THIS WAS SITTING IN DRAFTS. IM NOT ENTIRELY STANDING BEHIND A LOT OF THIS

Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isn’t a non-sequitor. — Fire Ologist

This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..

But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm. — Fire Ologist

There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one.

But the rest isn’t fairly arguable? — Fire Ologist

Could be. But I found this to be the sore red thumb of the lot, so figure best to tackle this first.

I might not only have to be an antinatalist, I might have to be an anti-hydrationist, because giving a thirsty person a glass of water, is like giving birth to a new person. — Fire Ologist

While i understand the avenue you're taking here, it's not apt.
Procreating is not analogous to maintainence of life. If someone is alive, there's a consequence to doing nothing. Not so around procreation. There is a neutral, or a positive (i.e nothing, or a new person (capable of suffering)).

And no need to consider what other things we cause by not procreating? As long as we don’t inflict suffering we will be doing good in this world, be good for this world - not arguable? — Fire Ologist

No. This isn't relevant in any way. We're starting at zero. If the position is that people must procreate I can only laugh. I don't see another conclusion there, if you want to establish a 'wrong' in not procreating.

Getting a little emotive here, which you criticized me for above. — Fire Ologist

Not at all. I would guess if it's making you uncomfortable, i could repeat those comments :P
The point here, is that most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life. Do you seriously think that isn't a reasonable inference, ignoring emotionality?

And why are happiness and/or purpose, as you frame the delusion, the only counters to suffering? If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking life is, on balance, suffering, then you would reject anyone who viewed any life as on balance, not suffering. Screw purpose. I’m enjoying just trying to argue with you here. — Fire Ologist

Here's some meat. IFF I am deluded in that way, then yes I would. I, currently, have zero reason to think so and plenty of good reason to think the opposite. I can note all the happiness and purpose in my life without having to ignore what I think is a good, logical conclusion about my life. It is, overall, a waste of time.

Antinatalism analogized to, ironically, a life guard, keeping people out of the dangerous waters. That’s backwards. Antinatalism would eliminate the lives to guard, not merely keep lives on the land to live safely. A lifeguard would inflict a riddance of the ocean to those safely on land, not a riddance of living, like antinatalism would. — Fire Ologist

That is not the analogy at all. The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean. But this is a little silly. An Antinatalist would call both analogies dumb and just say "Why can't you take the metaphor as the metaphor instead of reading other things into it?"

Living is simply different than suffering and cannot be summarized as only suffering. — Fire Ologist

Antinatalists don't do so. Not quite sure how to respond, in this case.

Bottom line to me, in a raw, physicalist sense, life is prior to suffering — Fire Ologist

I don't disagree. But it hasn't anything to say about antinatalism.

Antinatalism isn’t just a tidy little syllogism categorized as ethics. It’s an act in the world, and an against life, which is procreative. Against suffering on paper, but inflicted upon all human life in action. — Fire Ologist

I really don't know what you could mean here. Life is plenty of things - overwhelmingly: suffering. It is not right to procreate in the face of that fact (on my account). It goes no deeper than that. All of the other fluff obviously exists. It has nothing to do with the arguments, as i see them.

Mother Nature made use of suffering to fashion we species of ethical monkeys, only so that we could end the infliction of Her suffering on us and call it “good ethics.” Seems potentially delusional to have out smarted Mother Nature and her sufffering ways called “life.” With our “ethics” no less. — Fire Ologist

This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional to me. I'm unsure how to approach it, given that take. There is no 'intention' behind nature. We're not acting 'against' anything by not having children. We have a choice, and to me, it's a clear one. To you, either not so, or the 'other' choice.

What can the antinatalist do with the new fetus? Can they abort it?

If they can abort it, it must not be a person, because I would think the rule is that it is not ethical to kill another innocent person. That’s worse than inflicting suffering. — Fire Ologist

This is very interesting and you've picked up on a couple of conceptual issues that I think probably sort of float around among antinatalists without any real answers. For me, the antinatalist can abort. Should abort. But this is in line with most other reasonable takes on abortion: Up to a point. I'm not willing to commit to a timeframe, but its obvious at some stage a fetus can 'experience' and prior to that, go for gold.

