That doesn't make any sense. The content of my post was directly related to this thread's topic. The fact that it was also related to its author makes it ironic.

That's true, but my views on this matter aren't untrue.

How is it relevant, though? You actually said you brought it up because you thought it was ironic. — darthbarracuda

Right, that's why it was relevant.

I didn't wish to imply it.

I didn't say that.

Some countries are shitholes. And saying so isn't racist. Trump may be a racist, but his recent comment wasn't.

Is it becoming of a president to say such a thing? Certainly not. But it's not surprising coming from Trump, so there's no reason to be shocked.

Either you're lying about not caring, or your intent is to create drama. — darthbarracuda

Neither is true. Either you're blinded by your own self-importance or your intent is to create drama. I haven't cared or thought one iota about you since I sent that last PM, the proof of which being that I haven't really interacted with you at all since then, judging it to be a waste of time in light of the incident that occurred. I'm doing so now because it seems especially relevant. I will resume not caring after this conversation is over, assuming, like last time, we are unable to reconcile. If that doesn't interest you, that's perfectly fine by me.

you're still hung up on that? — darthbarracuda

I'm not hung up on it. I hadn't thought about it at all until I saw this thread and noticed the irony.

I'll apologize when I think I actually did screw up and feel the other person deserves an apology. — darthbarracuda

I attempted to show that you did, in fact, screw up, but you abandoned the conversation and to this day have made no attempts to reconcile our relationship. I don't care if it is or isn't, I'm just pointing this out to you.

You may recall or have realized by now that I've chosen to largely ignore you, darth, but I can't help but comment on this thread. In our last PM conversation, I apologized several times for whatever part I may have played in the scuffle that led to our mutual estrangement a while back, while you failed to offer, and have still failed to offer, any apology yourself and didn't seem, nor seem now, to care about resolving the dispute in a way that might enable us to carry on discussing things with one another in a cordial manner. Your position in this thread is therefore highly ironic.

"The Thinking Atheist." Mhmm. Do they also have any bridges to sell?

Askphil, especially the modship, is largely composed of belligerent left wing cranks (which sounds familiar...), so I always take what they say about Peterson with a grain of salt. Their primary objection to him basically amounts to the Courtier's Reply, but they never bother to explain what postmodernism is, which might justify employing such a reply. If they were made to do that, they would walk right into the kinds of objections Peterson raises. Postmodernism cannot be understood because it was never intended to be understood. It's a pose and an attitude, not a coherent philosophy.

Anyway, I thought Benatar was quite poor in this debate, despite the consensus from the comments that he "destroyed" Peterson.

I generally side with Peterson here.

I'd rather this not turn into a reddit-style forum, so I'm opposed to the request. I might be okay with only upvotes, but there definitely shouldn't be downvotes.

Man Buxtebuddha, these people do seem really confused — Agustino

If he actually read the wider forum, instead of cheerleading certain posters in the Shoutbox, he might realize that Buxe, you, and I disagree with each other quite frequently....

Anecdotes....

That article doesn't answer the question of the title. It says that the number of philosophy majors has increased and then goes on to state how difficult majoring in it can be. So what? That doesn't prove its practicability.

appeals due to its pragmatic and normative attitude towards ethical and moral judgments — Posty McPostface

Pragmatism with respect to morality doesn't sound appealing to me, and I wouldn't trust anyone who thought it was.

disregarding the above and assuming that utilitarianism is what philosophy ought to be, then isn't the problem now to create a calculus that would be able to determine what would be the optimal utility to all people (the greatest good principle) — Posty McPostface

It would, but ironically, philosophy would be cut from the calculus, as it has little to no practical utility. In this way, utilitarianism as philosophy is self-undermining.

"Laws of nature" is often just shorthand for inductive generalizations, so materialism rests on even shakier grounds than you describe.

I agree with the solution presented in this article: https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/the-trolley-problem-solved/

I don't think pleasure has much value at all, let alone intrinsic value.

Reminds me of the beginning of this video.

But the transcendental reality of the Buddha is emphatically not 'nothingness' or 'non-existence'. — Wayfarer

True. But we might say that it looks like nothingness from the perspective of someone still shackled to samsara, a "relative nothingness" that Kant and Schopenhauer speak about.

Tell me what a deity is and I'll let you know.

Is rather awkward. — TimeLine

I don't know what you're talking about. I interpreted your post one way, asked if my interpretation was correct, and it seemed it was, only now I guess it's not....

