So, you're creating a straw-man out of the Buddhist in that they are leading their life the way they are due to adversity? — Wallows

No you're still not getting it. The Buddhist is like the non-existent/potential child. There was no need for it to be forced into experiencing adversity when they didn't need to.

And, you have demonstrated with the Buddhist analogy that you don't think he or she is justified in living without any adversity. — Wallows

You completely misinterpreted the analogy in the OP. That person who forced the Buddhist into adversity was not doing the right thing.

So, does that make me an antinatalist? What if we lived in a world where every problem could be solved at the whim of science? Wouldn't such a life be mundane and boring to the point of not wanting to exist anymore? Isn't the whole premise of evolution about overcoming adversity? What becomes of "life" when we eliminate all adversity? We wouldn't be talking about "life" in the ordinary sense of the term anymore. — Wallows

None of this matters to me. I don't use future people as vessels for making life interesting, I don't use futuer people so that "life" can have a certain meaning that we have always known it. I don't use people so that life won't be boring. Rather, what matters in this claim is that future people will not be exposed to adversity when they don't need to. I am not claiming anything about how existence should be, other than that.

Isn't that a tautology. — Wallows

No. If you are saying is it a well-known fact, yes.

If life consists in adversity, and no utopia can be achieved, then there really isn't any alternative for the unborn child. — Wallows

Well, correct. That is the whole point. The child doesn't need to exist to experience adversity, period. It would be wrong to expose someone to adversity, just so they can experience overcoming it. Even if the premise was true that, "overcoming adversity makes one stronger", no one needs to be exposed to adversity in the first place. It is wrong to make someone overcome adversity when they didn't need to.

We're you the first to commit this error with the Buddhist living happily, and some twisted entity telling them they ought to suffer more? — Wallows

I don't get what you are saying here. This is an analogy- it is just a story to show a point.

Well, I can't really say that they ought not to feel adversity. Without it I think it would be hard to achieve affective states like appreciation, compassion, and empathy. If I could I would like to be a kid again. It was such a happy time in my life. — Wallows

Why does affective states, compassion or empathy need to be obtained for something that didn't exist to need it in the first place? And why put someone through adversity in order to achieve these states, if this needn't be the case in the first place? (These are basically the same question).

I don't; but, isn't that just life for you? — Wallows

The question is if it is right to procreate a new person who will experience adversity. Thus, it isn't just a matter of shrugging the shoulders if adversity can be prevented in one decision in regards to future people being born.

In general, life is getting easier nowadays. We tend to have more psychological problems nowadays than addressing fundamental needs like water, food, and shelter. — Wallows

Who are you to judge for someone else what is "adverse" enough for them, psychological or not? How do you know to what extent that person would want to experience adversity? How do you know there won't be more than small adversity but perhaps the possibility of undo suffering will occur?

The point is, is it wrong to create adversity for someone else if they didn't need to experience it in the first place?

If the navel-gazing Buddhist is likened to the potential child that does not need to exist (to be exposed to suffering/adversity) in the first place, then the person who comes along and figures that this navel-gazer needs to overcome adversity is like the parents procreating a new human into existence where they surely will experience adversity, and they will have to overcome it. Then, in Nietzschean fashion will claim that the point of living is to get stronger by overcoming life's challenges. This makes little sense if no one existed to need adversity in the first place. Don't take the analogy too seriously- it is simply to show the illogic of it.

I'm not asking anything. I'm merely asserting that it is wrong to say that the blissful and happy Buddhist is unjustified in their simple existence. Demanding that they experience pain and suffering is some kind of twisted logic. — Wallows

Yes, I agree it is. That is the whole point of the analogy.

Yes, it is. You are imposing you're of some fictitious entities (twisted and sadistic) will on someone that does the things they do for the very reason you don't want them to do it? Isn't the contradiction apparent enough? — Wallows

I do not get what you are asking.

And here, I disagree. We don't live in fascist or authoritarian governments. The Buddhist is free to do what they choose is best for them. And, since they feel no pain or adversity, then what they're doing is productive for their own good.

I see a lot of musterbation, proceeding from that assumption that what he is doing is wrong and unjustified. — Wallows

Did you read the whole post? The point of it is if someone feels the Buddhist needs to go through adversity, and thus exposes him to a situation of adversity, is this wrong? Then I connected this with the idea of antinatalism. Clearly the idea of Buddhist navel-gazer is an analogy for the potential person that has the ability to exist if procreated into existence.

Suppose we could access the mind of Jesus (setting aside hypothetical divinity): does the exact meaning of his sermons not depend on the social context in which they were delivered, and on the preexisting beliefs which they sought to modify? — VagabondSpectre

Yes of course they depend on the context they were delivered and the preexisting beliefs they sought to modify. That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m trying to show if you look at my recent posts on the trinity thread.

I'm loathe to assign the origin of any ancient religion to any one person or cannon because in my view they are continuously and usually slowly evolving beings, where at any time the most change one entity can effect is to add or subtract individual elements and attributes from the body of ideas already in religious practice. — VagabondSpectre

]

Well yes and no. Paul is widely considered the most influential thinker in early Christianity, shaping it to its gentle version. There were certainly influences in Paul which I’ve given a theory in the trinity thread (Gnosticism and Mystery cult practices). There were also other non-original sources as well including the Johannite idea of Logis clearly parallel with Diasporan ideas of logos already found d in Philo of Alexandria.