The antinataliat who doesn’t think a fetus is a person and who supports abortion would have to agree with the following: it is unethical to cause a sperm and an egg to form a fetus because that would be inflicting suffering on another person, but is it ok to kill the fetus after it is formed because a newly conceived fetus isn’t a person.

Doesn’t an antinataliat have to be an anti-abortionist to lay out a consistent treatment of future people we do not want to inflict things upon? — Fire Ologist

Few points here:

1. They would not have to agree. A zygote is not a person. The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this.
2. To - some - degree, i get what you're saying. But 'future people' is a bit ambiguous here. A fetus which could survive outside the womb is probably already a person. Prior to that, you're still int he realm of "whether or not" in terms of making a choice, to my mind.

No. The non existence of registries is not among the limititative grounds for annulment of marriages under Dutch law. — Tobias

I take it you're not reading these responses thoroughly:
If there is no evidence you are married, the marriage doesn't exist. This has nothing to do with 'Dutch' law. This is fact of any legal matter. It would be the exact same scenario if you were (in the proper sense) never married, yet claim you were 'still' married. Same thing. It doesn't exist. Your cliam is simply your claim and is at the mercy of the legal proofs you can present.
A discussion about whether it did exist in 'our' scenario here gets further. Annulment is only relevant if you can make out the marriage to begin with. You can't. The scenario i've set up is exactly that. You pretending it's not is beyond me, at this stage.

There is my GF and I were married on the 10 of the 12th, 1998. It has not been disbanded. I just have no means of proving it. — Tobias

Then you cannot have it annulled. It's getting tedious, because this part here leads me to think you are trolling. If you cannot prove the marriage, you can't have it annulled or otherwise. It isn't there to be attended, at all, except in your mind. Which i already gave you. A lot of people allow this to suffice for their entire life. But they don't then pretend they are legally married, either. A legal marriage requires instruments of law. Wont be addressing this further unless you stop being dead wrong (or, you try it and provide me a judge's opinion which supports the idea that an assertion at law is as good as an instrument).

That might be because the money stopped existing. The marriage did not stop existing. The wedding ring may well be lost in that catastrophe as well, but so what? — Tobias

*sigh*.

You are not mean, just a bully and a silly one. — Tobias

This says quite a lot more than you wanted it to, I would think.

Now Amadeus seems to state that when the promise cannot be proven it is somehow not there. — Tobias

ONce again, conflating 'promise' with legal obligation. What is going on here, Tobias? Are you literally not reading the responses to your points, or what? Equivocating like this is extremely bad form and ensures we could never have a fruitful exchange. I would implore to not do this

I was actually lying. I was not — Tobias

No one claimed this. I didn't claim this. I claimed you would be wrong. You would be. It's become clear you're making arguments for me and then trying to beat them. Please dont.

By definition we were married, as it is given in the facts of the case. The court has established the facts wrongly, based on of knowledge and on the rule of evidence. — Tobias

Here is where "A discussion about whether it did exist in 'our' scenario here gets further" comes in. You've worded this equivocally. You're not currently married if that legal instrument no longer exists. But you can absolutely make the argument for the legal system to carry through your 'promise' into a new legal instrument. I have no idea why you're having trouble teasing these two things apart. I have not once at any stage tried to make the point that your mental state of believing you are married is either dishonest, or an act of some legal kind. It is delusional in the way i described earlier. It is incorrect. You were married and that fact no longer obtains, legally. You need to do the above to reestablish the legal marriage. There is simply no grey area here to be argued. I think you're still, despite my noting it gently several times, conflating a legal marriage and your attachment to your 'wife'. Not really my thing to do so.

