Kripke was into scientific essentialism so I would suppose that something like your unique DNA fingerprint would be considered a candidate for a rigid designator.

DNA

The rigid designator is the person's DNA :D

The one under pressure slaving away every day suffers and is diagnosed as mentally sick, as if to say why do you suffer? A good slave doesn't suffer. So let's give you some chemicals so you can be a good slave again. While the one putting the pressure enjoys the rewards and the good life, and protects his position in part thanks to psychiatry which justifies the status quo. If you're a slave and you suffer, it's not because you're a slave, it's because there is something wrong with you. — leo

Good points.

not individually but being in a society (product of birth) greatly increases your survival chances as opposed to being out in the wild. It’s like how everyone needs food to survive but not everyone necessarily needs to produce food. We need a next generation to survive but not everyone needs to have kids — khaled

In this case it is just a means of how you weigh the utility. More births means more deaths and suffering anyways, so it is short-sighted.

If I have to harm someone to survive whether that be by giving birth or cannibalizing someone I'd do it — khaled

How are those two things equivalent? You don’t need to give birth to survive.

One of the problems I see is a parent has a child either for a particular set of personal reasons, or due to circumstances of sex. None of these reasons have the scope of that new person's life. The interest of the child as a whole person and what they experience in life can never be considered in full. But once the child is born all the negative collateral damage will occur nonetheless. The scope for the use of the child for the parent or simply the no thought that goes into procreation act itself, does not accord with what will follow for the child. It is incongruent. To not even think reproduction- whether or not it’s a good thing, is in the realm of moral reasoning, is perplexing to me considering that it lies at the cusp of such an important existential, ethical, and metaphysical starting point.

The big problem is this: Parents' evaluation of life are the only thing that matters in the consideration of having a child. The parents' point of view is the reason the new person is born. The parents' point of view is not the child's point of view, yet the child's life is justified only from the parent's proxy stand-in point of view of life. That is incongruent, yet is never considered unjustified. Our species is self-aware enough to reflect on these things. There is nothing that says ethics and and reproduction are compatible (naturalistic fallacy). Nor is reproduction ethical because its natural (naturalistic fallacy). We make analogies to other species, we are but one species out of many right? But other species cannot self-reflect, and have little to no moral calculations. Thus the comparison with other species is simply denying the freedom of choice humans have.

1- Both of them are necessary for survival — khaled

1. Both of them are not necessary for individual survival.

2.

2- Both of them have the potential of causing involuntary suffering on another being (it is involuntary in the case of eating because many who work in food production and distribution are there because they can't find another job and dangerous because of the risks associated with the job. Way more people get disfigured in the food and clothing industries than there are disfigured children) — khaled

I think you miss the point of AN. The point is that birth itself is the platform for which ALL harm is created. Thus, eliminate the platform for harm. There is no harm in having no children at all, but there is harm in having any child, as that child will suffer.

Yes, I have been on this forum for a while, and a lot of my posts in the past have been AN oriented. I am more of a structuralists AN though. Suffering is structural and contingent, not just contingent. However, I am sympathetic to AN that focus on contingent suffering such as negative utilitarianism. Though, I suppose, even structural suffering can be subsumed in the framework of negative utilitarianism.

Except Harry Potter can never be harmed. However, a potential person can be harmed in real life, if it is born. The birth is intricately related to the harm that will ensue in this case. Think of it this way, birth is the platform for which all harm ensues. ANs believe at least some harm will ensue (usually more harm than good), thus by preventing the platform, you are preventing the very basis for harm to a person. Harm is the sole aspect of morality in this case.

But as a consequence of not having a child there simply is no person that is either harmed or saved -- and that's my point. — Moliere

That's fine.. The AN in this case would say that no harm, no foul. In other words, it is only good that a person did not exist to experience the harm.

So what would be appropriate would be to tend to the needs of children that are actual -- but if there aren't any children, then what's all the fuss about anyway? You're thinking of what is not actual as if it were actual. — Moliere

But that is precisely the argument. There are two alternatives. It is binary. One is off (don't exist), one is on (exist). The better option is to be left off. Being left off means a person won't exist (who will experience harm). If a person exists, then harm will ensue. Thus, any consideration about how to prevent harm for the child after this decision is irrelevant in the AN argument which is just about whether or not to bring in a person (and thus harm) or to prevent a person's birth (and thus prevent harm). The person does not need to be born to know that it is being prevented from harm. If they are negative utilitarian, then it was only good that harm didn't occur.