I realize religious scholarship that responds to inquiries about historical interpretations and authorial intentions can have merit, but zooming in to a single identifiable point instead of assessing the trends and change over time just seems less than fully descriptive. When it comes to Jesus (I gather you find Paul to be an unacceptable source) I'm not aware of any single piece of scholarship which contains archeological evidence pertaining to his sermons. There are no surviving first hand accounts, and Paul is the closest we can actually get. — VagabondSpectre

You really haven’t read any of my posts in the trinity thread where I do indeed draw from a wide variety of sources. You are really pulling the rhetorical arguments by misrepersting my view which calls for a nuanced look at the historical evidence of 1st century Judaism of Jesus time. It’s like you are using my own ideas against me to make the opposite point. So weird.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but given the overall lack of evidence, it's entirely possible that Jesus was just another victim of Rome, whose particularly gruesome death became legend and was later embellished by people like Paul. I do disregard scholarship claiming to have access to the mind of Jesus, both the man and the God. (If any direct evidence contextualizing the existence, life, or beliefs of Jesus does exist, I might change my mind) — VagabondSpectre

Well, yes I agree he was another victim of a Rome in a particular place and time. Please see my posts in the trinity thread.

the intended meanings of the original authors are perhaps inaccessible entirely. — VagabondSpectre

I think that is relativizing the whole historical project as it applies to a religious setting. History has its historiographical methods and there is much nuance to Biblical/Jewish/New Testament scholarship that you are basically shrugging off by saying that it is entirely inaccessible. If anything, we are finding how much more we know about the origins of Christianity than we previously thought.

By taking the beliefs of later adherents after its original cultural-religio ideas were heavily changed by certain well-known and not so well-known interpreters, as what were the original ideas, you are just ignoring all scholarship for the idea that anything goes in this realm.

In this environment, Christ's cheap version of salvation became the favorite religion of the lower classes. It's certain that early interpretations of Christ's salvation were not metaphorical, at least from the perspective of laymen. — VagabondSpectre

But these would be converts to a form of Pauline Christianity who wouldn't even understand the original conception of Kingdom of God from the original Jesus movement- which would be more like that conceived in the Dead Sea Scrolls than it would be by let's say, some poor Latin farmer somewhere in the Italian peninsula being converted by adherents to a Pauline ideology.

What are your thoughts on Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven? And is eternal life a metaphor, a literal meaning, or something else? — Noah Te Stroete

I think it was representative of the apocalyptic Judaism of some sects of Judaism of that time (like the Dead Sea Scroll sect and apparently the one started by John the Baptist). Kingdom of Heaven was supposed to be the messianic age. A cosmic battle would ensue, and the elect/good Jews would triumph over the ones who were not following Torah in the correct fashion, and unrighteous gentiles would also be defeated. There would be a general resurrection of the dead too somewhere in there.

I believe the whole idea of inward notion of the Kingdom within, was more of a modern new age version of it. Although I agree, the inward new age notion is way more nuanced and ethically more interesting, if you want to be true to the scholarship of the what was going on in 1st century Judea, most likely it was a Kingdom of God that they thought was going to be near at hand (any minute now..) at the time they were saying it. The evil empire that ruled Israel at the time would be overthrown (at that time it was Rome), and anyone who were complicit with Rome (the Temple Establishment of priests/sanhedrin for example) would be abolished establishing a true kingdom with someone descended from the lineage of the mythic and revered King David whose lineage was broken with the Babylonian Conquest of 586 BCE and was hoped to be restored at the right time in history when a figure would emerge as a hero and usher in the Kingdom. Don't worry, after the cosmic battle of good and bad, there is supposed to be an age of peace.. It's all kind of ridiculous but just explaining the actual beliefs of that time/place.

And if it was not already complicated enough, the sources of different mythologies you cite got mixed into the Plato and Neo Plato thing as those different languages are themselves separate responses to elements that are not clearly recorded. — Valentinus

Sure, look at Philo and his idea of Logos already there pre-Gospel/Christian period.. Clearly, Diasporan Jewish thought was influenced through Platonic ideals (as can be seen clearly in Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish diasporean intellect and possibly first theologian of sorts). But, this just lends more credence that Pauline and gentile Christian ideology was borrowing heavily from outside influences that were not there in the original Galilean/Judean Jesus movement. Then in the early Middle Ages, of course there was more influence by the Neoplatonists, but by that time, it was already way off from the original being 300 years removed and redacted/interpolated by Church Fathers with various agendas, descending from an already off- Pauline theology.

Well said. I will take a closer look at those distinctions between Pharisees. — Valentinus

Yes, it is amazing how even scholarly types will forget that none of these Jewish sects/parties during the time of Jesus were monolithic. Just like there are various kinds of Democrats and Republicans, these sects had internal debates within them too that made for even more diverse viewpoints. There were Pharisees who thought divorce was allowed for reasons other than adultry (House of Hillel for example) and there were Pharisees who did not (House of Shammai), for example. There were more lenient Pharisees and more strict Pharisees. Jesus may represent a more lenient Pharisaic faction- one more in touch with the am ha-aretz. It was a sort of reform movement for Pharisees, perhaps. Their oral Torah traditions allowed for a multiplicity of interpretations. If the Talmud represents some viewpoints of pre-Temple Pharisaic thought, then indeed rabbis disagreed on many issues. If John the Baptist has connections with some sort of Essenic sect in the Galilee, then perhaps he represents a more outward-facing Essene vs. the more inward/purity-obssessed facing Dead Sea Scroll sect represented in, of course, the Dead Sea Scroll texts. The Sadducees may also have had some diversity, though their literature is scarcer if at all.

