Can anyone think of a right that doesn't somehow involve a sense of self and of rightful ownership of something? At the moment, I can't.

It seems to me that claims of rights, especially those having to do with freedom, are rooted in this sense of "mine", of self-possession and rightful possession of other things belonging to that self. And where something is thought to belong to someone else, we have no rights. I don't have a right, for example, to eat your dinner, control your thoughts, use your body for my ends, pollute your drinking water, invade your privacy, silence your ideas, do experiments on you, and so on. Any disagreement?

Suppose we don't challenge this basic sense of mineness and we grant that your body is yours and nobody else's and is therefore yours alone to decide what to do with. You have rights with respect to your body, for example to decide whether or not you'll receive a medical treatment.

What's wrong with saying that I have a right to own my slaves and to do with them as I wish? What's wrong with saying that I have a right to kill my children? Isn't it that there are interests here other than my own? Isn't it that my assertion of rights has crossed into the territory of what properly belongs to someone else? The exercise of my freedom has crossed beyond the boundary of another's nose, no? Some in the past defended such claims by saying that slaves, children, and women do not have rights because in some sense, they aren't properly self-possessed, conscious, soul-endowed, rational beings. Like animals, they are just things and so can rightly be considered property.

But we now recognize that people of dark skin, of the female sex, and of young age, are all real people with their own interests, just like us, and so we recognize their claim to certain rights.

But notice that in the case of a claim that we are entitled to have children, we seem to have an echo of the old view of children and family in general. My kids are mine! None of your business! But we consider it to be the business of the community to intervene to protect the rights of children in the case of child sexual abuse. This is because we see that there is another party here with their own interests. It isn't just the interests of the person claiming to have the right in question. We don't object to someone doing perverse things with sex dolls, but we do object to someone doing such things to unwilling, conscious subjects. And that is the essential difference that makes the moral difference, that my actions cross into the domain of the interests of another sentient being. Right?

If the children I cause to exist are not actually mine in the sense that I rightfully possess them and can therefore decide what happens to them, how can we consistently claim to have the right to reproduce? Don't the interests of the other party, namely, the children, need to be considered? What if the person is totally ill-equipped to raise the child? What if the person is likely a danger to that child? What if the person has a serious, heritable malady that is likely to cause the child a lifetime of suffering? Does a person really have a right to impose that on another human being?

Sure, the state can take away a child being abused. But now the person who reproduced has subjected another human being to orphanage, to the nightmare that being a foster child often amounts to. And the larger community now has to bear the burden of caring for this child. Did that person really have a right to do all that?

I had an unfortunate encounter just the other day with a relative who recently had a child and who provides a perfect example, in my opinion, of someone who should not have children. That poor baby! It almost makes me ill thinking about what it would be like to be him and to have to go through the experience of being helpless and under her power!

Put aside for the moment the objection that enforcing any limitation on reproduction would be problematic. It is fallacious to claim that because it would be hard to enforce restrictions on reproduction, that it follows that people therefore have a right to reproduce.

I question the entitlement to "have" children. They aren't yours. They aren't dolls. They aren't pets. They are people. They don't exist to serve your interests. They have interests of their own.

But it's the only possible justification. What's the supposed alternative? — S

Perhaps there's just no good justification for claims of rights at all. Maybe it's just something we pulled out of our collective asses. So far, I haven't seen any convincing arguments for entitlements. Even if we assume the existence of God, assertions of "God-given" rights make me wonder where people get the idea that such things as God-given rights are self-evident.

Consider that sometimes, the "my stuff" that is under discussion is such things as slaves. How would we respond to the Confederate slave-owner claiming his property rights? Does he have such rights?

It would seem that all our rights really amount to is a kind of social agreement to respect certain feelings that are more or less universal in the culture. I don't want you taking what I feel is my stuff. And you don't want me taking what you feel is your stuff. So let's agree not to take each other's stuff and let's make it a rule that one's stuff is not to be taken by someone else.

That about sum it up? Would anyone disagree with that?

I don't feel like I have been proven wrong — S

This isn't about the question of whether S has been proven wrong. I am interested in examining this concept of rights, since most seem to just assert their rights claims without even really knowing what they are saying. This is commonly what practitioners of philosophy do. We will examine things often assumed, just the sorts of things people usually take as so self-evident and universally known that it is silly to question them. The people who think it is silly to stop and interrogate our basic beliefs are not philosophical.

I really want to know. Why do people feel entitled to reproduce? And is their feeling of entitlement justified?

Anyone feel that this is spending too much time going over the basics... stuff we already know? — S

You are welcome to cease reading and participating.

A feeling, especially if it is not shared by everyone, seems a poor justification for a universal claim and a restriction of behavior that you want to impose on everyone. If you are making the claim that everyone ought to abide by this claim, you seem to necessarily be making some sort of objective claim.

