify not only antinatalism, but mass suicide, after wars to enforce the ethical rule once and for all (if we weren’t too incapacitated by suffering to act at all).

But life is not only suffering. We generally don’t think that. At least most of us. Often.

And some suffering is good (like right now I’m starving and soon I will be eating). “Hunger is the best sauce. The poor always eat well.” - Sancho Panza, Don Quixote.

It boils down to whether it is absolute that inflicting suffering without consent is always and only wrong. Life is not only the suffering of being wronged, it is also forgiveness. You really can suffer and move away from suffering. There really are both. I will be done eating today. You can give consent after the fact, after you’ve suffered without consent and say “oh well, life goes on.” Because there is not only suffering.

And it is worth some suffering to force a new life to be hungry once in a while, to work hard once in a while, to struggle and fail, in order to also have bread and achieve success, or just sit down and relax.

Most real suffering is self-inflicted. We break our own rules all of the time, and shoot ourselves in the foot, just so we can say “see, life is only suffering” to ourselves, regardless of those around us.

But some of us can sometimes just live life, accepting the suffering, forgiving the inflicters, and see that inflicting this life on another without consent is like giving them a gift, an unexpected, un-consented gift.

I just disagree it is moral or ethical that we should only focus on the suffering when deciding what world is better for any other people, such as any future generation. We need to see what is good in life just as well before we make out ethics and enact it.

Antinatalism upholds ethics high above the life and suffering of the human beings it is designed to promote, and this is absurd to me. If there is to be some grandiose place for any such high and mighty ethical laws, such as “thou shalt not inflict suffering without consent,” then there must be humans there to uphold it in that place. Ending humans ends any good ethical laws protect.

Following our disappearing ethical laws isn’t the only good that is done in the world; life has its own goods just as well.

We are not living for ethics. Ethics is present because humans are around. — schopenhauer1

Being human (or maybe any being with senses) entails suffering.

Human beings are inherently ethical beings - the beings whereby ethics exist in the universe.

And in order for human beings to act according to this ethics that they are, one thing they cannot do is inflict suffering without consent.

Since we cannot get consent from the unborn, and being born human entails suffering, we should be, we ought to be, anti-natalist. As a result of us currently living, suffering, ethical beings acting as ethical anti-natalists, there will be no more humans, but also no more human suffering inflicted unethically, without consent.

Am I with you so far?

However, with no more humans, there will be no more ethics either. As you said “ethics is present because humans are present.” So humans not present (unless some other beings are ethical) means ethics is not present. With anti-natalism, we not only avoid inflicting suffering without consent, we void the ethics that told us such inflictions are wrong.

So the anti-natalist is saying, in order to abide by the ethical rule now, we must create the conditions where this ethical rule will no longer exist, since humans are the presence of ethics and no more humans will be present. The anti-natalist is saying we should eliminate the existence of the ethical rule for the sake of following the ethical rule. Just like they are saying we should eliminate the possibility of human procreation (end all future humans) for the sake of abiding by an ethical rule that is only found in existing humans. The anti-natalist gets to be the last ethical man standing, and the last instance of ethical behavior anywhere in the known universe.

The anti-natalist must admit we’ve evolved to a point where we humans inherently posit “should” and “ought” only to take this power and say “I should not have evolved at all because my consent to suffer was not obtained. And since ethics comes to be only through me, a human, ethics ought not to have evolved in the universe either. But then if ethics didn’t exist until I did, how could it have been unethical for me to be born?”

The fact that the ethics summarized as anti-natalism arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained.

(It’s not quite a paradox because it holds “is” together with “ought not”, as opposed to paradoxically joining “is” to “is not” or “ought” to “ought not”, but it is certainly absurd.)

Anti-natalism is either a self-defeating way of saying, because of human suffering, it would have been better if humans never existed. Or it is simply passing judgment on God, saying God, a being whose mere existence entails ethics (like humans) was wrong to create humans and inflict suffering on them without their consent.

Absurd or Satanic. Better to rule without humans or their ethics in hell, than to consent posthumously to suffering in heaven.

I don’t disagree with any of your post (which I quote from below.). Good stuff.

Which means I also agree with this:

Thanks unenlightened @Wayfarer

Your answers are very helpful. I need to spend some more — Heracloitus

I also see the following:

specific thoughts arise for a particular individual (and are unique to that conscious individual) indicate the ownership of thoughts — Heracloitus

Ownership of thoughts. My own thoughts. My. Own. So a self buried still in there somewhere, and/or emerges. I see that, but it needs to be developed.

