Comments

  • Ethical Work
    I am interested in whether work is a moral thing.

    You could say work is necessary but that it has no moral connotations. Or you could say working is moral but some work is immoral.

    I think the idea that it is moral is potentially manipulative and open to exploitation.

    Also we had slavery that was once acceptable which is yet another kind of work which seems to have always been completely unjustifiable.
  • Ethical Work
    , I find picking tobacco leaves better than mugging someone in an alley.TheMadFool
    Not every unemployed person turns to crime. Some resort to begging and in the past that was even a religious order. Now we have state dependents and welfare recipients.

    The problem seems to me is the proliferation of unethical jobs where as you say in the past most jobs were less ethically suspect. Should we resign ourselves to propping up the status quo.

    But could it be that we simply should not do unethical jobs even if the alternative is starvation? Could it be that working in this context is immoral?Or does the fact you are exerting labour give everything a veneer of morality?
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    It seems to me that consent is not considered a problem if life is seen as an overall good. But if you do not share this view then consent is a problem.

    We would usually do something without someones consent if we were almost certain it was in their interest. I don't see how this world is good enough and ethical enough to be in someones interest accept maybe on a case by case basis for someone who is privileged and mentally well. Mental distress can quickly make any scenario highly undesirable.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    The DNA is not identical to S but it will become an essential part of S.

    The rape analogy consent is most powerful. You cannot have sex with an unconscious person because they cannot consent to it and therefore it will be rape.

    It is not usually acceptable to do something that will effect someone that they couldn't consent and may not have consented to.The fact an unconscious person cannot consent to sex is what makes it so unethical.

    Because someone cannot consent to being born I cannot see any ethical good in that scenario. If someone enjoys there life that is fortunate but does not mitigate the lack of consent. (I will go into this more in the other Schopenhauer thread.)
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    Oh please. Where have I endorsed attacking people?S

    I am not saying you are endorsing this but this is but this is what many people experience when they make valid complaints about the life they didn't choose. It is not just complaints people don't like but open suffering. They prefer to celebrate stoicism.

    Why stoicism? Because that way you don't upset other people with you suffering and they do not have to feel disturbed or guilty. They also prefer to portray life as a gift and not a burden.

    Should parents just stop being parents and leave their kids to fend for themselves?S

    Once you have unnecessarily created a child then I believe you have a responsibility towards them, although not all parents accept this responsibility.

    You can never give your child full freedom but you can ameliorate the situation by giving them as much control over their life as possible. But even the most generous parenting cannot stop bad outcomes.

    A parent will always be the primary cause for their child's existence and the essential cause for the child's later outcomes and if people saw this more and its ramifications maybe they would rethink things.
  • Ethical Work
    Martin Luther called the work of lay people (whatever that was) as holy as the work of monks, nuns, and priests. Religious work (preaching, praying, serving) is holy, but so is bricklaying holy; so is milking cows holy; so is mining and smelting iron holy; so is teaching school, and all manner of work. That what the Protestant Work Ethic is about: The work of man is the work of GodBitter Crank

    I like this picture because it seems to value you all work equally. But I think to value all work equally then it should all be paid more equally or at least no job should be poorly paid.

    I think I have been confusing the Protestant work ethic with this quote from early on in the bible that God said to Adam and Eve after banishing them from paradise.

    Genesis 3:19

    "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return"
  • Ethical Work
    Having a job means you earn a living ethically. It may be boring or difficult but it isn't immoral.TheMadFool

    I would not want to do a job or start a business that just harmed the environment and was not sustainable just in order to become rich and give people a short pleasure from a disposable item that then remained in the environment as a pollutant.

    Also Jehovah Witnesses in Germany refused to support the Nazis and their war aims and so were persecuted and sent to concentration camps. I think that is a good stance to take but dangerous, by not contributing to something you see as highly immoral.
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    My life could have been less of a burden to me and I greatly resent that fact. Some parents and societies make life worse and also refuse to take responsibility for this.
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    (...)it's justified to make a decision to act on what you reasonably believe would be in their best interestS

    But someone who does not exist does not have interests that can be furthered.

    If someone is unconscious and you help them that could be against there interest if they wanted to commit suicide. if you say that it is in someones interest to be born before conception you can equally say it is against their interests and they could have reverse preferences.

    On the issue of burden I find it absurd and cruel to create someone and then attack them when they complain about a life they didn't chose.

