Hopefully later rather than sooner unless Bartrick has his way though haha

Oh true, that stuff is completely lost to the ether.

“For pragmatism to IMPLY a belief in objective morality, that means that one can not be a pragmatist without buying objective morality.” That’s like saying all Kantian ethicists believe that no lies are justified just because Kant believed that.

Since the implication is subjective we can’t really know but I would argue that any pragmatist who thinks pragmatism doesn’t make this implication is wrong and they will think I am wrong.

Is it correct to say pragmatism implies pure moral truth? I don’t know and neither do you (and you’ll never believe there is anything to know) but it is completely correct to say that my belief is that it does imply this.

Could imagines scenarios not fall under the category of social, psychological and linguistic etc empirical data? For example when the imagined scenario is written down and becomes a literary work of fiction or when the imagined scenario is explained to the psychologist and the sociologist is looking for trends and patterns in accounts of people’s imaginings?

“Pragmatism in no way implies a belief in objective morality (absolutes or not), but sure, it wouldn't preclude them.”

This is just plain wrong. For example a pragmatist can still be religious and a moral realist. A pragmatist can believe in the concept of pragmatic moral truth and pure yet unknowable moral truth. He just resigns himself to using pragmatic truth in place of pure truth but understands that the drive to find pure truth is what leads to improving pragmatic truth.

My ethics is my set of preferences/judgments about interpersonal behavior (more significant than etiquette)

What do you use to make these judgements? Your opinions and preferences on empirical data?

It’s interesting that you say that, after our debates and seeing your replies to others I’m sort of noticing that the line between pragmatist and relativist is actually pretty small. After thinking it over you realise that the only real conflict there is that Relativists don’t believe there is a objective moral absolute to be found whereas pragmatists do, they just don’t think it can be known by an individual and only the society we create can be judged by whatever absolute we think may exist. At least, that’s the difference between mine and your practice of the stances it seems.

Moral Ecology expanded: Take my heated debates with @Bartricks

After thinking on it last night, I realised I’m not angry at him for being an Antinatalist and I’m not even angry at Antinatalism. I’m angry at my inner conflict over its place in our moral ecology.

On the one hand, Antinatalists at their current numbers in my perspective are useful in that they slow the human growth rate making a small contribution to resource management.

On the other hand it is one of the views that if it gains too much popularity could lead to a logical progression from Antinatalism is okay, to Genocide is okay. That’s not to say that’s what they currently think and I’m happy to take back that accusation I threw at Bartricks yesterday.

However now that he has a bit more insight into my own views (if he reads my response to @Artemis)and I’m agreeing to walk back my anger from our previous debates in the pursuit of seeing each other as persons and not means to our ends; maybe he can make the case to me that Antinatalism belongs in our moral ecology without me having to fear them hounding for mine, my descendants or everyone else’s death at some point down the line?

Is that fair Bartrick? I do apologise, but I think you can at least empathise with the fact that your views are controversial and emotive to most.

Well technically for Descriptive relativism yes. Only in saying that the rational relativist sees no moral absolute, but would say these things exist on the relative moral spectrum as beliefs within our population.

Pragmatists are probably more utilitarian when it comes to ethics but not metaethics. In that they apply a utilitarian principle toward ethics, looking at every moral view for utility to find pragmatic truth.

Pragmatic truth is probably best defined as that definition of good which is closest to objective by the empirical facts we have on hand. So at the individual level this can lead to different flavours of pragmatism.

Fundamentally the pragmatist believes in objective good, they just don’t believe it is possible to truly identify without us knowing all the facts of the universe. This also leads to a second feature of pragmatism (which I am oft prone to forgetting in my practice of it) is that it is not the individual that is being judged as moral or immoral, but the society individuals collectively create. Simply because one individual cannot have access to our entire collective knowledge as it is, let alone if we legitimately knew everything there was to know about the universe already.

Now we arrive at moral ecology which is the view that we have to manage our collective moral views as we would an ecosystem. There is some disagreement on moral ecology though, some think all views need to be represented and maintained while others (myself included) feel certain maladaptive and destructive moral views will always contribute to a negative moral judgement on humanity as a whole and don’t contribute to our survival, stability, security or moral progress.

The only valid criticism of Pragmatism I’ve come across really is that at times it conflates the distinction between normative and descriptive ethics, but no more than science conflates the distinction between empirical facts about the universe and the opinions on those facts. If anyone has other criticisms of pragmatism though I’d be willing to hear.