The struggles between Paul's and James' narrative was the most critical matter at that time. — Valentinus

Absolutely. This is a nuanced but major point people overlook. If Paul's writings in Galatians is examined, it is very apparent that James distrusts Paul to the point of sending spies on him for allowing Jews to eat at the same table as gentiles (who ate unkosher foods). There seems to be little love lost between the two, and I doubt that rift was actually repaired, though Acts tries to gloss over it. James can be said to represent the original movement- a link that can go back to John the Baptist, then Jesus, then James as leaders of this particular apocalyptic Jewish movement.

It is interesting to me how deeply the Gnostic element got involved very early. Those Babylonian and Persian cultures popping up in different ways, perhaps. — Valentinus

Yes the Gnostic elements were pretty early, but Gnosticism as a movement was around before Jesus. It was very easy to fit him in their scheme of a God of Light above the earthly god, the Demiurge. What people don't take in consideration is how Paul's theology was a sort of "limited" Gnosticism. Instead of the God of the Hebrew Bible being an evil Demiurge who is keeping people from knowing the real God of Light, he replaces the Demiurge with the Torah. The Torah represents the earthly realm and is replaced, via the death/resurrection of Jesus with an easier form of "redemption". The Torah is thus replaced by the dead/resurrected god-man in the figure of Jesus in Paul's conception, just as in Gnosticism, the God of the Hebrew Bible (associated with the Demiurge) is replaced by the God of Light.

Paul also adds in mystery cultic practices too. The god's death and resurrection and communion through the eating of flesh and blood of the god, while foreign to Jewish ideologies of the time, fit in perfectly with cults like to Mitrhas (heavily practiced in Tarsus.. Paul's home by the way), Isis, Dionysus and several other popular pagan mystery cults. If this is true, Paul essentially fused the pagan Mediterranean influences of both Gnostics (Torah replaced by Jesus death), and Mystery Cult religions (communion with resurrected god through eating blood and flesh..metaphorically in this case).

Jesus quotes concerning law seem pretty in line with pharisaic notions. My own theory is he was may have been a part of that movement and when the text say “Pharisees” it means a specific type or group of Pharisees. Or he may have been uniquely representative of the an Haaretz Jews as were found in the countryside of Galllee. That is to say, he emphasized the intent of the law being most important, not the extreme ritual purity aspects which was an innovation/attribute of Pharisees to add Kohein/priestly purity laws upon all Jews. It could have represented class struggles of the time. The lower am Haaretz had it right in other words..

Gnostics I think came from Greek/Persian/Egyptian influence on diaspora Jews in Syria and Egypt and had less impact on Jews in Judea proper. However, parallels with Gnostic ideas can be seen in angelic beings and layers of heaven which I think were more a general influence fro
Babylonian and Persian cultures after the Babylonian exile.

It does seem clear through Paul’s epistles and Acts that the early movement was of a more Torah based character and that he had conflicts with specifically James/Jacob, Jesus brother who headed the early community. I agree with many scholars who argue that there was never a reconciliation of Paul and James. Though Acts make it seem like a clean alliance after a Jerusalem council it seems probable that Paul was not liked by James and changed the fundamental direction of the group. Pauline’s ideas obviously became dominant as it was geared to a more open and wider pagan audience.

Judaism around the time of Jesus had incorporated more "other wordly" elements, as opposed to their mainly "this worldly" emphasis in pre-Babylonian Exile period. In the post-Exilic period, after Persia conquered Babylonia, much of Persia's Zoroastrian influence worked its way into the common Judaic practices by at leas the 3rd century BCE. For example, we see evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Enoch 1 and 2 more of an emphasis on angels and heavenly beings. Even towards the end of the Hebrew Bible, in Ezekiel and Daniel we see grandiose visions of angels and God's presence sitting on a chariot situated on strange angel-like wheels and archangels, etc. In the Book of Daniel we see the idea of a Son of Man that sits next to Ancient of Days. This Son of Man is perhaps the missing link in the 1st Century Judaism and the early Jesus movement.

The Son of Man was associated as God's scribe and helped judge the righteous- this is in books of Enoch I believe. Two things happened- the Son of Man was a nebulous figure in these visions and more elaborate stories developed to the role of this mysterious figure. In early Rabbinic Judaism, if we read Enoch 3 (written in the 500-600s CE), we see famous rabbis of the Talmudic period trying to ascend the heavens in a meditative technique whereby they try to see the vision of the chariot as described in Ezekiel and Daniel. In Enoch 3, it is revealed to Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha that the Son of Man was once the living man Enoch (Noah's great-grandfather). Enoch was one of the only men transformed into an divine being (like an angel) called Metatron and becomes head of the angels and men in the realm of judgement of sins I believe. So Son of Man = Enoch = Metatron = right hand judgement figure

Anyways, this is some really escoteric stuff. Being that Rabbinic Judaism (post-Temple Judaism) emphasized this world as opposed to other wordly matters, this is some very fascinating and surprisingly other wordly stuff to be found in the early Rabbinic literature. This proves that the idea of the Son of Man was a powerful idea, so powerful it pokes through even in the post-Temple Judaism of the this-wordly variety typified by Rabbinic Judaism.

