Progress is when you like the way that things have changed better than the way they used to be.

It looks like it. ;-)

However, I can be certain that it is possible to break the laws of a country and escape punishment. — BrianW

Sure, which is why I brought up the notion of risk.

I wasn't thinking that you might be thinking of "natural law." Re natural laws, they simply can't be broken, as it's not possible. If it were possible, then whatever was claimed to be a natural law actually wasn't a natural law.

Let's take Day A for Joe. Say that he only has 10 experiences for that day. While they're occurring, he evaluates them re positive/negative as follows:

experience 1 - positive
experience 2 - negative
experience 3 - negative
experience 4 - positive
experience 5 - negative
experience 6 - negative
experience 7 - negative
experience 8 - negative
experience 9 - positive
experience 10 - negative

So then we have two ideas:

(1) What "reporting more positively than actual lived moments day to day" says is that when we ask Joe at some later point to evaluate Day A overall, say, he says that Day A was positive--even though at the time, he would have said that more of his experiences that day were negative.

(2) What the Pollyanna principle says is that when we ask Joe about his experiences for Day A, he tells us that he had three positive experiences and seven negative, and when we ask him to tell us about those experiences, he remembers the three experiences that he reported as positive in a lot more detail.

Re (1), the only way to know what's being claimed there is to know that at the time, Joe said he had three positive experiences and seven negative experiences, but at a later time, he said that the day was overall positive for him (where he's forgetting some of the negative experiences and he's not simply reporting a weighting while remembering the 3/7 split).

Re (2), the way we know it is that we ask Joe to talk about experiences and say whether they were positive or negative, and then we note how much relative detail he gives, or can give, about each.

Right, but couldnt they be thinking about the value in the same particular way? — DingoJones

The "same way" in the nominalistic sense, sure.

only that there is more or less the same level of value being assigned by the group. — DingoJones

If everyone in a group feels the same way, sure. (Or if we're discounting the outliers or whatever, and in a manner of speaking saying that the group (overall) feels some way.)

I would call that something mattering to the group, what would you call it? — DingoJones

Sure. As a manner of speaking I'd say that. But what's literally going on is that individuals value things as they do, and in that group, they happen to value them the same amount.

I do not see why it is problematic to say that something matters to a group such that we should specify the mattering is “only” done by individuals in that group. What is the utility of doing that? — DingoJones

To make sure that people understand what's literally going on versus a manner of speaking that might lead to incorrect ontological beliefs. (Which I think is more important when we're talking about things in a philosophy context, and especially important when we're doing that and we apparently have a lot of people with incorrect ontological beliefs.)

I'm not saying I know better, but that people reporting positive overall evaluations, often don't recall accurately their bad experiences when making those evaluations. — schopenhauer1

Okay, but the only way we can know that is by the person (a) stating that experience F was negative in their evaluation, while experience G was positive, then (b) recalling experience G in much more detail than experience F.

That tells us nothing about "reporting more positively than actual lived moments day to day."

So first, that's about accuracy of recall.

What would it have to do with a claim that you know better than other people (per their reports) whether they've had positive or negative experiences?

Awkwardness? — Pattern-chaser

That doesn't seem to be working. ;-)

What happened to one thing at a time?

Besides the fact that people report more positively than actual lived moments day to day, — schopenhauer1

What? You're saying you know their actual experiences better than what they're reporting as their experiences?

Isn't that more than sufficient for our needs? If not, what does it lack? — Pattern-chaser

What's to stop anyone from effectively arbitrarily saying that something is or isn't an explanation in that case? And if that's what we're doing, how would whether there's an explanation for something serve as a hinge for philosophical or scientific claims?

Legally, codes are laws. I'm not sure what alternate sense of "code" you might be thinking of--I suppose something like the set of principles that some organizations have? In that sense, codes are the same as rules.

If you break a law or rule, it usually results in some form of punishment, up to excommunication (from society, from a place of employment, from an organization, etc.). It's up to each individual whether they want to risk the punishment in question.

So you're the arbiter and interpreter of what most people think? — schopenhauer1

Just an observer. You must think it's possible to observe this stuff, via reports from people, otherwise what in the world would you be addressing?

Ha, same for you — schopenhauer1

Good to know that we'll be keeping things succinct and focused.

I don't see how. The value can't be transferred to objects, and there's no such thing as collective thought, collective mental activity. All that's really happening with respect to this manner of speaking is that people are agreeing with each other--as in saying, "Yes, that matters to me a lot, too," or as in, say, setting a price for something that people will pay. But that's not the same thing as mattering or valuing, because there's a semantic component, where people have to think about that behavior in a particular way.