The one I’ve noticed myself reading this back; is that if the individual cannot know everything there is to know, then how would the pragmatist ever know if the society they are in is moral or not even if collectively we knew everything?

To put it simply though, pragmatism for the individual requires building ones own ethica pragmatica; A working theory of what good is, an obligation to hold true to that good with a moderate grip, so that one has the integrity to fight for it and yet isn’t so rigid that concrete evidence against their theory of good isn’t ignored.

Then you have adaptive pragmatism as a philosophy as opposed to pragmatic ethics (it is quite possible to be a philosophical pragmatist but not a moral one and vice versa) it’s only real difference between Pragmatism is that it requires a philosophy of science to be quantum accommodated, meaning a philosophy of science is incomplete without an attempt(A horrible, long and confusing attempt because of how probabilistic it is) at interpreting philosophy of quantum mechanics.

In conclusion, the answer to your question is Relativism is broad but pragmatism can be as broad or narrow as the individual pragmatist feels is justified.

“No, I think most atheists subscribe to some social, psychological and even economic models which they reference in rational thinking. "X will likely lead to Y because..." does not always have to reduce to physical laws.”

In my experience, most atheists in regards to Ethics are either Relativists or Pragmatists. You should check out Pragmatic ethics, I think you’d really like that. Moral ecology and Piercean Realism are also subjects you should research.

well the fact that she is a baroness is very telling of her approach to morality because quite frankly it’s not much better than yours. Never suggested a baroness was the opposite at all. I merely pointed out she isn’t an Antinatalist which makes your argument that there is a kantian Antinatalist argument extremely implausible.

Unless you’d care to admit that the person you brought up is wrong in her approach to Kantian ethics? Which would mean any work you’ve based on her is probably going to suffer from similar or in your case worse approaches.

Yes, so clearly widely adopted by all your critics here. I’ve actually got a Masters in applied ethics and your claim that it has been widely adopted is just not true.

If you understood how education in the UK worked, you’d know that her position as part of the elite meant that her being awarded a degree was going to happen whether she deserved it or not. Therefore should be met with extreme skepticism.

What do I know though, is you need to go back to school.

No, I want a space where people don’t break the rules of the site. Read site guidelines exactly.

I actually have a masters in applied ethics, so I actually do understand moral debate. Pity you don’t. I also have a degree in logic and it follows that if you are against procreation, you are against life, if you are against life, you are pro killing/suicide or at the very least will find it shockingly easy to convince yourself that killing is justified because of your stance against procreation.

Also, O’niell who you subjectively claim to be influential isn’t an Antinatalist and her understanding of Kantian Ethics is vastly different to your misunderstanding.

You’ve been told by multiple people that you are just wrong and that your reasoning skills are subpar yet comparatively few seem to be saying the same of my criticisms of you. You don’t have a grip on reality, you say the labels don’t matter every time someone here proves them to be incorrect.

Yeah, project all you like. I’m not the one condoning the genocide of our species here and all other life too as it seems your argument could apply to all life.

See because of my ethical stance people actually know what I’m inclined to do. You however can’t be trusted around children or access to the human water supply. I wear my principles for everyone to see whereas you keep changing them to fit your own end which is humanity must die. You are the epitome of evil and an Antinatalist evangelical who really should just be removed from the site.

Also, if you had any understanding of moral psychology you’d stop blaming the species for whatever wrongs you feel life has personally slung at you. Grow up, learn how to have a little gratitude toward your parents. I don’t care what arguments you have anymore as there are a lot of not good reasons someone would actually believe sterilising an entire species without its consent is okay and then have the audacity to call it Kantian in another post. I care about what psychologically motivates someone to hold an Antinatalist view and it’s nearly always coming from a selfish egotistical place.

You don't make it clear perhaps, but I re-read your OP and now I take it that you are rejecting the problem of evil in order to defend some kind of theism?

No, he wants to kill all the children in the world and he’s trying to build his court case for why he’s not evil and that he’s just an angel of death helping us all find peace in true serial killer fashion. Bartrick you’re genuinely scary. I hope you don’t work with kids ever in your life.

And as for sterilising the whole population - well, I haven't argued for that, have I? But if it is seriously wrong to procreate then it could be justified to sterilise the whole population. Why do you think it wouldn't be?

It’s your own argument that makes it wrong. If it is without consent then it is default wrong by your own definition.

Also have you actually read Onora O'Neills work? She understands kantian ethics better than you do it seems.

