I think most people would agree that cruelty to animals is wrong. They don't have to be self-aware to feel pain. — neilldn74

But it is interesting to ask why that is, isn't it? People have extremely varying attitudes to different animals depending on culture, and almost no-one is concerned about the well being of, say, insects.

So do we object to animal cruelty on behalf of the animal or on behalf of our human code of conduct, in the sense that we dislike people who show unnecessary cruelty? After all, we also dislike wanton destruction of, say, art, irrespective of any pain the art feels.

If aliens cut off your balls, for example, because they wanted you to be tamer as their pet, you would feel wronged. — neilldn74

Obviously, but I am aware of my own awareness. But if the Aliens could not recognise my behaviour as a sign of that awareness, how'd they conclude I was any different from a dog, a tree or a rock in moral terms?

But lets change the example - lets say we cut off the dogs leg, would it be okay because the animal was not self-aware? — neilldn74

I am just going to point out we kill thousands of animals every day which are not all that neurologically dissimilar to cats and dogs, and a lot of people seem fine with that.

Huh? In order to say “My child will suffer” I have to compare two different “versions” of him? No. — khaled

The comparison is hard to notice, because it's such a natural thing to do. But when you say "I wish this didn't happen to me", you're not wishing for an absence, an empty set, because you cannot actually imagine the absence of a state of affairs. What you do instead is imagine a different state of affairs that the event isn't part of. Absence is always relative.

Even if you define it this way, surely you agree that harm happens once born, right? — schopenhauer1

Yes. And it's predictable, too. But the responsibility for that harm doesn't lie with just anyone who causes it. It only attaches to specific acts, in the same way that in a legal system, only specific acts are illegal.

The comparison is between: Harm done when doing the act vs Harm done by not doing the act. Not between existent and non-existent Timmy whatever that is. — khaled

This comparison, yes. But I earlier pointed out there different comparisons. And the one where we establish harm/suffering in the first place does require us to compare two different versions of Timmy.

How so? And how would your answer not relate to Benkei's OP about causation? Cause that's where I see this going... — schopenhauer1

I think the conclusion is somewhat similar, but the OP seems to be arguing from an utilitarian perspective that accepts the idea of objective, measurable suffering as the basis for morality. It then distinguishes bewteen "entails" and "causes".

My position is more that utilitairan perspective doesn't work as the foundation of a moral philosophy, and instead of going the roundabout route of distinguishing between different kinds of causality, I just put the value judgement at the center. First comes the question of what outcomes you should will, and only then can we look at what causal chains might be relevant with respect to that outcome.

It's not morally relevant to prevent unnecessary harm to another person (especially keeping mind contingencies discussed already about ameliorating from worse harm for people who already exist to be harmed)? — schopenhauer1

Given your definition of harm, yes.

Oh this stupid thing...back to Benkei's OP of causation. So, there are levels of nested causation. If you can prevent ALL instances of harm from befalling someone, do it. — schopenhauer1

You're not reading it properly. I am not saying nested causation doesn't count. I am saying causation doesn't count, period. It's not enough to be merely part of a causal chain that led to a bad emotional response. That's morally irrelevant.

But what are you disputing about harm.. Does that even matter? You don't think people get harmed after being born? I know you can throw out some wild scenario of a perfectly charmed life but if you do, I won't take it seriously. — schopenhauer1

What I am saying is "harm", in a moral sense, isn't simply you having a negative emotional response to something. If you trip over your own feet and fall, that will hurt, and you won't like it, but that isn't relevant in any moral sense. Tons of people can be involved in the relevant causal chain that lead to you falling - not just your parents, but anyone who had any interaction with you whatsoever. That doesn't mean any of them harmed you.

But if someone does intentionally trip you for fun, that is harm. The difference is not that tripping you is somehow more causal, or that it hurts more to get intentionally tripped. It's that you don't want to be afraid of constantly being hurt by people for fun, and so hurting people for fun is wrong.

So all instances of harm will not befall the person born? — schopenhauer1

I'm disputing your definition of "harm", so I am not sure what to do with that question.

The capacity to harm someone in this fashion exists, no? If the person uses this capacity, harm will incur, no? Not hard. — schopenhauer1

No, it won't. Or, more specifically, there is no capacity to harm people by making them exist. That's not harm. No moral subject is limited in it's ability to exercise it's choice by being created in the first place.

