I feel that it is hard to be non destructive as a human partly because the competitive nature of life, the need to exploit the planet and current huge levels of one-sided exploitation of resources. Exploitation of poorer workers and countries and the rest of nature.

Maybe I just have an inexplicable prejudice against humans? Fueled by experience though.

Not everything everyone does is great, of course, but I think good things far outweigh bad things. — Terrapin Station

I don't think anything can outweigh a genocide. These kind of things are the depths of depravity.

However I am not sure how you would be making your calculation.

What is on your positive and negative side over the calculation?

On my negative side I would place the arms industry, poverty and inequality, greed and overpopulation. I would also include historical destructive behaviour like wars and slavery.

On the positive side I would put attempts at social reform, attempts to decrease inequality and create a sustainable population and economy. I would also include Historical altruistic and reforming behaviour like campaigns against slavery, racism and misogyny.

But you could put all sorts of random things in an equation to skewer it and ignore certain phenomena.

I don’t think it can be “right” or “wrong”. “Is liking vanilla ice cream right?” — khaled

I think if you dislike something that is harmless that would seem irrational, or merely a preference, but disliking horrible destructive behavior would appear to be a rational analysis.

From what I remember utilitarian calculations calculate levels of harm and pleasure in a similar way. I higher proportion of pleasure is seen as desirable and it is hard to see how a higher level of pleasure could be seen as undesirable.

Maybe you mean "justification for misanthropy"? Maybe if everyone acted like a complete asshole all the time. But they don't, thankfully. — Terrapin Station

I meant justification.

Everyone does not have to act badly all the time to give a negative assessment of humans or the human condition. I consider World War two and the Holocaust a huge black mark against humanity that cannot be lessened by acts of kindness. It is hard to find acts of helpful behaviour equivalent to the harmful and destructive behaviour.

I cannot understand why people could treat human atrocities and other bad behaviours so lightly.

Qualia cannot be useless, or they wouldn't have evolved. — PoeticUniverse

I am not claiming they are useless. I am claiming the require freewill to be acted upon.

You brought up the term qualia which is not something I ascribe to. I would just say conscious experiences and mental content.

I think it is a confusion when people use the term brain and don't clarify the difference between this and things like consciousness, mental states and the self.

I don't agree with the idea that we are our brain however if you claim we are our brain then we cannot get rid of freewill by saying the brain did this or that. Free will denial lead to dualism where there is an epiphenomenal helpless observer in the brain.

If you think that we are our brain then it is we who are attending qualia. The no freewill position makes consciousness an epiphenomenon helplessly experiencing bodily experiences.

If the brain is just a bunch of mechanical matter spontaneously reacting efficiently to stimuli I see no reason for consciousness.

It is a conscious self entity that experiences quailia. The brain is something explored by biology but not something we experience directly. Neurons were not discovered through introspection.

Any qualia would be the brain's way of broadcasting a product so that other brain areas could attend to the result. — PoeticUniverse

I do not see the point of any qualia if you cannot act on it.

Humans have a vast array of conscious data that they act on including the information that scientists use to propose theories and musicians use to create tunes.

If humans did not need free will there would be no need for consciousness.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread yet but I would like to present my evidence for free will which is...Pain.

What would be the point of human or any organism experiencing pain if they could not freely act on it?

The only explanation of pain that seems to make some sense is that it acts as a warning signal to avoid bodily harm.

Evidence that pain does prevent bodily harm is found in cases of people with congenital pain defect who suffer from severe injury because they are unaware of which actions are damaging their body such as sitting in a bad position or touching something hot. These people do not instinctively react to pain stimuli. The lack of conscious access to negative stimuli means they cannot volitionally move out of danger.

I have other reasons to accept free will as well though..

I am an antinatalist as you may now and when it comes to antinatalism people often instantly respond if life is so terrible why don't you commit suicide or something like that.

Apparently life is only terrible if you commit suicide.

Antinatalism is not saying all life is terrible all the time but a lot of people are suffering badly and unjustifiable. Mental health, problems, life problems and suicide are indicative of this. So the fact of suicide is not in anyway I can conceive an endorsement of life as it is.

I think the idea of suicide as impulsive or a symptom of madness or even as a liberating release from a terminal illness is trying to take it out of the political and ideological realm.

Viewing suicide as a kind of philosophical stance which can be interpreted to be indicative of just whatever, it's romanticising. — Judaka

I have been looking at suicide as significant statistic. The article that you linked to claims that 1/3 to 80% of suicides maybe impulsive. Now that is a very indeterminate estimate.

It doesn't reflect the fact that there are thousands of successful suicides in America where we cannot judge how impulsive they were.

