(a) simply refuse to recognize the potential joy and value of life — John Doe

I am discussing whether people are entitled to have children and not whether life has joy and value.

You appear to be claiming that these things justify everyone having children.

You can hold that life has joy in it with out claiming people are entitled to have children.

If you think joy and pleasure count for having children then it would be consistent to recognise that things like, suffering, drug addiction, overpopulation count against people having children.

You were saying people that try and monitor and manage the welfare of children are too analytic and contrasted this with a sentimental picture of motherhood which in no way helps children in need of an intervention
It is questionable sentimentality that seemed to be your only argument after you questionable depiction of those "analytically" concerned with child welfare.

This really suggests having children can't be justified by reason only sentiment which is a suspicion I had already.

Show me how MY reasoning leads to that. — apokrisis

You said:

So the default position is “why not?” We wouldn’t seek to impose restrictions on individuals (or individuals upon themselves) until we can supply the good reasons. — apokrisis

You say the default position is "Why not" which entails people do as they please until they feel you have given them a good reason not to do so.(Which could be never).

People should be open to reason before they act. Unless you think people should act without good reason until someone can convince them of an alternative course.

It concerns me deeply when you think you can reason about these matters of supreme importance — John Doe

It concerns me deeply that you can use sentiment to try and mask the vast amount of historical and current suffering of children and their adults selves via sentiment.

The matter of supreme importance is child suffering and suffering and individual integrity not someones desire to enact yet another narcissistic fictional drama with the fruit of their loins where they feature as some kind of heroic self sacrificing benevolent life giver.

In the city I live someone had all 8 of his children taken off him at their birth because he was a drug addict as were his girlfriends. But we mustn't stop them having children because that would imply that parenting is no longer sacred and romantic?

Many of us work hard, use technology and sacrifice on behalf of our children — John Doe

You would have to work hard to survive even if you did not have children you are just passing on a burden.
It is not a sacrifice to take care of child that you created that did not ask to be born. It is like a masochistic imposition on yourself that you are portraying in the most sentimental unreasonable light that doesn't tally with historical evidence.

People can have a child for no reason, with no qualifications, money, no resources no parental ability. There is no restraint on anyone having children for any reason.

A lot of childless people (including Newton, Handel, Schubert & Descartes) have contributed a lot to society. There are to be creative, change the world and fulfill yourself other than adding to overpopulation, resource depletion and inequality.

We wouldn’t seek to impose restrictions on individuals (or individuals upon themselves) until we can supply the good reasons. — apokrisis

Having a child is imposing on someone. How can you justify doing something that fundamentally effects someone else that did not consent to it? What kind of rights could we have over over someone else and why?

We can supply good reasons to stop someone harming another person but we refuse to do it in the case of child birth which is the source of all harms.

The burden is on people who feel entitled to do something to someone else not on people who seek to stop this harm.

The point of rights as I see it is about self integrity and harm prevention but having a child is not preventing harm or respecting the child's self integrity. It is an action that needs more justification than most.


By your reasoning I should be able to kill people until you make and argument that convinces me not to.

The immediate notion that there's something insane or unhinged about my concern with preserving the simple pleasure of a mother playing with her daughter...like, WTF are you talking about — John Doe

Society does not function based on mothers playing with their children in the garden, rather on hard work, technology, exploitation,sacrifice and the like.

So using some kind of irrational sentimental template to justify the rest of what reality consists of, the real non manipulative harsh reality(famine war, disease, blind chance) I find more than disturbing and not the least philosophical.

in an ever-growing sea of purely formal juridical relations. No long mother and child playing in the garden, but rights — John Doe

You seem to have a fantastical view if the past treatment of children based on Disney.

Huge numbers of children have starved to death and still do and do not have gardens to play in with some kind of Snow white mother figure. Children have the most protections now than any time in history. Children were sent down mines and up chimneys and are still working down mines and in factories. The increase in welfare has coincided with the increase in prosperity

It is an empathetic and not a legalistic mindset that refutes the right of people to have children along side personal experience of dysfunctional families.I can't think of any children's right movements inspired by legalism. The idea that anyone should be allowed to have children is the anathema to child welfare and patently absurd and the source of unmeasurable child suffering.

