@khaled On a deeper, existential level, a lot of people put stock in the game itself. Thus, it's not the dignity of the person being compromised by overlooking harm created on its behalf, but an "opportunity" to experience the game, for good or bad. And somehow that's all that matters. It's quasi-religious, even if not based on religion. There is a cause here of some higher "meaning" in playing the game and trying to withstand whatever the game has to offer. This game must be played, don't you see?

@khaled I still think the game scenario is the best analogy. It's as if after being kidnapped into the game, the person was like "But I prepared you for the game, didn't I?" This seems to be enough to go ahead and create a new player for the game.

The rest is pretty much semantic mumbo jumbo.. Consequences for a future person are seen as not legitimate because you cannot know the proximate cause for each and every harm. I'm not sure why aggregating "All Harm in an Individual's Lifetime" doesn't compute. That someone was not put in a position where a lifetime's worth of harm could take place is one formulation of the principle. That someone was not put into a game that cannot be consented is another principle in the same realm. Both are valid. The excuse that the parent is preparing the person to play the game well, and that reasonable amounts of harm are okay to inflict unnecessarily on someone underlies a lot of this too.

So "natalists" (i.e. regular humans going about their business) almost certainly do not make such value judgments at all. I've never come across anyone who said, "Well we pondered whether or not it's right to bring a child into the world but agreed in the end that everyone, future people, has a right to see Succession." In place of such value judgments, "natalists" have biological imperatives (and nagging mothers). — Kenosha Kid

Ha, understood. Notice I said natalists AND typical views on procreation. The nagging mothers and biological imperatives falls into that. However, I would debate biological imperatives. I am not sure if the abstract notion of procreation itself is really a biological imperative as much as the physical act of sex itself being pleasurable. Procreation being a concept prior to birth is more of an outcome that people desire to have. It's about maintaining a lifestyle, tradition, and other values and notions (from communal traditions, the circumstances of one's relationship, or one's own preferences or both).

Sure, among other things (there's more to a life than suffering) but that is not equivalent to harming someone. — Kenosha Kid

I mean you know the argument is more sophisticated than simply "harming" someone. I usually define it as creating the conditions for all other harm to follow. As far as non-harm related experiences- no person is actually missing out if not procreated. For the antinatalist ethic, there is no obligation to create beings with good experiences, but simply preventing beings having any negative experiences. Not creating unnecessary suffering and impositions on another person is what counts here. The question is, "Is that taking place with birth?" Yes? Don't do it.

A question for the typical-view is, why does any experience have to take place at all, if there is collateral damage involved? Why must this "other" reason be carried out on someone else's behalf? I don't believe there to be a good answer which doesn't overlook the dignity of the person that is supposedly benefiting from these experiences. I simply see people not thinking it all the way through- especially the part of no actual person missing out on anything, and not future person suffering. That is why antinatalists see a win/win with this ethical principle. There is no hangup about no one who experiences in the first place. So what? Is someone not going to be put in conditions of X amount of a lifetime of harm? That is the important question. I can go further for the basis of this, but I leave it at that.

Real, existing people, not just the possibility of future people. The former is a concern for morality. The latter is not. — Kenosha Kid

Who says? Will a person be affected (and most certainly negatively) when born? Then that person who will come into existence does have some consideration. What I think is interesting is then when typical-viewers don't consider the inverse notion. That is to say, they don't consider that since there is no "real" actual person now, there is no person who is "missing out" or "needs this or that" from life. Only the parent's need for a person to exist.

My definition of what morality really is is based on what capacities and impulses we have as a species to behave socially. Anything else is fiction. — Kenosha Kid

I mean, that would be convenient when debating antinatalism. I will stick to the broader definition. I think you are actually at the wrong level when debating this, which is causing the confusion. Morality can be extremely diverse, and disagreements about the right conduct, behavior, beliefs, etc. are within the broader scope of "right conduct/behavior/character". Once we are debating this realm, then we can argue which actual conduct/behavior//belief/character is the right one. The definition is the arena, the different values are the participants in the arena itself. But even if we were to use your narrow definition, since antinatalism is indeed about the consideration of people in future states of being, it is indeed social as well, so fits under both. Is it about consideration for other people? Yep. Certainly is. Even if it is about what will happen to a person rather than the current state.

By natalism do you mean normal people just naturally procreating without theorising about it? Because I can't imagine much more redundant than a moral theory that says it's okay to have kids. — Kenosha Kid

Fair enough, natalists and typical views on procreation.

First, creating a person that might one day be harmed is not the same as harming that person. Second, if a person does not currently exist, one cannot behave immorally toward them. — Kenosha Kid

So here is the little game you and that other guy on this thread play.. First you want to discount antinatalism as not even in the realm of morality because it doesn't have to do with "social groups". I already addressed this by pointing out that "social groups" is too narrow a definition. But, then when antinatalism does actually address issues of "other people" you then wan to discount that because "other people" is deemed as an illegitimate move. But it isn't. I have mentioned before that it doesn't matter when the decision was made, if the a person is born, and that person will then have a lifetime of X amount of suffering, that is the result. It is about "other people" very much.

