What's fascinating to me is how Marx's picture of capital, in spite of all this esoteric trapping, still rings true today. — Moliere

Because if people did not feel this way, the argument given would not arise. — Manuel

I have read several of your posts on the topic, you don't need to keep putting "imposition" and "forced" in bold - I get that point very well. But it's simply not convincing. — Manuel

Indeed when the moral argument is countered you invariably dismiss that counter with something along the lines of "you've had your say, I want to hear from others", a 'casting around' for agreement, and disparaging all others as 'trolls'. — Isaac

The rest of the world think the difference is significant and as such taking a decision for them (because they can't) is a perfectly moral thing to do and faces no such contradiction with their moral behaviour toward persons who already exist. — Isaac

Since there are no other examples in life, you can't appeal to consistency, and since there are no objective moral laws, you can't appeal to authority. — Isaac

Were you to be interested in the arguments one might expect that to be and end to it. But these threads just seem to come back again and again. Fishing for people who agree with you is not the same thing as showing an interest in the arguments. It's an emotional, not an academic activity. — Isaac

I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking catharsis (I don't think it's healthy, but then I'm not your therapist, so that's no concern of mine), but it is unpleasant to dismiss as 'trolls' anyone taking, at face value, an appeal to mutuality dressed up as a moral investigation. — Isaac

No Manuel has it right here. — Isaac

Add to that inapt, unrealistic thought experiments; quoting famous philosophers as a substitute for thinking things through; irrelevant comments and non-sequiturs; personal attacks and uncivility... — T Clark

I think your views of suffering are quite distorted to the extent that it actually clouds other everything else life can provide. — Manuel

Finally, also an issue that surely has come up - that people who have AN views tend to be depressed in some manner. This is claimed to be irrelevant to the central AN argument.

But if AN didn't have this kind of depression, I seriously doubt it would've ever arisen. — Manuel

There is no word that goes beyond "overkill" that I know of - but I don't see what success you've had.

Something has gone wrong here. — Manuel

There are no new arguments to be given for or against AN. It boils down to you thinking life sucks and me thinking it does not. — Manuel

The point is that most people (not all) prefer to go on living, till' it's time to go - as everyone eventually will. — Manuel

At the recommendation of others, I recently dove head-first into the world of Stoicism. And I'm shocked at what I am discovering. The quality and (above almost all else) practicality of the lessons and dialogues is stunning.

Stoicism reminds me of Buddhism in many ways, especially in terms of framing desire, suffering and what is optimal for growth. Also in terms of the asceticism, and simplicity.

Has anyone else here researched or even practiced Stoicism? What was your experience with this particular philosophy? I ask, because I am interested in being pointed in the correct direction when it comes to furthering my understanding of Stoicism.

Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe there is a dark side to Stoicism that I'm not appreciating. Which is exactly why I'm starting this thread; to peek behind the veil. — Bret Bernhoft

This argument strikes me as at best indentured servitude to a hypothetical or slavery to a hypothetical at worst. Am I off the mark?

"You must exist and suffer because some hypothetical beings might have it better as a result."

Slave owners had it better than their slaves. — Sumyung Gui

There's suffering but there's also a lot of joy. A lot of people consider the suffering to be worth it due to the joy. — Xanatos

The discussion of animal vs human ways of being in the world seems to me too polarized. Animals are subject to pressures from their environment, including each other. So are humans. There are many similarities between humans and animals and it seems to me most likely that there will be very similar ways of being available to both. I have been told that boredom is a uniquely human capacity, not shared by most animals; parrots are apparently an exception, but it may be that the distress behaviour displayed by caged animals is the result of boredom, so that is not at all clear. — Ludwig V

There is a massive qualitative difference between a) what lesser animals experience by flow, b) what humans experience during moments of flow, and c) what this "there" of actualized, perfect, literally limitless flow could be.

Don't think this might change your perspective much, but I wanted to offer this alternative interpretation. — javra

Interesting perspective. I find that being in the zone, or in flow states, is antithetical to zoning out. Yes, the questioning, chattering aspects of mind vanish in both cases, but in the first we are effortlessly (so to speak) accomplishing our goals. Wheres with the second we don't progress anywhere. For me, in an ideal case, all pondering and analyzing is to facilitate a smooth practice of being in the zone and so having "flow". Which, for me at least, is when life become most purposeful, for lack of better terms. — javra

Here again I'd describe this in terms of degrees. Lesser animals can certainly feel anxiety, trepidation, lack of flow - this in due measure to their intelligence. But they certainly are nowhere near as prone to such unpleasant states of being as we humans are. — javra

Reminds me of train of thought wherein ego is considered a in some fundamental sense a vice, lesser animals have less ego in due measure with their intelligence, and we humans - although having greater egos due to our greater intelligence than all other known lifeforms - endeavor for states of being that are evermore more egoless while yet maintaining the wisdom, or gnosis, that our intelligence gives us opportunity to obtain. To momentarily bring spiritual notions back into the discussion, notions of Nirvana or Brahman come to mind as just such egoless state of being which would be the pinnacle state of awareness to experience ... that is yet different in supposed quality from the reduced egos of lesser lifeforms.