Maybe you could tell us how you define "right," — tim wood

I am a nihilistic about rights. I do not think nature provides us with any rights and they are human inventions.

The concept of rights makes people feel entitled as opposed to working with known resources or limitations.

Right seems to come from the idea that a behaviour or belief is vindicated and therefore right. But like values it seems to come from desires as opposed to science. For example I desire that no children should be hit therefore I believe no child should be hit or abused and have a right not to be hit and abused. I desire that women and men should be treated equally therefore I desire they have the right to be treated equally.

It is never the case that I have discovered a law of nature entailing rights. It is understandable why someone wants to minimise harm and that is the most understandable conception of rights as opposed to entitling anyone to do what they like. I think intervening in different ways in the creation of new people is the only way to limit harm and have harm based rights.

I'm wondering if overpopulation is inevitable — Lif3r

There is no reason it should be. Humans have made massive interventions into nature. We don't just let primitive nature run our lives but have invented sophisticated mechanisms for survival, including thousands of medications, surgery, numerous technologies to improve our welfare. Having children is the only area that people are reluctant to control or demand rationality.

Controlling conception? Good luck with that. — tim wood

The Chinese did this but now they have reversed their policy, but they had massive famines so they resorted to this policy.

However I would prefer people were reasoned with to refrain from having children and not fed propaganda concerning having children so people felt that having children was essential, the ultimate fulfilment, and entitlement and so on.

And besides who even knew where the little squirts came from in the first place? — Baden

I believe humans have always been intelligent enough to examine the consequences of having children. For example I reached my own conclusions from my own reasoning. It is true that people were less knowledgeable in that past but not that they had not had no ideas about the ramifications of having children.

For example most tribes I have read about and I can cite examples had restrictions on the number of children people had. They worked out what was a sustainable size of population that is why infanticide was widely practised.

Nevertheless I don't think people should have a right to have children based on ignorance. Of course people will have lots of children if they are uneducated and fed religious dogma but statistics shows that education and intelligence and wealth greatly reduce the number of children people have.

In a general sense she is entirely true and this is the cornerstone of Epicurean philosophy. — Marcus de Brun

That is just a bald statement. I gave evidence why she is not true.

What is your counter argument or counter evidence.

Here is another dubious statement from Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness"

She says"An organisms life depends on two factors: The material or fuel which it needs from the outside,and the action of it's own body, the action of using that fuel properly"

What she fails to mention is that humans equally rely on cooperation and depend on others. At the very least for the first 7+ years of childhood and I doubt many children around this age could survive unaided without learning some survival techniques from the humans. Humans need to learn how to talk, how to hunt and make a shelter. They don't just come out of the womb fending for themselves.

Parents cannot just be selfish and focus on their own survival if they want their genes to be carried on to another generation. Self sacrifice to some extent is written into the human mode of survival.

There are many different ways that organisms survive not just one mode of survival and some organisms die soon after reproduction or eat their mate, other species are highly cooperative. There are parasitic relationships and symbiotic relationships. Nevertheless following any one model like a law is making the Naturalistic Fallacy. If you use nature to justify a course of action you can justify anything because everything happens in nature.

WHERE OR WHAT IS YOUR CRITICISM? I hear only the usual grunting of from the herd! — Marcus de Brun

I did an extensive criticism here of her claim that "The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action"

I find Ayn Rand makes a lot of false claims in her work or claims she does not support or that are easily questioned.

For example in "The Virtue Ethics" she says:

"The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action"

For a start this, is causally implausible it is unlikely that what is good for us and what is pleasurable would be the same thing because that would be bizarre coincidence.
We know this isn't the case, because of cases of addiction and obesity and excess leading to ill health which are pleasure seeking activities.

There are lots of actions that are good for us that are not pleasurable.It is rather displeasure that causes us to improve our condition pleasure can lead to complacency and sloth or obesity. Painful physical exertion or surgeries can lead to improved health.

