How do you feel about the suffering of non-human animals capable of feeling pain? Is it wrong for them to procreate? — Srap Tasmaner

Animals appear not to be able conceptualise issues like right and wrong. Some extreme utilitarians have come to the conclusion we should destroy all sentience and some utilitarians advocate intervening to make animals unable to experience pain.

It is hard to prove things about animals conscious states. Also they can't form a contract for consent. Which raises a related issue. People take care of the pets until they die (good owners) the pet has no obligations. That is what ideally should happen with children.

(..)and I also agree with you about how tiresome and childish the anti-life, anti-natal sheep are. — John

I came to antinatalism by myself with no outside influence. Most antinatalist are the least sheeplike most skeptical people I meet.

Your attitude highlights the problem. We are talking about suffering from Genocide to Chronic depression, famine and slavery and you are calling people childish for not wanting to propagate this.

Even If I had children I would always be concerned and vocal about famine, disease, abuse, inequality and all other forms of suffering. It seems you just don't want to be exposed to other peoples suffering. People have to suffer quietly and discreetly so you can enjoy your life.

And with your fantastical scenario people chose this life so can't complain about their suffering and have to behave ethically and embrace that they chose their cancerous body and or callous parents.

Hmmm

That's nonsense; for example when people consent to marry they never know how it will turn out. — John

As I said you can't consent to be born on your scenario because their is no contract between parent and child (or contact)

Usually in marriage you know the person you are marrying and can gather all sorts of information on them. We are talking about children living in a slum,war zone or famine area here not someone marrying someone who turns out to be bad.

Personally i don't think marriage is anything real. I don't know what you think is involved. By marrying someone you do not consent to be forced to have sex with them. as far as I am aware marriage gives you no rights over the person you marry and you cannot force them to do anything. (ironically it on divorce that you can take half their stuff)

And I don't think consent allows anyone to harm you anyway. If someone ask for an assisted suicide it is usually to end there suffering and is done in a humane way. if you consent to uncomfortable surgery it is to improve your wellbeing.

The theory that souls do not pre-exist bodily life is equally unfalsifiable, so again what you say here is irrelevant. — John

It's not a theory it is the null hypothesis.

I know parents who wanted to have children and had them based on their own desires with no reference to pre existing souls. Considering there was no communication between them and the souls they can be separately held accountable for their action.

For example Imagine Jane is suicidal and is standing by a bridge about to jump but then she is hit by a drunk driver and Killed. Her desire to die does not mitigate the criminal offence of the driver.

The point of theory being falsifiable is so it can do some work in explanation so it's got go beyond pure speculation in my opinion. A thought experiment can be fantastical and be used to create "ad absurdum" or provoke thought. But to apply something to real life it has to offer to explain the evidence imo. In this case it seems simply be an attempt to shift accountability.

Yes, and according to our two alternative scenarios, you either chose this prior to life or the very notion of choosing it is incoherent; take your pick. — John

The notion of being forced into existence is not incoherent. The idea that we did not consent to be born is not incoherent.

If I decided to create a child tomorrow I would be choosing to make someone else exist. I would be solely responsible for them existing they would exist based on my desire to create them.

Now if I see a child wandering near a busy road I feel a responsibility as a capable adult to prevent them from wandering in the road. I think most adults would feel responsible for any vulnerable child in danger because they have the capacity to save him or her from harm.

So if we can assume responsibility for a stranger's child why the aversion to taking full responsibility for deliberately exposing your own child to serious harm? Self exculpation it seems.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Do you mean the soul would only choose if it couldn't know that it was choosing a "bad life"? — John

There is such a thing as informed consent.

There is no point having consent if you have no idea what you are consenting to. For a soul to give consent to enter this world they would have to know what they were consenting to i.e. see into the future.

The reason we can consent to things now is prior knowledge of outcomes. I wouldn't consent to someone throwing a rock at me because prior knowledge of the damage to would cause.


I have absolutely no evidence that I chose my parents so why should I believe it? You appear to saying we should be believe anything that is a possibility with no evidence.

A soul could not set up a consenting relationship anyway, unless it communicated with its future parents and there is no evidence of that. Consent involves two or more people communicating with each other and not one person simply desiring something.