If you disagree with the men who believe they have a right to kill their wives, is it nothing more than your feeling against theirs? When you say they are wrong, aren't you making an objective claim about what is right or wrong for everyone?

Suppose we find an example of a historical culture in which men feel that their wives and children belong to them, and that therefore, they have a right to kill them if they see fit. Suppose this feeling is strong. Suppose the adult women even agree with it. Clearly, in our culture, most of us disagree with them. Who is right? How do we decide?

No, why would there be? I suppose that you could say that there's a conflict more broadly, in that a consequence of the variation of feelings means that naturally people won't always agree over the matter, and might get into arguments about it. But that would have no bearing on anything, as far as I can discern. — S

What if you claim to have right X, and you base it on a feeling that you alone have, this feeling being shared by nobody else at all?

Some rights seem to be mostly a matter of legal convention. "You have a right to an attorney..."

The claim that people have a right to reproduce wouldn't seem to be an example of this though. If our government were to pass laws against having children without a license, people would argue against such laws and base their objection on their claim of rights.

Probably the only precise definition of right is in legal terms. Outside of legal terms, it's probably sufficient to ask what we should do. — Echarmion

It would seem that the claim that I have a right to X is often understood as being something like a claim that my doing X isn't illegal under the present government. I'm allowed to do X, in other words. But really, when people speak of their rights, they seem to be trying to express something more than that. And it seems they often want to change laws to make them more consistent with the rights they feel people have. So the rights would seem to be thought prior to legality.

We could perhaps say that rights are rooted in interests. I.e. I have an interest to keep some things at the exclusion of others, and therefore I'd like property rights. — Echarmion

But to say that I have an interest in something or another seems different from saying that my interests ought not be obstructed. And the rights claim seems to be along the lines of the latter rather than the former.

A rapist could say that he has an interest in satisfying his sexual needs. But most wouldn't agree that he therefore has a right to satisfy them.

Why? Because people disagree? People disagree regardless, and always will. — S

When a person claims that people have a right to X, they are making a universal claim. And they are saying that I should respect their right. But if the claim to the right is justified only by a feeling the person has, and different people have different such feelings, isn't there a conflict here between the universality of the rights claim and the non-universality of the moral sentiment it is supposedly justified by?

It seems to be a trend lately, by the way, that people will start a bunch of threads that are just slight variations on the same thing, sparked by a discussion in some other thread. — Terrapin Station

I decided to start another thread because I wanted to zero in on the entitlement or rights claim being made and the OP in that thread made his intention clear that his thread was about what motivates antinatalists. He was claiming it isn't reason, but rather personality. I was trying to be polite in not going off-topic there. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess. Someone probably would have felt I was out of line turning that thread into a rights discussion.

Hanover, your comments are genuinely helpful in moving toward the actual material I'd like to get us thinking about. Thank you.



So far we seem to have God and common moral sentiment as possible justifications for claims of rights.

Someone basing their claim to rights on their "God-givenness", even if we assume God is real, still has a lot of work to do, it seems to me. Just saying that I have a right to X because God gave it to me is a lot of flat assertion. How do I know what rights God gave me? What does that even mean for God to "give me a right"? Does it merely mean that God allows me to do certain things, that they are, in a sense, simply legal?

It seems to me that the claim that I have rights is different from the claim that some higher authority allows me to do certain things.

As for moral sentiment, is this saying basically that I feel I have a right, and therefore I do? Isn't this problematic?

What does that even mean, that I "have a right"? It isn't quite the same as saying that I am unconstrained, physically or otherwise. It isn't quite the same as saying that something is legal. What is it exactly? I honestly find it puzzling. I wonder if we know what we are talking about when we speak of rights.

It seems to me that it is primarily rooted in a feeling, maybe something like what a small child feels when screaming, "MINE!" Is it more than this? Is that feeling justified? Is it some kind of instinct?

It would seem that the sense that we have "a right to do as we please" is rooted ultimately in a sense of self-ownership. I'm mine. My body is mine. Not yours. We should be able to do with what is ours as we please. Nobody else's business. Something like that?

But if I look into that feeling in myself, I find that it's basically a sense of frustration at my will being obstructed. This then takes the form in my mind of the idea that my will ought not be obstructed. Is this leap justified?

Something like property rights gives us the basic sort of right. No?

It would seem that we are dealing with the basic idea of libertarianism, which is that the only justifiable role of the state is to protect liberty, and that my freedom ends where the other person's nose begins. Yes?

But isn't this basic sense of mineness itself open to question? And isn't that what entitlement is really reducible to? Basically a feeling of mineness?

Fine. We'll be off-topic here then. I was trying to avoid diverting another thread, but that apparently wasn't appreciated. So let's examine the concept of rights in the antinatalism thread.