In your scenario 1, though, there simply is no person to reason about. What's so different about a child you decided not to have and a fictional character? — Moliere

The child need not exist, only the possibility that a child would exist. In this case, the harm and the person the harm is happening to comes together in the same package as a consequence of the action.

But something else we do not reason morally about are either things or beings which do not exist. So Harry Potter, for instance, is not the sort of thing which we should reason morally about. So far I don't think this is controversial. — Moliere

But that is where possibility does factor into this. The very thing that is in question is whether to create a new person, where there was not that unique individual before. The very thing in question is the very real possibility of a person being born from real actions that take place in the real world. Whether or not the person exists already is irrelevant when the very question being asked is SHOULD that person exist in the first place.

So the question is, is it moral to create a new person if creating a new person leads to that individual experiencing harm? This pertains to two alternatives: 1) A person is not created or 2) A person is created.

In scenario 1, no new person is created, and thus no person exists to experience harm. In scenario 2, a person is created, and thus a person exists to experience harm. These are very real alternatives and possibilities thus, it is not the same as a fictional character and very relevant for consideration.

For myself I have a hard time accepting that I'm inflicting anything on someone who does not exist. Birth will result in a life that will include suffering in it. But without birth there isn't anyone at all -- and hence nothing to consider within a moral light. It is only after birth that someone becomes a morally significant being worth consideration. Else, it's just an imaginary character. — Moliere

I don’t think this argument holds up. We understand the idea that things are possible all the time. The more likely the possibility, the more real it is taken. So a stampede of unicorns goring a crowd of thousands is impossible. A hurricane in the Sahara very unlikely. However the likelihood someone can be born, and as a consequence suffer, is so high that it’s taken as a given.

But I feel it is probably best to confront how life is actually is as accurately as possible in order to improve it. (That is not to say that we might be wrong in some of our negative appraisals.) — Andrew4Handel

The "real" may be more harmful than not to humans. Think of Disneyland. It is a make believe amusement park full of fake characters and rides. The "good" parts are the make-believe, the imagination, the parts that are not real. The indifferent (and often harmful parts) are the gears moving the rides, the millions of tasks of putting together this "fantasy land" of entertainment. What is real is what causes more work along with the limits of empirical evidence. You cannot fake a blood pressure or a lab result for a blood sample. That is real. That is something to be dealt with. You cannot fake the fact that you will need to feed yourself, stay warm, and avoid illness. That is the real. The fantasy, the imagination, rides on top of this. Even love, romance, etc. are all secondary to the needs of the real, which I stated earlier seem to be indifferent or harmful, and causes more work, toil, and frustration. The real is what cannot be avoided, what must be dealt with.

You’re stretching to make materialism the messiness it rightly is, which I’ll give you. Perhaps I was too harsh on my assessment of abstraction. But it could be said that even the messy ecological view that pervades your materialism, can be said to be even too “formal” (in the literal sense). Of course then it remains to be said whether the thing at hand can be discussed intelligently without these abstractions. This is probably your basis for calling my claim “mysterian”. The fact remains that it is a line of reasoning to be explored as the point is that material is itself before it is the abstracted concepts applied after the fact.

One of the big issues with any metaphysical ism, material or otherwise is how it handles emergence.

It's not my job to address connections that you're making and not explicating. 'In the realm of information'; 'hint at a kind of theory of information' - this is imprecise blather, and it's nothing but thick irony to accuse me of 'avoiding the central issue' when you're literally making things up and projecting connotations whose significance to the OP you can only hint at with half-baked allusions to semantic connotations. Don't mistake your own analytic inadequacy for that of the OP. — StreetlightX