So I agree with this:

But - this is the crucial point, not generally acknowledged in my view - in none of this is agency denied. — Wayfarer

Which I see agrees with this:

I don't think Buddhism denies these facts of individuality. — unenlightened

So we have:

when you speak of consciousness, it seems to me that you are not speaking of any of these things, but rather these are all things that one might be conscious of.

It is as if all the world is a great play that consciousness watches - the life of the hero, told from his point of view. But the performer is always hidden under costume and makeup, and the audience is silent and passive sitting in darkness. — unenlightened

And so we now have to reconcile ”the performer is always hidden” with “specific thoughts for a particular individual” (Heracloitus) and “agency” (Wayfarer) and “facts of individuality” (Unenlightened).

The following, which I agree with, speaks about speaking and naming and how these are not the same as what is spoken of or named, particularly when speaking of the self or Tao.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. — T Clark

When speaking of or naming the self, we are both the speaking self and the one spoken about. The one spoken about can be recognized as an illusion. But by speaking, a self-certified speaker remains.

To bring this all together, the self is elusive, even to itself; if this is not admitted, the self can become illusion, but if this is admitted, the admitting agent, the facts of individuality, the particular thoughts that show this elusiveness, can be known, as an actual self.

The self is the thing that does not know the self. There is no need to consider mind/body, signifying/ signified, or any distinction to see where the self becomes one of its things and its own becoming at the self-same time.

The self is its own answer when it is questioning itself, and the self is lost the minute it takes up only that answer without the questioning.

Curious if you agree with the thrust here but for different reasons.

If the pilot diverts the plane to kill less people, then they have intentionally sacrificed those people for the sake of other people; just like how a person who pulls the lever intentionally sacrifices the one to save the five. Am I missing something? — Bob Ross

Although I wouldn’t pull the lever, I don’t think we precisely agree on the reasons. So you are not missing something (we do disagree a bit).

I see what you are saying, about the primacy of moral agency, that the moral law (that one can never intentionally kill innocent human life) must be acted upon, so that in any circumstance, if one would be forced to intentionally sacrifice an innocent life (pull the lever), one cannot act. One cannot be an agent of dead innocent lives and have acted morally.

And I do see that the plane example can be seen as the same as the trolley. But it can be different.

I agree that there are moral laws we cannot break and be justified as moral, or good. Not killing innocent people is one of them.

And I would not pull the lever on the trolley example. But the plane and trolley can be viewed differently from each other and used to show why I would land the plane intentionally where there were less people.

You said:

If the plane is out of fuel, and it is not the pilot’s fault — Bob Ross

In the trolley example, the situation is thrust upon me from nowhere and I am shown how to direct the trolley - left or right. I am sitting there, and then I have to make a decision with innocent lives about to be killed.

In the plane example, I am the pilot. There is no scenario where the pilot has not caused the outcome at least in part; the pilot has already pulled the lever so to speak and has implicated himself in the innocent death.

If I was the pilot, even unintentionally running out of fuel and blown by the wind over a festival, I have already intentionally flown the plane into that scenario. I have flown the plane. I have created this danger. And if I know the plane is going down, I already have to take responsibility for innocent death, so I have killed innocent people. It’s done for me the minute I see my plane is going down. I know this before the plane lands because I am the pilot, the intentions and some of the reasons the plane is in the air at all.

So now, being responsible for innocent death, I have a second choice to make; I can choose to also be responsible for killing as few people as possible. This is why I intentionally land the plane in a less populated area.

It’s not the principal of double effect that permits me to land where there are fewer people. (I don’t really like the principal either.). It’s because the choice is now more or less equally innocent people I will kill, it’s not whether or not I can kill an innocent person, because I know I’ve already done that.

In the trolley example, I didn’t start the trolley. I didn’t put it on those tracks. I am being asked to go from sitting there taking a trolley ride to implicating myself in the trolley ride of death. Either five or one die depending on whether I stay seated or pull the lever. No, I will not do either, because it is wrong to kill any innocent life.

To ask me to treat the trolley ride where drivers disappear, where people are tied to tracks, where I learn what levers do on trolleys - and to then be the cause of five or one innocent deaths? No. No one can be expected to decide which track to take in that circumstance. Who is telling me about the people and the lever? As a moral agent, provided the option to let five tied to trolley tracks die or pull the lever, it would be irresponsible (immoral) of me to just join the scenario. Irresponsible because people are now asking me to participate in the killing of innocent life which is always wrong. . If there is a voice telling me about the tracks and the lever and the people, but not telling me what to do with the tracks and the people and the lever, nothing makes sense and I should not act.

