Every anti-abortion argument I’ve heard has to do with the termination of human life, so I’m not sure that’s accurate or a fair interpretation of what they care about or want. — NOS4A2

Yet many pro-lifers are in favor of capital punishment, so, clearly, the termination of human life is not all that repugnant to them. So it must be something else that leads them to oppose abortion.

The view that it is wrong to procreate is not the view that no one procreate. It is normative: a view about how ought to behave, not a view about how we do behave — Bartricks

I'm asking you what you make of the fact that people are able to procreate (some people, at least; the ability to procreate is not a given).
What moral implications does this fact have, according to you?

Extreme unending agony. — Bartricks

That requires belief in one's eternal damnation. This is a very specific belief.

They were more afraid of the reprisals than dying and end his life destroying everything they built during Nazi Germany. — javi2541997

Again:

How do you know that?
Can you substantiate your claim with empirical evidence, or is it just conjecture?

Not really. It was mainly driven by fear. Fear of being held responsible and of being put on display and fear of reprisals. — Tom Storm

How do you know that?

Can you substantiate your claim with empirical evidence, or is it just conjecture?

A quick test is developed for the presence of this structure. You take it, and of course, you are positive. Unfortunately, your loved one is negative: They are a P Zombie.

How would you respond? — hypericin

People tend to treat others like zombies anyway: "You are whatever I say that you are. You feel whatever I say that you feel. Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are." People tend to treat others as if those others don't really exist, as if they are merely shells with no inner life, other than the one stipulated by other people.

I would thoroughly enjoy abusing them, although I'm not sure I would enjoy it actually, knowing that they aren't actually suffering. — bert1

You can never know that anyway. It's why revenge is such a drag.

a women — _db

A womAn.

Asian culture, whatever it might historically have been long before America was a twinkle in anyone's eye, must play some role internally here as well, meaning their values must also be leading them toward STEM based occupations, without manipulation by the powers that be. — Hanover

Yes. There's research on this, e.g. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

A suicidal doesn't expect to fail the attempt — javi2541997

Presumably some suicide attempts are intended to fail to begin with (the harm inflicted upon oneself is clearly not grave enough).

To procreate is to create an innocent person. They haven't done anything yet. So they're innocent. — Bartricks

The problem with the innocence of infants is that it doesn't last, it's corruptible, inherently so. It's not innocence proper, one that would last.
For your argument to work, the person would need to remain innocent, be incorruptible. Corruptible people get what they deserve.

One does not have the right to impose a lifetime of injustice on another person just because you want to have a little baby to look after. — Bartricks

But what do you make of the _fact_ that people are able to do so and do it?

How can we intelligibly talk about the _right_ to have children, when there is no instance that would grant or revoke that right; instead, people just do as they please (and many do have children)?

If you can do something (ie. if you're able to do something), this is already an indication that the universe works in such a way as to grant you that, ie. it gives you that "right". It is in the case of you wouldn't be able to do something that the question of whether you have the right to or not can be brought up.

Nevertheless... we have to highlight that Adolf Hitler killed himself before seeing the loss of Nazi Germany — javi2541997

Not just he, but many other Nazis as well.

So death is a great harm to the one who dies. A huge harm. It's one of the biggest. — Bartricks

What's the bigger harm (or harms)?

Suicide causes immeasurable pain and suffering to those who knew the deceased. Parents never get over it. You'd be causing immeasurable suffering to your parents and siblings. — Moses

More likely, it's those same parents and siblings -- and friends or a spouse -- who actually drive a person into suicide.

More pertinent than suicide is the prevalence and relevance of people wishing that someone would kill themselves (or generally, that they would die).

Do you agree that it is contrary to one's interest to kill oneself, extreme unending agony aside? — Bartricks

The sad irony of it all is that it can be the same people who tell you not to kill yourself who also wish you would be dead.