    I think there are good reasons to think life is unethical or bad thing even if someone has a preference for it. So even if you don't think consent is important you can still make an unethical choice on someone else's behalf.
    The only situation where consent might not be an issue if one far far removed from this reality where absolutely everyone was deliriously glad to be alive and lived in total equality.
    However being glad to be a live still does not tell us whether the context is a good one. You could engender this delirium by a drug.
  • Ethical Work
    How would you define with exactitude and clarity what ethical work is? What should we teach the young generation as praise-worthy labour?DiegoT

    I would rather define unethical work. Work that makes other people waste their money, work that damages the environment. Work that exploits the environment in an unsustainable way. Work that is cruelly monotonous. And more.

    Ethical work is harder to define but I assume most people believe health care work is ethical, Nurses, carers and Doctors, therapist and so on if it is done for a compassionate way and not solely for financial gain and power.
    Also ethical leaning would be work to help the poor, challenge inequality and prejudice, environmentally sustainable work or work to improve the environment.

    What concerns me is the idea that generating money or accumulating wealth is good thing on its own regardless of context or just the over riding desire for profit and excess wealth as a good motive for work.
  • Ethical Work
    Clean dishes are the good that make washing up have valueunenlightened

    I actually find washing up therapeutic.

    I think work, loosely defined as effort, is enjoyable if you like what you are doing or find it therapeutic or get pleasure from the end results.

    I think some labor saving devices we use are used for their novelty and the enjoyment of gadgets. On the other hand some of these labor saving devices give us more time to do more other work as well as increasing leisure time.
  • Giving someone a burden they didn't need to experience is wrong
    I think that life can be a burden regardless of what is happening and that we cannot justify making someone experience life without consent.

    I only do things for people or to people with their consent as consent is impossible here life is an imposition.
    It is down to the individual how they view life or react to life. People have different preferences.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    I think that all the matter that makes a human does exist before it turns into a child. the only thing that might not exist prior to conception is consciousness.

    I think creating someone is clearly an act of force on them because you are in control of the outcome which profoundly effects them. There is no mystery now about the process of reproduction where you have unprotected sex knowing it could lead to the fusion of egg and sperm and start the process of making another person.

    Anyhow here is another example. If you plant a land mine in a playground it does not matter if the persons killed by the mine did not exist when you initially planted it because your action was clearly one aimed to maim and kill and harm someone else at some stage. You can expose future persons to harm and hardship.

    To me also if someone cannot chose to be born then they did not chose there life and cannot really freely chose anything afterwards because any choice is forced upon them by the nature of non-consensually coming into existence.

    Likewise you cannot authentically help your child charitably because you caused their life problems in the first place. It is like chopping off someones leg and then making them a prosthesis
  • Nature versus Nurture
    I think that just creating a child makes you ultimately responsible for that child. I think there is a lot parents can do before and after a child is born that influences outcomes.

    It seems very easy to influence outcomes and I cannot see how genes can prevent an outcome being influenced.
    The below video outlines some of the problems with behavioral genetics and twin studies.
    For example identical twins separated at birth still shared the womb for 9 months and could be equally influenced by the mother biochemistry and her moods and so on.

    I think part of this issue comes down to free will and volition so that we are not just driven by natural forces but can intervene.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0WZx7lUOrY
  • Why is our upbringing so diametrically different than adulthood?
    I am not sure how beneficial parents can be for their child's future.

    Maybe if you are a millionaire you can support your child for life taken all financial pressure off them.

    I don't know if parents or a child know what is best for the child.

    But it does seem problematic to infantalize a child a child and leave them with no Independence or coping mechanisms.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    "The exponential fall in genome sequencing costs led to the use of GWAS studies which could simultaneously examine all candidate-genes in larger samples than the original finding, where the candidate-gene hits were found to almost always be false positives and only 2-6% replicate;[7][8][9][10][11][12] in the specific case of intelligence candidate-gene hits, only 1 candidate-gene hit replicated,[13] the top 25 schizophrenia candidate-genes were no more associated with schizophrenia than chance,[14][15] and of 15 neuroimaging hits, none did.[16] The editorial board of Behavior Genetics noted, in setting more stringent requirements for candidate-gene publications, that "the literature on candidate gene associations is full of reports that have not stood up to rigorous replication...it now seems likely that many of the published findings of the last decade are wrong or misleading and have not contributed to real advances in knowledge".[17] Other researchers have characterized the literature as having "yielded an infinitude of publications with very few consistent replications" and called for a phase out of candidate-gene studies in favor of polygenic scores.[18]"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_heritability_problem
  • Death Existence Consciousness
    I think when a person is no longer conscious they are absent from us.