Now, if we only see remnants of this Son of Man emphasis in Rabbinic Judaism, I'm betting it was even more pronounced in Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus. That is to say, groups like the Dead Sea Scroll Sect/Essenes had versions of the Enoch 1 and ideas about the Son of Man in their literature. They certainly had more emphasis on the other worldly, with more discussion of angels, End of Times, struggle of good (the elect/saints) vs. the bad people. Sons of Light and Sons of Darkness are big with them.

So what is the nature of the Son of Man? I am not sure, but some texts identify it as an angelic being (specifically either with Metatron or Michael who could be interchangeable in some stories). Some identify it with the messiah (king from line of David), some identify it with its own being. There is a text in the Talmud where Rabbi Akiva mentions the possibility Daniel's vision was about the messiah. Rabbi Yose quickly dismisses him as being good at the law (halacha) but not good at intepreting/recalling the stories (aggadah).. that clearly (in his Yose's view that is) the figure next to the Ancient of Days was all of Israel. So we can see the impulse to identify the Son of Man as an individual messianic character in the Talmud even, even if ultimately this idea is rebuked.

So perhaps, Jesus being from the Galilean region was a mix of various Jewish ideas of the time- probably leaning towards a liberal Pharisee message (his ideas about the law essentially echo the debates between Rabbis Hillel and Shamai going on at the time), with heavy influences by the Essenes due to emphasis on other wordly- World to Come, Kingdom of Heaven is nigh!!, End of Times, good vs. evil, mention of angels, and heavy emphasis on idea of Son of Man. This group perhaps thought that Jesus was a human par excellence- with the soul of Adam.. thus the symbolic idea of being baptized by John was symbolic of his soul becoming more aligned with the heavenly sphere, perhaps gaining the abilities of the Son of Man on Earth, but as a human messiah - with these powers- not as a god-figure which he later became.

From this more nuanced idea of a human representative of the Son of Man, we can see it doesn't take too much for later disciples (after Jesus' death) to take this idea and go even further, making him a literal Son of God. Instead of Jesus being an exemplar of following the Torah to its fullest degree, the religion starts revolving around that actual person of Jesus himself as a divine figure that should be worshiped.. Thus, I think lines like "You can't go through the Father without the Son" in the Gospels, were interpolations after Jesus' death. The Son of Man references are probably more authentic to the original idea about what Jesus' character was in this early movement.

From Paul's idea of a literal Son of God, we have Jesus being with God since the beginning, and then him being coequal with God as a divine entity to be worshippped with God and from here it doesn't take much to get to the idea of the trinity which had many manifestations until it was "decided" by vote at the Council of Nicea some official version of this represented by the Church Father Athenasius.

Thus the trinity concept was a later development that evolved from the original Jesus movement by way of incremental steps, especially from people like Paul of Tarsus and later Church Fathers who wanted shape the theology a certain way.

believe that moral perfection, in the sense of moral saintliness, does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive. — Susan Wolf

Yes, and there is no need to strive for anything if no-person existed in the first place. No need to make people strive for a good if they can be prevented from existing (to not experience harm). To make someone in order for them to pursue some model of well-being makes little sense, if they didn't exist to need anything in the first place. We will always have this back and forth as I will always bring up the idea that no one needs anything to begin with if they don't exist in the first place to need it.

It's their own suffering and that's a cost. They ARE actual children. — Terrapin Station

So exposing a new person to all possible suffering it may incur in order to alleviate the suffering of a present person on one particular issue, is justified? That makes no sense to me.

The suffering isn't on behalf of someone else, it's their personal suffering, due to their desires not being met. — Terrapin Station

No I mean, the import of the argument relies on creating harm for someone else.

You have no idea that the action will cause suffering to others. That's speculation. Meanwhile, there are existent people who really are suffering because they can't have a kid through no choice of their own. — Terrapin Station

Then their suffering is their own and not exposing a lifetime of suffering for another- with no cost to any particular person (that is to say an actual child). It's not like the child already exists and there is a relative trade off.

Which is factually incorrect. Things are only good or bad to particular people who exist and who feel that that thing is good or bad. — Terrapin Station

The terminus is preventing harm with no cost to any particular person. I cannot conjure an infinite amount of reasons. That is the starting place. Who created the first cause.. etc. So at the end of the day, no argument can go beyond the values of the ethical premise. We discussed this and something we agree with to that small extent.

Nothing can be any loss or gain or anything to a "potential child." — Terrapin Station

Correct.

If Jim and Janis want to have a child but do not because of social pressures (maybe even a law) against it, doesn't that create suffering for them? — Terrapin Station

Yes, there is a component that the suffering is on behalf of someone else. If someone suffers cause they can't do an action that will cause suffering to others, that is still not a good thing that takes place, as it is causing the suffering for someone else. The kicker again, is that someone else did not need to suffer..unlike people who are already born that may need some type of adversity to get to a stronger outcome.