I have responded to many individuals who wanted to kill themselves. In every case I've seen it is because life has become unbearable through chronic pain, the loss of a loved one, major depression, sexual abuse, trauma - that kind of thing. Most people do find a way to work through the issues and

find reasons to live. — Tom Storm

The real question is whether those people who failed in their suicide attempt "found reasons to live" because those reasons were somehow already present for them prior to the suicide attempt, or did they find them precisely because they seriously attempted suicide.

It is imaginable that a serious suicide attempt (one where the reasonably predictable outcome of the method is death) brings about a special change in the person's cognition (on a biochemical level).

Note how suicide survivor stories differ: those who survived falls from great heights or gunshot wounds to the chest or abdomen seem to be far more optimistic than those who survived a medication overdose or slit wrists.

how does that apply to Asians? — Hanover

I heard (in a documentary about immigration in Australia) that Asians, specifically, the Chinese, tend not to be interested in politics and government, because the Chinese hold politicians to be a "lower class of humans", they don't see going into politics as a respectable career choice; they see it as something necessary, but not respectable. This is one of the reasons the Chinese tend to be underrepresented in politics and government in multicultural settings (such as Australia).
I suppose similar could hold for other Asian ethnicities.

Good riddance; and good luck, comrade. — 180 Proof

He's not your comrade and you're not his, and you know it.

And this is how right-wing authoritarianism wins: By "good people" doing nothing and just being all politically correct, destroying some small offenders while letting the actual villains be.

Dogs bark, and the caravan goes on, straight into hell.

Misogyny at its finest.

Because the whole world doesn't revolve around you ...

*sigh*

On the contrary. It was the Church who was in favor of the separation between Church and State. The Church had good foresight: this separation is actually in the Church's favor. It's because of this formal separation that the State (and outsiders to the Church) are not allowed to interfere in matters of religion.

Jesus said pray in private. We know the agenda of those who pray in public--nothing to do with the teaching of Jesus. — Jackson

Irrelevant. Outsiders are not in the position to judge the contents of a religion or whether a particular religious person adheres to their professed religion. The secular constitution gives religious people the freedom to "practice their religion in accordance with their conscience" and this trumps every objection from outsiders.

Honestly I don't think it was coercive. An atheist can stand by respectfully while the Christians do their rituals. That's emotional maturity. — Tate

"Emotional maturity" that results in favoring Christians.

Christians do not respond with the same "emotional maturity" when atheists want to do their atheist things.

Or the coach can have some maturity and stop doing the prayer when asked.

Then he'll complain about his right to freedom of expression of religion is being denied.


More to the point, if a student's coach or mentor has strong religious inclinations, this can reflect in how he treats his students, ie. by prefering those who have the same religious views as he. The coercion needn't be explicit to be powerful.

Unless a student has a powerful mummy and daddy, it's probably best to publicly go along with the coach's religious views (if the student's sport aspiration is vital for the student), or else change sports.

As someone who works in addiction and metal health services there are many people who find the theism of AA and NA counterproductive and unhelpful. God is also a barrier. They prefer SMART recovery models. I personally think whatever works is useful because it's better to be a nascent theist than a dead heroin user, right? — Tom Storm

Don't forget that in some (Western!!) countries (democracies!!) the person doesn't actually have a choice as to which recovery program they will join or which the court mandates them to join.

No, I'm talking at least about some Hindu doctrines of karma, Buddhist doctrines of karma, popular doctrines of karma.

It seems you're implicitly trying to figure out which doctrine of karma is the right one, yes?

Which account of karma are you assessing? — Tom Storm

Seconded. It's meaningless to discuss "karma" without reference to a particular doctrine of karma (there are several of them).

Based on what evidence? The technologies created by scientists are open to abuse by the nefarious and by self-interest or just incompetent decisions made by those in power. — universeness

Not at all. Already the "regular" use of scientific achievements is what causes pollution. Plastic waste is plastic waste, regardless whether produced by an honest, hardworking man or by a glutton.