After reading “Between consenting adults” it seems clear to me you do not understand Kant or O’Neills view on Kantian ethics, nor are you able to pickup on the class and political bias within the paper it seems.

Just so everyone else is aware, Onora O'Neill Is not an antinatalist, she’s a baroness in the House of Lords.

https://instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/account_100000000083919/attachments/24032268/2265350.pdf?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22Onora%20O%27Neill.pdf%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27Onora%2520O%2527Neill.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAJDW777BLV26JM2MQ%2F20191023%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191023T221704Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=a67f35f75c8aa3b15aedac92258765d5c0d8eebc3b250f12f527e5b81b612256





In conclusion Bartrick, you’re full of it. If this had been called “The deontological case against procreation and hadn’t brought up Kant you might have had an easier time of it. However since your arguments keep flipping between that and consequentialism whenever anyone points out the flaws in your reasoning and labelling it’s clear that even Kant and O’Neill would say you’re incapable of rationally consenting to anything, because you’re insane. So from that, in a hypothetical consent scenario if the insane person is claiming they wouldn’t want to exist, then we can logically surmise that the rational person would probably want the opposite.

I think if you were to ask anyone who has hit rock bottom, if they wanted to die or want their life to get better, most would answer the latter.

You shouldn’t want to force sterilisation on people by your own argument yet you’ve actually suggested that it would be justified even though by your own admission it is a default wrong.

This is my last, this is getting too laughable now.

Btw this is why in real philosophy we cite our sources. Do you think anyone would have taken Kant seriously if he hadn’t cited other philosophers in his work? O’Neill at least cited Kant.

Learn how to admit you’re wrong and people will judge you less for it. That’s my advice. Bye now.

it’s a simple question. Here it is even more simply; Do you believe all moral debate is pointless/useless?

I can’t believe you really just overlooked slaves moral opinions and said it was conventionally considered morally permissible when it was widely debated by slaves, freed men and white advocates of freedom.

So can we take your relativistic stance to mean that if you’d been around at the time, you wouldn’t have seen any value in even debating whether or not it was right to keep slaves? This just makes you a moral apathist in my eyes. Your apathy is probably the biggest indicator of a fundamentally immoral mind.

Wow! I’ve literally thought of the same thing but to teach ethics specifically! This is great!

Yeah, it’s getting to the point where even I’m getting confused as to which thread we are in and I think we have both been dancing on the line of going away from the original topic of discussion.

I think we’ve discovered a lot about the others views so far which means we might be able to broach where we have consensus.

I think one thing we will disagree on always is how we are defining truth in terms of morality. You don’t believe it is possible for moral statements or arguments to have a value of true or false. I do.

If we define that which benefits a life, as things like having enough to sustain its life until it’s natural end. Is morality useful to life? More specifically, is morality useful for you? Does it help your position to have humans who believe in morals around you or would it be better if every single one of them was a moral antirealist?

Agree with the overall tone and feeling of this article. However I’m still waiting for the logic and your use of the word “concern” is emotive.

That's the argumentum ad populum fallacy, and it results in saying that it's true that it's morally permissible to have slaves (if you're in the US in the 1820s in the South),

It’s only morally permissible if you don’t take in the moral opinions of actual slaves at the time. Pretty sure they weren’t calling it morally permissible nor were their white advocates. It might have been legally permissible at the time, doesn’t mean it wasn’t morally reprehensible though.

It's just that that stuff is irrelevant when we're talking about the ontological status of moral stances re whether they can be true or false. You're not going to say every single thing about every aspect of morality every time it comes up. You'd have to write a book over and over.

I’m starting to have a better understanding of your problems with some aspects of moral realism. How demanding most moral systems tend to be. Would it be fair to say that you’d call Moral systems inherently demanding?

“That stuff is irrelevant” You do realise, in logic that is like saying “my argument works if you take out all propositions and make it a statement”?

Humans do write books over and over and have been for centuries. It’s why we have books.

It matters because while a places culture and history factor into the moral ecology of said place, it isn’t the only factor.

For example, there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that most views reside within most places regardless of culture or tradition of those places. Demographic ratios may show a differing majority but nevertheless the views still exist within that culture. Actually the most substantial empirical evidence you could hope to find. Schools. Schools have records of their graduates core beliefs in every field you could imagine. Including ethics.

It also matters because it relates to the pragmatic definition of truth and the data found in Descriptive Moral relativism which takes into account these demographics and is an amazing data tool for ethics.

That's not a view I agree with. So how would it be the case that you find that everywhere in the world?