It is irrelevant whether someone can consent to be born — Andrew4Handel

The relevance is whether they did consent.

I pointed out that you can't force your parents to create you. There is no evidence of people being told by an unborn spirit to procreate (I've heard of).

I have not experienced a whisper in my mind encouraging me to create children. Also it is unnecessary for a biological account of reproduction.

As I say it is an arrangement dependent on the parents having sex so the key responsibility falls on them. If it was true it would imply some consent but how could you prove it?

Anyone can make up an unfalsifiable theory and brandish it about and.. you have no evidence I was a pre existing soul that wanted this. Why would I or anyone want this?

My experience was that I was lied to from birth about religion and parental authority so I was not in the position to give consent (forced to go to church up to 5 times a week) It was only as a culmination of traumatic experiences that I was able to break away from the indoctrination as a older teenager.

Why would I chose to be lied to so that i was only able to honestly examine existence when I was in my late teens?

Also I do not believe any one would chose a bad life even if they were a preexisting spirit entering the foetus somehow. Unless you have a further invalidate belief that preexisting spirits know the future.

Therefore If a spirit did enter the womb to be born the parents is still infringing it by exposing it to harm that it didn't expect.

You acknowledge that it is possible that souls exist prior to birth. What if all those souls born into flesh do consent? It's true that later they may come to either endorse life or not. But if in their pre-life state they saw the greater picture, their later failure to endorse life might merely be the result of not being in their right minds. — John

There is no evidence for this scenario so it cannot be a coherent excuse for creating a child. It's wild speculation. I am open to it but it is widely rejected by most people so only a parent that believed this could advocate this excuse.

However as I think I said earlier, even if a soul was desperate to be born you can prevent that by using contraceptive methods. If someone came to me and was desperate for me to set them on fire I wouldn't do it. You can judge the world is an unsuitable place to create new humans.

I just don't get why past events like human sacrifice, slavery, 2 world wars, yearly famines, the holocaust and so on, are no deterrent. I learnt about The Holocaust at around 12 when we watched "Escape from Sobibor" in English class and I could not fathom how people could behave like that and then later in my teens I was shocked by this kind of mounting evidence and that people would continue create new humans. (new evidence included photo's of a KKK lynching where someone was burnt alive surrounded by grinning men and boys)

In itself, yes. But how do you think you can resolve the dilemma of either implying something ethically controversial which makes no sense or saying something trivial and uncontroversial? — Sapientia

We haven't got around to examining the ethical consequences.

If people don't consent to be born then it is an imposition. Once they start to exist they are imposed upon and exposed to harms they did not volunteer for.

Now if law and democracy is supposed to be a contract then it is invalid because we are already in society without our consent. It is the equivalent to offering a kidnapped person a choice between having green or cream paint in their bedroom. If someone consents to a system or game then the rules can be used on them.
But because they did not consent to be in born they have no obligations or accountability to the system.

It seems ludicrous to me that punching someone in the street is considered a crime and an imposition. But a parent creates a child and they (like someone I knew) suffer from something like 40+ years of constant pain through chronic arthritis and that is acceptable.

I don't see why I should be allowed to expose another person to severe harm and not be in the least accountable either.

It is irrelevant whether someone can consent to be born what is relevant is they can be harmed by existing and parents have created this existence for them not at that individuals desire.

Parents make people exist. So existence is created by parents and they are responsible for that existence and what it is subject to.


It sounds like you would let a serial killing, paedophile procreate because you are only prepared to intervene when the child starts to exist.

Here is another highly disturbing case like the one I mentioned earlier. This woman agreed to let her boyfriend abuse her children after they were born in return for him marrying her. The plan went ahead and the children were abused/raped.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2479093/Mother-sentenced-54-years-horrific-sex-abuse-children.html

They had no intention of respecting the future children's well being and integrity. Obviously we shouldn't way til a plan is enacted to act.

That's what you have to argue for in order for what you say to make any sense. — Thorongil

What I am saying makes sense and is factual. We didn't consent to be born.