People who don't experience any pain are in more physical danger than people who don't experience pleasure as is recorded in cases of people with congenital pain defect. So it is pain avoidance rather than pleasure seeking that aids survival and flourishing.

"CIP is an extremely dangerous condition.[1] It is common for people with the condition to die in childhood due to injuries or illnesses going unnoticed"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain

Then there are Depressive Realism findings where depressed people on average make more realistic judgements than happy people. — Andrew4Handel

I feel that it is terrible, that you see destruction all around you, and that you are moving toward disaster until, and unless, all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected. It is precisely these trends which are bringing the world to disaster, because we are now moving towards complete collectivism, or socialism. A system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody, and we are moving that way only because of our altruist morality.

Rand is entirely correct here. — Marcus de Brun

Based on what evidence? What was she referring to?

How does she know that reversing and rejecting welfare state conceptions would prevent whatever disaster she was referring to.

The countries with the most comprehensive welfare states are among the most wealthy in the world.

I pointed out early on in the thread how Stephen Hawking was kept alive by the NHS but some Americans believed that he was treated in America and would have been left to die by our welfare state. That is typical of the level of debate I see in America.

Ayn Rand: I object to the idea that the people have the right to vote on everything.

Rand is completely correct here. Democracy is not perfect. Democracy gave America and the world Donald Trump. — Marcus de Brun

That was not Ayn Rand's point in her interview with Mike Wallace.

He pointed out to her that people voted for progressive socialist ideals and she objects to that. Voting for Trump is the complete reverse of that trend.

As far as I am aware there was no way to prevent people for voting for Trump. If people should be allowed to vote there is no limit to what they should be allowed to vote on. Political parties tend to outline their policies in a manifesto and you vote for a package.

If you oppose a political parties ideals and conduct you have the chance to vote them out next election.

In the same interview Ayn said: "The whole people elects. There is nothing wrong with the democratic process in politics

There is no alternative to democracy she just wants to prevent people from using it when the will of the people goes against her selfish desires and dogmas even if that means she frustrates the will of the majority. Indeed that is extremely selfish.

A political decision is always going to upset someone or negatively effect someone and that is unavoidable it is not cause for military intervention.

I find Ayn Rand makes a lot of false claims in her work or claims she does not support or that are easily questioned.

For example in "The Virtue Ethics" she says:

"The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action"

For a start this, is causally implausible it is unlikely that what is good for us and what is pleasurable would be the same thing because that would be bizarre coincidence.
We know this isn't the case, because of cases of addiction and obesity and excess leading to ill health which are pleasure seeking activities.

There are lots of actions that are good for us that are not pleasurable.It is rather displeasure that causes us to improve our condition pleasure can lead to complacency and sloth or obesity. Painful physical exertion or surgeries can lead to improved health.

People who don't experience any pain are in more physical danger than people who don't experience pleasure as is recorded in cases of people with congenital pain defect. So it is pain avoidance rather than pleasure seeking that aids survival and flourishing.

"CIP is an extremely dangerous condition.[1] It is common for people with the condition to die in childhood due to injuries or illnesses going unnoticed"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain

Then there are Depressive Realism findings where depressed people on average make more realistic judgements than happy people.

What evidence have you for this egregious interpretation of Rand? — Marcus de Brun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ooKsv_SX4Y&t=1087s

Ayn Rand: The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I feel that it is terrible, that you see destruction all around you, and that you are moving toward disaster until, and unless, all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected. It is precisely these trends which are bringing the world to disaster, because we are now moving towards complete collectivism, or socialism. A system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody, and we are moving that way only because of our altruist morality.

Mike Wallace: Ah...Yes, but you say everybody is enslaved to everybody, yet this came about democratically, Ayn. A free people in a free country voted for this kind of government, wanted this kind of legislation. Do you object to the democratic process?