That "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character" is not what moral means? We can take it for granted we'll disagree on what morality is just on the basis of the fact that you believe antinatalism addresses moral concerns, but I'll confess I'm curious. — Kenosha Kid

Sorry, "this" in that quote was your mischaracterization by too narrowly defining morality. That Google quote was to show contra your opinion, it concerns principles of right and wrong behavior, and goodness and badness of human character" or similar such definitions.

And, indirectly, it's a messed up value system. — Kenosha Kid

Of course, antinatalists can say the same of natalism...

Not sure how "Not harming a future person" doesn't count as moral. The whole social group benefit definition is too narrow a claim regarding ethics, and it's purposely created to exclude antinatalism, and then post-facto made to seem like some abstract consensus just annoints your exclusionary definition as of course, fact.

The most basic definitions usually read something like this: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. That's just from a quick Google search even. Don't have to go too far to see this is a mischaracterization of what moral means.

He is trying to circle a square to make a non-argument; making a definition that will exclude antinatalism as moral so as to not even consider it debatable in ethical theory. Clearly your examples are some of the many formulations over the years, that do indeed take antinatalism as the basis of a moral theory, whether meta-ethical, normative, or in practical ethics. But, it is a fact that anyone can deny anything and with contemptuous phrasing to make it seem as if it is a matter of fact. Shrug

Well no, they don't, that's the shame of it. I would say they seem to be largely sculpting the trend of morality in some places to some extent at the moment. We are tending toward egalitarianism in most countries (not the middle east which has largely moved away from it) and I think people are encouraged to be more empathetic. We are increasingly progressing toward responsible social behaviour in many quarters.

But that's in the background of history of slavery, military expansionism, genocide, and other injustices, and it's not difficult to see how antisocial behaviours are again becoming not just normalised but lionised, i.e. ethics are made out of them. Likewise any arguments for such are not well-grounded, not because they fail to meet the theoretical criteria for a moral theory, but because they are contrary to what morality really is in its pre-theoretical sense. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, your argument is slipping. If history is the battleground of human ideas playing out, it's got a lot of horrible examples of what humans do. Thus this argument that some particular set of morality is "the" true or essential human biological behavior just seems cherry-picking. So I would move on from the biological aspect of it and just move to the idea itself. Reduction of harm seems a good place to start, as I think both parties agree that in some respect, this makes sense. It is more about the context and circumstances and thresholds of how much that difference start taking place.

Moral claims that don't match the majority do not lose their status as moral claims. — khaled

Exactly. Look at modern day Saudi Arabian practices of punishment and women's rights, All European Empire tactics towards non-European peoples, 400 BCE-400 CE Roman conventions of war, punishment, and intimidation, 1930s Germany, 1930s Japan, China's current political persecutions, 1830s USA, 1490s Spain, 800s Scandinavia, 1090s Christendom in general, 1200s Mongolia, All these societies seemed to have a majority of the population agree with what we would find appalling in our particular society, or were tolerated back in that time but not today.

But khaled, according to @Joshs, most people will have wanted to have been born, and think that it was justified for the parents to cause the harm. The end. End of story. Go home, pack your bags, end of debate.

So your mission can’t simply be to prevent suffering. It has to be to prevent the suffering of those who , when born, would grow up to believe they shouldn’t have been exposed to the risk of suffering. How large a group so you think this is? — Joshs

I refer you back to what @Inyenzi says.. there is no referent of the unborn that will suffer not being born. There will be someone who suffers if born. No one actually loses out in a situation of no person born (that could have been let's say). A person will be born and will be harmed.

My point isn’t that not killing oneself in and of itself means that one believes the decision to create another human who will suffer must be justified.” It is that I believe that most of them do believe it is justified, in spite of their misery, because they equate a life starting and one continuing. — Joshs

You make an impossible situation, and you still haven't read my post probably that I keep referring to. You think people ought to live to "know" if living was worth it. The antinatalist side would simply say, harm can be prevented, and no one suffers from not being born. Period. You are trying to subtly do the tree falling in the woods argument. If no one exists to know about suffering, who is this "for"? People need to exist to evaluate this pain, according to you.. But they don't. People don't have to exist to evaluate anything, and no "one" is losing out for this. However, once born, it is too late. Someone will be harmed. That someone also exists to evaluate this, doesn't matter. We don't need people to exist so that suffering can be evaluated. If you would be creating unnecessary suffering on someone else's behalf, and there is no actual person who needs to suffer in the first place, then don't create this unnecessary suffering. It's not like they exist already, and you are preventing a future of even more suffering (like a vaccine or something), but rather, there was no conditions of suffering for a person to begin with, and then you are creating this from whole cloth, unnecessarily. No good that.

One wonders why there are not more suicides. Many who don’t contemplate suicide have had much suffering in their life, and yet they view each new day as if they are potentially reborn, with a new chance at meaningful existence. Even though they know what great pain may lie ahead, they clearly don’t believe that choosing to be ‘born again’ into the next new day is an unjustifiable risk where they needn't ‘re-birth’ themselves into new life in the first place. They could choose preventing further suffering over the creation of pleasure , but they don’t. Why? Perhaps because even the suffering has meaning and value to them. If they feel this way about their own lives, maybe you can see why they feel the same about conceiving children. — Joshs

This is another natalist trope.. that because people don't commit suicide all over the place, that must mean that the decision to create another human who will suffer must be justified. Again, look at my post that actually predicted pretty much all of your arguments..