If you're OP wasn't even about information and simply that matter shapes things.. then it wasn't worth commenting on anyways. My original point was that abstractions from the "matter" at hand in materialism are removed from the heart of materialism as to what is going on, which is the material itself. Excuse me for seeing a thread-line in your threads. I won't attempt to connect your ideas together, no matter how adjacent. Perhaps you do not have coherent ideas from thread to thread. You discuss many abstractions such as networks, forms, and the like in threads like these: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2235/networks-evolution-and-the-question-of-life/p1 https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3293/intelligence-abstraction-and-monkeys/p1 https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3208/non-organic-evolution-sub-specie-evolutionis/p1

I spoke of neither emergence nor information - I didn't even use the former word, and the latter only appeared once in the OP in a not very central way. So I have very little time for your two-bit projections. — StreetlightX

You are good at the rhetorical devices. This is just handwaving and parsing of terms so you don't have to deal with the central issue. No, you didn't say emergence and technically only mentioned the term information once. However, these type of concepts are central to what you are discussing. For example, you mention the idea of "being shaped by and conditioned by the media in (and by) which it occurs." You also mentioned "immediacy of transmission". This is very much in the realm of information. The information is shaped by its materiality. You also discuss "transversing" and "passage of things". Sure this can be strictly material substrate, but words like transmission, media, passage of things, and transversing strongly hint at a kind of theory of information via the emergence from material substrate. Form created through material. Yet, the form can become magically "information" on its own, which is the illegal move I describe.

I'm not the one who expects tautology to be taken seriously as a point of discourse. — StreetlightX

C'mon. Because I said "matter is matter is matter"? You realize that was to point to the idea that to assert emergence and information, is to already put something other than the material in the picture. It's almost an illegal move, if you will. Sure it seems to be the case that things are emerging into hierarchical structures that then influence the bottom structures, let's say, but then what are these formal structures themselves but abstractions of the matter? These are placeholder concepts, abstractions, for what the matter itself is or is doing.

This is just warmed over mysterian trash. Not worth engaging. — StreetlightX

Typical response fromsomeone who doesn't have a good answer. If you had something interesting to say you would not need to resort to these tools of rhetoric. But instead you hide behind the shroud of superiority you want to project on this forum.

True it is not fully elaborated, and I can only speculate for his elaboration, but I think the premise is a strong starting point. Here we are, constantly the Aristotleans, labeling material into elaborate forms. In this particular thread, you say,

To understand matter as medium though, also requires a rethinking of the nature of mediality itself. Although 'mediums' are often understood as a kind of epiphenomenon, a kind of cloth by which the 'real thing' is wrapped up in (the TV as a medium for its content), media studies since McLuhan have long recognized that 'the medium is the message': media has its own substantiality and being, in a way that doesn't just transparently 'facilitate' the passage of things, but in a deep and important way, shapes and defines the very nature of what it is that is being communicated. In a word then, the materialist insists that the world is medial through and through: everything that is, has a density recalcitrant to all ideal(ized) first principles (arche) and immedial fantasies (God being among them).

To pervert Aristotle: the accidental is the essential (and the essential is the accidental). — StreetlightX

Well, here we are again, idealizing matter into all sorts of superstructures- this time it is the information as material. We do everything we can to get away from the material of the material- networks, information, organization, etc. The material itself gets lost in these abstractions of what is the case. You have already crossed the boundary into meaning but have not explained the content. Emergence is put in the picture, yet the material is lost. Emergence is gotten through fiat, and the term "information" is its spooky crutch that magically lets the "materialist" theorizer to get from point the substrate to the emergent scenario with ease. This is what I meant when I said "matter behaves", as it is the start of all this fiat. Matter is matter is matter. Matter doesn't matter to matter. As soon as you start abstracting from that, you have already put something other than matter in the equation.

This would be very silly though. — StreetlightX

Actually no, it would be a valid critique of the inability of materialist conceptions to get to the heart of materialism.

I doubt Cat would make the naive and boorish mistake of identifying abstraction with idealism - especially since he seems to reject the latter term as being of significance - but I'll let him speak for himself. — StreetlightX

I can't speak for SophistiCat, but I don't think he was necessarily equating abstraction with idealism per se. Rather, he was pointing to the fact that "true" materialism would have as little abstraction as possible, as it would merely be the "stuff" at the basis of the discussion. Thus, it can be said that concepts like "genes", "networks," and the like (which I presume you take as central to your position in regards to how material organizes itself and emerges) would even be going a step too far.