What of it? I'm not a realist on rights, and I'm the one who made the claim. There's no contradiction there because obviously as an ethical anti-realist, I abide by an interpretation of rights consistent with that stance. — S

Interesting. Can you explain the "interpretation of rights consistent with that stance"? It would seem to me that claiming you have rights when you say you don't believe rights are real surely involves a contradiction.

Forget it. I thought there was an opportunity to do some actually philosophy here. But it seems you aren't interested in that.

Haven't you ever read Plato? I was trying to draw you into something a bit like a Socratic dialogue, my role being that of gadfly. You clearly don't want to examine your beliefs. And that's fine. I'll go play elsewhere.

Isn't the question of whether or not we should have a right or entitlement to reproduce answered by the question of whether or not all people should be having children? ... — Tzeentch

Different question. Related, sure, but different. I want to focus on why people think they are entitled to have children. Are they justified in believing they have this entitlement?

It could be that we are entitled to do as we wish with our bodies, for example, in using meth, but the question of whether we really should is another question. I am interested here specifically in whether we are entitled. And I welcome broader discussion on the matter of rights or entitlements generally. What is a right? Is belief in rights justified?

If you are interested in defending your claim about entitlements, please do it in this thread I created just for the purpose of focusing on the question of the entitlement to have kids:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6564/are-we-entitled-to-have-children

Are there any other current threads specifically about the entitlement to have children? I tried to direct interest in this question over here from the other thread since it isn't quite on-topic there. I created this thread and linked here. I want to focus here on the claim of entitlement, even the question of what entitlements are. The other thread is about what really motivates antinatalism, whether it is reasoning or one's personality. This thread has a different focus.

Can we talk about entitlements without getting bogged down defending the purpose of the thread?

The question of whether we should or shouldn't have children is being done to death in a thousand other threads. I want to zoom in on this one particular claim that we are entitled to have children. I am zooming in on that idea of entitlement or rights here. Make sense? There's plenty here to chew on philosophically.

I already made clear my reason for asking you what rights are. I don't think you can justify your claim that we are entitled to have children. You accused someone else of not understanding entitlement. I suspect that you don't understand what you're accusing that person of not understanding.

Just a flat assertion that we have a right to X and then a "defense" of that claim by just accusing people of not understanding rights is not going to fly in philosophy circles.

Considering the amount of harm done to children and their environment by bad parenting, I don't think it stands to reason that every one should be having children as they desire. — Tzeentch

This thread isn't about the question of whether or not people should have children. It is about the idea that we are entitled to have them.

However, forbidding people from reproducing is just a horribly impractical thing, and enforcing such regulations would almost inevitably end with some draconian methods. — Tzeentch

Sure. Still, do have the right to have kids? Is this idea well-justified? We might find that it isn't, that we aren't justified in believing that we do. The question of whether reproduction should be outlawed is then another question.

I just looked it up in the dictionary. Basically it says that entitlements are rights. And if I look up rights, basically it says they are entitlements. Each is even listed as a synonym of the other. Not very helpful!

What if we're not realists on rights? — Terrapin Station

You're welcome to attack the very idea of rights. That's part of the point of the thread.

Entitlement is part of ethics. It means having a right. — S

When I asked you what a right is, I was ribbing you a bit because what you said here is a little like the old "dormitive virtue" tautology:

dormitive virtue

I suspect that your belief that people are entitled to have children isn't well-examined. And I'd suspect that while you accuse others of not understanding what an entitlement is, you don't really understand it yourself.

This is a philosophy forum. And in philosophy, we often examine what most people believe without examination. Here, we have an opportunity to do some philosophy. The feeling people have that they have a right to have kids is a perfect place to question a commonly believed but rarely examined idea.

But this is a bit off-topic. I'll start another thread:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6564/are-we-entitled-to-have-children

The evidence we have is that consciousness arises when certain biological processes are present... — khaled

Do we have evidence that it "arises" at that point? This seems to imply that it wasn't there before the arising. Perhaps it is more a matter of elements of the world becoming so organized and integrated that they, as a system, become capable of articulating and reporting the otherwise less organized consciousness that is always already present.

If you seem to arise from unconsciousness in waking in the morning, emerging from anaesthesia, and so on, this doesn't prove that no consciousness was there in that state. Maybe you are just unable to remember and report what it was like. To be able to remember and report something has a lot to do with what information you have access to. And maybe nothing was recorded. But that doesn't mean nothing was experienced!

Suppose we temporarily render you paralyzed and also unable to retain memories for longer than a minute and then give you all sorts of experiences. When we release you from this condition, what will you report as your condition during that time? Unconsciousness? You will likely draw a blank about that time. But does that show that there was indeed no experience?

If there is a drug that truly turns off your capacity for experience and another drug that merely paralyzes you and renders you unable to remember experiences had under the drug's influence, how would we tell the difference?

I worry sometimes a little that our anaesthetics really don't save people from the tortures of surgery! Maybe they really don't! How would we know?