I completely understand why you’ve made this point. However, “Everywhere” here doesn’t mean literally everywhere. This is the compartmentalised geographic everywhere, meaning in every country. What is trying to be said here, is that the majorities of most countries would agree with at the very least, not having unnecessary suffering inflicted upon themselves individually, as a community, as a country. The majority of people on the planet probably have at least one person in their life who will definitely not want them unnecessarily harmed, whether it is yourself, parents, family, friends, employers, colleagues and even random good natured strangers who try and apply that to everyone. Even the parents of murderers are still prone to not wishing anymore unnecessary harm to their child than they’ve already caused for themselves by committing murder.

I don't consider procreation one of these: there are no dire (personal effects) of not having a kid.

What about the men and women who commit suicide upon finding out they are infertile? What about Unwanted miscarriages?

Then there is the opposite side, orphans. Most Orphans believe they need parents.

Yes. It. Is. Name the philosopher who drew the distinction between 'Kant's moral philosophy' and 'Kantian' moral philosophy.

I’ve got a better idea, how about instead of demanding that I cite your sources for you, you do it like you should have been doing from the start. Literally dozens of philosophers have written about Kant and Kantian ethics and if I don’t agree with you that they made the distinction more than Kant did, then I’m not gonna know who it is based upon your subjective belief that only this one philosopher made the distinction. You could be talking about Hegel, Heidegger, Hill, Cummiskey or any number of people.

Quite frankly though, if you’re going to make Consequentialist arguments I’d expect you to have read cummiskey at least since he’s one of the few people that believe kantian ethics is compatible with consequentialism.

Imagine I'm the product of rape. the rapist phones me and asks me if they should rape my mother. Would my answer - whether positive or negative - tell you anything about the ethics of rape?

Are you the product of a rape? If not I don’t see how this view is relevant to you and how you answer tells us a lot about how you view your parents which in term impacts your view of antinatalism.

So mr Antinatalist, why are you so angry with your parents?

To be honest I think the reason you won’t answer that question is because you don’t want to lie but don’t want to tell the truth either. The truth is, if your parents called and asked from the past you would probably say they should still have you, which doesn’t support your antinatalism view. However to say that they should use contraception and end your existence would be a lie for you wouldn’t it? The truth contradicts your own belief in Antinatalism though.

One more thing; Will the antinatalist movement ever convince 100% of the population to A not have children B always use a 100% fool proof contraception (doesn’t exist) and get an abortion if one slips through the net? This includes teenagers with raging hormones, sex addicts, prostitutes and basically every women who used to be a little girl that dreamed of being a mother and every man who dreams of being a father... or just dreams of having sex and being lousy with protection.

Oh and you can’t sterilise the entire population either because you run right back into consent. Of which, you will not get 100% as I said before.

Ehhhh not Kantian. Others have already out argued you on that point. Stellar job on that front folks! Stop trying to use Kant as a brand for your nonsense. He and all other true Kantian ethicists would be turning in their graves and beds to see this.

Moving past that since I’m not a kantian and digging right at antinatalism.

The Hypothetical consent scenario; You have a time phone. It rings, it’s your parents. They want to know if they should use contraception. What is your answer?

Now before you answer, keep in mind that even if you say yes, and you are never born, it might not save your parents moral standing as they may change their mind a year later and all you’ve done is made sure you weren’t the sperm that made it.

If we keep doing the same things that are driving us crazy, then we will stay crazy. Ceasing crazy-making behavior will (usually) help a great deal. That assumes, of course, that one can change. If raising one's 6 children on a poverty budget is driving one crazy, one might have to stick with it anyway. Or, if the only job one can find is bad for mental health, one might have to stay on the job.

What about external crazy making factors?

If one is troubled by one's history of bad actions, an study of ethics might prove very helpful.

Or troubles by the history of bad actions inflicted upon them.

No. we were supposed to be talking about The moral standing of future people, not subjecting people to suspiciously pointless debates on the non existent merits of moral relativism.

I’m going to level with you here; there is one over arching reason why you will never convince me that being a relativist or any form of moral antirealism is The Argument of Trust.

There may or may not be moral truths. If there are though, immoral people will try subversive tactics against that claim.

Individuals who claim there are no moral truths have the potential for a dark hidden bias. A reason why they either hope there are no moral truths or a reason why they want to convince other people of it. Now I’m not suggesting this of you but it’s one that should make you pause when listening to other moral antirealist views.