While I'd like to think that yes, materialism does entail more mature, more elaborate theorizing than the various idealisms which it arrays itself against, I think you're vastly understating the influence and pervasiveness of the latter. If one accepts materialism in the sense outlined here, people like Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg become nothing other than arch-Idealists; searches for reductive 'theories of everything', where all the universe follows from a small handful of first principles, turn out to be idealist desiderata par excellence. To say that these debates have no purchase in the sciences is just to leave implicit and untheorized attitudes which pervade them through and through. It's naivety, and a willful and damaging one at that. — StreetlightX

I read @SophistiCat to be saying, even your seemingly matieralistic-oriented notions are idealist in a way- just a more sophisticated version. As he said here:

However, I think that the contrast you are drawing is rather between more and less abstract levels of explanation. Abstraction removes detail, and detail is where your "materiality" is. The more abstract an explanation, the more immaterial it seems, as it were, its ontology consisting of made-up concepts like "genes" and "networks," instead of familiar, immediately perceptible "stuff." — SophistiCat

But, still, sometimes we are satisfied for longer periods of time or non-temporally. Such as reading a good poem and remembering it due to its significance. Or owning a place one can call "home". — Posty McPostface

If you are fulfilled with romantic notions of home and poems, great. Still has to be maintained, paid for, worked, and the person dwelling there entertained. However, I think we both agree that perhaps imagination has something to do with getting by. The freedom of the mind to find significance and insights.

The inherent lack in life is (momentarily) satisfied by certain actions. Then we go back to needing things or boredom. — Posty McPostface

This I agree with.

No, does that deny my logic? — Posty McPostface

I don't see much of an argument. What I am trying to say is that having a home doesn't magically make suffering go away and is not usually an end in itself. It may be a goal if you are homeless or you are not independent and you want to be. That isn't a panacea though- just part of living in a certain stage of life. That life still requires the three things I mentioned. I'm not sure why you would try to reduce things this particular goal. You seem to be conflating some personal desire you have to own a home to solving your existential question about suffering. It doesn't compute. Work towards having your own home if that's what you want, but that in itself is not an argument for happiness unless you are combining it with some other idea of growth, or a hierarchy of needs, or being independent, etc. Having one's own home itself does not mean one is happy.

But, doesn't the joy of owning a home or apartment override such negativism's? To have a place you can call "home" is a magical experience. — Posty McPostface

There's a lot of stuff to maintain that magic. I am guessing you don't rent or own your own place?

Maintaining a homeostasis is just what we tend to do. It isn't just home though. It is the cost of keeping the home, the time spent maintaining the home, and the boredom felt if one does not find an activity of some engagement- something to go out and do so you can go home and rest. Again, the frantic survival, comfort, and entertainment needs. We cannot just be.

You are always at odds with something.
First, you are born in the first place. You must contend with the basic animal imperative- survive or die. This takes a tremendous amount of energy in terms of enculturation, learning, and cultivating ability to maneuver the socio-economic sphere.

Then, you must contend with the broader social and power structures of your society. You must contend with those who control various means of resources- employers, governments, tribal leaders and traditions, or what have you.

What to do about it? There is nothing you can do regarding the first problem. Antinatalism and suicide both represent pseudo-solutions. One only prevents future suffering- an ethical principle but not a solution to your own problem. The other stops suffering, but also stops the realization of the end of suffering.

The second problem may be solved in several ways. Perhaps take ownership of the social or power structures. This is tremendously hard- whether in some political socialism or simply individual ownership of capital means of production. Either way, you are going to have a hard time attaining each- though some people manage to do the latter. The former has never really accomplished much in terms of any realization of a socialist utopia- just inefficiencies of large command economies. Smaller communes have only ever worked within the comfortable confines of a larger capitalist society that protects it.. but I digress.

To step back a bit. Go to an abandoned parking lot with one broken down car in it early in the morning. Then come back and look at that abandoned car in the evening. Nothing much has changed. That is more or less the world as it is. Our frantic wills, characterized by our survival needs/wants and inability to simply be, is what causes all the drama. That cannot be prevented though. Small insights like the parking lot example, or dreams of utopia may be the only thing you have.