But that's why I mentioned capacity to do harm. Does the capacity exist? Then don't do it. That capacity exists, even if there is no one benefitting from not being harmed. That is the focus in these formulations at least. — schopenhauer1

But then, as I said, if the focus is on protecting people's ability to make their own decisions, there is no reason to have a rule that no-one benefits from.

I am sure the events of the 20th century will be debated for centuries to come, but I put this out there to draw a parallel to present day events and the resurfacing of extremism (this time from the left). — synthesis

Are you living in a parallel reality? Can you give me a list of all states taken over in the 21st century by right-wing and left-wing extremists respectively? Because all the examples I can think of are right-wing takeovers: Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Egypt (after the revolution, and now again after the coup). And all the really endangered democracies are endangered from the right as well: the US, Brasil, Poland.

The first question that would need answering is just what kind of moral weight does a dog have? It's not self aware in any way we can recognise, so do the dog's interests, if they can even be called that, matter?

It's because you are looking for ways to move the argument of existence vs. non-existence. You are trying to do "If a tree falls in the woods.." — schopenhauer1

That's actually a good analogy. The problem in the "falling tree" thought experiment is also one of communication, namely that it's unclear what "a sound" is. Is the sound just the movement of the air molecules, or does it require a human mind to actually be affected by and interpret these molecules.

The problem here is similar: when you say "harm", you mean an objective state of affairs, i.e. "the amount of harm in the universe has increased". I don't think "harm" or "suffering" can be meaningfully assessed from such a (imagined) objective vantage. Because to me, the moral relevance of "harm" or "suffering" is the effect it has on people's ability to make decisions.

I think I defined all three pretty precisely. — khaled

The point wasn't whether you can come up with definitions. The point was that in order to be convincing, you need people to agree to your definitions not just set them out.

Correct. And concluding that one of the causes of timmy breaking his arm was that he was born. Because if timmy hadn't been born he wouldn't have broken his arm. What's wrong with this? — khaled

Nothing. It's just that causality is usually amended with additional stipulations precisely to avoid it being this far reaching. So when people talk about "causing suffering" they ain't usually use this definition of causation.

That's not really how I use the term. The way you put it I would say A was a cause of B. — khaled

What I wanted to point out is that you figure out whether something was necessary by making another comparison. Your definition actually makes this pretty explicit.

In line with what I have already written, I don't see how you could expect a sentence like "don't cause unnecessary suffering" (shortened for emphasis) to resolve any argument about a specific moral dilemma. It's the kind of statement that is easy to get the gist of, but hard to pin down, because all of the key words, "cause", "suffering" and "unnecessary" have a large frayed edge to their common definitions. And you require all three to agree on a specific issue.

Do you see the problem here?

Any and all harms can be prevented, not just the possibility of torture. — schopenhauer1

This just goes back to my first point: I do literally believe that someone needs to exist in order for us to conclude that there was harm.

This is true in the literal sense that obviously if no-one was around at all, "harm" wouldn't exist, since it's a human concept.

It's also true in the sense that harm is something that happens to discrete, existing individuals, and so of course only exists when they do.

And it's also true when we consider the hypothetical future person, because to conclude that they will be harmed, we need to imagine a second counterfactual future where they exist but whatever harmful thing we imagine didn't happen to them.

Now you'll dispute this last point and say that no such comparison is necessary, since we can just look at the amount of harm in the abstract and see that, in the world where a person is born, extra harm exists.

That is wrong, I think, because this abstract position is fictional. But I can't think of a way to explain this in a way you're likely to find convincing.

Can ever be interpreted as “comparing existence to non existence”. The word “compare” doesn’t come up once in any shape or form. Neither does “existence” — khaled

I think you're wrong about that. Even though the word "compare" doesn't come up, that's nevertheless what's happening.

To establish causation, we need to compare different potential timelines. Some event A is the cause for B If B would not have happened without A (conditio sine qua non). This implies we're looking at two timelines: one where A happens and one where it doesn't.