What is death but a form of amnesia? After all, isn't matter as it persists and carries information about past states something of a form of memory? The body persisting over time in a state of some similarity to earlier states seems rightly regarded as a kind of memory.

Whether or not God is good has no impact on whether or not he exists. — T Clark

I am not so sure that's true. There is something about an all-too-human God with character flaws that makes him far less believable. A being capable of creating this universe, obviously having intelligence and power beyond our comprehension, would surely not be so petty and fucked up!

I don't claim to have a great argument that would show some necessary connection between the goodness of God and the likelihood of his existence. But there is certainly something persuasive in an argument against a particular kind of God based on his character flaws. For one, seeing such flaws makes it apparent that this God is probably something created in the imaginations of flawed human beings who made God in their own image, mostly after their abusive fathers.

If there is a true supreme intelligence behind everything, surely this temperamental and jealous monster depicted in the Bible is not that supreme intelligence!

Maybe one argument would be that the more supremely intelligent, good, and wise you are, the less likely you are to be concerned to punish apes you made for playing with their sexual organs, especially when you are responsible for their desires and their weakness and know precisely why they have these. Or you could simply show that such a being is not good, and if God is defined as being identical with Goodness itself, that this being cannot therefore be God as God is defined. This character clearly violates the definition of God in a number of ways.

I have a pretty strong intuition that if there is a God, He (as if such a being would be gendered!) would necessarily be supremely good and would necessarily not engage in the sort of behavior attributed to the God of scripture. But I am not sure how to justify that rationally. Something seems obvious about it. That doesn't mean God exists! But if God were to exist, God's goodness would surely be commensurate with His infinite intelligence and wisdom. I have a hard time taking seriously the idea of some kind of divine supervillain who created everything just to torture it!

One question that comes to mind for me when reading some of the posts in this thread is this: can a person ever be said to belong to another? More specifically, do parents own their children?

Consider that it is generally thought to be wrong for parents to beat their kids. This was once thought to be a man's right, as he basically owned his family. He could even kill them or his wife in some cultures.

The thing is, having a child inevitably involves more than just my interests. The interests of the child and perhaps the rest of the world must be considered. And usually, when a person's choices impact another in a big way, we tend, in our culture now, to see that as a place where state intervention is justified. Even in libertarian thought, you have this "my freedom ends where the other person's nose begins" idea. We have the state intervening between parents and children in abuse cases. Why not reproduction?

I find the claim that a person is entitled to or has a right to have kids questionable. I think one would be very hard-pressed to fully justify such a claim.

If someone is being raped, would the rapist be right to say it is nobody else's business, or that he has a right to meet his sexual needs? If he were doing something involving no harm to others, we might accept his claim.

Does a child qualify as "someone else" in relation to the parent? If so, are questions of harm any different here as opposed to with strangers?

It seems that people have a sense that "this is my child!" And this feeling is where they ground ideas like having a right to discipline as they see fit, being entitled to reproduce, and so on. But isn't this "my child" claim questionable?

Entitlement is part of ethics. It means having a right. — S

What is a right?

What a highbrow nonsense! Nobody remains childless because she wants to do something against climate warming.
You have a child or not because this is a very personal preference. — Matias

It is probably not 'either/or'. I don't see why such concerns can't be part of a large web of motivational vectors that end up summing one way or another. It would seem that in the way you are looking at it, no decision of any kind could ever be made on the basis of conscious, rational consideration of cost and benefit, and all such thinking would amount to no more than post hoc justification for behaviors really rooted in pure feelings or unconscious factors. Such irrational factors almost certainly play a role, but I think there's room for reason to inject some influence. That influence will never be total though. Feelings, after all, and even such things as wanting to be a "good person" (probably partly unconsciously a wish to receive love) are partly at the root of worries about climate change.

If I think about why I haven't had kids, I see a large and complex web of factors. And concerns about such things as global warming form part of that web.

One way to try to support free will is to attack the strongholds of determinism, such as the causal closure of the physical, particularly where we, as consciousnesses, seem to influence bodily behavior. But this doesn't yet speak to the freedom of the will. Actually, I am not so sure about that. Anyway, for free will to not be the case, it seems to me that consciousness must then be ineffectual. And if consciousness is ineffectual, why does it exist? More to the point, if it were ineffectual, how could we possibly even know about it?!!

Consider that last point carefully. If consciousness has no effect on behavior, how could behavior ever come to contain information about it or refer to it? When I tell you that I find myself to be conscious, it would seem that the fact of my being conscious has necessarily somehow made a difference in my behavior. It goes deeper still. For me to even form thoughts about my consciousness, for my consciousness to refer to itself, for me to know that I am conscious, my consciousness must have some influence on the brain state that presumably determines the structure of my mental state, which contains references to my consciousness. I am aware of my awareness, and my internal verbal and bodily gestural behavior often reflect this.