Would this roundabout mindset be something that resonates with you? — javra

In sum, our discussion points to the broad conclusion that all natural dependencies admissible in human language are Merge-generable, including certain types of nested, cross-serial, and transformational (such as filler-gap/movement) dependencies, and that non-Merge-generable dependencies of any type are extraneous to the human language faculty. There are only abstract hierarchical phrase structures in human language, generated all the way through via Merge. Here, we provided a novel set of neuroimaging data that confirm this general picture, thus corroborating the overarching hypothesis that human language at its core is a surprisingly simple system of unbounded Merge, and that Merge is the single generative engine underlying every aspect of linguistic computations. — Frontiers In Article

The significance of language lies in its capacity to express and communicate meaning, which includes our experiences, beliefs, intentions, and values. This capacity is founded on the ability to construe reality, i.e. to mentally represent it and make sense of it. Conception is not a passive reflection of the external world, but an active process that entails selective attention, highlighting of aspects, and organization into patterns. These patterns are abstracted from experience, both perceptual and introspective, and become structured in a cognitive grammar. Language is the vehicle for these structures, which are brought to bear on the interpretation of linguistic expressions. — Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World" by Ronald W. Langacker

Language is the key symbolic adaptation that has enabled humans to accumulate and transmit culture, including cooperative social practices, technology, ethical codes, and knowledge of the natural world. The development of language reflects a confluence of evolutionary and developmental events that led to the co-evolution of brains and communication systems, including the growth of cortical brain regions involved in auditory processing, vocal learning, and syntactic analysis. As a result, human communication exhibits unique properties, such as the ability to express an unlimited range of meanings, displace talk to other times and places, and create recursive structures of great complexity. These properties, which are absent in the communication systems of other animals, reflect distinctive features of the human brain and its relation to social and cultural processes. — The Symbolic Species- Terrence Deacon

The creative aspect of language use can be seen most easily in the ability to produce an unbounded number of new sentences, quite unlike any that have been previously encountered.

Language is a complex, uniquely human cognitive ability that allows us to communicate with one another, to express our thoughts and feelings, and to create an infinite variety of novel sentences. While other animals also have systems of communication, they are not able to acquire language in the way that humans do, and their communication systems are limited in their expressive power and flexibility."

We possess an elaborate and highly articulated system of knowledge of language, which is both tacit and explicit, and which reflects the experience of a lifetime. This knowledge, together with the highly articulated system of sensory-motor capacities, provides the basis for the production and comprehension of an unbounded variety of expressions, each with its own meaning, conveyed in a way that is sensitive to a potentially unlimited number of conditions. — Language and Mind by Noam Chomsky

The recursive mind has allowed us to transcend the limitations of our senses, and to inhabit a world of possibilities, independent of immediate circumstances. It has allowed us to engage in science, to imagine alternative scenarios, to predict the future, and to entertain multiple perspectives on a situation."
"Recursion is a process that allows us to generate an indefinitely large set of hierarchically structured objects or ideas, each of which can be analyzed in terms of smaller components that are themselves instances of the same kinds of objects or ideas."
"The recursive capacity is what allows us to create complex grammars, to generate infinite sentences, to use pronouns, and to talk about things that are not present. It is also what allows us to think about the future, to make plans, and to imagine hypothetical scenarios."
"The recursive mind is the key to our creativity, our sense of self, and our ability to navigate complex social environments. It is what allows us to create art, music, literature, and science, and to pass on our cultural heritage to future generations. — The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization by Michael C. Corballis

So appraised, Homo Sapiens are a unique kind of lifeform. But then so too are all other species of life out there. And all species evolve, sometimes speciating into new kinds, given a sufficient period of time and given that they don’t perish. — javra

More generally, how can awareness, as an aspect of life, be deemed to not hold any continuity between different types, here meaning species, of lifeforms? With such an evolutionary continuity then also comes different degrees of magnitude of awareness and different degrees of quality of awareness. The ameba and the human then holding vast differences in their magnitude and quality of awareness despite there being a continuity between the two - such that the differences in their awareness could be deemed a matter of degree on a very extreme spectrum. — javra