I suppose I'd just say this asymmetry is false, then. Or, at least, I do not believe in the asymmetry between these. Preventing harm is only important if someone is there for harm to be prevented. And, even then, preventing harm is also a relative good -- causing harm can be the right thing to do, in certain circumstances. — Moliere

Not in the circumstance of no person existing at all (but has a potential to ). In cases of potentiality of possible people, there is an absolute way to prevent all harm, with no relative trade-offs that affect a person.

Ethics are a human concern, and so eliminating the agent from which they spring sort of undercuts the very basis of any ethical claim. — Moliere

This doesn't make sense. It again values life itself as something that must be had in the first place. Ethics is about right course of actions. If there are people around then follow the right action. If there are no people around, ethics does not matter. People don't need to exist for ethics Rather, if people around, ethics then can take place. There is a big difference. We don't live to be bearers of existence, or bearers of ethics. We just happen to live and thus exist and think about ethical concerns.

Just a quick side-note -- valuing life unto itself differs from thinking that we should experience life, too. We do, after all, keep people in a vegetative state because we value life, even though they do not have experience -- certainly with some hopes that they'll come back to us, but this is just to note that the experiential angle isn't exactly what I'm getting at by saying people value life. — Moliere

Then the same question remains. Why is life considered more important than preventing harm, when no actual person is losing out only the parent's sadness of not fuliflling projected value of life.

Exactly! :D It does not matter until the child is born. Mattering can only happen if there is a someone. There is a cost associated with your axiology -- the cost is life. And people do, in fact, value life. For yourself this seems like no cost because life is not worth much. But for most that is just not so. — Moliere

Well, part of the argument is where benefits of life (like I guess, life itself and pleasure) do not matter unless there is someone there to be deprived. However it is an absolute always good to prevent harm even if no actual person existed for this benefit That is the asymmetry part of the argument. Pleasure is only good for those who exist. Someone being prevented from harm when they otherwise did not need to be harmed is always good, period (thus necessary harms of adversity to get stronger are moot points pre-birth).

There isn't an agenda, it's just something considered vauable -- that has currency. So it's not about a deprivation or a benefit to some non-entity. Valuing life isn't really about what we are doing to non-entities. The consideration isn't about saddling or burdening someone else with the horrrors of life. — Moliere

Yes there certainly is an agenda- the agenda of being born to experience life. That is what the parent is projecting on behalf of another person, despite the fact that existence has non-trivial harms. Guess what though, being not born is not a harm, it is not a bad. Nothing is lost by not being born for any particular person. Certainly, suffering is prevented though which is always good.

Life itself is just valuable, so procreation is as a relative good. That's the whole of it. Just like suffering has no real why behind it, but is generally seen as something that is worthwhile to avoid, prevent, or lessen. — Moliere

I see no need to put life with harms above preventing harm. The only person who loses out is the sadness of the parent for not fulfilling their projected value of life for its own sake.

There is nothing about life itself that needs to be carried out, because needs only happen within life -- just like suffering only happens in life. Valuing life isn't an ends-to-means kind of care, so it doesn't make sense that the child is "saddled" with the desires of some parent just by the mere fact that they are born. — Moliere

This doesn't make sense to me. Suffering and needs happen within life. Do not "saddle" a child with the burdens of life by procreating them into existence is the argument. As far as the parents' desires- what I meant was that if a child does note experience whatever X agenda (pleasure, experience for its own sake, etc.) that is no loss for the potential child, only for the parent who is projecting what the child is missing. Other than that possible confusion, I don't understand your claim here.

Not to mention that this is kind of far astray from suffering and has more to do with valuing autonomy and individuality. — Moliere

Well, I have mentioned that it is not just preventing suffering, there is a component that you are also not creating suffering on behalf of someone else so the child can live out X agenda (pleasure, fulfill a role in a family, etc). Again, the kicker here that you might not take into consideration is that no actual child is deprived of whatever X agenda that they might miss that the parent had hoped for the child.

For me, then, this is reverts back to thinking of un-real persons as receiving some kind of benefit, which is just absurd. I'd say that valueing life isn't the sort of value that one is doing for the sake of which -- hence why it seems strange to me to say it's an agenda. The child is not a means to an end. — Moliere

I certainly hope the child isn't a means to an ends, but unfortunately, to the procreational parents of the child, that is what it becomes before its birth. The placeholder of that potential child is the reasons it should be procreated in the first place (to experience life, to create a family, etc.). It becomes the bearer of whatever agenda reasoning the parent had in mind for why the child was to be born, at the cost of preventing a person who will suffer.

Why does the suffering of a person matter? Why should autonomy figure in our moral reasoning?

Of course there is no why. All reasoning comes to an end, including moral reasoning -- and the sorts of appeals being made here are not being made for some other reason. Suffering is bad, life is good, autonomy should be respected. These aren't values of the ends-means variety, but are the values by which we reason about how to act. They are a kind of terminus to moral or ethical reasoning.

The big difference here is not an answer to these questions, but the degree of attachment you happen to feel to these sorts of things. You don't feel attachment to life, or at least not enough to balance out your attachment to the badness of suffering -- suffering is so bad, and a necessary part of life, that life does not have value for you to the degree it has for others.