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483507

A life starting and continuing are different. The choice itself of "Well, you just have to live this out or kill yourself" is an unfair choice, cold comfort really.

So while anti-natalists think the terms of the debate are about being versus non-being, they’re really about how best to move forward in life. — Joshs

I actually don't mind this interpretation. Certainly by having children, an existential stance is being made on how to move forward in life. It is an ideology of a way of life that is literally replicated in another person who will be involved in some way in the socio-cultural-political-economic sphere of the society they are born into. It is a stance on how things are, and an affirmative for perpetuating that way of life. The pessimist/antinatalist takes a "no" stance on this perpetuation. It stops here. I don't speak for all antinatalists though. Certainly for the philosophical pessimist variants, this makes sense.

I've posted stuff previously about how procreation is actually an a political act. It is a stance on behalf of someone else, that they need to live the life that the parent deems needs to be lived out by this new person.

Arthur Schopenhauer - 19th century German Idealist tradition-
Main philosophy: Existence is Will- a striving force/principle, but manifested as phenomenal existence (Will mediated through the fourfold root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason). This manifested/mediated version of Will causes being to be bifurcated as if it was subject/object and causes great pain for the individual animal/being that strives but without end or satisfaction. Life is equated then with kind of dissatisfaction/suffering discussed in Buddhism and Eastern philosophies. It was best never to have been born if looked at in foresight from parent /hindsight from already being born. Once born, art, aesthetic experience, compassion for fellow suffering beings, and ascetic denial of the very Will at the core of being are avenues one can try, but often fail to achieve.

David Benatar- Modern ethicist at University of South Africa Cape Town.
Main philosophy: There is an asymmetry between the absence of good and bad. Pleasures are good and pains are bad when existing. Absence of pain is good, even if people don't exist to know it. Absence of pleasure is not bad (or good), but neutral unless someone already exists to be deprived of that good. Therefore no one is obligated to bring about people who have benefits, but are obligated to prevent people who have pain.

Nihilism is a broad category, and these two arent necesseraily nihilists unless philosophical pessemism counts as a form of existential nihilism, which is debatable.

Put simply, the goal of antinatalism was never the elimination of pain. The goal was not to cause pain. So the fact that the elimination of pain is not the same as absence of being is irrelevant. — khaled

Good points.

Bad metaphysics which they handwave at as "semantics" is my experience. — Benkei

Also https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483829

This seems a very obvious point, but it's not one that the anti-natalists here accept, so there must be some fundamental disagreement about the basics of the argument involved. Unfortunately, I have been so far unable to figure out just how exactly this fundamental disagreement comes about. — Echarmion

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483829

The key point is that anti-natalism confuses elimination of pain with absence of being. You don’t take away MY pain by not having me be born in the first place. You only take away MY pain by giving me the choice of removing an obstacle that is interrupting my ongoing self-functioning. If I choose suicide, I havent chosen ‘non-being ‘ , since that notion has no meaning in itself. I have only chosen that way of thinking which reduces pain, provides a sense of relief , and so ENHANCES my functioning. — Joshs

Um, antinatalism isn't about the already existing person. It is about the future person. Also, oddly, your points are already predicted and refuted in the post I made right above the one you chose to write here.

See points 1-3. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/483507

The world is not ideal. It is what it is. However, we can think of a more ideal world. It would be wrong to put anyone in a world that isn't the most ideal world. There's only three things people will do in this case to try to counter this.

1) Equate the actual world with an ideal world. This is just false because if you can ever evaluate a task/situation where you would rather it have been different, than you already have a more ideal world. It's easier to pull out some Eastern/Buddhist crap to say that it is our expectations and mental attachments on things.. but that's not how it works (via experience in living daily life). Even if it is true, the fact that we need the Eastern thought is the more ideal state that we are not at yet so by way of self-refutation it is wrong.

2) Claim that if people weren't born, they wouldn't even know there was an ideal world, ergo, people need to be born to realize this sad truth that this isn't an ideal world. That is just ridiculous even on its face. That's like saying, suffering doesn't exist unless someone suffers to know it sucks, so we better bring more suffering so that it can exist to know it sucks. Doesn't compute.

3) Claim that the actual world is good enough to be born into. But this is like saying that it is good to create situations of impositions that are inescapable. So, if the actual world has the imposition of needing to survive and this causes all sorts of stress, anxiety, harms, and that this cannot be escaped by going to a more ideal world, but only by suicide, this is not an optimal situation to impose on anyone.

@khaled
Let me explain further...
Because of this extra layer of how we operate and survive, it adds that much more suffering onto the task at hand. We now have to do all sorts of things to try to bypass the suffering and "deal with" the situation. We use things like "ideals", "habits of thought", "self-talk", "discipline" and any number of things. All of this we know as we are doing the very thing at hand. It isn't an instinct, a reflex, a habit learned from operant conditioning really.. it is a dialectical, existential, thing we do as operationally deliberative beings.

That's really been the whole crux of the disagreement with literally everyone here.