    I feel a lot of important human communication is done through language which gives us an insight into another person and their inner world.

    The loss of consciousness seems to deprive us of that person. I am not sure that what is being lost is simply a functional state. Also consciousness appears to be the seat of values and subjectivity.
  • Nature versus Nurture

    What issue is that supposed to resolve?
  • Nature versus Nurture
    You’re not related to Greg Handel of Wisconsin, are you?Noah Te Stroete

    No I am a big fan of The Composer G F Handel.
  • Nature versus Nurture


    Robert Plomin has come out with a book arguing similar this year, 2018.

    https://theconversation.com/blueprint-by-robert-plomin-latest-intelligence-genetics-book-could-be-a-gift-for-far-right-104499

    "DNA is the major systemic force, the blueprint, that makes us who we are. The implications for our lives – for parenting, education and society – are enormous."

    "On the science, Plomin has previously expressed his support for Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s racial premises in their notorious 1994 book The Bell Curve "
  • Nature versus Nurture
    Well, they would react similar to how they react when it is proved that violence or gluttony is in our biological nature. They´d say: but we also have a spiritual (or cultural) nature that must play a role, or we are just chimps.DiegoT

    I do not think they are willing to accept God would create homosexuality. If it was proven genetic

    . I think some gay people including myself here would be reassured if it was purely genetic because of the slurs we have faced.

    I do think religious people that opposes something that is genetic and biological and immutable will tie themselves up in knots be contradictory and look horrible (which is what happens)

    If there was anyway it could be shown we could be nurtured to homosexual they would jump on that.

    Nevertheless I don't think you can get an is fro an ought so whether a behaviors is nature, nurture or a combination how we respond to that or create values from it is subjective values.
  • Why is our upbringing so diametrically different than adulthood?
    My experience was completely like this. Completely controlled as a child with no preparation for adulthood. Then turn 17 and expected to fend for myself.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    it´s not possible that some cancers are entirely environmental.DiegoT

    I am not saying that I am saying they are primarily caused by something in the environment and can be avoided by not being exposed to that environment. It is trivially true that the the body and nature are involved in everything but not causally deterministic.

    Another example is comparing physics and economics. It is trivially true that coins are considered to be made of atoms but atoms play no role in economic theory. You could class money as an emergent property which behaves differently then the basic behaviour considered in atomic theory.

    Psychology could be described as an emergent property in this way.
  • Nature versus Nurture

    It seems to me that humans have a vast repertoire of behaviour and potential. Whereas animals have a limited repertoire of behaviour and potential.

    So there is a huge range of possible outcomes for humans and environments they live in.So I think it is much harder to predict outcomes or find general causal factors. Also people can be channeled in numerous directions to "flourish" in different ways. So I don't think tendencies like introversion, aggression etc can be that determinate.

    Maybe being shy will prevent you becoming president or Prime Minister? Maybe not? Maybe aggression will get you a top job as a ruthless manager or maybe it will land you in prison? Maybe diligence will make you hard working and popular with your boss but unpopular with your more relaxed work mates.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    Remember what Richard Dawkins said?

    "Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.

    They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”"
  • Nature versus Nurture


    I was saying Angelina would only want to remove her breasts if she thought the cancer was genetic and not otherwise.

    The overall point is that there are genetic conditions that cannot be avoided and lots of environmental factors that can be avoided. But I am failing to see where this blend of nature and nurture is arising in specific cases.

    What I am seeking to show is that you can make a valid distinction between nature and nurture without it been an oversimplification. I am skeptical about genetic or nature explanations unless they are robust and specific not just hand waving.

    I think you would have to be a determinist to believe nature could not be overcome. Also I believe people are biased even when they play lip service to the both are equal stance. For example with Stephen Pinker who really wants to prove that evolution and nature have some inescapable deterministic effects.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    If the idea is that we should have equal outcomes for allDiegoT

    I have not put forward this idea. My comment was that genes can fully manifest their attributes in ideal environments.
    For example if you drop a Lion in the middle of the Atlantic then it's genes will prove useless but in the Savannah it can show its skills. In this sense genes can easily be undermined by environment and nurture.