Ayn Rand: I object to the idea that the people have the right to vote on everything.
........
So essentially if people volitionally do not vote how Ayn wants them to vote they should not be allowed you vote on that issue. This indicates also the only type of selfishness she endorses which does not include a welfare state.

I find Ayn Rand's views childish and incoherent.

She advocates selfishness as a virtue and then ignores and dismisses what most people actually desire.

If someone really wants to pay a high rate of tax and have a national health service etc that is them asserting their own desires and fulfilling themselves.

She dismisses this evidence and assumes with no reason that anyone that doesn't act under her definition of selfishness and desires things like social justice and redistribution of wealth has wrong motives or is brainwashed etc.

As I said near the beginning, cooperation helps personal well being being.

She only wants her viewpoint to triumph but that contradicts her own values because why should anyone else sacrifice their viewpoint and values for her if they are entitled to be self centered?

So when people judge her views to be psychopathic and unworkable they can happily reject them for selfish reasons of self preservation in the presence of her dark dystopian sphere.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0n_9CaImJk

It seems to me that that values can last for a long time and emotions can be temporary so that a value outlives an emotion making them come a part from one another.

You can be angry to see someone hitting a child and think it is wrong but can still feel it is wrong after the initial strong anger subsides.

Have you come to realize that your emotions are the real value judgments and that your thoughts aren't? The truth, in this case, is discovered from looking within. So, it was never about arguing about it like you and others are doing. — TranscendedRealms

I am a nihilist so I find it hard to see value in anything unfortunately. I am also a depressive so that can flatten the emotions.

I think if anything has value it is hard to discover that value. I just live in hope that life won't turn out to have been futile.

I don't see how you can really go from an emotion to a coherent value. To solve problems you need to use your intellect.

Well I don't think you have proven your point. What value is behind conflicted emotions?

Like I pointed out we can reject our own values even if we have a strong emotional attachment to them, through reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers_memo

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."

Millions of tons of waste plastic from British businesses and homes may be ending up in landfill sites across the world, the government’s spending watchdog has warned.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/uks-plastic-waste-may-be-dumped-overseas-instead-of-recycled

Are you saying emotions and values are identical because to me they seem to be quite different things?

If I eat food that I don't like I recognise that as a personal preference. If I don't enjoy lamb I don't judge it to be a bad thing so I can separate between personal preferences and moral values.

What do you think emotions are?

I am a value nihilist I think it is hard to validate values.

I don't recall a single given moment in my life where thoughts and beliefs allowed me to value things. My positive emotions have always been the only way I could value things in my life as beautiful, amazing, good, or magnificent. My negative emotions have always been the only way I could value things as horrible, bad, disgusting, or tragic. — TranscendedRealms

I don't see how you validate your values in this scenario.

It seems to be saying that if someone feels pleasure abusing people then that is the right thing to do because if someone enjoys doing things like abuse, exploitation and cruelty, then how can they judge them to be bad.

I think it is possible to judge things as bad that we enjoy doing or desire.

Are you saying emotions are the only valid way to the truth of values?

Like most people I have conflicting confused emotions so I couldn't rely on them very well. But I do think emotion is a big source of motivation and decision making from what I have heard studies claim that damage to certain areas of the brain associated with emotions undermine decision making and motivation.

Overall however after having to read a long book on emotions I became completely uncertain about what an emotion is. I need to reread it.

I don't think that the productivity or success of an ideology validates it.

For example I don't think that Christianity is true because of its successes, because of the great Cathedrals, music and the foundation of Universities and so on.

Likewise I don't think that the success of capitalism or any human endeavour makes it valid.

As with the example of religion you can build some great things, impressive feats of the imagination and persuasive social ideals on a fantasy.

This is one way you can view economics as soulless if it is not concerned with ethics, meaning, purpose and truth. If It is only concerned with profit and growth.

I think that the kind of "society" (or non society) Ayn Rand proposes would not work and the America she chose to live in was never like that.

For example Stephen Hawking was kept alive by the NHS in Britain. In America someone said this and this absolute lie went around.