For them we should live, and we make morality to live better. For me, we make the morality first, and if "we should live" doesn't come out of it then so be it. — khaled

Yep agreed.

I guess my point with that one too was that in so many ways humans are understanding their pain as they are living it. In a broader philosophical conversation, we are animals that use ideology, ideas, linguistic/cultural based motivations to get stuff done all the time. At any given time we know we can technically be doing something else, even if in the long run it would be a worse alternative in terms of our survival or pain.. but we know we could do something else.

Then I honestly don't care. I don't care about "embedding" moral premises in other moral premises. Why is creating someone who might hate life wrong? Because it just is. OR because it is "using people". OR because it is "disrespecting the freedom of the individual". OR because it is "unwarranted suffering". Or because all of the above. Or because of the first, which is because of the second, which is because of the third.

I can embed the premise (make it a conclusion deriving from another premise) in a large number of other premises but I think doing that is just distraction. The question then becomes "Why is using people wrong?" or "Why is causing unwarranted suffering wrong?" etc. This "embedding" is just a waste of time, it doesn't give any new information or any new answers.

People certainly seem to like it though. The best moral theories have 2-3 "layers" of redundant embedding at least so that when someone asks "Why X?" you answer "Because Y" and then they ask "Why Y?" up to 3 times at whichpoint you can pretend that they're being ridiculous. That is tip number 1 in the "Moral Objectivist's Guidebook to BS". "Embed your moral premises in many layers so that when people keep asking 'why' you can call them children and not actually have to justify anything" — khaled

I totally agree with your sentiment and really like your explanation of how often finding a moral foundation is simply embedding it in yet another layer that needs another foundation, etc. At some point, you either agree or disagree with the axiom. I have maintained for a long time now that at that point it is more about appealing to a person's emotions on why exactly that premise is so important, not embedding it in another principle that is some sort of air tight case. That will never be the case.

That being said, this doesn't have to be embedded in layers as much as just another primary layer for why it could be bad to procreate. But I guess my real question then is what is it about this principle that seems so noxious to me in particular? It's this weird paternalistic idea that people should like, tolerate, or deal with negative situations in the first place I guess, because it's somehow just "good for them" and if they don't realize this goodness, they need to be re-educated. I guess the difference between that side and my side is that side leads to other people being affected, and my side does not. Of course, that side would shrug and say, "I just don't care" or "experiencing the negative is good" or make it seem like it is inevitable, "it's just the course of life", as if there was no other option. Then you can ask, what is it about experience that needs to take place. I know that is a very deep and somewhat dark question because people think that simply living must be good in and of itself and antinatalism is preventing this, just as antinatalists might say that they are preventing a future person from suffering. There is an odd sort of secular theism in the optimism that living must take place. I don't know.

@khaled What do you think of this one?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/482594

Just another argument I thought of for antinatalism..

Humans are (generally) creatures that can self-reflect on any given situation in real-time. An example would be that I can know while I am shoveling the sidewalk, that I am indeed shoveling the sidewalk.

Indeed, with the feature of self-reflection comes the ability to also evaluate any given situation in real-time. So as I am shoveling the sidewalk, I can evaluate the situation as not pleasant, neutral, pleasant and anywhere in between.

If it is the case that the person being procreated is one that can evaluate a situation as negative and if there are de facto "facts of living a normal human life" that cannot easily be escaped, or would be violating the communal norms that sustain the individuals in the community by doing so, and can be indeed evaluated at any given time as negative by the person doing them, then forcing someone in a situation where negative evaluations is possible, would be wrong. The keywords are "forcing someone" into possibilities of inescapable negative evaluations.

The implication here is the paternalism feedback loop of forcing someone into situations where one can evaluate the very acts of surviving as negative, and then believing that society must re-educate these individuals into accepting this inescapable circumstance. This is through all sorts of coercive means.

If anyone can provide any further ideas.. this scheme of creating people who can evaluate the very givens of life as negative and then re-educating to "get with the program".. why does this seem immoral, not right, fishy, wrong? I think it has something to do with using individuals, but I'd like other ideas for why this intuitively seems wrong.

But that's my point, friend. You may choose not to participate and create a person who you will raise to not only not do that but do everything in their power to prevent that. Not because they're "forced to" simply because you raised them to view doing so as beneficial and bringing joy to their person. Meanwhile, those who are raised without said belief will continue to do so and thanks to your non-participation will continue this unabated and unrestricted. — Outlander

Humans are not a bunch of inputs that magically will be programmed to be beneficial robot machines. And my main point is that even if you were to be able to program a human in such a fashion (again not how it works), procreating a person in order that the outcome of a beneficial robot machine comes about, would be wrong. That's my point. It's not about the utility of a person in this case of the procreation decision. It is about using them for your means, good intentions or not.

The child will undoubtedly do what the child wants. The assumption that a child raised to receive joy from selflessness is "sacrificed" or otherwise forced to do something against their will is on par with the same idea toward a child raised to feel joy from selfishness, is it not? — Outlander

Same response as above.

Again, people will continue to be born, and without proper guidance, continue to be subject to the scenarios you provided. Until, someone with knowledge and perhaps guts, decides to raise others in opposition to this. — Outlander

Sounds like culling new people to be part of charitable organizations.. weird. I mean, if you are simply saying teach people to give more, fine. But to create new people for that purpose, is the problem.