What about all the lives that aren't born? What about all the potential lives floating around within our groins that may provide consent to be born but never are. There are far more lives that are never born than those that are. — Harry Hindu

The issue is about planning to create a child knowing that that hypothetical desired child could withhold consent from something. A sperm is not a potential child in the way a fertilised egg is. A sperm is as much a potential child as an atom is. The problem is the parent intends to create a child. So they intend to create something that has volition, desires and consent issues. (planning to have children requires envisioning future children)

This gets back to the intent cases where someone is a danger because they intend to harm someone. people are trying to fixate the discussion around the point before the child is conceived.

This is like the unconscious rape case. You don't focus the issue of consent to sex around the time when someone is unconscious but on the whole lifespan and future potential to consent.

An analogy is when you consider throwing a brick at a window. You know that a window has a disposition to shatter. You don't need to prove it will shatter. So when planning a child we know they can do X. You don't have to wait til a future point to assert the outcome of an action.

It is true that a child may endorse life but the problem is the same process that created them creates people who don't endorse life. So I might consent to sex and another person may not, the fact that some people may consent to something doesn't justify inflicting it on all, but life is like that.

I don't think suicide is a consensual act because if you do something to yourself you don't need to ask for consent. So I don't think committing suicide is a way of withdrawing consent from life

Also people have glib attitude to suicide when advocating it for antinatalists.

If you watch documentaries on suicide, the families and friends of the deceased persons are usually devastated by the bereavement. Also suicide usually comes after a lot of suffering. Usually when you withdraw consent it is an easy situation.

1.Do you want an apple? No thanks. 2.Do you want an apple. *kills self.*

My first ever post in the other "Philosophy Forum" was suggesting that the need to philosophise came from being born. That a fundamental question is why our parents created us.

For example now children have access to a huge range of facts and ideas humans have made or found. So a child now appears to have less work to do to explain various aspects to reality.

Parents could have brought children (hypothetically) into a world with no philosophical questions.

I am interested in philosophy but I feel it is an imposition like everything because I was brought into a mysterious imperfect world.

I don't think the onus should be on the child to understand her existence or make his own meaning. I find this whole "make your own meaning" idea unpleasant. It is an existential burden that also implies the failure of parents to present you with a meaning.

What would you think if I said that chairs don't speak loud enough? Or that apples were not surprised at the recent general election result? Or that people didn't protest against the big bang at the time? Or, here's another one, that dogs can't vote? Be honest. And remember that there's an implied ethical context. — Sapientia

Chairs can never speak, apples will never express surprise.
But humans will have consent issues and will have an opinion on their creation and their own desires.
People can express an opinion on the big bang..

My statement in this thread is that it is impossible to consent to be born so it can never be that we are here by consent undermining consent. I am not expressing a desire that the unborn consent just stating the fact that life is at base non consensual. (Thanks The madfool)

Apples do not desire to be surprised so the inability to do this is not a burden but humans can reflect on their existence and creation and regret it and lots of people have. People can speculate about the big bang and express opinions on it even though it is a past event. Humans are not just stuck remorsely in a present moment with no access to the past and future. They remember the past and are influenced by it and plan for the future,

In my view you can't say that someone didn't consent to be born, etc. either. Not consenting to something is an action in my view. It's not the default. — Terrapin Station

If someone is unconscious they can't consent. So you can violate their consent without them having to be able to vocalise it. Unless you want to claim we can do what we like to unconscious people. The same way you assume a sleeping person isn't consenting to sex you can assume things about future humans.

If a child had the choice to be born to millionaire or to be born in a slum facing hunger do you think any child would choose the slum over the wealthy existence?

A child can't withhold their consent to grow up in a slum but you can safely assume that that life will harm them and would not be something they would choose.

I love baroque music and it is harmless but I wouldn't assume my child would like it... so I certainly wouldn't assume my child would like any form of harm let alone simply having my tastes forced on them.

You can impose on someone else by having children.

For instance your children are consuming and competing for limited resources and your children can have a negative effect on other people. For example I was bullied for years as a child. Also children in other countries are used as slaves in mines or have to work in sweat shops having a child isn't a neutral act with no ramifications

There are lots of ramifications for creating new people particular in the context within which you create them which is a connection of relationships.

If someone is unconscious they cannot consent to sex. Therefore it is wrong to have sex with them in this state.

if someone cannot consent to be created then you should not create them. You cannot be acting in their benefit or based on them expressing any desire to exist.