Epiphenomenalism, one of the classic determinist positions, would seem ruled out, as it is a belief in an inefficacious subjective something that we nevertheless find objective traces of in behavior. We would have a hard time explaining why the idea of epiphenomenalism ever arose in the first place if it were true. Bodies are referring to consciousness. It must not be the epiphenomenal consciousness that they are referring to!

You'll find people who assert epiphenomenalism, especially as they do implicitly when they take Libet's results as proof against free will, and then they will also say things about why and how consciousness evolved by natural selection because it offers some kind of survival advantage. Clearly, they haven't thought things through!


We might model epiphenomenalism as follows, with mental states designated "M" and physical brain states as "P".


Here, mental states don't influence physical states, nor do they influence other mental states. There is no way for any feature of the mental state distinct from the pure physical state to make its way into the next physical state. In other words, they are pointless and non-detectable. To wipe that top mental series away completely would make no detectable difference in the world. So why do epiphenomenalists believe in their consciousness? I think it is obvious that we should throw this stupidity out! Epiphenomenalists are a weird sort of dualist anyway, often without realizing it, even though they sometimes heap scorn on dualism. Honestly, I don't think a weaker position on the mind-body problem exists than epiphenomenalism. How it persists is beyond me.

For us to know about and to talk about our mental states seems to require that consciousness is efficacious somehow. Further, even if a physical state influences a mental state, a mental state must introduce something extra into the next physical state, rather than just mediating the physical-to-physical influence. This would mean that to at least some extent, the mental is free from prior physical determination. So perhaps here we have something of the will and its freedom. Of course though, it could be that there is some other sort of unbroken chain of mental causation that eliminates the freedom here. To have real freedom would seem to require that the mental is causa sui. "I determine while not being determined by anything outside myself. I am the fundamental substance."



When we talk about free will, aren't we basically talking about our minds in relation to our bodies? I think so. Doing something unconsciously (presumably automatically?) seems not to involve free will. So consciousness is an issue here, as is time. And these, it seems, are deeply connected.

I think it very difficult, if not impossible, to defend the idea of free will with rational argument. And it seems easy to disprove. So the matter would seem settled. And yet, I find myself unconvinced, as my intuition that I am free to act as I will is very strong. It reminds me of the sense of the flow of time, which is also hard to defend rationally. Some intuitions like this I find far more convincing than any tidy syllogism.

My existence is surprising to me. If it weren't so obvious, I wouldn't believe it either.

I think that we simply don't understand the deep nature of time, space, matter, causality, consciousness, agency, selfhood, and so on, well enough to be justified in drawing firm conclusions here. Frankly, we just don't understand what we are talking about. Puzzlement and uncertainty are warranted. Those who think they know for sure one way or another should check their hubris. My suspicion is that neither position really fits the reality. To know the truth here would probably involve having a quite different understanding of what everything really is than anyone has yet had. Maybe it is beyond our comprehension.

Honestly though, I have read and thought a fair bit about it and I have never seen a good argument for free will, nor have I even come across a clear definition of it that I think really captures what I intuit. And there is too much talk of deliberation, as if it is always a long process of thinking. The intuition of freedom deals with something much more basic and immediate, and something definitely related to a self, something owned. It isn't simply "will", but "my will". I caused the action, on purpose, and I could have done otherwise. There is an arbitrariness here, but mine. Not simply non-determined. I determined it, at least to a degree. And nothing beyond me fully determined my determination. But what am I? Answering that question rightly is critical! And it might be impossible for us to rightly answer it.

And the Libet results, IMO, are usually horribly misinterpreted. The experiment involves instructing the person to allow the rising random impulses in the nervous system to complete as actions, basically uninterfered-with, after first priming it with it a request for a certain kind of impulse. Given the instructions, the results don't surprise me at all, and they certainly don't show that all behavior at all times is entirely the outcome of impulses that are already in motion before awareness of the intention to act occurs.

Reason has proven that we exist...without a rational foundation. — TheMadFool

Proven? Strong claim! Let's have that proof! :razz:

It is probably the same mechanism by which we gain tolerance to drugs and suffer withdrawal symptoms when the drugs are abruptly discontinued. The nervous system tries to normalize itself by downregulating receptors for certain neurotransmitters like dopamine that are too plentiful.

I am not sure why some negative feelings seem to persist indefinitely though. Different baseline? Other systems? Receptor regulation disorder? Something else?

Some people seem to be loaded with dopamine all the time even without any cocaine! I know a few.

Antinatalism isn't a rejection of life, that's pro-mortalism. Antinatalism is the recognition that no matter how much we enjoy or reject life, we don't know what our children will go through and shouldn't take the risk for them — khaled

I suspect that's probably not true for all antinatalists. I get the impression that many simply believe it is better to never have been born, period. But it seems to be primarily a matter of risk for you. Interesting.

So do you think a child should be born if the risks can be mitigated to such a degree that we can be fairly sure that things won't be so bad? What would you eliminate from a future person's life to meet this condition?