    So before you claim to have proved genes are responsible for intelligence or outcomes then you need to create an equal playing field to validate this claim.

    My other argument is that we could help people to be the best them, whatever that is, otherwise we are going to be forcing very different people with different abilities into a damaging rigid paradigm. This could mean something like a completely different education system for different types of people.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    But your parents are bags of genes and how they behave (raise you) is a result of their genes and their own upbringing (adopting the behavioral norms of ancestral bags of genes). It's a process so tightly woven that it's difficult to say that it's two separate things.

    Your Angelina Jolie example and comparison is one that supports my argument, not yours. It's both nature and nurture.
    Harry Hindu

    I don't see how My Joile example supports your point and I definitely do not think it is a tightly woven process. Some cancers are only caused because of an environmental factor and some are only caused because of a genetic disposition.

    I think your reference to genes is vague and you can't actually specify any particular gene complex that you can claim caused a behavior or outcome.
  • The De Re/De Dicto Distinction
    Well, those are just examples to illustrate the de re and de dicto distinction. Maybe you have a better example in mind? I can't think up any.Wallows

    I find this kind of philosophy hard to follow but to use something unrealistic as an example of language use undermines any argument.

    It is ironic that analytic philosophy and the philosophy of language is more complicated and obscure than the language it seeks to analyse.

    Quite a few years ago I studied philosophy of language but I found the examples and thought experiments totally implausible and convoluted. And also there is unnecessary jargon.

    If Ralph said "Someone is out to get me" you would say "Who" and then he would tell you a person or just express his general paranoia, resolving ambiguity.

    I think the meaning of a sentence is contextual and a false belief is only false if you analyse context. A lot of things are unproblematic in context and I can't think of any language that does not a occur in a rich context where there is prior and current events and many other factors influencing meaning.

    For example if Ralph was a Russian and talked about being spied on that would immediately make much more sense then a suburban house wife or Amazon tribes person saying it.

    I think it is absurd to try and analyse the meanings of word on their own with no context.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?


    The problem is that no one can choose to be born and so how do you describe their existence instead other than as an act of force?
    I think things like houses are made to exist by force and when I am doing gardening or moving something around I am aware I am using force. I do not think the term force is a value judgement but it is obviously not how parents want to describe having a child. Maybe you like the "life is a gift" metaphor?

    Nevertheless I do think there is a puzzle about how we come into existence in term of consciousness because it seems you can mold clay into numerous different objects without it ever being aware of existence but humans are aware of existing in a profound way.

    I think there are definitely different degrees and varieties of indoctrination and I think that religious extremism is not equivalent to the inevitable indoctrination of a child on birth.

    However to limit force and indoctrination would entail giving a child adequate information to draw her own conclusions and to allow a high level of freedom of choice, information and action.
  • The De Re/De Dicto Distinction
    (1) Ralph believes that someone is a spy.

    This could mean either of the following.

    (2) Ralph believes that there are spies

    or

    (3) Someone is such that Ralph believes that he is a spy.
    SEP

    I don't think it means either of those things.

    For a start I don't think anyone ever says the sentence " Ralph believes there are spies." That is a very unnatural sentence especially without any context.

    If someone said "Ralph believes there are spies" you would ask for further questions to ascertain what they meant unless the prior conversation had already contained lots of information.

    The prior or later conversation would determine the exact meaning of the sentence.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
    None of that amounts to being able to do anything, pro or con, consensually or nonconsensually, to someone who doesn't exist.Terrapin Station

    I have not claimed someone non existent is being forced to do anything.

    However I did give the example of a vase, a vase comes to exist by an act of force on preexisting clay and then the vase is made to exist by someone else's actions.

    You seem to be quibbling or prevaricating about the boundary between coming into existence and not existing.

    Before a child comes to exist there is the potential and material for a child to come to exist. A humans psychological desire to create a child is also real and can motivate the action of turning preexisting matter into a new child. So I do not think there is non existence in the sense you seem to be referring to.

    Are you claiming nothing is forced on a child? I mentioned how straight after birth I was indoctrinated and forced into strict religious routine. It was not free of parental force at any stage in my childhood and I had to painfully struggle to leave including nearly dying by suicide attempt.