What future individual? You're an anti-natalist! — Outlander

I mean we are ignoring the individual, bypassing their dignity by creating a being who will be imposed upon and suffer.

See above. People will continue to be born, either with the mission or at least inclination that they should or perhaps could better their fellow man and thus future selves in the process, or not. Regardless, births will continue. So. Do you, as someone who recognizes or at least identifies the current state of society and the world as "in need of improvement" enough to imply it needs to be improved have kids who may be taught to do so, or do others who either don't realize or couldn't care less have kids that just contribute to the degeneracy. The choice is and has always been yours. — Outlander

See above. If you want to start charitable organizations and schools that promote charity, cool. It's more about creating people who will be harmed unnecessarily by way of existing (to be harmed) for this purpose that is the problem here. I look at it as, is this causing unnecessary harm? Is birth for the sake of the person born? No? No? Don't do it.

What are your views on the trolley problem?

I'm sure you know people who actually think enough to consider anti-natalism and it's arguments are the minority. People will still keep having kids without a care in the world. So, just let them? This would seem to place any alleged concern of "human suffering" along with any alleged efforts or attempts to reduce it secondary to simple avoidance of personal responsibility. Would it not? Perhaps that's all it is to some, elimination of (personal) imposition. So this definition of anti-natalism it is not a "humanitarian" or "moral" belief that "delves into the deepest wells of selfless concern for one's fellow man in hopes of preventing suffering" but rather a simple and independent whim of one's own selfish, personal prerogative. Is it not? — Outlander

Using people is not respecting the dignity of the individual. If a person self-sacrifices, that is different than sacrificing someone else for some cause.

What I don't get in all this is people don't understand de facto forced situations. Certainly, if I tied you up and made you work at some factory you did not want to.. eventually came to think it was okay because, what other choice do you have? Is that good? I'm guessing you'd say no.

Yet life is basically a much wider version of that. Instead of the factory it is working via social institutions. The illusion of choices doesn't cut back the actual decision made on someone's behalf that this is indeed "Just needs to happen for other people". People have to live, because why? So they can experience the wonders of blah blah and so and so? Not an excuse.

So we are not here to reduce suffering. We are not here so more plastic can be created, more technology happening, more movies watched, more people singing Kumbaya around a campfire, more presents can be given, more food can be distributed.. That is using people's lives for some cause outside the very people being created. Bypassing suffering for the future individual is what matters. Principles of this or that are not focusing on the individual being created.. and their dignity as people. Wanting to see some X outcome outside of the individual is where this goes off the rails...

I think there are a couple ways of going about answering these conditional versions.

1) The risk factor. There is still a non-zero chance the child itself or other he/she interacts with will be/cause harm that is not worth the risk, so why risk such a possibly devastating outcome?

Although this is the most accessible claim, as everyone can understand risk, I don't think it's actually the most important.

2) The imposition/don't cause harm premise. A lot of universal antinatalism (as I'll call it) is that causing impositions unnecessarily on others, and causing conditions which inevitably lead to harm unnecessarily on others is always wrong. In the case of antinatalism, there is a unique choice, perhaps unique amongst all others (so not special pleading) that all harm for a future individual can be prevented, without that child also being deprived in the present state (as they are not born yet). Unlike being born already and already being harmed and harming others (even unintentionally), the situation of procreation is a case of preventing all harm and not needing to harm someone else in order to "improve" a situation either. For example, a lot of times, we cause impositions or minor harms on others so that they can get to an even less harmful situation in the future. However, even this is not an excuse to cause conditions of harm in the procreation decision as there is no one who exists yet that needs to be harmed a little for a greater good (as they don't exist yet). Thus, this really is a unique case, again, because one would be creating conditions of harm and impositions on another completely unnecessarily and not for a greater good in terms of for that individual's sake.

Now, couching this in terms of greatest good for greatest number and not focusing just on harm of the individual being born doesn't persuade me either. I think this is actually non-moral or even immoral as it is now not basing morality on the dignity of the individual but rather how that individual can be used for some aggregated cause. However, as I've explained elsewhere, I see the locus of ethics at the dignity of the individual. People should not be used for others ends. However, there are varying things one might give up living in a society. However, certainly these kind of mini-violations that we must weigh once born are not a consideration in the procreation decision, as again, no conditions of harm needed to be created in the first place in order to use those individuals for aggregated needs. So those mini-violations for the "greater good" don't even need to take place. It would still be completely unnecessary to create conditions of harm for that individual for "greater good" community reason outside of the very child whose whole existence will be predicated on this abstraction.

But given the scenario we are dealing with, it's not obvious why paternalism should have a negative connotation. We can imagine a fantasy scenario where we time-travel to ask all out future children on their opinion about being born. But then the question is, what more right does any one version of me have to decide on all of my existence with all its consequences? Is some moment of me empowered to make the decision for all moments? And what about the consequences for everyone I have and will meet?

This sounds like a scenario where I'd welcome some paternalism. — Echarmion

What makes this game so good, other people must play it, instead of worrying about playing it yourself? If no one is born, clearly no one is suffering from not playing the game there. So it seems at the decision, it is only about the parent wanting something.. Their desire leads to tremendous outcomes.. in fact a whole life existential decision made for someone else. Seems a bit odd that you have a notion and someone else is the one that has to be profoundly affected by it.