The same could be the case for the plane, say if the pilot dies when the plane runs out of fuel and you, a passenger, are told how to land a plane. Where all things are equal prior to the moment where you are asked to guide the plane or the trolley - the question what would you do then is equal too. You can see the trolley as the same as the plane - but this is how I think we differ. If there is nothing to consider prior to that moment, then you can only be implicated in its outcome if you participate - if you take the yoke of the plane or stand up and pull the lever. Once you know in advance (as when you are told on the trolley that five or one will die, or when your engine shuts off over a festival), it is then a matter of whether you are implicated in that certain outcome. In the trolley example, you can avoid participating in the possible outcomes, and can remain separate from any outcome. It’s not because pulling the lever is you killing one or sitting still is something else killing five. It’s because something else that you are not a participant of is killing any of them. But if you are the pilot (or a trolley driver who knows where he is going and what pulleys to pull to get there), you have to take some responsibility for the outcome already, for the fact that any of them will die, so the choice that is now thrust upon you is how many innocent deaths will you be responsible for, and how many innocent lives can you spare.

Strong Solipsism

We only ever experience Sensory Data. We cannot experience anything that is not Sensory Data. — Treatid

How can we call it “sensory” then? It’s unsourced data that we call “sensory, but not by any causal connection to anything in particular).

Sense incorporates a sense and a separate object being sensed. Granted the experience of sensation (the conscious representation) may be particular and unique to the sense (the eyeball attached to a brain) and distinct from any object being sensed, but for strong solipsism to be coherent, we have to ignore the eyeball and the light that hits it, in which case why call this sensation? We are all just somehow fabricating everything we experience from some function of ourselves. Like a Berkleyan idealist.

Weak solipsism it seems to me is the observation that our senses color and manipulate the separately existing world as it might be in itself, so we are cut off in a solipsistic experience, but this experience still provides some data that relies on the separately existing world exists (ie, there is a separate thing being sensed).

There is no logical way around this that I have discovered (have to revisit Searle).

You may be right: our genetic predisposition to insanity may prove stringer than our reasoning and need to belong, in which case we will destroy ourselves utterly. But I'm not convinced that it's inevitable. — Vera Mont

The greatest hope I see to conquer our insanity is the fact that there was a man like Jesus, and he didn’t own anything, so maybe you are right.

No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle. — schopenhauer1

But if the reason to promote antinatalism now while there is humanity is that It is the ethical thing, and its goal is no humans, then “No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle.”

Meaning, what is the point of being ethical towards beings that aren’t born yet, if ethics itself is not to be? Why would we humans uphold any ethics above upholding the procreation of more humans, if upholding that ethics means that humans and ethics both equally should no longer be?

Antinatalism is just as much an anti-ethicalism.

life is more than the avoidance of suffering — Leontiskos

Says it all for me on this question.

Anti-natalism doesn’t save anyone in particular from suffering. We are not doing anyone any good by not procreating. There has to be a someone to prevent someone from suffering. Life is ontologically prior as Leontiskos said.

Ownership isn’t the problem.

Getting rid of owning things to make the world better is like getting rid of things to make the world better.

We need food. Sometimes one person has it and another doesn’t. Ownership isn’t the problem. People’s fears, greed, desire for power over others and their own future, gluttony, etc - those are the same problems in any world, at any time, whether sifting through the rubble, or through search results on Amazon.

I’d say fate is the future looking portion of determinism, where determinism includes all past causes, present states of affairs and controls all future outcomes. Fate ignores the reasons why and the causes, or can ignore them, and just points to what will be, what has to be done in the future.

If science one day identifies all of the causes that account for every current state of affairs, including what we are thinking and what we think we are choosing, science would have confirmed we live in a deterministic world. If, based on that knowledge, science could identify and predict all future motions and states of affairs, science could identify each person’s fate.

Fate is more of a romantic way of speaking of the determined future.

And if all of them were innocent, one should not take hand in killing innocent life by pulling the lever so one would have to let the five die. Is that your take?