But is there really an answer you can provide to the answer of "why?" other than that suffering is really, really bad? — Moliere

Yes, as I stated to Terrapin, at the end of the day, these kind of axiologies are based on various ways we feel about the values they are based on. The value of preventing ALL future suffering at the cost of nothing FOR NO PARTICULAR PERSON, and the value of not creating suffering on the behest of someone else so that they can carry out someone else's vision of the agenda of what is valuable (pleasure, experiencing life, enculutraing, overcoming adversity, etc.) is what matters in this axiology. What I think gives strength to this argument over all others is the fact that there is NO COST. There is NO COST because no actual person is deprived of goods, but all the benefit of not being harmed would be the case. Sure, this means that all other aspects of experiencing life are considered not as important, but what does it matter to a person not born in the first place?

Also, the lesser but still notable value (that you pointed out) that the child isn't being used as a bearer of the parental agenda of values that they think should take place for that new individual is also important here.

Lastly, the collateral damage of undo suffering that happens to some degree (sometimes to the extremes) is always something to consider. But this is an imperfect argument because based on statistical weights of future outcomes more than any hardcoded axiological value to base it on.

So, one way or another, we face the contradictions in dealing with other people and have to deal with that somehow. — Jake

Yep.

Finally, I think the incredible popularity of both social media and dogs tells us where this is all headed globally. On average, generally speaking, we are retreating from each other, choosing convenience and control over the often messy business of face to face social connections. In other words, whether we like it or not, whether it's a good idea or not, the robots are coming. — Jake

True.

We find people frustrating when we need something from them and don't get it. Thus, one solution would be to understand and meet our own needs independent of what anybody else is doing. — Jake

Hard to do when our very survival is predicated on collaborative actions- probably one of the main factors in why we have such a large neo-cortex (that is social cognition in a complex society along with things like future-planning, and tool-making).

Ok, so this is hardly as easy as it sounds. What might be easier is to see our frustration with other people, or anything going on between our ears, as being our own situation and not the fault of somebody else. That is, take responsibility for our own emotional experience. — Jake

Yeah similar to Stoic idea of indifference. I just don't think that conquers the annoyances of others. Just one more notch added to prove that this is certainly not the best possible world. Much of life is just coping with stressors and unwanted preferences. One still has to be exposed to the harm, whether there is thick armor in place as a defense or not; the very fact of this makes life questionable. I said in another post that our universe, if compared to an infinite amount of universes that could exist, is mediocre at best. Jim Holt suggested this in his book "Why Does the World Exist". Our universe is certainly not a universe with the most ideal circumstances.

We often use the idea of, "when things get real or that's just reality as if pointing to the fact that this is how things just work, means that we should tolerate it. Of course, my form of rebellion in regards to any form of harm is that we rebel against it by preventing future people from experiencing it.

You can try to develop coping strategies from the millions of self-help books, you can try to take the path of the indifferent sage, but really, it was existing in the first place that was the first mistake. People scoff at my idea that since this reality/universe is not one with ideal circumstances (specifically that harm exists), then any ethic that puts as a priority X agenda (i.e. experience itself, overcoming adversity, experiencing pleasures of the mind and body, etc.) is putting aside the principle of prevention of harm to another (and in this case preventing the exposure of all instances of harm), in order so that a person can be "bearers" of an agenda (carrying out the experience of life, carrying out pleasure, carrying out overcoming adversity). You will chastise me for these ideas because it puts suffering at a premium. I will gladly agree, but I see no other ethic as more important IF there was no person who existed in the first place who cares, or would be deprived. At the end of the day, it is only the parents' projection of an agenda.

Thus, to bring it around again- frustrating people is one (though a large one) known harm of existing. I recognize that we have coping strategies, but that is post-facto- after the fact. We already exist so, yeah of course we have to find ways to deal. The fact that we create others knowingly who will be exposed to this harm and many other negative phenomena, just to because we know there are after-the-fact coping strategies doesn't provide a high enough threshold to then put more people into existence.

You seem like a very nice sweet individual (but who knows..maybe you kill baby kittens or something). Anyways, some like myself think that having children is actually a bad choice to make on someone else's behalf, as all the suffering of life is caused from being born in the first place. This position in philosophical circles is called the antinatalist position.. Anyways, the point is the world is full of people who either are assholes or do asshole things. We seek out people because we are social creatures, but the very thing we are almost always driven to let us down or frustrate us. Is it best to fullfill this desire to seek out others who will unleash such negative emotions, or is it better to withdraw into oneself like the hermit? Perhaps it is a matter of personality and preference as you allude to. Humans perhaps have no choice, but it does seem interesting that if Camus was right that other people are Hell, and we seek out other people, we seek out our own Hell because we have no choice. Ouch that's an interesting conundrum. Of course Hell can be ourselves too. Mental disorders and anxieties of all kinds makes it even harder to live with our own thoughts sometimes! Wait, perhaps this all leads to more truth that life has inherent suffering principles, which then feed into the antinatalist argument that it's better to never have been in the first place! Ouch that's another interesting conundrum..