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

In reality social services and wealth creating infrastructure, paid for by taxes have given opportunities to a lot of talented and productive people including universal education and access to health care. It is the most wealthy countries that have highest levels of social care.

It is easy to win the battle of survival of the fittest and just go round and kill your competition. The reason we don't all just fight to the death is because cooperation is better for ourselves.

So you having those appliances isn't irresponsible, but some African having them would be? — ssu

What is irresponsible is to exhaust environmental resources rather than reduce the worlds population.

Yes our lifestyles are wasteful. I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I don't have a car, I have never used a plane, I recycle everything possible.

I don't think it is possible for every country to have America and Europe's level of consumption so what is irresponsible is to just try and make everyone equally prolific consumers.

Also, usually more affluent societies do take care more of their environment — ssu

I don't think this is true at all. I already linked you to the problem of pollution in China and that is where a lot of things we use in the West is manufactured. Britain became very polluted when we did our own manufacturing.

Personally I don't think we should create children, to be wage slaves, care for the elderly and save the economy. If decreasing population leads to stagnant growth and wealth leads to decrease in population then it seems like you are advocating poverty.

Our reliance on oil is a key player in the problems in the Middle East.

She came across as a psychopath with a very chilling view of politics and economics.

The only mitigating circumstance I can think is that was a reaction to the communist terror.

And unless are you saying that there will be no necessity to sort peas or clean toilets in your ideal society, — gurugeorge

I am not putting forth an ideal society.
I think the main reason for the division of labour is to speed up or streamline the exploitation of resources.

But is possible for a doctor to grow her own peas and clean her own toilet and play in an amateur orchestra. Some businesses make employees do a variety of tasks including cleaning to share the burden of menial tasks.
It is possible for a family to live on a small holding to milk their own cow, grow some of their own food and so on.

Nowadays a lot of doctors do some care work as part of their training, to practise interacting with patients and experience a different aspect of healthcare.
It is possible to make work less monotonous.. but the bigger the population, the more focus on exploiting resources and producing stuff the less likely that will occur.

It may entail making sacrifices. Another solution is machines and robots doing as much menial labour as possible.

I think life is dystopian and the less we create the better.

I think we should interfere to improve the quality of peoples live as much as possible.

Contradicts this:- — gurugeorge

No it doesn't

I was giving an example of the division of labour and how it creates menial tasks.

There may always be some division of labour under any system but not to the extent and rigidity of a highly exploitative society.

Responsible breeding? What are you talking about? — ssu

Decreasing the population is responsible breeding.

Unfortunately the worlds population is increasing.

A country can easily increase its population overnight by taking in immigrants, refugees and so on. there are plenty of those.

Based on the rates of resource domination and depletion by the west to support our current lifestyles we would have to come up with some dramatic new technology to give everyone as similar lifestyle quality and not completely wreck the planet.

Are saying you think everyone can have a car, washing machine, microwave, computer and so on?

Even if it were possible I still think it would be irresponsible use of resources.

Here is a relevant article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China

"According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, industrial pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death."

"500 million people in China are without safe and clean drinking water."

"Lead poisoning or other types of local pollution continue to kill many Chinese children."

"The pollution has spread internationally: sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo; and according to the Journal of Geophysical Research, the pollution even reaches Los Angeles in the USA."

This is what is fuelling our affluent lifestyle.

I think it is possible to have values not based on emotion.

Especially valuing equality.

For example say there are 9 apples and three people and one person gets seven whilst the other two people get one each mathematically and logically we can see that is an unfair distribution.

I think there are non emotional assessments you can make like this.

It is not clear whether emotion or judgement comes first. Are you unhappy because you judged that distribution was unfair or did the emotion make you believe the transaction was unfair?

However I do feel that emotions might be the only way of enforcing values because people seem more susceptible to this than reason.

I don't think you can improve peoples welfare solely based on emotion.

No, the classical liberal or propertarian position is against colonialism — gurugeorge

It is a bit late to be against colonialism when it already happened, apparently the term Propertarianism was coined in 1963.