I think we can blame people for obvious negligence; so if you are stipulating that a person was informed clearly that they should not be on the tracks, that they have the freedom to easily move off of the tracks, they refuse with no good reason to be on the tracks, and the other five people (on the other tracks) do not have the freedom to move nor are they being negligent; then, yes, I would pull the lever because I am no longer killing an innocent person. — Bob Ross

I appreciate that answer.

In this case, would you have a duty to save more lives, and that’s why you would pull the lever, or does it matter that the people tied to the tracks are innocent?

As a parallel to the airplane scenario, folks who pull the lever tend to see themselves as being in a state of necessity, similar to the pilot. — Leontiskos

So, now factoring in intent, if one refuses to pull the lever because one will never willingly kill an innocent person, they are acting morally; and if one pulls the lever because they see the necessity of reducing death, they are acting morally.

Correct?

So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death. — Leontiskos

Isn’t there an argument that by pulling the lever you are landing the trolley in the area with the fewest people?

Under a general duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event (one) cannot avoid causing deaths”?

The exigent circumstances remove all intent to kill anyone from the actions taken by the person on the trolley or the pilot.

I agree there is an absolute law that killing an innocent person is never permissible.

The reason killing an innocent person is wrong is because of the unique value of each person.

New hypo: a whole bunch of innocent people are dying, dropping like lemmings off of a cliff. You can’t save them all but you are given a choice and tools (big net and a helicopter) that can save one or save five of them. All will surely die without you, it’s just a choice of whether you take the bigger net and helicopter to save five, or the little one.

Is there a duty to take the bigger net because it is wrong to kill an innocent person? No. You aren’t the cause of any of the deaths so you are not culpable for any who are not saved.

I think the same reasoning may apply in the inverse with the trolley. Whether you pull or do not pull the lever, you aren’t responsible for any of the deaths. You are not responsible for the death of the person alone on the tracks if what you were doing was trying save as many lives as possible to address a situation that was otherwise beyond your control.

That also means that you wouldn’t be responsible for not pulling the lever either - just choosing the smaller net during a time of crisis.

We all realize that people have thought society would collapse into fighting factions and utter destruction for most of human history. And to combat those fears we’ve formed factions and launched wars for most of human history. With some factions turning to religion and others turning against it for most of human history.

Tribalism has always been the norm.

In order to unite the world, we have to admit that tribes are good, and respect each other despite differences we don’t understand.

When it comes to the urge to herd into narrow tribes, we are still basically scared monkeys with iPhones and air fryers.

because both people that I would be lying to have forfeited their "right" — Bob Ross

Could you say the person standing on the track has forfeited his life? I mean, we all know to stay off the trolley tracks. Does that person have any duty to the trolley driver to stay off the tracks and avoid being killed?

I am advocating that it is wrong to kill innocent people — Bob Ross

Couldn’t you say the person on the tracks who wasn’t tied down, has forfeited his innocence?

I’m a huge proponent of virtue ethics. I don’t think anyone could ethically participate in the trolley problem because it wreaks of killers and to kill five or one people because they would then be participating in an immoral scenario.

But if we were stuck on that train and knew there was no trick, no murderer behind the scenario, this was just a horrible accident about to happen, then are you killing anyone or is the trolley killing the people?

A plane is going to crash in a city. The only way to reduce the destruction and death is to quick land on that baseball field with kids playing. It’s either two teams and some fans die, or probably fifty or one hundred or more people everywhere else. But to land in the field one has to commit five intentional moves and aim the nose of the plane at the pitcher and land quickly before anyone can run. Since the pilot has to essentially pull the lever to land on the baseball field, is he wrong because it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent people? Should he just chug past and see what happens, or does he have any duty now thrust in his lap to kill as few people as he can?

Its about killing innocents to save more people. If just sticking to the initial facts, I feel like the only reason to not make a choice is that you object to the idea of not killing innocent people, and that is indistinguishable from having msde a choice - to not pull the lever. — Apustimelogist

That sums it up. It highlights the distinctions between people dying, and people killing people.

But it leaves no room for a distinction between people killing people, and murder.

It asks us to adjudge ethics between people dying, and people killing people, where I think ethics comes into play where killing is distinguished from murder.

I read the paper. Liked it. Agree with it. Think I am speaking in line with much of it.

Much better example of the situation with the tyrant killing five unless you kill one. Avoids the whole ridiculous omission versus commission discussion too. Brings in intent, agency, and duty in much more express and clear way than the stupid trolley.

But I guess you are above all of this, with your intellect surpassing my caricature of an honest conversation. Fairly unjust way to treat someone don’t you think?