Because consent to come into existence is impossible then everyone is here not at her request. There is no consent to life. There is no ethical justification for causing someone to exist and no need to create new people and lots of good reasons not to create new people and expose them to harm.

I think intending to harm someone is not far removed from harming them.

I think it is inaccurate, for instance, to say there is no harm in deciding to have children because for example my mother knew my father didn't have an affinity with children before she had children with him. then I was forced to do lots of things as a child and am now forced to try and survive as an adult and I certainly feel my life was an imposition not a gift.

It is a semantic quibble to say life was not imposed on me because I certainly did not choose my parents or my body or my childhood experiences.

If parents took seriously what they are doing to a child then they would have to plan to have a child much more seriously.

why on earth would you be talking about consent — Sapientia

Have you not heard of hypotheticals? There is nothing bizarre about predicting the future based on the past.

Hello science!

We are not talking about whether a non existent person should be able to consent but that the future person who comes to exist will be able to withhold consent and have desires and that these desires can be in opposition to your act of creating them.

I don't think you can grant consent to someone after you have forced them into existence or coerced. You are clearly imposing your own desires on someone by choosing to create them.

It's not illegal to have a cage and chains, etc. (or at least it shoudln't be) — Terrapin Station

That wasn't the issue. I feel slightly ludicrous having to explain this. He didn't have these things ornamentally but as part of a plot to harm someone in the future.

I find is implausible that you cannot imagine someone planning to harm someone in the future. It is just not plausible.

If the weather report says it will rain into two days it is rational to find an umbrella before the the actual event exists.

Your position seems to rest on an implausibility. The idea that you can predict nothing about the future and nothing about the future welfare of a person. You know that most humans created will have desires that can be thwarted and will desire consent.

The ability of a person to have desires after they have been created means these potential desires can be taken into consideration. The child you plan to have is not a total mystery like a new species but will share common traits.

Then find that absurd. I couldn't be more against criminalizing ANY speech, expressed desires, etc. — Terrapin Station

But because he had an actual cage and chains in his basement it wasn't just a desire and speech. And a hate speech can incite violence.

People can get longer sentences than a murderer for hiring a killer. I personally find that strange since the killer was not forced or caused to kill by the person hiring them. But hiring a killer is greatly increasing the chance of a person being murdered.

But again I don't think you can just wait for a crime to happen before acting.

I think a lot of the opposition on this thread amounts to semantics or exploiting ambiguity.

Children are exposed to suffering and the body and mind we possess is clearly liable to cause suffering. Even non-malicious parents can cause suffering in different ways if not just by creating the persons fallible body.

What is important here is that this was not a consensual situation. No one is to blame for their own suffering. The ambiguity of coming into existence and causality is not sufficient to make parents blameless.

And its strange that whilst people excuse parents of various thing blaming the individual is quite common. I think we should intervene immediately in a child's life to ensure it has the best possible life and at the very least regulate parents. It is a waste of time trying to "improve" things whilst having no profound parental responsibility.

2. Could there ever be no laws of nature? — kris22

If reality is an illusion then yes.

Law doesn't seem an appropriate word for some because it suggests a law giver. Some people say regularities.

I think there is an issue as to why anything exists and any disposition exists. If a creator created reality what caused him/her/it? If a creator doesn't exist how did reality create itself.

It is hard to conceive of a logical reason for things existence.

I think if someone consents to something that gives them some accountability or responsibility.

I think if someone creates someone else then the person created cannot be responsible for her existence but the creator can.

I think the only responsibilities people have is towards the children they created. if you have a child whilst in a broken marriage or poverty that is your responsibility and an unjustifiable burden on the child.

I was not just intending to talk about procreation and antinatalism i was asking how you can defend the notion of consent at all when our parents chose for us to come to exist. Like I said their are minor non consensual acts that have less harm than creating someone.

As someone else said the issue with consent and birth is that consent isn't possible so that we can never arrive here through consent.You can't claim someone consented to be born, consented to be a girl, consented to get cancer and so on.

I think if we value consent we have to assign responsibility properly because current;y consent only comes into play after a lot of imposition.

I also think you can't argue for a ham based morality if we people are allowed to harm people by creating them in harm prone bodies that will eventually die. So I think procreation undermines a lot of moral positions ( maybe not deontology.)