But where do you even get the moral weight of harm from? That's a problem for all utilitarian ethics, but it's especially problematic here, because you square absence of harm with absence of existence. But aren't harm and it's absence judgements by existing minds? How then could there be an absence of harm without minds? — Echarmion

I explained that it is just an axiom that preventing harm itself is absolutely good in some views. In other views, it's not about good but about simply activating a principle when a situation arises. So, if someone exists and they have a capacity to make an inter-wordly decision, such as preventing all harm unnecessarily by a certain inaction, then there you go.

My view here is different insofar as I don't even see why impositions are strictly negative in the first place. I am aware the word has negative connotations, but are they warranted in this scenario? — Echarmion

It's just an axiom, no unnecessary harms and challenges are taking place versus they are taking place.

Also just intuition on things like resentment for being kidnapped into a fatal and sometimes harmful game with various tedious, annoying, neutral, (even if interesting or not so bad at times) that have to be played out. It certainly doesn't follow that, since we must exist to know the game in the first place, it is permissible for people to start the game.

Why though? I can see the argument being made for particular sets of challenges, but what right does the "future person" have to not have challenges "imposed" at all? What rule, based on what philosophy, would be broken? — Echarmion

I mean someone might ask the same thing, why is causing harm bad? Why is forcing someone to do something just because you want it bad? I mean you can question anything. At some point it's your intuition. I can provide analogies, emotional appeals, but if you are not convinced so be it. Unlock physics or something, I am not going to reveal to you something where it will convince you by way of working a certain way that happens all the time, etc like a piece of technology derived from a scientific discovery.

What I'd be interested in is how you view the relationship between the individual and the community. Does the community only exist to facilitate the purposes of it's individuals or is community a more fundamental element of humanity? — Echarmion

I think that individuals are the locus of experience. Certainly community is a necessary part of being socialized as a human, but the community doesn't feel a knee being scraped, going through this or that experience, an individual does.

However, I think as a community, we can look at each other as fellow-sufferers in life. We can more clearly see the harms that are necessary to stay alive as they are being enacted in real time. This may lead to minimizing our harmful interactions as much as possible. Our desires and needs are necessary parts of our beings and they cause other people to have to work, and us to work for them. I am not talking about compassion or heroics or something, just the everyday entailment of economic existence that needs to take place to maintain the structures for survival, comfort, entertainment.. The expectations that need to be there, the attitudes, the de facto forced behaviors and interactions. We are a species that knows we don't like something but yet know we have to go through with it to. We can contemplate life, see that it isn't ideal even in possibility but still live it out.

I am trying to engage in a new direction, but it's perhaps not clear that I do. I think there is an alternative perspective that you're not fully considering. That death isn't actually "a way out", but rather just another part of "the game". That there aren't ways out, and that the idea that there should be is really kind of absurd.

I think it's the same kind of problem that happens when people ask "what's the meaning of life?" The question contains a hidden assumption (that someone imbued life with meaning) that people who ask the question don't realize, and hence they don't realize that the question they're asking is nonsense. To ask for the meaning of life is to give someone else the authority to set that meaning.

The problem I see with your approach isn't the same one, but it's similar. You're trying to conceptualize life in a way that's not compatible with a secular, materialistic worldview. There is a hidden assumption here, something along the line that we're souls trapped in bodies that we could conceivably escape. — Echarmion

Well, first thing's first.. I do think that antinatalism is actually a good insight into general pessimism and big picture questions.. before I get into that though, we do have to resolve at least something..

It seems even @Benkei agrees that there is some threshold in which it is not okay to have a child. He mentioned a few circumstances. So clearly, there is something going on here where we can look at a future where there will be a person who exists and project what might happen to that person. If we can't get past this, then we shouldn't even really be arguing anymore. At that point you would be arguing for argument's sake to argue at least that point and I frankly think we would have no shared ground of anything to discuss.

That being said, if we all can agree that we can project the outcomes of a future person who would be alive if we procreated them, then it becomes a matter of what are the facts, and what is the threshold. The threshold means, at what projected amount of suffering/negativity would you find it AT THE LEAST distasteful to entertain having a child? Now clearly you, Benkei and others a way lower threshold. My view is that ANY form of negativity is wrong. Now, we can go down the stupid rabbit-hole of pinpricked charmed lives, but let's not cause that is just a cul-de-sac. Rather, Let's just agree that at least life has challenges to overcome and harms that we are exposed to. Knowing this, I see it as paternalistic to think that another person should be born, because I deem life's negativity/challenges sufficient to bear the burden of.

So based on the evidence of what living a human life entails, that is where the main disagreement lies. Unlike intra-wordly scenarios where we have to make compromises all the time, this is a unique area where no person will exist to be harmed by a simple inaction of procreation, where there presumably could have been someone if this action was taken. Antintatlists will either take the metaphysical stance that it is a "good state of affairs" (a sort of absolute axiom) that all cases of harm were prevented in one inaction OR, simply that AT LEAST the bad situations of affairs of all/any harm befalling a future person was prevented.