"Unnecessary" also implies a similar, but inverted, kind of comparison. Because an event A is necessary for an event B if, in the absence of it, event B doesn't happen. Of course we'll first have to decide what events, or attributes of a state of affairs, we consider important so that we think their presence necessary.

And lastly, the notion of suffering also implies a comparison. This is more or less what I've written to Schopenhauer above with respect to harm. We don't just conclude that bad things are bad in a vacuum. If something had happens to someone, they wish it didn't happen . And since there is no simple absence of events, that means they wish for something different to have happened instead.

I don't really want to rehash all the same arguments again. It's just the disconnect that I find kinda fascinating. I believe you that you're honestly not seeing the flaw in the reasoning, it's just so weird to me that someone wouldn't. Perhaps you feel exactly the same way. Usually, things like this happen in political topics, were some group affiliation is at stake and the entire thing is really just a song-and-dance routine to affirm your group identity. But there aren't really any strong group identities involved here, so it seems like a geniune breakdown of communication.

I can tell you a hundred times that we can only compare situations of different existences (tortured child - not tortured child, seeing child - blind child), but never compare an existence with a nonexistence. But you just somehow don't see it. And I just somehow don't see why it's just as bad to cause common suffering as it is to inflict special suffering. If I am against suffering due to torture, I must be against suffering due to being born. And I just am not. Weird, right?

Kant is fine to just read directly if you're used to long and compex sentences and if you're fine with getting the gist of the philosophy rather than trying to follow the entire argument step-by-step. If you do want to understand it step by step, you'll probably need some kind of glossary of terms (or make one while you read) to get all the connections.

A good way to figure out whether you want to directly read Kant is to read his "groundwork of the metaphysics of morals". It technically comes after the critique of pure reason, but it's a relatively short, accessible and self-contained text.

Also just starting out with a general history of philosophy will get you exposed to a lot of ideas in a short time, so that you can better place the primary texts when you read them.

Do you realize that you make equally, if not more sweeping assumptions about the people you interact with on this forum - their worldview, their honesty, their intelligence? You don't pause to think whether you have enough evidence to prove any of that in court.

Someone is either affected negatively, or no one is affected negatively. The fact that someone is affected negatively is what we are pointing to. Antinatalists are saying, don't do that. It matters not that the alternative is "no person exists". — schopenhauer1

I recognise this is your position, I just wanted to point out that it is, in my estimation, the source of the fundamental disagreement between natalists and anti-natalists in this discussion.

Otherwise, you have the absurd idea that in order for us to realize harm is bad, someone needs to be born, so we can then say, "See harm is bad!". — schopenhauer1

The quintessential problem here is that if I don't agree that this is absurd, there is no further basis for discussion. You think it's absurd, I think it's rather reasonable. Insightful, even. I suppose many of the people who disagree feel the same. There is no easy way to bridge that conceptual chasm.

We aren't speaking about an objective good here, but rather a trade-off. — Inyenzi

Are we? What is being "traded" exactly? This is at the core of the disagreement here, that one side views life as an option, like a game or some other activity, while the other side is saying that this isn't so, as nonexistence is not actually an alternative.

Randall Munroe, the author of the xkcd webcomic did a calculation on how many unique english language tweets there are. According to the calculation the answer is "more than you could possibly imagine".

Let's go further back who has set the idea that will be trauma for human mind? — najomip369atmaksap

Is there a who? It seems unfounded to assume there is a personal intelligence behind the properties of the human mind. It's possible that there is, but it's not necessary, and there is no evidence for one.

Let's go further back who has set the idea that will be trauma for human mind? — najomip369atmaksap

Is there a who? It seems unfounded to assume there is a personal intelligence behind the properties of the human mind. It's possible that there is, but it's not necessary, and there is no evidence for one.

Either you are blisteringly lacking in self awareness, or radically dishonest. Either way - I'm not banging my head against that brick wall. — counterpunch

And here you have the answer why noone will seriously engage with your ideas: it's because you already think anyone who disagrees with you is either an idiot or a liar. Why would anyone talk to you, given that attitude?

But good luck anyways, you'll need it.