But here again I think we can see why it is the anti-natalist argument tends to fall on deaf ears. Why does it matter that we are able to evalaute the entirety of life? And, in fact, don't most persons view the entirety of life as a good thing? Perhaps if they thought suffering was so bad that any amount of it is a good reason to eliminate it by any means necessary they wouldn't think so. But most people are more tolerant of the existence of suffering than this. To the point that, in spite of life being full of suffering -- and I am not at all convinced that there is more pleasure than suffering in life, so please don't mistake me as giving the usual utilitarian retort that the pleasure outweighs suffering -- we also value life as an end unto itself. — Moliere

By entirety of life, I mean, you have the unique ability to prevent suffering for an entire life. This valuing life as an end unto itself you mention as a reason, can stand in place of the "agenda" the parents have in mind when creating a child. In this case, life itself is the agenda, and the child is the bearer for this agenda. The child needs to be born in order for the agenda to be carried forward- that is life itself. Why does life itself need to be experienced by a person though? This idea coupled with the idea that no person needs anything, if they are not already born in the first place to care about it or be deprived of it, is my point. It is all about the parents' perceived loss of some future outcome that they want to see- again the agenda. There is no person deprived of this benefit (what I call agenda). There is no need for the need for an agenda (to the potential person who does not exist to care)

Just because most people are tolerant of suffering, does not mean that it should be perpetrated on behalf of a future person- that is to say, that it a new person should be exposed to it for X sake (in your case to experience life itself- but you can put ANYTHING in that agenda).

And also I really don't think I'm misrepresenting you at all in saying that your target isn't suffering as much as it is life itself. As you say -- procreation is the only instance when life as a whole can be considered. So your target is life, not suffering -- suffering, in any amount, is what makes life bad, for you, but your injunction is not "prevent suffering" as much as it is "prevent life, because any suffering at all is bad, and this is the only way to eliminate suffering".

Does that strike you as right or wrong, in terms of my depiction of your argument? — Moliere

Well, if life itself didn't have suffering, then that wouldn't be a target. What is it about life itself that needs to be carried out in light of the fact that no one needs anything if there is no one there to care or be deprived in the first place? That is my question to you? Isn't it all about the projection of the parent in any of these cases you could possibly present? Why does the child have to bear out this projection?

Someone needs to learn how public boards work. ;-)

If you want to address just one person, private message them. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I know how they work. Certain people want to post like a troll to incite rather than insight. Could just be your online or real life personality \_(ツ)_/¯

That's fine, but I'm going to point out the facts when you seem to suggest stuff that's wrong. — Terrapin Station

But you haven't, so it's extra annoying ;). We addressed this when I actually agreed that this was about prioritizing what was important- based on someone's intuition or feeling. The axiology falls from there. You have not presented anything earth shattering :roll: . I find preventing harm a pretty decent place to start, in light of the fact that no one needs X agenda if they don't exist to need it already.

That's what I pick up from what you are saying. What I'm getting at is that the injunction "prevent suffering" is developed in a world of people, people who are real, who feel suffering. So universal birth-prevention undermines the very basis on which such an injunction is formulated -- and therefore does not prevent suffering as much as it annihilates our ability to prevent suffering in the first place, and so does not fulfill the (commonly accepted) injunction. Universal birth-prevention is aimed at, given its consequences, the feelings of people who will not exist, which is absurd given that our ethical actions are not normally directed at what will not exist.

With birth comes real suffering, but without it comes nothing at all. — Moliere

Ok, you have two arguments going on there and they are kind of separate ones.
One argument is that by preventing people, the injunction itself is annihilated. I just don't see the problem. If there are no people, the injunction is unnecessary. As long as there is the option for procreation, would this be an issue. This is supposed to be some sort of "tree falls in the woods" conundrum that I don't think really has any bearing because as stated, only in cases of decisions of procreation exist does the injunction matter. Otherwise, it's not an issue.

The other argument is that it does not fulfill commonly accepted injunctions of aiming at things that do exist, but rather it aims at the feelings of people who will not exist. Again, I don't see a problem. The people that could exist will suffer, don't have make this condition an actuality. It is odd because it is about procreation which is the only instance when life as a whole can be considered rather than various decisions of someone who is already born. This is not about improving or getting a better angle on some issue in this or that situation, but situations as a whole. That does make this unique which is why I see it as THE philosophical issue, more important than other ethical matters. Should we expose new people to suffering is the issue? However, what other priorities should take place. You didn't propose anything, but if the answer is other than harm, clearly an agenda is there, unstated. The agenda could be to form a family, to watch a new person overcome the adversities of life, etc. Either way, the parent is wanting something to happen from this birth. The non-intuitive notion, that is still valid despite being non-intuitive or unfamiliar, is that anything other than preventing harm does not need to take place, if there was no actual person to need that particular agenda to take place.

The only way any moral stances are "justified" period is by someone feeling however they do. — Terrapin Station

I've already explained my position on that. We agreed to disagree on the "feeling" of the matter. And then you reopened this for rhetorical points. Good job.

What? I need to go back and read whatever post this is supposed to be referring to, but "the more 'absolute' and stronger moral argument" isn't going to follow from anything. — Terrapin Station

I wasn't addressing you. Stay in your lane, or make a more clear post to respond to.

Our socially annoying selves are the consequence of our evolutionary history. We abandoned the trees, developed a big brain and smaller teeth, and became puny in comparison to chimpanzees, but we retained many annoying primate personality features. We are stuck with our social needs and our social liabilities.