Again, keep to the text:
— baker

Again, try to improve your clarity.

Look up a textbook for learning English, under the chapter "Giving short replies".

The dismissal of those with existential concerns is done by those who have relatively low aspirations in life.
— baker
Do you consider such people a large majority of the global population?

Yes. Look up the DSM; "a religious problem" and other existential issues are actually listed as signs of mental illness.

We live in very imbalanced rich/poor conditions. It is harsh to judge the aspiration level of any individual who has had poverty imposed upon them since birth and very limited or no opportunity to escape it.

Having relatively low aspirations in life has nothing directly to do with poverty. There is plenty of very rich, very educated people who nevertheless have relatively low aspirations in life. Their aim is the pursuit of sensual pleasures in their various forms, and that's it.

I assume you are not female.

Why do you assume that?

No woman I know has ever raised any concern about such.

Because they know that for a woman, it is best to be a fool, a beautiful little fool.

So even they spell it as "as a women, I ..."

Just like any other case where if you know it will harm, and it is unnecessary to do so, you wouldn't do it. — schopenhauer1

What is "unnecessary"?

Is refusing oneself the satisfaction of one's ego "unnecessary"?

Hasn't it? I don't think NATO has attacked Russia at any point. — ssu

Who actually fires the first bullet has only symbolic value. When a party makes it clear it wants to destroy the other, it's irrelevant who actually started shooting.

Well yes the only thing Christians despise more than themselves are people who do not despise themselves. — Streetlight

No, I've never met a Christian who would actually despise himself or herself. On the contrary, they are enormously self-confident, self-assured, consider themselves superior to everyone else.

Holism, Mental and Semantic
https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/MentalSemanticHolism.html

I mean have you ever met people with more self-contempt than Christians in general? They literally made a religion out of it. — Streetlight

Does this look like self-contempt to you?
It doesn't to me.

They overturned it because they are a bunch of Christofascists who hate women. — Streetlight

But Christian women go along with it.

There was a feature on the news where a Republican politician said the overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a big victory for life (or words to that effect). He and the other men there were smiling, while the one woman who was also there, did not.

A good Christian woman must make herself sexually available to her boyfriend or husband at all times, whenever he wants. She must only get pregnant when he wants to have children, otherwise, she must "take care" of the unwanted pregnancy. Such are the unspoken rules of engagement in Christian culture.

Christian women have so far relied on the secular society for contraceptives and abortions, so as to be able to live the Christian lifestyle (or at least, keep up the appearance of it). But what are they going to do now?

Procreation. I have about 10 billion examples.

As I said earlier. If your moral system concludes that almost every human being ever is morally wrong and that the entire human race cannot morally continue to exist, it is far more likely that your moral system is wrong than it is the entire human race for the last 400,000 years is wrong. It takes a monumental, messianic ego to assume you're right in the face of every other human being ever. Hence why your case is so fascinating. — Isaac

Make that potentially about 20 billion examples.

You're ignoring that sexuality and procreation have been by far the most regulated social activities in human society throughout history.

If procreation would truly be "just fine" and as moral as you suggest, then people wouldn't widely practice contraception, abortion, infanticide, wouldn't regulate the status of unwed mothers and their children, there would be no eugenics, no notion of incest, no sex education. Instead, people would just go forth, be fruitful, and multiply, at whatever age, socioeconomic status, with or without consent.

You underestimate how complex human procreation is, and also underestimate how complex people's views of procreation are (contianing mutually exclusive premises).

It takes a monumental, messianic ego to assume you're right in the face of every other human being ever.

Oh, come on, that's not empirically true.

Secondly, it's not the OP's argument that is strange. The OP is actually simply taking a few premises that are non-controversial in our society and follows them through to their logical conclusions.
The problem isn't with the OP, it's with the Western point of view.