Maybe try just try chilling out, not worrying so much, and just experience and enjoy everything for what it is? — Terrapin Station

The kind of unconscious, thoughtless living that your recommendation seems to suggest is not in my nature. That's the problem with a lot of procreation. People are just too chilled out, not worrying, and not considering consequences, much like animals. Lots of horrible and needless problems ensue.

Just experience and enjoy everything for what it is? Enjoy everything? For what it is? Seriously? If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to think you must have so far lived a fairly untroubled and oblivious life to say something like that. But I know that everyone has their share of shit to deal with and to witness, so I banish the thought. Rather, I suspect that this must be your coping strategies speaking.

Your mild sadism (which is what I call enacting suffering for others so they can "grow" from it) does not need to be enacted in the first place. — schopenhauer1

That's not quite what I was getting at, this growing from suffering that you read into what I said. And I object to your accusation of sadism, as I don't get off on the fact of anyone's suffering, nor do I inflict suffering deliberately. I was speaking more to a sense that we embody goodness in simply being pained by evil. It is better that some element of the world actually cares what happens, isn't it? If I go from being a child who cares nothing about the injustice in the world to being an adult who cares, hasn't something improved? Isn't there now more good in the world? And isn't it good to be part of that good?

Suppose someone is being tortured and a crowd stands witness. Suppose, in world A, that this witnessing crowd feels no pain about the torture that is happening. They object not. They are unbothered. They do not suffer. In world B, they are horrified. They care. The feel the need to intervene. They suffer too, seeing this suffering. World B contains more total suffering than World A. But which is a better world? Is it about simply minimizing suffering on a balance sheet?

Is it better to be a caring person with a conscience than to be an uncaring person without one? Suppose the former suffers more because of this?

The pain of the loss of a loved one, as I alluded to, involves several things. First, the loved one must have value. Second, that value must be appreciated by another. That appreciator must be someone to whom it makes a difference whether this value is present or not.

Suppose I am to have a kid and I can choose whether they'll care or not, and I know that if they don't care about anything, they'll suffer less. Should I choose that they won't care? Suppose I can also choose that they'll be so mentally limited that they won't know they'll die, and so will be free of much anxiety. Should I choose that they'll be so limited?

Suppose I could snap my fingers and suddenly all living beings will simply be buried in the ground in safe little pods where they'll be only conscious of the continuous pleasure from machines stimulating their pleasure centers. Would bringing this about mean that I have improved the world?

Is trading consciousness and understanding and caring for pain-reduction always simply and obviously a good thing to do?


I expect that someone will likely point out the problem that in order for me to be the better person that I might be for being pained by evil, I need evil. I need others to suffer so that I might be good, making me a vampire of sorts. Yes, that is a valid point. But it really misses what I am saying. And if there were no consciousness to suffer to begin with, you might say there would be no reason to have people who care that there is suffering. The world would simply be better off dead. But this ignores all the value in life and the possibilty that it couldn't exist without all the suffering. It might well be the best of all possible worlds.

Also, I don't see the world as a dead world in which a few isolated, truly separate and distinct individual conscious minds appear for a short time, sort of distinct from the dead world surrounding them. I suspect that our consciousness is just a highly developed, highly integrated form of a subjectivity always already and everywhere present to itself. We are the universe becoming aware of itself, the world waking up. Isn't there some value in the universe coming to wonder what it is, why it is, and so on? Isn't there something more valuable and amazing in a pile of clay that stands up and asks what it is, even if pained, even if afraid, as opposed to a pile of clay that remains forever just a dead pile of uninteresting clay? If you were to witness such a pile of clay rising up, would you just cleanly terminate its consciousness, just put it out of its misery before it can even really get started, saying, "There! That's better!"?

Since you spoke of growing from suffering, perhaps it isn't just a question of individuals growing from suffering. Maybe it is also a question of the world as a whole growing from it and rising from the muck to become a morally conscious world and to maybe even eventually solve many of the problems of suffering.

Some often claim that the world is uncaring, that nothing matters, that nature is coldly indifferent, and they say this with a negative feeling about this lack of caring that they imagine in the world. But only a dead world is so indifferent. A living world is a world that cares. To eliminate all life that might suffer, and especially all higher, intelligent life, is to ensure that the world is indifferent and that nothing matters. If we exist, then at least part of nature cares what happens and things matter. Even the universe itself gains value and becomes something that can be appreciated and wondered at.


There is something paradoxical about valuing human beings enough to care enough about their suffering to wish them non-existent. That anything happening to them is worth caring about suggests value that wishing to eliminate their existence seems to ignore.