Refined manners, which some people cultivate, allows the aggressive features of our primate selves to be deployed in more subtle forms. Many people (too many) don't bother with the mannerly approach and just bash you in the face if you annoy them too much.

Many people (not enough) curb their social urges and spend more time in the woods, in their basement shop, in a comfy chair with a book in their hands, or in front of a screen reading, searching, learning, and other activities.

I spend a lot of time alone but I need a regular dose of social contact; the standard dose is several people for about 1 or 2 hours, or 1 person for maybe 5 hours. 24/7 social contact is OK under certain circumstances, as long as there is respite down time. — Bitter Crank

Yes, so what does this say about humans? What to be done about this dilemma? There is a substratum of boredom which leads to urges to socialize, yet that socialization leads to us being perceived as the Other and not as we see ourselves.

One of my conclusions is that personality plays an enormous role in daily behavior. Screw grandiose ethical arguments. Dealing with an asshole or a flake on an everyday basis takes its toll more than any ethical dilemma described in a text book. Personalities can make or break your day. It drives so much interaction and is largely ignored in philosophical discussions. I am not sure we should erase the place of personality in daily interactions when understanding how to act.

What is your goal?

A mother is not someone who lives alone. At least the traditional wife and mother cannot be fulfilled without human relationships with family and the community. I think we have greatly overlooked the importance and value of traditional women. — Athena

I'm not sure what you mean as what is my goal. I guess I meant in the OP three years ago that we live in the imperfect situation of a world where we usually have a longing to socialize, but that socialization process brings with it enormous amounts of frustrations. This brings about a conundrum for the human condition- Hell is other people, but we need them. I am not sure how the traditional role of women would make this predicament any different. A mother is frustrated by her children, but loves them. A wife is aggravated by her husband's actions or words, but she loves him, etc. It is pretty much the same in any human relationships.

The prevention of suffering isn't the belief your anti-natalist position comes from, but rather your belief about the state of the world. It's that there is suffering in the first place, for you at least, that makes the world something worth anihiliating as long as we do so without causing yet even more suffering overtly.

And that's a very different argument than relying upon the belief that suffering is bad and should be prevented (to the extent possible). — Moliere

No, you are purposely using my argument against me in a way I overtly said in the last post it shouldn't be used. I purposely said that this is an imperfect argument for the reasons you brought up. Since this is about the state of the world in the sense of stochastic harms and goods that can befall someone in greater or lesser variance it makes the argument hinge on statistics rather than axiological principles of harm. Hence, the more absolute and stronger argument is preventing suffering, period.

You say that there is no agenda, but I don't see how that is the case. If preventing harm isn't the number one priority, then it is something else, and that something else is the agenda. It can be seeing someone go through the encultration process, grow, learn, have to navigate the world. This requires at least some level of adversity, Beyond the usual adversity of encultration is the collateral damage of unforeseen and undo suffering beyond that. Either way, both forms of adversity are real, and they are being put as a priority above the principle of preventing harm. Providing opportunities for pleasure for someone who does not exist to need them would also be a moot point, if that person is also exposed to real harms/adversity. Sure, this is about what one prioritizes, but it is hard to justify anything other than preventing harm for those who do not already exist to need anything in the first place.

It doesn't directly impact the child prior to or even at the moment of conception. — Terrapin Station

This is rhetorical blather. You know that procreation is the direct cause of someone else's existence. This whole "there's nobody there until they are there thing" denies the very cause of the person being there to exist in the first place. And being there in the first place is what exposes someone to the adversity/harms of life. That is the point. Now decisions HAVE to be made. Adversity HAS to be overcome. Try a new argument.

But the belief changes from what is a fairly commonplace belief to something else that rejects the entirety of the world because of suffering. — Moliere

What agenda would you put above preventing suffering in the unique case of procreation. In this situation you can prevent, all future suffering for a new person altogether, with no actual person but the parents' own projection deprived. Sometimes commonplace beliefs are misguided, unreflective, and sometimes the truth is hard to hear because it is depressing. No one needs to be born to carry out the parents' idea of what is valuable. De facto, at the least, the parents are unintentionally putting adversity above harm as adversity is very much a part of the equation of life. If you think adversity, or the collateral damage of too much undo adversity, is not something to consider, then you fall into the Nietzschean camp.. See above in my correspondence with TheHedoMinimalist here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/236652 . You think experience should be lived out for the sake of experience, even though there is no a priori reason for experience to be lived out.

It should also be considered, that if we are going to do stochastic models (which I don't think even need to be considered in this case of procreation), then it should be noted that we live in an on average mediocre average universe with a mix and range of harms, goods, and for the most part it is very neutral to mildly annoying/negative for many on a daily basis. Sometimes there's peaks and flow states, genuine catharsis in laughter and entertainment, etc. but on the whole very mediocre. Now remember, this isn't even something I consider because fully preventing harm is enough a reason for me to consider, but I don't see the carrying on of a mediocre existence as moral either. Since we know this universe is a mixed bag, that is even enough to prevent future people from experiencing it. Why would I want to promote the agenda of a mediocre range of good and bad experiences for a future person? This imperfect version of the "preventing harm above all else" is just a more pedestrian way to get the idea across for those who like to "weigh" the good and bad, which again, is not the utilitarian version I think is appropriate for this procreational scenario (though it may be for those already born looking to weight outcomes and have no other recourse since already alive).