I could say that celibacy is dogmatic and assigns a negative value to perhaps the most common, basic, and accepted acts of human existence - sex — TimeLine

No it doesn't. You're describing anti-sex-having, let's call it, not celibacy. Celibacy doesn't declare that sex is immoral, it merely designates that a person has chosen to refrain from it. Catholic priests are celibate, for example, but they don't think sex is immoral.

Please don't use words like 'doubtless' when you are uncertain. You are surely better than that. — TimeLine

An overly pedantic and literalistic comment. My use of the word was quite appropriate.

People should not be having children for the wrong reasons. It does not mean that people should not be having children. So, what are the wrong reasons? And if they are wrong and if we can articulate why it is wrong, than our attempt should be to make it right. So, how can we make it right? If everyone stopped giving birth, that would not resolve the issue. Giving birth for the right reasons, which would be only when two loving people actively choose and decisively commit themselves to raising the child. — TimeLine

I agree. But you beg the question at the end. Why ought two loving people choose to have children?

Are you sure about that? — TimeLine

Yes.

Do you think that sexual intercourse' only objective is procreation and if so, would your complete abstinence therefore be anti-natalist? — TimeLine

It is from a biological perspective or from certain metaphysical perspectives I suppose. Abstinence from sex isn't antinatalism, unless one qualifies it as "practical antinatalism" perhaps. I have done so in the past but find the term mostly useless now. Antinatalism is a theoretical position.

but I assume it attracts in similar vein to your original rejection of anti-natalism the same self-refuting irony — TimeLine

Are you saying that celibacy makes people miserable? I don't see that it does. It's a way of life that can be tested and found wanting or not wanting depending on the individual. Antinatalism is different, for it is not a way of life but a philosophical position that assigns a negative value to perhaps the most common, basic, and accepted acts of human existence, which in turn changes the complexion of one's everyday experience of life considerably, and for the worse. A cheerful antinatalist is a contradiction in terms. If the claim this view makes is taken seriously, then merely to live and interact in the world is to be continually confronted with and reminded of the object of one's moral disapprobation, which cannot but be met with sorrow and dismay (e.g: seeing a pregnant woman or hearing of someone's fervent desire to have children). Sometimes, the ubiquity of natality will be met with outright misanthropy, in addition to resentment at being born and at the decision of one's parents to procreate, even if one's parents are otherwise kind, loving people. I have no firm statistics, but the suicide rate among antinatalists is doubtless very high. Many antinatalist communities and individuals praise and even encourage the act. It is therefore naive to believe it can be genuinely maintained in a theoretical sense without it affecting one's psychological, emotional, and possibly physical state, and again, for the worse. In sum, celibacy isn't defined as a moral judgment, whereas antinatalism is, and because it is, and because of the nature of that which it judges, it leads to almost perpetual anguish and misery.

it is only wrong when it dictates your Will to act above and over compassion and love — TimeLine

For the sake of argument, wouldn't it dictate your will to act above and over compassion and love for the duration of copulation? Otherwise, what does your qualification here mean?

Alas, it seems to me that the number of loving parents, call them Schopenhauerian parents, is rather small. Indeed, Schopenhauer's own parents lacked the compassion he emphasized and which you describe.

In any case, the antinatalist, beholden to negative utilitarianism, cannot abide so much as an ounce of suffering if he is to remain consistent. There is a reason schop1 speaks of "structural suffering." Assuming a moral imperative to reduce all suffering, then procreation is immoral, as even the most compassionate parents in the world will not produce a life that does not suffer and thereby add to its sum.

Forgive me, but are you not pro-celibacy? I should think that to be self-refuting, which just makes the logic of your entire argument problematic. — TimeLine

You should think what to be self-refuting? Being in favor of celibacy? Why would it be?

Forgive me, but I find the attempt to objectively weigh the good and bad in life in order to decide, depending on which direction the scale tips, whether to line up for or against antinatalism, to be a futile exercise. I don't think goodness and evil are quantifiable. My own subjective experience is that evil greatly outweighs the good, but I have no way to empirically go about proving that.

Such an assertion on my part will always be countered by someone who asserts that his or her own subjective experience of life is replete with sunshine and daisies. I have no way of refuting such a claim except to say that said person is deluded. For some who assert it, this may indeed be the case, for there is such a thing as an optimism bias, but then so too is there a pessimism bias. Life is probably a great deal worse than most of us imagine it to be and a great deal better than what it could be.

I do not reject antinatalism because my life has gone or is going swimmingly. I reject it because the arguments don't work. It is also an ironic position to hold, being self-refuting. That is, to the extent that antinatalism makes people miserable, which it undoubtedly does, then based on the very negative utilitarian principles on which it is based, one is obliged to reject it.