It is too late to claim we are starting on a level playing field. It is the same problem with the notion of a Meritocracy. These things need a level playing field to be an honest reflection of ability and just desert.

Do propertarians believe in taxation and social services?

division of labour — gurugeorge

I think division of labour is problematic because it forces people into menial jobs and creates hierarchies

So people are less free. Someone has to sort odd peas, or clean toilets and not everyone can reach the higher positions or more lucrative jobs.

It is not clear that the people in menial labour are the least capable in general or best at this kind of work rather the reverse because you meet graduates and all sorts of people in cleaning, caring and retail.

And the increase in affluence of the population brings population growth down. Overpopulation is a problem in the poorest countries where the simple reason for having more children is that they can work for the family and take care of you later. — ssu

Overpopulation is a fairly recent problem. These countries became poorer and exploited under colonialism and inherited the colonialists religious beliefs in fertility and contraceptives etc.

It is ironic that the western countries which consume the most of the earth resources become complacent about their luxury and can boast of responsible breeding. It is not clear that all these others people can conceivably share our lifestyle and consume the same amount of resources.

A society with 10,000 people of which 3,000 die violent or theoretically avoidable deaths each year is more violent and less well run than a society of 10 million people of which a million die violent or theoretically avoidable deaths each year, regardless of the fact that a million is a much larger number of dead people than 3,000. — gurugeorge

I have notice that this analysis of tribal societies is controversial in anthropology. Nevertheless I have not used tribal societies as a model for non violent societies.

I think a million deaths Over 3,000 is a more violent world. You just need to have loads more children create millions of new people each year to dilute the percentage rate of suffering. We are living in a time of excess and not just in the positive sense. Not a time of moderation.

I do appreciate your point about making innovative use of resources. But that doesn't justify excess.

I don't think ownership/private property can be logically or scientifically justified even if you would like it to exist as a thing. It is like I mentioned with moral nihilism, where killing is neither right or wrong regardless of preferences but we treat certain things as wrong because we want a stable society.

So as I see this means our claims should be weaker and more pragmatic.

You said

And you are not necessarily depriving someone of anything by using a resource. You may be, but only in very particular and rare circumstances. — gurugeorge

The examples I cited of food being exported from Ireland and India during famines are counter examples to this.

I am not being deprived of the use of something on the other side of the world that I'm not using, that I'm not in a natural relationship of control with — gurugeorge

The point I am making about depriving is that once you claim to own something then you are saying no one else is entitled to it. This would be fine if the world was infinite in size but because it isn't and the population has grown hugely then there is less to be owned by more people.

Even if there were less people, owning a resource can mean preventing others from accessing it, so for example you might on the only source of clean water in area.

Anyway as I showed with the Congo example often other countries and peoples are exploited to benefit someone living thousands of miles away. It is no longer the case and hasn't been for centuries that your lifestyle will have a limited impact.

I oppose the idea that we can do what we want with the earth and exploit it how we like which is really anarchy.

I am not claiming capitalism is to blame for famine but rather excessive exploitation, but that does seem to be encouraged under capitalism

How about the failure of the Marxist-Leninist experiment? — ssu

I don't see how stewardship entails communism or is a central plank in its doctrines.

Like I have said stewardship is a simple assessment of the impact of your activity on your environs like not defecating in the water you are going to drink from.

I don't see evidence that communist regimes took extra care to preserve their environs, more the reverse. It is not like they tried sustainable practises and failed rather the reverse.

It would be bizarre if we were the only species that could not live in a natural states and survive. Apparently we alone are culpable for an unprecedented, rapid rate of extinction in other species. I am not saying we should live in a state of nature but I don't think completely ignoring nature makes sense either.

I am happy for a multi millionaire to posses x amount of land if he or she does not destroy it or stop others accessing it when they need to. Sustainability and stewardship does not imply everyone should be equal at any cost and that resources should be all divided equally at any cost. Rather it implies that people who are best skilled to preserve and sustainably use and distribute resources would be favoured

And overall I am not advocating any system just criticising the rationale of the ideology I outlined in my opening post.