If the social services know that there are a couple who intend to create a child and they are alcoholics and drug users with criminal records, do you have a problem with them voicing a concern for any future child the couple may have?

Are you claiming we should only be concerned about someone when they start to exist and that we should not try to prevent any people existing even if we know they will live in poverty or inherit a severe disability etc?

You can try and prevent suffering quite coherently before someone is born. Parents will move house and get better jobs and so on before trying for a child. There is nothing incoherent about planning for a future child. You can plan to complete undermine the future childs consent.

In the case I highlighted I find it absurd if you think the man who has claimed he wants to rape and cannibalise a child and has a cage to imprison them etc in his basement, should not be imprisoned. The mean clearly presented a danger to children.

Except it's not. No one can exist before they exist, so you can't force the non-existent to exist. This is a logical refutation of your argument, showing that it depends on a contradiction and impossibility — Thorongil

I don't know what you think my argument is. I am stating the fact that we did not consent to be created or exist. So we are not here by consent or through our own desires.

I think coming to exist involves acts of of force such as physical forces involved in reproduction.
You can say that we are forced into existence. There is a force that makes us exist.

But you are playing on the ambiguities here. As has been said it is possible our "soul" exists before this body. What does coming to exist actually mean? (since the exploitation and abuse of children rests on it)

What concerns the individual is their consciousness and volition. The matter that our bodies are created from does have a prior existence (cannot be created or destroyed). So it is not that some part of us only starts to exist on birth. It is like a potter forces clay together to make a jar.

So what are you saying does not exist prior to birth?

None of this is a get out clause for exposing someone to suffering.

This is an example of a case of someone imprisoned for intending to harm a child in the future even though no specific child was involved and he may have abused a child yet to exist.


" (...)a British-born Massachusetts resident planned to rape, murder and eat children(..)"


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2417572/Geoffrey-Portway-dungeon-First-pictures-torture-dungeon-British-man-planned-rape-murder-eat-children-beneath-Massachusetts-house.html

Here's an example of concern for an unborn baby.

"Where an unborn baby is likely to be in need of services from Children’s Social Care when born, a referral is to be made to Children’s Social Care."

"Where concerns exist regarding the mother’s ability to protect.
Where alcohol or substance abuse is thought to be affecting the health of the expected baby
Where the expectant parent(s) are very young and a dual assessment of their own needs as well as their ability to meet the baby’s needs is required
Where a previous child in the family has been removed because they have suffered harm or been at risk of significant harm"

And so on

http://www.teescpp.org.uk/safeguarding-the-unborn-baby

The concern is for the child's ability to suffer in the future.

Sigh... we just had a thread on this exact topic.

The argument is bunk because there is no one to harm. QED. — Thorongil

I'm making a statement not an argument.

The statement is "People can't consent to being born".

If you accept that statement then you will see that coming to exist is not a consensual act.

If people cannot consent to be born for whatever reason then they are never going to come into existence through choice but be forced into existence. The parents do the act of making them exist through fertilisation.

I think it is a semantic quibble nonetheless people can't consent before they come to exist but we know they will be able to withhold consent and that we are not creating a robot.

How we come into existence as an independent consciousness is a puzzle. It is a puzzle a lot of people don't acknowledge. At some stage we become aware of being a specific "person" in a specific body in a specific era of time somewhere in space.

I feel fatalistic because of this. Maybe people are brought into this world to observe how wrong it is and to discourage it's propagation. I feel having entered this world seen terrible things and had lots of pain I am now here with this knowledge to discourage its propagation and at very least make it a more rational just world.

Because of people's mistaken attitude towards the creation of other people society can't be just. The Just world hypothesis and fundamental attribution error become rife.

Because people cannot consent to being born (conceived) then it can't be a consensual act (creating someone).

There can be no sense in which we really have consented to what happens to us. If I was born an Indian woman I couldn't consent to being woman or Indian even if eventually I am okay with that situation.

I couldn't consent to have lungs or needing to eat to survive. Most people have to work to survive. Sothe lack of consent permeates life. People accept certain affairs that happen to them (resignation)

Even a millionaires child with privileges is forced into this lifestyle as opposed to choosing these parents and this lifestyle.

I think reproduction is an act of physical force and when the baby is growing in the womb its growth is an involuntary act.