It's kinda weird to assume a bunch of things about my opinions after I just asked you why you think everyone on the left is alike, or why you think they are inherently less rational. But in the hopes of getting this conversation somewhere:

political correctness — counterpunch

Political correctness is useful insofar as it keeps ad-hominem and poisoning of the well at bay. It makes sense to take care that our language doesn't unduly label and marginalize people who might have important opinions to contribute. I don't really care much about it beyond that, it's sometimes taken too far, but even where it is it doesn't really seem worth worrying about to me. It plays into the whole "culture war" thing, which as far as I am concerned is a distraction from actual problems.

extinction rebellion — counterpunch

I honestly don't know enough about their exact goals and approach to form an opinion on extinction rebellion specifically. I think it's entirely understandable that people take to the streets in desperation after decades of inaction on climate change. It certainly has helped to get the problem more firmly embedded in people's heads.

Why do you act in ways that are contrary to human rights like freedom of conscience and freedom of expression? — counterpunch

Some left-wing people might. The left has it's share of authoritarians, neither side has a monopoly on those. But personally I believe in the things I believe partly because I think they'll increase freedom. Of course I understand freedom as more than "being left alone" and include actually having the freedom to act because you're not starving or homeless etc.

Why do you pursue a "have less-pay more" approach to sustainability? — counterpunch

It's a bit of a Truism that having less stuff is more sustainable. If we were more frugal with our resources, that would free up a part of said resources for investments into the future. The "western" consumer economy is extremely wasteful and certainly not sustainable. So having less seems a very obvious first step to take. And most people only actually use a portion of the stuff they own. I'd rather invest that portion into a Mars mission or something.

The pay more part mostly comes from trying to accurately price the environmental impact, which seems to me a perfectly fine market-based approach, if difficult to do accurately in practice.

You may not think you want eco communist authoritarian government and genocide, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. — counterpunch

Sure, but the same is of course true of your own good intentions. So that can't be the difference between your good intentions and mine.

We agree on a lot of things. That science is the way to gain knowledge about reality. That this knowledge shows us some obvious priorities (cheap, clean energy can solve a whole bunch of our problems). That failing to recognise those priorities could lead to disaster (via climate change, environmental degradation or simply not having an asteroid defense system when you need it). We also broadly agree that market based solutions are often good, that concentrating too much power in few hands is very dangerous, and that freedom is valuable.

So why are we bogged down in an ideological conflict about left and right?

It's a case for a sustainable and prosperous world. — counterpunch

And you think the right wants that, and the left does not, because?

I cannot make the case to the left - who, I would argue, are using the climate change issue as an anti-capitalist battering ram. They are constructing an argument for eco-communism, overlaid with authoritarian political correctness as a means of control. — counterpunch

I consider myself "on the left", and I don't want authoritarian eco-communism. So I wonder why you'd think all people on the left are the same, or why you think that they are somehow not rational.

It'd help if you didn't frame your views in ideological terms. You don't seem so much interested in creating a coalition to further your goal as you are in identifying who the enemy is. Which, in your case, incongruously is "the left", even though people on "the left" are a lot more likely to agree with your focus on cheap, clean energy.

There's an interesting quirk of human psychology that makes us think that if we did it before we'll do it again. If, say, there was a 1 in 10 chance of being caught speeding on a particular road, that might for some time put me off speeding, but should I get away with it once, I'll be more likely to think I'll get away with it again, even though patently the more I do it, the larger my overall probability of being caught. — Kenosha Kid

Sounds like an application of the representativeness heuristic. We guess probabilities based on how easy we can come up of an example of a case. Reminds me of that other bias where we're more likely to believe stories that have more details added to them even though technically all those details make the story less likely to be true.

It's too bad politicians seem to rarely consult criminologists (or don't care) when drafting new laws, because they'd tell them that constantly increasing the penalties for stuff people don't think they'll get caught for won't work.

Two variations of Clarke's Laws come to mind:

Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. — baker

Of course this comes up all the time, not least in court. I someone tells me that they genuinely thought the passport they bought from the guy at the street corner for 200 dollars was a genuine, state-issued document, I'm not going to believe them. They'd need to show some kind of medical document with a diagnosis that makes such a mistake remotely plausible.

I think ultimately there is a normative element at work here. There is a level of basic competence that's simply ascribed to everybody, and if you want to argue that you lack this basic competence, you will have to provide the evidence. A reversal of the presumption of innocence, if you will.