I think spontaneity in suicides is the same as spontaneity required in any decision. At the point you commit or attempt suicide you have to make a final decision to go ahead.

But the circumstances leading up to a suicide include all kinds of dysfunction and depression. There are lots of people that feel suicidal but don't attempt it also.

So why is suicide a phenomena at all. I know people that committed suicide and I have attempted suicide myself in the past and we all have had troubled backgrounds. I took overdoses twice but they turned out not be lethal. I haven't attempted suicide in the last 20 years although I have had strong urges at different times. I have been involved in the mental health services and have articulated a lot of my opinions and philosophy on the internet. If I ever did commit suicide it could not be separated from all that I have articulated over the years.

I think if this life was truly fulfilling and lacked harm we would not be eager for death.

Death is inevitable as well as being a big unknown. I would prefer to die naturally whatever that means and not feel forced to depart life prematurely.

i don't want anyone to feel forced to kill themselves because of the nature of life as it is now. Also I don't want the world after I die to be a terrible place that I leave behind.

There is a kind of paradox here that if the afterlife is something great then why persist in this place? This is question for the religious or simply any believer in a better afterlife.

But what concerns me is that people are ignoring the ramifications of up to a million people a year killing themselves and these people not having a voice in the politics despite the implications of what is a drastic or severe action.

Maybe killing yourself is a courageous and revolutionary act? But when is it appropriate to do it?

The study into impulsive suicides in America is based around firearms. I think that access to firearms is going to allow more impulsive suicides because it seems to be the less intimidating method of suicide. A lot more people attempt suicidal then are successful because most methods of trying to kill yourself are less effective then shooting yourself.

I am not claiming that people committing suicide are making an explicit social or political point but they are an important statistic and representative of human nature.

I don't think the values of people who have not attempted or committed suicide are more sound than those who have. Suicide does not seem to be part of the human narrative even though it has continuously happened. The closest thing now to this dialogue is antinatalist who don't believe life should be continued via reproduction. You might say not having children is type of genetic suicide.

I can't believe that that Durkheim statistic still holds up. The Protestant faith learned nothing from his work. — thewonder

I was referring to the Durkheim statistic because it suggests that suicide might have strong social and cultural elements.

I grew up in a strict protestant background which involved a lot of internalizing and soul searching. People have claimed that introspection can be lethal.

. But dead people don't post, and have no philosophy. — unenlightened

But they do study the causes of death.

These causes might be disease pollution, bad housing, mental health and so on and these can lead to policy change

.But like I say I just see a lot of suicide as not endorsing life. It is an aspect of human nature. an almost unique biological/psychological trait.

On the other hand suicide might be giving up and admitting defeat. Where you failed to significantly change life or convince someone of a cause and gave up or felt defeated or weakened.

That was a long suicide note.

It has been critiqued elsewhere. I just worry that it was a too long and rambling statement and I hope he didn't die in vain.

What do you think that statement is? the nearest I can get is a universal and definitive "Fuck off!", but I'm not sure that 'profound' is how I would describe it. — unenlightened

I think suicide refutes some claims made by the living. I will need to root around to find some good specific examples.

If someone commits suicide at a hundred after having a full life you could say this person has not rejected life, but if someone commits suicide at 20 and is in reasonable physical health you can see this as a rejection of life.

I think these deaths should class as a source of information about the quality of human life and as a statistically significant rejection of common human goals.

For example does someone who killed themselves early on, or in the middle of life care about things such as "Climate change, The Environment, The Economy, Trump, Guns, "The future of our children" and Brexit?"

I am not even sure that the voices of the mentally ill and generally distressed get heard or responded to but I think it is easy to overlook someone after they are dead unless friends and family campaign on behalf of their legacy. There are protest suicides but I would prefer to protest whilst alive.

There is even a stigma to expressing a negative worldview and a degree of enforced positivity which can suppress speech.

I feel that suicide is a rejection of life and hence a profound statement.

We can make a comparison with gun violence here.

Far more people kill themselves with guns than die in mass shootings but the latter issue gets far far more publicity. I think there enough suicides warrant an investigation into the phenomenon and factors that might cause it (outside of sociology text books)

It could be that social circumstances and values are leading to suicide because there are communities and countries where suicide rates are significantly lower such as the difference between catholic and protestant suicide rates.

The unknown is not the supernatural.

The issue is the importance of the unknown. Not knowing the cure for cancer is not the same as not knowing how many grains of sand there are. So it is not just a religious versus atheist issue.

But both sides of that dichotomy have a reason to exploit or diminish the unknown. I am a general agnostic in the face of the unknown.

Here is a further elaboration.