In absence of an agreement, all force necessary to mitigate the violation of rights is permissible — JosephS

Per your views, on what grounds is this permissible if someone didn't agree to it?

The underlying premise (it's not anarchy) is that absent agreement, action taken by one individual against another is de facto prohibited. — JosephS

But how do you get that agreement? If I didn't agree to allow others to take action against me just in case I rape someone, what do we do? You're saying that absent my agreement to let others take action against me, you'd prohibit that action against me.

A lot of your post isn't clear and/or it's off-base.

Even with your very callous and indifferent way of looking at suffering (for how other people may experience it versus you, let's say) — schopenhauer1

So starting with this, my view doesn't ignore other persons' opinions. Most people don't think that only suffering matters, and most aren't so miserable that suffering greatly outweighs everything else.

Every sentence in your post has something that needs to be addressed, so I'm not going to do it all at once. One thing at a time.

How would you describe a collective value? — DingoJones

As a manner of speaking that's not something that literally obtains? :joke:

Well, first, it's only to individuals that anything matters. Valuing things so that something matters is something that only individuals do.

Why don't you just say that you're "against procreation, not because it does something to someone else against their consent, and not because it 'causes' suffering, but because it creates people who are bound to occasionally suffer in some way or another," and either you consider that suffering sufficiently weighty to suggest avoiding it altogether, or you only care about suffering and its elimination, regardless of how slight the suffering might be compared to non-suffering, regardless of its exact character?

If you were to put it that way, the only counter to it would be for someone like me to note that I don't feel the same way about suffering that you do. I don't feel that it's the only thing that matters and/or I don't feel that it outweighs other things to an extent to suggest avoiding it altogether.

. . . I guess maybe the problem with that is that you don't just want to announce your stance, you want to persuade other people to have the same stance. But for someone like me, it's pretty much an impossible hurdle, especially since I don't do principle-oriented ethical stances, and especially since I don't have any ethical stance that's simply based on the ideas of "suffering" or "harm" per se. If I think something is a problem, it is because of a specific scenario, a specific set of properties that obtain in that situation, and for me, I also like to significantly "err" on the side of permissibility, so that some things I only see as a problem if they're severe enough--which is why I don't think that any physical violation is an issue if it doesn't have lingering--at least a few days--non-microscopically-observable (physical) effects for example.

Sorry that was a misunderstanding. The "I did" was a response to when you said "But I said nothing about sperm and eggs" — khaled

That was after the post in question.

(Perfect opportunity for you to bring up block time, by the way.)

Dude, at least be honest.

You quoted me saying, "You'd have to say that it's morally problematic to do things to materials that could turn into living things"

You responded with "I did."

And then you said, "You did, too."

I did. — khaled

That's fine. But you just argued that I said that it's morally problematic to do things to materials that could turn into living things. I did not say that.

Again You'd have to say that it's morally problematic to do things to materials that could turn into living things

Sperm and eggs aren't living things? — khaled

I didn't say anything about sperm and eggs, though.

The fact that C was an option in the first place — khaled

If I was caused to pick C by the fact that it was an option in the first place, then how could I have picked another option?

You're not saying that a cause can obtain without the effect in question, are you?

You said genetically modifying babies to suffer is bad — khaled

Babies aren't living things?

It's not irrelevant to saying that something caused something else.

If we buy that there is free will and I make a free will decision to do x, how does it make sense to say that I was caused to do x by anything other than my own decision?

The problem with that argument is that you can't impose living on someone else. There needs to be a someone else to impose something on them, but there is no one to impose something on prior to the person in question living already.

You'd have to say that it's morally problematic to do things to materials that could turn into living things, but of course that would introduce a bunch of nonintuitive upshots that you don't want to introduce.

No it would make it a huge category error. — schopenhauer1

How would you describe the category error in question?

One of your bad arguments is the "suffering of parent" for not begetting someone else that would be harmed argument, yes. — schopenhauer1

It's a problem that you can't even understand or learn that that's not an argument about antinatalism on my part. If you can't learn that, how would it be possible for us to have a conversation?

We don't have to agree — Janus

What we'd need to agree on is what the other person is even saying, for example. We don't do that as far as I can tell, unless you are of the opinion that I sometimes understand exactly what you're saying. Often I'm not of that opinion, however, and we'd both need to have the opinion that I understood what you're saying--otherwise, we'd not agree on this. Hence my question about how you're thinking about "reference" above for example. The question would make little sense to me if you're not thinking of it in its semantic sense, but that would be a confusion on my view, since "frame of reference" is not conventionally using "reference" in that semantic sense--hence the question. That you won't simply answer such questions and explain what you have in mind better is a big part of the problem.