Well there is a long tradition of thought in philosophy that holds, essentially, that "evil is reducible to ignorance", i.e. nobody knowingly does bad things, everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, and is only incorrect about what the right thing to do actually is. — Pfhorrest

I'm sympathetic to this position, though I'd say we'd have to differentiate between ignorance about the facts and a false moral philosophy. You can be perfectly cognizant of the facts but adopt the moral position that all live is struggle between the weak and the strong and that might makes right.

Could one say we were manipulated into this reality? — wilal47744

Why would we say that?

Temporally, absolutely, but, practically speaking, I think not. — synthesis

Do you mean temporarily? Otherwise not sure what you mean.

Number one, Dr. Skeptic understands that medical science (in many cases) will not only not get you to the correct diagnosis, but it will only serve to confuse the matter. — synthesis

How does Dr. Skeptic know that? What methods does he have access to that medical science does not?

There's a very old saying in medicine that you might have heard before, "If you listen closely enough to the patient, s/he will tell you EXACTLY what is wrong." — synthesis

But isn't that also what "standard" medicine does? Only that they do not just listen to you talk, but also "listen" to various other bodily functions?

I would contend that it is impossible to understand even the simplest of things (if for no other reason than each event is preceded by an infinite number of events determining such. — synthesis

So, if you want to boil a pot of water, do you randomly do things to it until it boils? Pray to the gods to boil the water? Or do you use your understanding of physics to predict what course of events will make the water boil?

How you possibly understand the true nature of anything? — synthesis

How did the "true nature" of anything get into this discussion? What's a "true nature"? Why does it matter?

Reality is not like the movie our brains convey. — synthesis

How do you know? If you don't think we have access to reality, you cannot make claims about it.

Again, Absolute Truth exists outside of the intellect. It is permanent and unchanging. Relative truth is impermanent (in constant flux). Although all knowledge is indeed relative, the left got it wrong (imagine that!) by refusing to acknowledge that although truth is relative, human beings still agree to live by it (a moral code) just the same. — synthesis

How is this epistemological position either left or right?

Self-adoration or self-preservation: which will the pussy-grabber choose? — Kenosha Kid

He's way too much of a pussy (heh) to take such a risk. So I'll vote self-preservation.

I think quantum physics is philosophically mistaken in assuming the idea of fundamental building blocks. Rather, I think quantum physics is a science of the frayed edge of reality where something bleeds into nothing; that quantum effects can be explained as the lack - and gaining of existential properties, location velocity, mass - etc, by things that don't quite exist, and that the central focus of reality is the causal, deterministic, macroscopic reality we inhabit, where all the forces intersect. — counterpunch

Fair enough, as far as a metaphysical explanation goes. Though I think it's important to not mix physical and metaphysical perspectives on this. On a physical level, what matter is to have the best (most powerful in terms of predictions) model that can account for all the observations. That's the "shut up and calculate" approach. Interpretations are only relevant insofar as they allow new models that allow for more predictions.

The metaphysical perspective is to ask what all of this means. That'd be something like we're reaching the frayed edge of reality, or we have basically reached the limits of our power to perceive and comprehend so the weird behaviour we're seeing isn't actually ontological, but rather is the result of us actually charting the border of our epistemological capabilities.

So in what way would someone figure out that context and provide them with a new context if not through discourse. Amend that, what better way than discourse? — DingoJones

Well, it's going to require communication (I suppose you could stalk them, figure out where they live and quietly gather information, but that's rather time-intensive). But it's a much different kind of conversation, because you wouldn't be trying to show them they're wrong via some logical syllogism or similar. I don't know whether I know any good strategy, but I suppose you'd be more focused on letting them talk and explain their view, and maybe adjacent views, and try to avoid to sound combative or dismissive. I have also heard it said that there is value to actually protesting and correcting false information immediately, because presenting people with evidence, especially if it involves people they respect, does have an effect in the long term.

So I guess you think membership into another group? Thats a superior remedy in your view? — DingoJones

I think what @Isaac is trying to say is that you are very unlikely to change someone's mind in a non-professional conversation (like an internet forum) just by making what you think are good arguments. If you want to change people's minds, you need to first figure out what context they formed their opinion in in the first place, and then try to give them a new context in which they can then come to new conclusions.