When you read the various philosophers, you will find that they tend to refer back to earlier ones. Philosophy has a distinct historical dimension. It is like a long conversation that stretches back at least to the Pre-Socratics. If you jump in near the end of the conversation, you'll often be a little lost. For example, if you encounter Nietzsche mocking the idea of "immediate certainties" without already being familiar with the thought of those like Descartes, you won't know what he is talking about. He doesn't explain or make any attempt to orient you. It is assumed that you know this stuff. So, I would suggest reading something of an overview of the main ideas and currents in philosophic history and also dipping into that timeline here and there, reading some of the primary material, especially that of the key thinkers, and secondary overviews of their main ideas. Zoom out. Zoom in. Repeat. Dig in deeply here and there. A picture will fill out over time.

You can't possibly fully digest it all in your lifetime though, so don't get bogged down feeling like you need to read absolutely everything chronologically. If you do that, you'll never read any recent thinkers. But it is essential that you get a pretty good sense of the larger historical landscape. You need to know what each philosopher was responding to and why. No philosopher is ahistorical. It also helps to have a sense of history in general, including especially political, religious, and scientific history, as it gives you some important context. All these thinkers and their ideas are situated in cultures which have certain worldviews, values, knowledge limitations, and so on.

Don't be too impatient. This is a lifelong journey. And don't expect to ever understand everything. You won't. Philosophy is largely concerned with the great questions that have no ready answers but are nevertheless very much worth asking and thinking at length about. Often it is about better appreciating the great questions and their unanswerability. What is clearly answerable usually breaks out of philosophy and becomes something like science. And don't get too settled on any positions. Allow your views to flex and evolve as you take more and more in.

I'd advise you to resist the tendency to form and then just defend a hard philosophic identity, a trap many fall into. Don't join the tribes on the sides of the various warring divides. Don't adopt labels for yourself, like "I am an x-ist." Remain open. As soon as you think you know and have the right answers and start thinking the opposition stupid, evil, or whatever, the spirit of philosophy has likely died in you. It dies in most. Many, you might find, are defending their identities, personal and tribal, or are just trying to prove themselves most intelligent. And most have questionable psychological motivations for attaching strongly to certain positions. This nonsense has nothing to do with real philosophy. Fight to maintain some open-mindedness and a spirit of wonder and interest in the truth rather than the protection of your ego. It isn't about you winning an argument and showing the other person to be wrong and less smart, even though that's what it ends up being about for many. If your interlocutor shows you a real flaw in your thinking, try not to take it personally. Take it as a gift. This person is helping you to correct your thinking, to bring your mind more closely into conformity with the truth. Ideally, an argument or dialogue should improve the understanding and clarity of thought in the minds of both parties.

There are many decent overviews out there. I enjoyed The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. The Dream of Reason, by Gottlieb, was decent if I remember right. I also liked Russell's overview. These three are available in audiobook form, which I like, as I can listen and hike or drive or do mindless chores like cleaning. The primary material is better read in print with full attention though.

My college Intro to Philosophy text, The Philosophical Journey, by Lawhead, wasn't too bad.

I think it essential that you read at least the major dialogues of Plato early in your explorations, including The Republic. Along with a basic overview or two, I'd start there.

And it probably wouldn't hurt to look early on specifically into critical thinking, learning about the various fallacies and whatnot.

And what thinkers you should pay most attention to depends on what areas of philosophy you are most interested in. Are you mostly concerned with the nature of reality, matter, mind, the limits of knowability and so on? Or is your interest more about ethics and the social and political? Don't completely ignore any of these though, as they tie together to some degree. It is probably best at first just to get a solid overview and then follow your interest.

Enjoy the journey! Philosophy is a wonderful world to explore. Most importantly, don't be impatient. This is a long, thoughtful walk you are starting. And there is no clear destination. And reading most of these thinkers will require much patience, care, and attention. Don't rush your reading. Works of philosophy are for close reading and a savoring of the questions and ideas and even the occasionally great writing. Take notes even. Summarize your thoughts on what you've read. Don't rush from one thing to the next. Never is it about getting to the end. And it isn't about racking up a list of big books that you've "read", with which to impress yourself or others.

I've long been troubled by the question of antinatalism. I feel ambivalent about it. I see much of value in life and consciousness as we know it as humans. There is much in my own experience of life that I cherish and much that I simply find astonishing. The thought of no more human life or life whatsoever is an extremely sad and dark thought to me. But I also see much in life that is awful. I am daily confronted with the horror of simply having/being a perishable body. I've experienced a share of both good and bad. I am also not sure if suffering and darkness is always altogether bad. It might even be seen to be part of what gives life gravity and meaning and seriousness. Purely cheerful music is not so substantial. It is like cupcakes. Life isn't like cupcakes. This isn't Disneyland. Maybe that's a good thing.