That seems paradoxical. — Ludwig V

I think claiming belief and not knowledge is paradoxical. The claim to 'faith' is, to me, an indication of dishonesty or delusion.

belief implies one is not certain — Ludwig V

+

I'm happy to assert that that is not the case — Ludwig V

If these two hold some water (I think your wording is a little confused, but I'm with you generally) then belief implies one is certain. If that is hte case, then belief implies knowledge, even if it isn't claimed. Its a foundational aspect of certainty, even if it's misguided or unjustified (which would be the case here - hence, delusion - I use that word with faarrrrrr less disparagement than is usually imported, btw**).

But I would say that a belief must be capable of being true and most people think that religious doctrines are true or false. — Ludwig V

Hmm. This is an odd one for me, because in practice i'd have to nod along to this and roughly agree. But, on consideration, I don't think belief is apt for something capable of being "true" in the sense of 'veridical'. Belief is redundant in any scenario that this is the case. Belief is simply jumping the gun and, again, I think a form of either dishonesty or delusion as a result. "my truth" is where people get away with holding "veridical" beliefs that are, in fact, not veridical at all (perhaps your objection to the objective/subjective split gets some air here).

**to me, delusion implies that someone has simply formed a conclusion without adequately assessing the relevant states of affairs. That could be for any number of reasons, but suffice an example where someone has read a meme on Instagram about how something in psychology works and forms a belief about it. Totally unjustified and so the belief is a delusional, rather than the person is deluded. They might just be lazy. That may need further parsing, i'm aware. The addition of actively refusing to review one's beliefs is another matter.

Here is a statement from a highly-regarded Catholic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, with whom I have only passing familiarity: — Wayfarer

About the preceding paragraph: I think I roughly agree, but I think the demands on one's character for religious purposes are systematically learned through manipulation of hte mind. With philosophy, i think it's a "If you're this kind of person, you'll be apt for such and such". The former seems to be capable of intercession regardless of one's "base" character for lack of a better term.

On the quote itself, several points to me make it entirely ridiculous and incoherent. I'll quote the points at which this became apparent to me:

moral virtues become deeply embedded in our character

links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity.

the virtues of faith, hope, and love

Alll three of these lines render the rest of the passage nonsensical, and clearly manipulation into religiously informed worldview instead of a logical.

I didn't write this ... — Apustimelogist

Quite clearly. It also seems you’ve not understood it. But this just adds to the pile..

point taken, but ironically - it’s case by case. Religious groups, for instance, can quite reasonably be profiled given some very cursory case-specific information (ie if you’re Catholic, are you practising?). Many very helpful applications here.

But those let’s call them arbitrary “attributes” you’re complete right. But if a particular issue exists only in that group, regardless of prevalence, we’re right to ascribe it to that group. But this takes beinf an adult which most discussing social politics are not. Vibe tends to be that Their group is diverse despite being a special interest group, but the out-group is not despite being literally everyone else… seems the common take so your point is very apt

if the insured businesses are more likely to be vandalized then it is reasonable for the insurance company to charge higher premiums — Leontiskos

You can rearrange this sentence to adequately respond to most charges of racism/sexism/transphobia etc..
Generally speaking, that aspect of the person/group/behaviour/whatever else... is actually not relevant to the policy, and some other aspect is. It is not the fault of policy that it has more frequent interaction with a particular group due to their behaviour or self-affected identity.

"States of people's minds" suggests that you are either a relativist or a subjectivist. Or have I misunderstood? I do agree, however, that the binary classification between objective and subjective is most unhelpful when applied to ethics. — Ludwig V

As best i can bring myself to adopt a label, its emotivism.

There is something of a battle going on at the moment between belief and knowledge as the appropriate category. The (mistaken) idea that the difference between belief and knowledge means that saying one believes in God implies some sort of uncertainty, so people who strongly believe in God want to claim to know, while people who don't believe in God (or don't believe that belief in God can be rationally justified) cannot possibly concede that. It's very confusing. — Ludwig V

There is nothing coherent about claiming a belief and not knowledge unless you also claim the thing cannot be known - that would relegate the position, though. I don't see any problem there, myself. You may not be able to apply a certain framework to the claim, but I "believe" there's a Yule log in my fridge, it's because I have sufficient reason to believe so. That is, on the personal level, knowledge. If someone is claiming 'knowledge' having had no experiences that would actually indicate to the person the thing they believe - they are just being dishonest or are deluded. I actively discount those scenarios because I don't think we're taking about those people..