Understanding what each other is saying doesn't include your belief that you understand exactly what I'm saying. In order for us to agree that we know what each other is saying, I'd have to be of the opinion that you understand what I'm saying. I'm almost never of that opinion.

In short, you basically think I'm an idiot who isn't posting in good faith, and you really don't care to understand anything I'm saying--you rather just want to argue with it. And I think that you're an idiot. I wouldn't necessarily say that you're not posting in good faith. I just think you're an idiot--as in thinking that literally you're not very intelligent, and you're incapable of understanding things that you don't already think, that haven't already been adopted by you as part of your script. And I don't have the motivation to sort through or bother with all of that when you apparently just want to argue--especially because I actually hate arguing. But you're also too arrogant to do anything other than what we've been doing, so let's continue, I guess.

If it's any solace, I think that the majority of people who regularly post here are idiots while being ridiculously arrogant. Most seem to have mental problems, too--as in, they seem as if they've received diagnoses, received treatment, etc. The arrogance comes from the fact that they're educated idiots--they know some things, in the sense of being familiar with them and being able to regurgitate them, but that's not at all the same thing as intelligence.

So you would find it sufficient to explain concepts such as potential energy — Possibility

No. Concepts aren't potential anything, and they're not just energy. Nothing is just energy.

Concepts are particular brain states, in particular individuals.

First, it's important to realize that there are no true normatives. That is, truth is not a property that a normative can have. (This is with respect to your "should" questions, for example.)

Most takes on personhood have it that sentience is one of the most important aspects. Definitely fetuses are not sentient at the start--they don't even have brains at the start. It would at least require a particular stage of brain development for sentience to obtain (barring a good reason to believe that mentality, subjective experiences, etc. can obtain in other materials, which we'd need to specify). Are newborn babies sentient? That's more difficult to say. So personhood may not really kick in until sometime between late infancy/toddlerhood/being a young kid.

The reason that we consider babies due moral consideration is typically the fact that they'll develop into persons, and eventually into entities that are capable of and due consideration for granting or withholding consent, where that doesn't kick in fully until we consider them adults. So it's a very gradual process to that point--a process with lots of fuzzy boundaries, especially because we're dealing with individuals who don't all develop the same.

Uhhhhh. Ok. How about: falling off a bike and breaking your leg. That was partially caused by you being born in the first place. Was it not? — khaled

So presumably, you don't buy that people have free will?

"Just in case having a child doesn't cause suffering, then there's no justification for antinatalism"--I don't at all agree with that statement. I'd need to agree with it to see my comments as an argument against antinatalism.

(At this, by the way, I wouldn't say that having a child can cause no suffering. But we'd need to specify the suffering in question and see whether we can peg the causal chain in question. Of course, I don't hinge any ethical stance of the concept of suffering, but that's another issue.)

At any rate, no fact can justify any normative, so pointing out that something isn't a fact also isn't going to undermine any normative--because the normative can't be supported by the fact in the first place. This is not to comment on rhetorical, persuasive power of anything, but that's simply a matter of whether we're appealing to someone's psychological biases.

And that you use "cause" in a manner different than I do doesn't make my usage flawed. As for "reductive," that would need to be defined better and why it's supposed to be negative would need to be supported.

So, when you say ‘SOMETHING’ here, do you mean it must always be a physical, tangible something applying or receiving forces, or could it be a conceptual, abstract or subjective experience of ‘something’ that interacts with a physical something and in doing so effects an applied force? — Possibility

I'm a physicalist, so on my view, concepts, subjective experience, etc. are physical processes.

That's one of them. — schopenhauer1

? It was a yes or no question. And the answer, given good reading comprehension, should have been "no."

This is akin to the problem of the Loch Ness Monster. Reported over nine-hundred years, if there is such an animal, it's got to be a family. Now, given that there is a universe, is it more likely that there is just one and only one, or that there's more than one? To hold it to one implies the existence of not only whatever brought it into existence, but additional somethings to keep it at only one. That seems the less likely. But clearly this has nothing to do with physics so much as a judgment on likelihood. — tim wood

I commented above, "There is only one universe - this is primarily a matter of definition,"

For example, if we define "universe" as "everything that exists," then you can't have more than one.

Any harm you can think of can be causally linked to being born. In the same way that the specific harm of having 8 broken limbs can be linked to the genetic modification, so can ANY kind of harm be linked to the modification "birth" that allowed it. — khaled

C'mon, you can't give a single example?