If abortion is available the parents can abort the child to prevent possible future suffering. Parents can use contraceptives to prevent a needless child existing. So it is not an inevitable existence.

Why is consent (in any circumstance) valuable at all? Maybe you think it isn't.

You can't chose to be born but then you can't chose to be black or grow up in poverty. (But you can choose this for your child)

If we took consent seriously we would not harbour such a bad just world bias.

I also think the idea life is good is warped.

How does a history of slavery, genocide, war, sexism, famine etc add up to existence being good? I can't see how that picture could be subjectively good either. Objectively there has been and still is appalling suffering. An individuals personal happiness does not mitigate this. Even if my own life was idyllic I wouldn't overlook the burden of history. I am not content for people to starve to death so I can continue propagating life. It is not like antinatalism is a response to a scratched knee or mild cold.

That doesn't avoid the problem I brought up. I doesn't even address it. It's like calling a banana agnostic. Consent doesn't come into the former, like knowledge doesn't come into the latter. You're talking nonsense. — Sapientia

Consent does come up when creating a child because a future child will have the ability to consent in the same way and unconscious person will when he or she awakes.

Your protest is ridiculous, as if you are incapable of imagining a future state of being.

When you are creating a child it certainly seems you are imagining you are doing the future child a favour or else what else could you be thinking?

You are making it sound like before birth a parent never thinks about the future child. People paint nurseries blue and buy toys when trying for a child.

Consent is an issue because humans (or at least i certainly do) value consent. So because we cannot consent to come to exist here the whole act is undermined and dystopian. An analogy is if someone told you that they could make you an elixir of life that could only be made by killing ten people. The outcome desirable but the methodology is hopelessly flawed.

I think this is a big issue for free will and freedom also.

I believe we can freely think and move our bodies (usually) but..we can't choose our parents, our gender, our race,our school etc. When you create someone you are already determining a lot of things about them so they will be acting within severe constraints.

Maybe the soul chooses which fertilized ovum to enter. No "forcing" is necessary since the parent's would know nothing of it. — John

As I mentioned unless the parents initially have sex there is no fertilization process. And contraceptives are also used to avoid this.

Nevertheless there is no evidence for this scenario. It has the absurd and grotesque consequences that you are essentially claiming a child murdered by her parents chose those parents.

Even if a soul wanted me as a parent I would prevent them from coming here because I know what this life is like. So even if a soul desire to exist here for this temporary time we can chose not to let them via contraceptives.

And I don't believe most parents even put this depth of analysis into the reproductive act..

How predictable. You're making my point. I know you, and other anti-natalists, want to focus on the negative aspects. You want to make out that it's the be-all and end-all. But it ain't. — Sapientia

The whole point of antinatalism is avoiding suffering especially unnecessary suffering, which a lot is. The suffering is non consensual because suffering is something endowed by nature. So while you can embrace some suffering if you want we are talking cases where someones life is marred by suffering.

Consent is a bigger issue than suffering for me as a child who was forced continuously to do unpleasant things and was attacked by others. I can choose to expose myself to some discomfort if I desire to do something. I don't have the right to chose suffering for another person to fulfill my desire to be a parent.

I could have succeeded in my first suicide attempt when I was 17 and what would that have achieved? That would have silenced me, made my parents looks like victims and no acknowledgement would be made of the bullying at school etc. What frustrates me is we haven't even got near rational parenting and social justice and people are resistant to full parental accountability or examining the role of procreating in social and personal ills.

Look at the first few lines. "People can't consent to being born. It creates a massive problem". These are your words, not his, and I dispute them. People can't exercise their right to assembly without first being born — Sapientia

This is leading to the semantic quibble I was aiming to avoid.

The right to assemble is something that someone may want after being born but consent is an issue about personal integrity and the basis of obligation etc. Your overall response was incoherent to me.

I deliberately did not say "we did not consent to be born" I just pointed out that it was a non consensual act. (Even though personally as I have elaborated I think we can easily and rationally imagine a child not consenting to the life they have to lead)

So if the act by which we come to exist is non consensual and that that existence can be very painful how can we coherently advocate consent? I think people are completely justified in not being stoical about suffering they did not choose. If society undermines consent we undermine the grounds for politics and law which is why society does have a farcical and dystopian feel.