Imagine there is a person who has a huge fetish about someone having sex with them while they are asleep or unconscious. Their biggest sexual fantasy is that someone has sex with them whilst they are asleep or unconscious.

So they leave a note in their pocket saying "If I fall asleep or become unconscious please have sex with me".

Later you find this person lying unconscious in the street and are unaware of the note in their pocket.

Most people would not sexually assault this person assuming that no unconscious person wants someone to have sex with them. They would not base their judgment on an individual personal preference but on a general rule.

So when you respect an unconscious person you are usually basing it on a general rule not on their specific preference and so you can easily do the same in an abstract way with the unborn.

Sure. Do you understand the difference between whether we're talking about someone who can normally grant or withhold consent or not? — Terrapin Station

Most human beings past, future, and present can give consent.

Someone who is unconscious cannot give consent in the present only in the future like the children people seek to create.

An unconscious person is unable to give consent. Only a conscious person can give consent. Why should we respect an unconscious person during the stage they can't give consent?

If you think it is because the unconscious person will become conscious in the future that is speculative and you don't know that they will regain consciousness.

if you can be speculative about the future of unconscious person then you can be speculative about the futures of any new human that will be created.

I don't see a difference between an unconscious person unable to consent and a non existent person able to consent. Unless an unconscious person regains conscious they cannot consent. they may never regain consciousness.

But the inability to consent does not justify you doing anything you want to them. Some people use this arguments to defend the environment because they will say even though plants are not conscious we are not justified in wantonly destroying them.

You can morally criticize someone for their intentions unless you are a moral nihilist. You can prevent harm by thwarting someones intentions. Not creating a child is preventing future inevitable harm. Like I said to Station earlier not acting is a way of respecting consent and a way of not causing harm.

When someone starts to exist they have strong preferences usually and can reject life and feel imposed upon. It is this potential to feel imposed upon and have personal opinions and be imposed on that is being created.

↪Andrew4Handel All the things you say are true. My point is that none of these things is unknown in the sense that the nature of dark energy or the existence of extra-terrestrial life is unknown. — T Clark

I don't know. I gave examples of unknowns such as the precise numbers of grains of sands and stars. These are hypothetically knowable. So I am differentiating between the hypothetically knowable and currently inaccessible knowledge (which we don't even have a convincing framework or set of reliable axioms to study them with).

Dark energy, dark matter and the multiverse are like a God of the gaps. Unknowns posited to explain gaps in data or to rescue current theories. They are seen as credible because they apply scientific terminology.

Some people are trying to give materialist or scientific account of morality which they view as giving it more credibility and more of an empirical basis.

Do you doubt that deer or chimpanzees have most of those same experiences? — T Clark

I have no idea. I only have access to my own mind and my own experiences.

I don't think creating analogies between your own experiences and other people or other organisms is sufficient. Some experiences are widespread and we can imagine common experiences in a basic way such as having a headache or feeling cold but the rich personal world including many experiences and values we don't share is is unlikely to be something one can imagine or see on a brain scan.

This also relates to the Mary's room Knowledge argument so that unless Mary has seen red she can't simply imagine it and Knut Nordby a real life achromatic said he couldn't imagine colours even though he had extensively studied the visual system and psychology etc.

There is no explanation of how anything in the brain gives rise to or could give rise to mental phenomena without leaving a large explanatory gap.
— Andrew4Handel

And yet it does — PoeticUniverse

There are different models of consciousness, Dualism argues that the mind and brain interact but are independent. You might use the radio signal analogy

Panpsychism suggests everything is imbued with consciousness.

Idealism suggests everything is mental and is a position that has been and still is supported by several physicists

Solipsism is profound skepticism that one person might be imagining reality and questions the existence of other minds. I have not heard a convincing refutation of solipsism and agree with Descartes Cogito about the primary certainty being of our self existing in some form.

I have a different question for you mate, what would be an absolute proof that God does not exist?
Because for me absolute proof of God's existence would a simple hello. — Filipe

Evidence is not straight forward.

Democritus suggested an atomic theory of matter thousands of years ago and the existence of atoms was only considered proven about a hundred years ago (although the nature of atoms is still mysterious and they are not indivisible as initially though)

Democritus probably like most people can looked at his surroundings and experiences and tried to understand what reality consisted of.

When something exists that is evidence for something and scientists, philosophers and other thinkers speculate about what reality is, what is causing their experiences and what stuff is made of and how it came to exist..

The problem is something is not usually if ever evidence of nothing. So to prove a creator deity did not exist you would have to present a compelling case that reality could be explained in terms of something from nothing, self creating and self sustaining.

Morality is a matter of human value and preference. No amount of study will come up with a definitive statement. — T Clark

Peoples moral beliefs affect how they behave. Moral certainty or the reverse moral nihilism can impact behaviour negatively but moral agnosticism can lead to caution.

Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer both claimed to be moral nihilists who converted to religion in prison. On the other side religious fanatics/fundamentalists claim their religion commands them to commit atrocities.

There are people including myself who might have vengeful and nihilistic feelings but restrain themselves based on moral uncertainty. Whereas in some countries/conflicts tit for tat violence continues with both sides feeling justified.

There are hundreds of neuroscience studies about the nature, scope, behavioral effects, and experience of consciousness. These have gotten more specific and detailed with the development of cognitive science techniques - PET scans, MRIs. Specific brain activity can be associated with specific mind activity - memory, emotion, thought, perception. This information has been used to try to understand the functional processes that go to make up consciousness. The one source I can steer you toward is "The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio. I don't like the book much and I'm not sure if I buy his conclusions, but I found it a very plausible example of what a neuroscience description of consciousness might look like. — T Clark

I did a degree in Philosophy and Psychology with a module on philosophy of mind. I had to do a lot of reading in this area including about mind-brain correlation, interpreting brain scanning results, language processing, meaning etc.

There is no explanation of how anything in the brain gives rise to or could give rise to mental phenomena without leaving a large explanatory gap.

The idea of one specific experience has problems because experiences have many different features. However say you correlated something like someones memory of their grandmother to some specific neurons their would still be a fundamental puzzle of how activation of this area produced conscious experience.

We don't have a measure of consciousness so that we can prove anyone any organism is consciousness. There is wide range of problems in the field and a massive literature. It is a very optimistic stance to take to believe the field is near an explanation of consciousness.

I think having a child does not resolve the ethical issue about creating children. In the same way that killing someone does not resolve the ethical issue about killing.

Having children because it is "natural" justifies of free for all of anyone doing anything because they can.
In the same way slavery has gone on throughout human history by brute force.

I think it is nihilistic to have children without good argument and sufficient justification.

You can travel to South Africa without breaking your leg. So traveling to South Africa doesn't cause you to break your leg. — Terrapin Station

If you break your leg on South African soil then South Africa was a causal factor in breaking your leg.

South Africa refers to the territory governed by South Africa and that territory contains hazards that can harm you.

South Africa is not a necessary and sufficient cause to harm someone but creating a child is.

I don't believe her. I can believe that was her attitude when she was interviewed, but I know plenty of people who will say things in that vein at times and things completely inconsistent with it at other times. — Terrapin Station

You are aware that people commit suicide aren't you?

Not doing something is respecting consent....such as not creating children.

It's also a f**ked view that not only do you think that anyone is forcing anyone to "suffer" for 80 years, just the fact that you think that anyone is suffering for 80 years is f**ked. — Terrapin Station

"I have not had a single happy day in my life. I have always worked hard, digging in the garden. I am tired," Istambulova told the Daily Mail. When asked about her secrets for longevity, she said, "It was God's will. I did nothing to make it happen.... Long life is not at all God's gift for me—but a punishment."

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9k8ydd/earths-supposed-oldest-living-person-has-hated-every-day-of-her-life

I disagree with your characterization of consent. If you do not rape someone then you are refraining from an action because you respect someones consent. Refraining from actions not doing actions is the main way that consent is respected.
— Andrew4Handel

None of that disagrees with anything I've said, though. — Terrapin Station

It does because you can respect consent without an action and without involving anyone else just restraining your own behaviour.

I would never have children so there is never going to be the question of what I might make my children do. The whole premise of antinatalism is that it is immoral to have children. Once you have had a child there is a limit to how much you can control their well being.

I have a friend who suffered from genuine school phobia but he was forced to go to school including because the educational psychologist encouraged his parents to do so. I also know someone one else who ended up stopping going to school because he couldn't cope.

You seem to have a trivial view of things that people find hard. I always went to school but I got badly bullied. If someone enjoys school then they are less likely to complain. I also mentioned being forced to church and throughout my whole childhood I went to church up to 5 times a week and had to read the bible and pray everyday.

I am getting the impression now that you don't value consent at all.

Somethings are internally contradictory or refuted by further evidence.

I meant valid

Consent is for specific actions.

Give an example of a specific action you have in mind — Terrapin Station

I disagree with your characterization of consent. If you do not rape someone then you are refraining from an action because you respect someones consent. Refraining from actions not doing actions is the main way that consent is respected.

I gave my own experiences of being forced to go to church and school also I was forced to eat what my mother chose for me You are forced to work or either claim social security. You are forced to continue surviving or commit suicide.

The consent issue only arises in humans because of our unique cognitive capacities. I don't know what other animals would think about procreating if they could reflect and reason like us.