Use your imagination. You can contemplate before-birth imaginatively, and death imaginatively. To simply ask why the in between matters as that is going on with you right now. It is deep down, a religious sentiment, or at least an axiological one. — schopenhauer1

This isn't a response to what I said.

I haven't given any robust arguments before. — schopenhauer1

I'm assuming this is sarcastic. From my perspective, you haven't adequately addressed and refuted the criticisms of such arguments. What you do is attempt to shift the burden of proof by asking different variations of the same question, namely, why do we need to have children? If there are people who say that we do, the question is certainly relevant to them. But there doesn't need to be a need to have children for antinatalism to be false, so your question is irrelevant to me and most people here.

but the question being important — schopenhauer1

It certainly is, and I wish more people raised it, particularly philosophers and theologians. But that shouldn't inhibit one from seeking an answer. Having been on both sides of the debate, I feel the intractability of the question all too well. I presently regard antinatalism as false, but even if there is no definitive answer, that too is a kind of tacit rejection of it. There is a danger in believing that the profound and anomalous nature of the question in itself entails antinatalism's truth, as though such a question couldn't possibly admit of the answer the vulgar masses would give to it. However, sometimes truth corresponds to the intuition of the brute and not to the rarefied intellects who pose such questions, which isn't to demean the latter mind you. It seems to me that if one believes antinatalism to be true, one ought to robustly argue on its behalf.

I think you misinterpreted my comment, which was based on a counterfactual.

But by then (but before the complete shutdown of awareness) you don’t even know that there ever was or could be a body or a life anyway. — Michael Ossipoff

An interesting thought. If life has no meaning (and here I refer to salvific, objective meaning, not the created, subjective meaning of the existentialist), then it doesn't matter whether one has children or not or whether the human race dies out or not. Absent such meaning, there is nothing, no God and no law of karma, keeping track, as it were, of all the suffering of human beings and other creatures. Suffering leaves no imprint in a meaningless world. Were the antinatalist's ultimate desire met, there would be no perspective available to anyone or anything to judge that the extinction of human beings was a good thing. It is therefore no more or less good than their continued existence.

Does Augustine make this move as well? — Mitchell

He might.

I honestly have no clue what that means. — Mitchell

I mean, God is not the sum of 3 and 7. That is an eternal truth but not the eternal truth. God is the truth itself. The argument is basically:

If something greater than the mind exists, then that is God.
Truth is greater than the mind.
Therefore, God, as the truth itself, exists.

Isn't foundationalism just a theory of knowledge? I'm talking about complete systems of philosophies that would include a theory of knowledge. — anonymous66

I guess I don't understand you then.

Well, you have highlighted the self-refuting nature of nihilism. I only stated what nihilism claims, not whether it is coherent.

But he does not go into the key move from the eternal truths to God — Mitchell

You're right, he's a bit unclear. God would be eternal truth as such, whereas the eternal truths in the examples are Ideas in the mind of God for Augustine. I don't know if that makes it any clearer, though.

I think a better term than dogma would be foundationalism. That seems to be what you have in mind. I think there's a fourth choice: nihilism. Relativism and existentialism still hold to meaning, they just relegate it to a social or individual construction respectively (although I realize these terms can have slippery definitions). Nihilism, on the other hand, rejects meaning altogether.

I completely disagree with the OP more so because this utopia simply does not exist neither is it likely to, but complete sexual liberation is clearly not the answer to our problems. If not, then what is? — TimeLine

I agree too. Sexual assault continues because human nature remains fundamentally unchanged. Utopia achieved by humans is an impossibility, so there is no answer to your question.

Quite the reverse in my opinion. I don't know where this "sexually repressive environment" of which you speak is located. Maybe among the Mormons, the Amish, and certain Muslim immigrants? Everywhere else in the U.S. and the West as a whole the ideology of sexual liberation reigns victorious. I don't know how much more "complete" it can get.

Let me add a point more relevant to the OP. As I have pointed out before, the single greatest need on this forum is a mod who can act as a counterweight to the present mod team. I suggested Agustino, i.e. someone who isn't best buds or ideologically sympathetic with the other mods.

The mods have refused to allow this on utterly unexplained and arbitrary grounds. They say they desire feedback and a diverse mod team, but then turn around and say, "no, we don't have to listen to your feedback, and we're not going to make the mod team diverse by adding another mod." It would be the simplest thing in the world to shut people like me up if they would enact my suggestion, and yet, inexplicably, they refuse. So I will continue to have a cautious, skeptical attitude toward the leadership here, and to hell with them if they complain about my complaints.