Although I am scientifically trained, I only see it as a tool (and a rather primitive one at that). — synthesis

Oh? Now I am interested. Is there a less primitive tool out there?

There are many different directions we can take that so let me go in this one. Science (like all knowledge) changes constantly, correct? Why should I take anything postulated out there seriously if it is only going to be dis-proven? — synthesis

I am not quite sure what you're saying here. Do you not believe that, say, atoms are made out of protons, neutrons and electrons, which are made out of quarks, because tomorrow someone might figure out more fundamental building blocks to reality? Do you not use Newtons laws in common cases because they have been superseded by Einstein?

I used the adjective "real" before the word threat, the odds of covid causing the kinds of additional complications are so extremely rare (how many under 80 have such complications?) so the force of the overall argument remains. — dazed

Noone knows how common they are with any certainty, which is part of the reason why we should be pessimistic about them. The force of the overall argument does not remain. It cannot remain. If you properly understand utilitarianism, you understand that every consequence needs to be accounted for, so you do need to take this into account. If your argument remains unchanged after hearing about negative consequences, then you're doing it wrong.

what long term consequences are you referring to? the same extremely rare complications you refer to above? — dazed

No, the social, political, economic and cultural consequences of letting millions of people die, apparently at home or in some kind of mass palliative care, burying them in mass graves, and telling everyone they really shouldn't get all emotional about it, since it really was the only rational choice.

And what about the pressures this kind of strategy puts on people? With the virus at high tide, how many people are forced into a decision of going to work and risking their health and that of their families or loose their job? And what if you miscalculated the chance of complications and hospitals are forced to triage the patients under 80? Did you actually consult any statistics and look at likely scenarios for your plan or do you just figure it'll work based on "common sense"?

I guess we have either a full-on lunatic or a troll on our hands here.

You are very incorrect in your political philosophy. The range from left to right of the political spectrum goes like this: [Left] Communism, Socialism, Market Economy, Fascist Economy [Right]. — eduardo

Says who?

Communism involves the whole populace being part of the government. No money is available. — eduardo

Not true either in theory or in practice.

There's no left/right to do with monarchy, republic, empire, shogunate, or what have you. — eduardo

The original left-right distinction was precisely between republicans and monarchists.

Nazi Germany was fascist (called National Socialism by Germans in those days), — eduardo

Not according to the definition you provided. The market wasn't somehow completely independent of the state, nor was it self-sufficient.

The right of the economic spectrum (Market economy and Fascist economy) allows you the freedom to support yourself being self-sufficient and self-contained, and having fun while doing so. — eduardo

Except to those that don't have the means to support themselves. They don't get any of that "freedom".

The current policy is driven by the notion that all human life has intrinsic value and that our response to covid is all about preserving those valuable human lives... — dazed

If only that were the case. Unfortunately it seems more like the response to covid is all about preserving the GDP.

based on various data sources, it is clear that covid is only a real threat to the elderly and those with underlying conditions (and in fact the elderly who succumb generally ALSO have an underlying condition). — dazed

What's your definition of "a threat"? Does an unknown chance to contract long term debilitating fatigue and other neurological symptoms count as "a threat"? Is overworking doctors, nurses and other medical stuff "a threat"? Is asking those same overworked medical personal to perform triage "a threat"?

from a pure utilitarian perspective it seems obvious that the amount of human suffering caused by this collateral damage to billions of people far outweighs the suffering by the millions who died or were hospitalised with covid. — dazed

It does not seem obvious to me. For one, it would seem to me we'd have to be able to predict the long term consequences of "just letting the virus do it's thing". But we really can't. And from a utilitarian perspective, if the risk is unknown, you should always assume it's worse than you think.

I think those with purely atheistic views would have taken a very different policy approach to covid, so ultimately belief in God is again to blame for yet another mess... — dazed

I'm an atheist, and I disagree, so consider that anecdotal evidence against your theory.

So what is the solution? Public elections? — schopenhauer1

A public election fund would help. Doesn't at all eliminate the problem of lobbying and post-political careers, but it at least makes the actual election finance independent.

You would still have to require parties to have a certain minimum amount of members and backing to weed out insincere applications, but that's something administrations already do in other areas.