But other people do the same kind of thing. Epistemologically, it's not even clear it's possible to do something else.
— baker

It's fairly straightforward... — Isaac

People are typically epistemic autoritarians. From the lowest plebeian to a philosopher with several advanced degrees, epistemic authoritarianism: "Things are the way I see them, and everyone who thinks differently is wrong, bad, evil, mentally deranged, or lying."

Although the "the way I see it" element is questionable. People generally don't seem to think they are looking at things from their perspective, their viewpoint, but are, instead, "seeing things as they really are".

The OP might be a bit more in-your-face, but he's no different than most posters here when it comes to being dead sure of one's position.

Western culture is "just the practice of using reason to find out what's true"??
— baker

It's up to you to tell me what on earth you mean by 'western culture' or why it's relevant to anything I have argued. — Bartricks

It's relevant because your argument is deductively valid only in a specific context, ie. that of Western culture (where people don't believe in (serial) reincarnation or rebirth).

But philosophy is the practice of using reason to find out what's true, yes?

That's an ongoing debate.

And then there's just making stuff up or believing something because there's a tradition of believing it. That's not philosophy. It is what it is.

You're part of the tradition that believes there is no (serial) reincarnation or rebirth.
You say you're the one using reason. The Asians say they're the ones using reason.
Hm.

Now, I assume that when someone starts talking about 'other traditions of thought' or 'other cultural traditions' what they mean is "but what about those who do not use reason to figure out what's true and instead just make stuff up or insist that certain views are true because that's just what people believe in this or that neck of the woods". Well, my answer is those folk are not doing philosophy. It's like giving me your recipe for banana cake. It's not relevant to anything I have argued.

If you're so sure of yourself, then why start this thread?

The implicit one, "People are born innocent".
— baker

That wasn't an implicit premise. It was explicit.

No, you didn't formulate it like that.

Do you dispute it? On what basis?

On the basis that it's culturally specific.

And create a million others
— baker

Scientists have certainly been involved in biological and chemical warfare but it would be rather dumb to create a virus that can kill as many of your own people as it will the enemy, unless you have a cure. I think what you are suggesting belongs more to unlikely conspiracy theories than reality. Also, people should be a little more accurate in their use of quantities. There is an old 'jokey' response; "for the millionth time! Stop exaggerating!." — universeness

Keep to the text.

Did science not eradicate the harm of smallpox to use a simple example.
— universeness

And create a million others. — baker

"The harm" is the center of your phrase, and to this one I replied. As in, "Science created a million other harms." For example, all the polution we're facing nowadays is the result of science.

They'll simply dismiss a young person with existential concerns as mentally ill, rather than question their own scope of existential insight.
— baker
Well, you are engaging in a great deal of generalisation in such typing. I am capable of such myself but I think it's important to recognise when you are using such a big cumbersome brush to try to paint details.

Again, keep to the text:

Of course, given that many people have relatively low aspirations in life, the argument from the prospective parent's lack of existential qualification is unintelligible to them. They'll simply dismiss a young person with existential concerns as mentally ill, rather than question their own scope of existential insight. — baker

The dismissal of those with existential concerns is done by those who have relatively low aspirations in life.

I believe however that women must be masters of their own body. The state cannot FORCE a women to maintain a pregnancy.

Women cannot even be the masters of the noun for them!
The state should FORCE people to use the noun "woman" correctly, correctly distinguishing between the singular and the plural form.
It adds insult to injury not to use the noun "woman" correctly in a discussion of a topic that is of great importance to women.

think you should not bring children into this overpopulated world unless you can tick a large list of requirements first.

I think my list is longer than yours.

The rational reply would be deterrence, to have the capability of defending your country from an attack from this threat. And then continue to be at peace, because your deterrence keeps that someone from attacking you.

I guess the country with largest nuclear arsenal in the World can pretty much do that. — ssu

You seem to think it isn't trying to do that?

It certainly hasn't worked until February this year. Make no mistake, I have no doubt that the West will win this. Hatred and contempt are stronger than justice, stronger than goodwill.