    I still think your point is a semantic mistake. Or a mistake about the relationship between intention and action. Before John Lennon was shot his assassin intended to shoot him and that intention was a significant causal event (that played a causal role in the eventual murder). My intention, not to create a child is preventing me causing a pregnancy.

    This seems similar to your apparent moral stance. If someone has every intention of Killing John Lennon you wouldn't prosecute them until the bullet exited the gun.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?

    What matters to me is the potential for harm. A dead person exists but has no potential for harm.
    I don't t like to do things that have the potential for harm like I will not work in the weapons industry and build a bomb.

    What matters with a (deeply) unconscious person is they can in the future be harmed. Not that they can be harmed whilst you are abusing them.

    On the other hand it seems like plants and the environment cannot be harmed although they exist because they do not appear conscious.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
    Aside from the fact that you're not seeing the distinction between whether a person exists or not (you're thinking of it simply as a question of whether someone is conscious--that's not the issueTerrapin Station

    Do you think a person exists when they are recently dead and their body is intact?
  • Nature versus Nurture
    Why do you think that genes, which direct the formation and operation of a person, would not determine outcomes?Bitter Crank

    By outcomes here I am not referring to hair color or intelligence etc.

    An outcome can be shaped or influenced by too many factors including chance.

    I think there is a valid discussion to be had about weighing up the contributions of nature and nurture in various areas including education and child rearing.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    Homosexuality is an interesting example (and sexuality in general) because people want to know what causes it whether it is genetic, occurs in the womb, or develops.

    If it was found to be genetic in some sense and this was proven beyond a doubt it would be interesting to see how religious anti gay people reacted.

    I find the idea people could be reared to be gay via parenting and propaganda highly implausible and as a gay person who grew up in a strictly religious home I see no evidence of this happening to me.

    I have read claims (by homophobes no doubt) that the reason some gay men had bad relationships is because the boys sexuality was alienating the father from the fatherly duties he had a preference for. Some people blame a child's personality for the parents rejection of it.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    I'm not interested in discussing debates. I'm interested in discussing reality. Reality is nature. Nature is reality. If it makes you feel better to use the term "reality" then that's fine. "Reality" is what makes you "you". You're making it more difficult on yourself by dividing reality into "nature" and "nurture".Harry Hindu

    But I think in reality some things are genes and "nature" and somethings are nurture/environment in a real sense.

    Take cancer for example. Angelina Jolie had both her breast removed because she had an increased risk of breast cancer in her family.

    However some people have developed cancer through the workplace being exposed to toxic substances like asbestos or lead. So it wouldn't make sense for Jolie to have a double mastectomy if her relatives died in a work related incident.

    The debates people have are based on evidence.
  • Nature versus Nurture
    Nature and nurture are the same. You are arguing a false dichotomy.Harry Hindu

    Maybe I should clarify myself here. By nurture I mean parenting and some social factors. The term nature is problematic in some sense because it does not refer to anything is specific but is like a concept someone times contrasted with the artificial or supernatural.

    So in a trivial way everything is nature but in the context of these debates nature equals biology and genes and sometimes ecological environment (as opposed to artificial environs)

    On the other hand nurturing is quite well defend as upbringing of offspring and it can refer to the environment you deliberately create or expose the offspring to.

    Nature as in life in general on this planet is not really concerned with outcomes and many species go extinct and use a wide variety of strategies to achieve goals with mixed results and fluctuating systems. I am not arguing that we should make children in harmony with nature and their genes but that nurture can help the best traits of a person flourish.

    i am not optimistic either way but I think nurture and parental responsibility is very important.
  • Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
    I can think of a potential argument for having a child in the form of religion or supernatural/esoteric beliefs.

    Someone might believe that after creating a child, the child will live for ever. This life is temporary but they will go on to an eternal heavenly afterlife so there life will over all be amazing.

    This is a genuine hope some people claim to have. But it is a dangerous optimism with no evidence to support it (depending on how you analyse the evidence claims)

    I think to have a child on this kind of worldview would require strong evidence and more evidence than has been presented.but still it would not justify a free for all of unregulated procreation.

    I find it harder to understand why someone without these kind of beliefs would have child, some of these people believing in no innate purpose or meaning, no afterlife, no God, no freewill etc.

    I think religion might encourage people to have children because it is based on a mixture of false hope and ignorance and that rationality and inquiry does not lead people to have lots of children if any.