Similarly, antinatalists often view impositions on other people as wrong. Starting someone else's life by having them is seen as an imposition. This is where the facts on the ground are seen as different. Natalists don't see starting someone else's life as an imposition. They see individual instances of challenges to be the impositions. Antinatalists don't understand why these individual instances cannot be summed up as a general category of negativity/harm. Thus instead of 1, 2, 3 instances it is X[1,2,3] that is being prevented.

So it is really a case of the threshold and the facts of what counts as causation of harm.

But, aren't the challenges the be all and end all? This kinda refers back to my remark about "the meaning of life". If there is no outside, metaphysical reason for any of this - and I assume you'd say there isn't - then why complain about the nature of life itself? There isn't any point of comparison, outside the utopias we can dream up. And dreaming them up of course requires that we exist first.

What do you think about the line of reasoning that life is the universe experiencing itself? Useless drivel or important insight? — Echarmion

Well there is no alternative for us. We exist. However, as long as a capacity exists where someone in the future can be prevented from challenges, then it is incumbent not to start X[1,2,3] challenges for that person (that is to say all harms/challenges that come from existing in the first place, which is caused by procreation of that person).

What do you think about the line of reasoning that life is the universe experiencing itself? Useless drivel or important insight? — Echarmion

It's kind of an anthropic principle argument that we need to exist for the universe to exist. A negative version of this to some extent is Schopenhauer.. The phenomenal world is the playground of the Will but it has no end to its striving, thus causing the misery for the manifestations that arise from it's illusory flip-side of phenomenal existence. I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory, but it's aesthetically intriguing.

I do think that antinatalism has implications for how to act as a community. If you want to discuss that, let me know.

Anti-Natalism is basically a series of grammar mistakes themselves mistaken for substantive philosophy. A position lacking even the dignity of being 'wrong'. — StreetlightX

Usual pile on without adding. You know that's not true. If there are grammar mistakes to your filter, then as this thread has shown with people like me and @khaled and @Tzeentch it can easily be re-written to pass through the gotcha filter regarding the the non-person (non-issue) argument.

@Echarmion
Of fuck, I used the term "people already existing".. But you know what I meant.. We exist rather than there being a state of affairs of no people..

But see this is the bullshit we all agree on... and we can word it to be semantically proper but now because you are in gotcha mode.. and even though you know I know this because we discussed it a billion times.. you are going to bring it up in another gotcha.. so now I have to waste a post addressing it.

Still wrong though. There is no "or" here. — Echarmion

Die through the course of living life (through its challenges) or don't do that, just kill yourself. Don't see the problem with the or.

So challenges are a game, and death is a game, and I suppose making an argument is also a game, since it's also challenging. Everything is games! — Echarmion

No the challenges are a game.. I guess death is a way out of the game. I'm calling it that.. Call it challenges if you want. Discreet things to overcome over a lifetime of surviving, finding comfort, entertainment in a society being exposed/impinged along the way by contingent harms. Stop trying to find "gotchas" and engage and maybe this will go somewhere :roll:. This is getting tiresome, not because the topic isn't endlessly fascinating (I think it's important), it's that this particular dialogue hasn't gained much traction. It would be nice not to do tit for tat responses and actually understand the perspectives at hand. That's difficult on this forum for whatever reason though.. Mainly due to personalities perhaps.

What I wanted to point out that for someone who can't abide smugness, your own position sure is awfully convenient. You get to feel morally superior to everyone else without actually having to address a single real problem. Because you're doing the much more important work of fighting the devil himself — Echarmion

No, see I never said that. You can certainly address other problems I just focus on this one. It is the originator of all the other problems, so is one place to start. For people already existing, yep there is a shit of challenges to get your hands dirty if you want.

What does seem like moral superiority to me is chastising those who do not want others to live out the challenges but rather default assuming that the challenges are the be all and end all.. But that's just it.. Of course it is, because what else is there if we don't kill ourselves right away or die of starvation? Yep, of course we are going to buy into the challenges thing.. It's a must. Do or die.. I get it.

But that's wrong. Because it assumes that when you start the game, you already have something to loose. Hence the "or die" part has significance. This isn't the case though. The supposed "game" is literally all there is. It isn't a game where you either play or die. It's a game where you play, dying is part of playing. — Echarmion

Yes, die slowly (by playing the game in various ways.. some leading to faster death than others) or kill yourself. Kind of strengthens the argument actually.

Uh, I am? — Echarmion

I just have this theory that anti-natalism is a secularised version of heaven. You see all the pain and suffering in the world and look for a metaphysical way out. Some way to fight all the evils at once, without actually having tofigure out a solution for anything in particular. — Echarmion

Sounds like a game.. challenges to overcome.. figuring out the key to overcoming the challenges. That's what I mean by you reiterating the game analogy.

'Arguments' and 'responses' are not smug. People are. — Isaac

That's for damn sure. You prove that all the time.

To those out there, I am characterizing the position that other people need to live life so they can find solutions as a smug argument yes. The word I really mean here is paternalistic. Smug is sort of self-righteous condescension. That would be more like the tone of responses from certain posters here looking to start fights.