That said, I hesitate around the idea of having children. I am now approaching my mid 40s and so far have not had any children and probably won't. In some ways, this saddens me greatly. My life feels deeply impoverished by not having children for many reasons. I'll have noone to give myself to, noone to carry the history of my family, noone to tell about the wonderful people my parents were, noone to shower with gifts on Christmas, noone to show all of the wondrous things I've discovered in life. I won't get to discover who my children are. I won't be able to share the experience of raising kids with a significant other. One big one is that I've discovered in myself a deep feeling that I need children in order to feel that my life struggles have meaning. We need someone precious to us that we can give our lives for. What did I build all that I've built up in myself for if only to perish and give it to noone? When I struggle to earn a living, what is it all for, just my mere survival? If I have kids, I have a reason. All seems so much more pointless without children.

But is that a good reason to have kids? So that I can use them to give my life meaning? Is it for me or for them? How selfish if I have them only to better fulfill myself, to help me feel my life was for something! If there is a reason to have kids, it had better be for their sake, and not for my own immortality project or my own sense of meaning!

I feel sad and guilty though when I imagine my potential children. I find I love them. And I feel very sad telling these potential children that I believe they should not exist. Sure, I want to protect them from all the horrors of life. But I also feel terrible denying them the chance to become conscious, to experience love, to hear music, to inhale the intoxicating scents of a forest, to create something, to come to understand some things, even to be saddened at the injustice of death. Yes, even that latter one. There is a goodness underlying any suffering of a bad.

I have a hard time looking at the people around me and thinking, "Reality would be better off if you had never been born, if none of you had ever been born. Things would be better if Earth were like Mars, with not a trace of life." I can't think or say that while really meaning and believing it. But so much of life remains a horror show! I am deeply conflicted about it.

Life in many ways seems a great gift! I would be lying if I were to call it all bad. It is so deep and poignant! There are so many joys, so much to discover. Much in it has value. It is so incredibly dishonest to take all that life is and try to pack it into the word "suffering"! Even suffering itself isn't so simple as what the word implies. It isn't simply a negative, simply a pain. No pain is just pain. There is a whole complex human existential background that frames that pain. It means something. Often it is painful only because it threatens to negate some good or potential of life that never being born would surely negate altogether. What, you've gone deaf and can no longer hear Beethoven's Sixth, which you love? If noone had ever been born, there would never have been any music or hearing. Yes, loss is painful, but loss implies the existence of something valuable and truly worthwhile that can be negated by it. And there is some sort of hard-to-explain value even in the existential situation of there being a human confronting all that is difficult, even suffering the loss of beautiful loved ones. How horrible if we didn't suffer the loss of a beautiful being!

Regardless, I still hesitate at the idea of having children or recommending procreation. But I'd hate to tell my friends who have had children (all beautiful and valuable people) that their children should never have been born, that the world and the universe's experience of itself would be better off without them. And while I sometimes have wished I'd never been born, had never been saddled with all the burdens of my life, I don't feel angry at my parents for having had me. I feel grateful for the life they gave me. And I find, even in my darkest moments, I am glad to have lived and known what I have. What a trip it has been so far!

There is far too much to life to reduce it all down to a single, simple judgment, a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. I suspect that asking yourself if you think life is good or bad is rather misguided and seems maybe to require a willful disregard of so much of what we know and feel about our lives, the lives of others we know, and so on. In doing this kind of thing, I think some of us are probably trying to justify something in ourselves and our lives, maybe something to do with our failures and disappointments, and possibly even our own suicides. Many of us would like to feel we can give ourselves permission to die, to escape the problems of our lives, to be free of what our lives ask of us. To be sure that life is all bad and nothing but futility and evil is to be able to cut one's own throat without guilt, and thus not to have to face our problems, ironically including our own death and our fear of it. Maybe more, we fear life and we are cowards and don't live as we know we should and we can't cope with this. We haven't been the heroes we wish we were. And the idea of suicide makes us feel even more cowardly and guilty. But if we can convince ourselves that none of it is any good, that nothing is worthwhile, that even the things we wish we'd do have no value, that all life is painful and meaningless, we promise to assuage our guilt over our past and the about the dark deed we might do. We maybe want to be free to die.

What motivates our collecting of evidence against life? Why do some of us go to such lengths to justify our rejection of life? If we are honest, I think we know.

What complicated creatures we are. And how richly baffling life! It certainly isn't simple or easy. And all of us are struggling in one way or another. But I see value in it all.

After reading your post and responding, I later listened to a talk by Evan Thompson while doing some yard work: link

Very interesting! I was rather impressed. I think I did actually come across him some years ago in my wanderings through podcast and video space.

I felt that he gives quite a good overview of the landscape. And he articulates it all very well. He understands a lot of the problems. I don't feel though, at least in what I heard, that he solves any of the deep problems. When he got around to criticizing panpsychism and talking about the combination problem, I don't feel like what he seems to present as a solution goes any distance toward actually providing any really satisfying answers on the matter. I've never found any argument that really puts my mind at ease with respect to the combination problem. Most people seem to wave their hands here, including me.

He seems to understand all the issues better than most, though.