I'm sure some evolutionary reasons. Our evolutionary path was that of flexibility over specific modules to handle situations. These in turn, were probably a kind of Red Queen scenario where each new advantage created its own problems which needed more ratcheting. So for example, it may have started out simply with walking upright continually, which freed up hands for tools. As with other primates, tool-use is not new. But the complete freedom from using hands for mobility and bipedalism created the opportunity for more exploration. This in turn favored higher rates of pre-frontal cortex formations for abstract and long-term planning. This created the situation where social pressures needed even more ratcheting for there to be awareness of intent and understanding social relations. The shift to some language-based thinking that could have been due to various mutations (FOXp2 gene for example), along with exaptations like the the mirror-neuron system (that is just one idea), might have helped in developing dedicated regions like Wernicke and Broca's region of the brain. This in turn ratcheted up things exponentially as symbolic thought combined with a general processing brain (not specified to certain tasks and responses), created the goal-directed, reason-producing, narrative creating human being we saw appear 500,000-150,000 years ago.

But though interesting, I am trying to showcase the burden that this kind of cognition carries. We are an animal that knows it does not have to, but does it anyways. A chimp forages and hunts in its environment but it almost certainly doesn't have to motivate itself. Sure depression is something that can be seen in animals, but it is not necessarily the same as a daily struggle for providing reasons. We know there are nasty, shitty, crappy, negative aspects that we don't want to encounter, and we must grapple with that and overcome that. If we didn't, we would literally die. — schopenhauer1

Biblical-like metaphysics wherein a supposed existential division of being occurs between soul-endowed humans and soul-devoid lesser lifeforms. (To me, either all life is endowed with an evolutionary continuity of soul/anima or else no life is endowed with soul - but I see neither evidence nor logical cohesion for there being a division between lifeforms with a soul and lifeforms devoid of soul.) — javra

We're defining the differences between animals and humans using different standards. — T Clark

Deliberative, constantly iterative, many degrees of plasticity, self-reflective, language based creatures, as we are now. — schopenhauer1

we deliberate on various counterfactuals and past events. We can reflect on the reflection of a reflection seemingly infinitely. — schopenhauer1

Instinct is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.
— William James - What is an Instinct — T Clark

Darwin used the word instinct in a number of different ways—to refer to what impels a bird to breed; to a disposition, such as courage or obstinacy in a dog; to selectively bred patterns of behaviour such as the tumbling movements of tumbler pigeons; to feelings such as sympathy in people; and to stereotyped actions such as those employed by honeybees when constructing the cells of a honeycomb. It is regrettable that Darwin did not make the distinctions of the meaning of instinct more explicit, for he gave powerful precedent for the indiscriminate use of the word, the ambiguity of which has repeatedly clouded and confused the understanding of behaviour. — https://www.britannica.com/topic/instinct

I guess the answer is that there is continuity between animal and human cognition. It's a slope, not a jump. — T Clark

It's not that I don't think we have a powerful general processing ability, but I don't think you can ignore what is built in from the start. I don't think there's anything wrong with calling them instincts. — T Clark

I'll answer this question with another question - Is it actually true that there is a discontinuity in cognitive ability between humans and other living things? — T Clark

And there isn't a reason, as you note.

There's simply yourself, and the world, and what you need to do. — Moliere

The question I struggle with is, what probability makes it acceptable/unacceptable to procreate? 60% chance of a good life? 5% chance of a life of chronic suffering? I don't know the answer. — Down The Rabbit Hole

that is not idealism - it is representative realism, where the idea or perception represents the actuality.

'“Realism” (in philosophy) is the view that certain concepts refer to real things. For Locke, it is the view that our sensory ideas (sensations) represent material objects in the world.

We must distinguish between the mental representation of an object, and the object itself. The mental representation is an idea (probably a complex idea). The object in the world is not an idea but an object. The slogan is “ideas in the mind, qualities in bodies.” Ideas can represent qualities, as well as (entire) objects.' — Wayfarer

That's an observation, not a problem. — Banno

I'm not seeing it. — Banno

I wouldn't use cause. Consciousness is not a thing like moving billiard balls. I advocate treating it as a difference in seeing as, a la duckrabbit. The event can be seen as a physical system or as being conscious. Two sides of the same coin. — Banno

But again, this is a change of topic. — Banno

What would be the equivalent in the realist/materialist attitude to consciousness? — Banno

Since you enjoy the deontological approached to Antinatalism, are you familiar with the work of Julio Cabrera? — Oldphan

Ok, so if we agree to leave aside the exegesis, do we agree that idealism errs in treating facts about trees as facts about minds? — Banno