Those are the de facto conditions. That is the game. I don't like to start games for other people.
— schopenhauer1

The whole game thing is an analogy though. Life isn't a game, because games are a part of life. Life just is, no-one decided that this is how human life feels to us. — Echarmion

So this goes back to my analogy of kidnapping someone into a game.. read the post about that. Don't feel like copying it. And for the thousandth time, I get the non-person problem.. so there is no one to be "kidnapped". But, someone is being started in life.. and the analogy is that the "game" is one of life or death. You either live the structural and contingent conditions or you die.

I don't know what's smug about it. No-one here is claiming that everyone should be happy about their particular lot. But perhaps it seems smug because it throws a wrench into the fantasy of the "perfect" life. — Echarmion

It's smug to assume people should play the game.. that is to say start the game for other people to play.

I just have this theory that anti-natalism is a secularised version of heaven. You see all the pain and suffering in the world and look for a metaphysical way out. Some way to fight all the evils at once, without actually having to figure out a solution for anything in particular. — Echarmion

Why do people have to be put in a circumstance where they have to figure out a solution for anything in particular? For someone who poo poos my analogy about a game, you are sure reiterating it. This is again, under the genre of smug natalist responses.. "Deal with shit or die". Yep yep yep. smug smug smug.. I get it. You can reinforce it with more smug responses and I'll entertain it. Keep your greatest hits coming.

we instead all have to make the right decisions everyday, with everything. — Echarmion

Those are the de facto conditions. That is the game. I don't like to start games for other people. That is paternalistic. Again, deal with situations or die. Smug assumptions and conclusions to do on behalf of other people if you ask me.

Related, I had another thread that discussed how bad decisions themselves are part of the contingent harms of the games.. Start a game for someone and then say "do better at it".. more smug... Smug, smug, smug, smug...

Because you want an option where you exist, but don't have to deal with it? Isn't that what heaven is? — Echarmion

IT doesn't matter if the world that is better doesn't actually exist, it's just not this world.

I think this is avoiding the question. Clearly "deprived" isn't the name of a fundamental force in the universe. Whether one sees all existence as deprivation, or sees individual cases of deprivation that can be solved is a question of perspective. — Echarmion

The Schopenhaurean perspective is that deprivation is akin to the base of an existing animal and human as a phenomenal manifestation individuated in time/space/causility all a flip-side of Will, which is the real noumena beneath the surface.

But I don't necessarily have to subscribe to that kind of metaphysics to get the point. Being alive entails essentially being de facto forced into deprivations of the survival, comfort, entertainment varieties.

I just don't get the idea that we want to make other people deal with any kind of thing. The natalists response is to, again, "deal with it" or "go kill yourself". I just don't find that acceptable.

Yeah, likewise. The arguments have been done to death. The problems with your arguments are very obvious to me, but you either cannot or do not want to see them. — Echarmion

And of course, I would say likewise to your counterarguments. Just because you characterize my arguments that way, doesn't make it so. But you can keep going with them.

But that's such a weird request. Deprivation is a human mental category. It's not a physical description but a value judgement. It's not your parents that think of all life as deprivation. It's you. — Echarmion

It doesn't matter what we think, it is the mode of existing as a human being embodied in the world. You don't have to make a judgement as you are being deprived. You are just deprived.

Yeah, but then we're right back to square one. Affecting is a very broad term, which is why the claim that creating someone "affects" them is plausible. This is no longer the case when we use more concrete terms like imposing or causing conditions of harm. The whole causation argument has been done to death, as has the imposition one. — Echarmion

I'm not sure what you are saying here. I am qualifying affecting because you seemed to be saying affecting was too broad. You already know what kind of affecting I mean, but I still wanted to answer your question about consent by qualifying it. At that particular post you weren't arguing the non-person argument anymore (as I already answered that with how the displacement in time of the decision and affect on the person the decision is about doesn't mater) but rather why "affect" would be a violation. I'm defining that there is harm and impositions on another person, and in this argument about consent (rather than just suffering itself which is a related but different argument), that negative affect without consent is the violation. Again.. way too many words for something you probably knew.

These are, like all paradoxes, caused by modes of thinking, which can be rejected. But the anti-natalist solution seems to be to instead find the one who is responsible for the paradox, and ask them to fix it. Blaming your parents for something they did not do - indeed cannot do. — Echarmion

It is simply asking not to create this deprivation or deprivation-states.

This seems to be an unwarranted value judgement, arbitrarily describing one physical process as a "deficiency". The kind of processes involved predate humans, and would still be around if humans were not.

Without reference to the important part - the mind - the argument can go nowhere. — Echarmion

That it predates humanity doesn't counter what @Inyenzi saying. And it is precisely the human mind that often amplifies this type of suffering. We not only lack, but know we lack and can perseverate all the more on it. He brings up the much deeper structural forms of suffering I mentioned towards the beginning. Once born, we are almost always in a state of lack that we are trying to fulfill, and this overcoming of lack is its own form of suffering that is often talked about in Eastern circles, and which philosophers like Schopenhauer have expounded upon in World as Will and Representation and his essays. If you take away any contingent forms of contextual suffering (which is actually common enough to be structural anyways), this form of lack is always there churning away in the psyche, all the more compounded by self-awareness of this very situation that we lack.