I’m sorry if I’m sounding patronising, I can’t help it sometimes. See, learning the theory is one thing, but how well do you know the personal history of the individuals behind them and the history of the society they lived in? You’d be shocked at how many people immediately discard Kant at the first reading simply because they didn’t understand Kant as a person based on the historical accounts and they rarely understand the times he was living either.

You do realise that subjectivism and noncognitivism are contradictory views right? You said you were specifically a subjectivist yet you didn’t answer those questions the way a subjectivist would and instead changed your mind and thought you’d prefer me focusing on the noncognitivist instead.

Also, if you’re a subjectivist how can you claim that subjectivism is factually correct when subjectivists don’t believe in facts? This is what I mean about relativists. They say silly things like nothing is true and then claim “nothing is true” is true.

This is the ultimate flaw in moral relativism and with autodidacts it comes out so much more because you hold onto ideas based on feelings, not logic. There is no prescriptive value in relativism whatsoever. You simply went wow at the idea use that very idea to justify the first wow.

@god must be atheist Some of the arguments here might resolve some misunderstandings you have about Cultural relativism. Descriptive relativism would serve you better.

“You can't be getting offended that I'm challenging anything from a philosophical perspective, right? You're one of the people who did philosophy at university. Surely you're used to views being challenged.”

Challenged in methodically correct ways. I’m not offended, I’m frustrated as you aren’t actually refuting my arguments that come with questions. So it’s not really an honest debate as I’m taking in everything you say and challenging it with arguments.

Okay subjectivist; here are some questions for you.

Hitler: What I am doing is morally right
Mother Theresa: What you are doing is morally wrong

Which of them is speaking the truth?
If they are both speaking the truth as you would suggest, then their is no moral asymmetry between them, yet there is significant moral asymmetry between them.

A: it was wrong to invade Iraq
B: it wasn’t wrong to evade Iraq.

Which is the true statement?
If they are both true, then statements A and B don’t mean the same thing by the word wrong
If they don’t mean the same thing by the word wrong then they aren’t really disagreeing. Yet they are both disagreeing. So how can subjectivism be taken seriously? It doesn’t move debate forward because it’s the same as saying everyone is right. It’s intellectually lazy.

You should read up on moral psychology as a field.

“only mentioned common moral theories because uncommon ones could be anything imaginable. So it's difficult to say anything in general about those” not if you have a handful in mind that you’ve studied like Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence for life or the ethics of pragmatism and moral psychology.

So you’re trying to say sleep walking disorder isn’t real and that we should ignore sleepwalkers as evidence of sleepwalking? By very definition of sleep they are not conscious because we are not conscious when we sleep. I shouldn’t have to explain the concept of sleep for you. Your fight is with the evidence of the medical profession that says sleep walking disorder is real.

“So would it be fair to say you are a moral relativist? You believe that morals and value are relative based on things like culture, nationality, religion?” One of the other questions I asked which you conveniently ignored. If you can’t answer questions and you can’t make a point that actually relates to echarmions point then you shouldn’t be on this discussion thread.

Any system of morals that deals with rights of children and acknowledges a parent responsibility to safeguard their children’s future that right there is a moral system that as the rights of future people’s in mind.

Common moral theories include contractarianism, divine command theory, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, etc.

those are historically common moral theories and each of those has many modern variants. So if you’re suggesting that we are only allowed to discuss the moral theories of long dead people that you respect, then I say I’m done with this argument as you’re not contributing to it. It seems to me, that what you call common moral theories, I call entry level ethics.

Try and keep the discussion on track next time. If you aren’t aware of other philosophies and moral systems that deal with these issues then don’t comment and misrepresent the debate like only the systems you are aware of exist. If you don’t know something say it, it’s just intellectually dishonest to say it doesn’t exist just because you are ignorant.

“Greatest minds of our species” Would you care to give us an example of such a mind?

That question needs clarified and if you have a point to make I suggest you make it soon. We are getting too far away from the topic of conversation here and you’ve not answered very many of my questions, yet expect me to answer question after question that doesn’t even deal with the main meat of what I have said.

The fact that they aren’t conscious and have even been recorded saying things out of character for the conscious personality.

Well cognitive psychology and myself both disagree with the Freudian conceptualisation of the unconscious, there is a lot of empirical evidence which suggest we have an automatic or implicit consciousness which does contribute toward our behaviour. We can’t keep everything within our cognitive awareness.

But who knows, maybe all sleepwalkers are faking it and are all awake the whole time.