Rather than these fleshier theories being a case of us getting wise to the materiality of the world, they are simply the result of more mature, more elaborate theorizing, which, while still being abstract (as all theories are, by definition), can afford to incorporate more detail.

As for the question of whether these abstract forms are immanent or transcendent, whether matter possesses its own powers or is animated from without, I am not even convinced that this is something worth asking. In any case, this rarefied metaphysical debate gains no purchase in empirical sciences. — SophistiCat

Seems to be a more elaborate version of my comment above ;). Nice post.

Well, sure -- but then, nothing is inherently better or worse than anything. Things are better or worse in relation to a judgment we make, not because goodness inheres in a state of mind or object or action. — Moliere

I can agree with that.

If someone wants to be miserable and elated, there's nothing you can do to persuade them to think or feel differently. Such changes only happen because a person changes. But the distinction should still be recognizable, all the same -- there's a meaningful difference. — Moliere

Agreed. Though a lot of this is how you characterize it. Miserable might be the wrong word, and not capturing what is really going on by not accepting the situation.

I'd say misery is the opposite of this kind of happiness -- where we are unable to accept our current conditions of life. But this differs from elation in that we can be miserable yet elated -- we can set unrealistic goals for ourselves, fulfill them, yet be attached to a new, harder, or higher goal. And hence be dissatsified and miserable with life as opposed to happy.

And we can be happy thought we are not elated -- we didn't get everything we wanted, but we can accept the situation we happen to have now. — Moliere

I think it can be personality driven. But I don't see inherently how acceptance is a better mode.

Matter behaves. This fuzzy language leads to all kinds of confusion, including the idea of emergence, and ideas of mind.

Now, we have a lot of questions about God, life, and such. But, aren't these questions epistemically inchoate? — Posty McPostface

If we take the idea of "What should we humans be aiming for in life"? That would be a rather vague question, but it can be broken down and made more concrete by explication. Is your criteria for inchoate, that it can be answered in too many ways for there to be any common ground to advance any position? If so, I may have to agree with that. However, if by inchoate you mean that it cannot be fleshed out, then I don't agree as clearly anyone can make claims about the subject matter that advance a position in this or that direction.

The only thing I saw that was sort of an answer is negotiating giveband take. Essentially it’s just stay neutral. The individual suffers for the cause I guess.

Had to look that Brit term up. How is that even answering. Other than your impulse to insult you just gave another scenario. It concerns the scenario and answering the question which is more moral is simply dodging the question.

Diddums what? I presented a scenario and a question and you just presented a different scenario.

So you have worked up an example that presents an obviously unhappy balance. — apokrisis

But you did not answer the question, just presented a different scenario.

The peacock's tail. Is it frivolous or is it promoting the survival of the species? — apokrisis

Being that peacock's can't make moral decisions as far as I know.

Could a medical process on an individual past reproductive age be considered moral in the sense you want to apply it? — apokrisis

I guess I mean longevity to individuals and the species.

Most folk would say it is stuff that we might do that makes no essential difference to the fulfilling of that major goal. And our moral stance in regard to that would be a collective shrug of the shoulders. That becomes the morally meaningful thing to do. — apokrisis

Not sure what that means. I guess the scenario becomes real in this situation:

You have situation where you work 8 hours a day doing the most tedious and annoying things. The job doesn't care that you don't like it, the people that run the job don't care that you don't like it.

In fact, to make this scenario even more interesting, let's say the people that run the business/non-profit/organization are downright assholes towards the feelings and respect of their employees. But the result of what this organization produces is some produce that enhances some life-prolonging process (again, think something like a medical process that prolongs life for an individual).

Or you can spend 8 hours watching tv shows or reading a book, or writing philosophy (or whatever it is that you entertain yourself). One is clearly personally more satisfying and one is morally satisfying perhaps (if it is defined as purely in terms of outcomes for increasing survival for individuals). However doing the job itself is "soul-crushing" for the individual employee- there doesn't seem to be any way the job shortening that employee's life, just testing his/her patience. Let us take away the idea of employee's obligation to organization, and just look at the idea of employee vs. outcome from employee.

Morally, what would you say is superior- the employees frivolous pursuits that are more satisfying to the employee or the 8 hours of tedious soul-crushing work that produced a life-prolonging process?