P1: Life is suffering. — Fire Ologist

This is definitely the most arguable aspect of the whole thing. I actually do sometimes swing on this one, but as a living person it hits me as patent that I'm off the rails at that point. I am not important to my own considerations here. It is whether or not causing people to exist is ethical. If you are (as I would put it) deluded into thinking your life is, on balance, purposeful and happy, you will reject this premise and (whether erroneously or not) be fine with procreation. The other premises don't seem to be shakeable in this way.

Suffering itself involves emotions, physical states and psychological reactions to those states, so bringing emotion into it isn’t a non-sequitor. — Fire Ologist

This is true, but where we are dealing with non-existent people this is not relevant other than to assign a position to oneself as a result of their emotional reaction to whatever proposition..

But in all of the above scenarios, in your quote, there are already existing victims of the harm. — Fire Ologist

There are clearly not. There are potential victims. This is why the analogy holds, for the most part. And taking this straight to your conclusion of "no playgrounds", yes, that's right, but antinatalists don't confuse the issue:
No humans. Not not playgrounds. Let the people who exist use hte playground, for reasons your point out that would make the "no playgrounds" conclusion stupid as heck. That said, it seems fairly clear that's not hte intention. THe intention is to leave the playground (world)as is, and remove the potential sufferer as it is (on this account) an unavoidable consequence of being one. We're not trying to get rid of oceans to avoid drownings - we're trying to stop people swimming where drowning is a clearly likely consequence (very shaky analogy, but there you go - can refine later if needed).

Is this not the long and the short of it? — ENOAH

Yes. But "many things" includes many things one would not trade non-existence in for, if the choice were at all a coherent one. If someone is "many things" but in there is psychopathic sexual deviant, we aren't inclined to let it roll.

Er, I think antinatalism is dead in the water due to this argument: — Leontiskos

That isn't an argument.

This is because it opposes the natural order, and to oppose the natural order requires appealing to some vantage point outside of the natural order. — Leontiskos

For example, given that Benatar’s argument opposes the natural order, it cannot have been derived from the natural order. So if Benatar really thinks his argument holds good, then he must hold that his own mind and the knowledge it has come to know is super-natural, transcending nature. — Leontiskos

Simply put, what? Total non sequitur. Sorry to say, but this just hits as red herring designed to impugn the logic of an argument on a naturalistic basis. Who gives a flying toss if its "against the natural order"? You'd need to establish what that is, and how it is derived (in light of hte extremely novel consciousness humans currently enjoy (see what i did there..)) in a way which could logically make Benatar's points untenable. You can't support these claims - only make them. I do smell the overwhelming aroma of religiosity coming through here... where did the evil bit come in?
Either, you have that knowledge, or his arguments are as good as yours. One for thee, one for me. Though, if you've simply been overzealous and mean only to posit that his arguments are inadequate and not that his position is wrong due to other arguments, sure. It reads as if you're trying to present a logical basis for rejecting his arguments. But, they literally boil down to your tastes regarding epistemology it seems. And I'd say your comments there are.. bizarre... That said, you'd very much enjoy prof. Tim Mulgan's Ananthropocentric Purposivism.

No, that is not how legal obligation works. You confuse obligations with rules of evidence. If I am married legally and the marriage is not legally dissolved I am simply married — Tobias

No. This is a complete misunderstanding. If there is literally no evidence of hte marriage the law does not hold a position on it. It does not exist. It is not there to be spoken about (again, if you're conflating legal obligation and moral obligation, which you clearly are - that's fine, but wrong).

That though does not make the obligation somehow disappear, or the marriage somehow annulled. — Tobias

Yes. That's literally what it would mean. Although, you've used misleading terminology - there is no marriage to be annulled in that scenario. The same way if your bank loses its server, you have no money. You cannot claim that wealth, if it literally disappears from the register in which it exists.

You could have dispensed with your silly condescending tone, but here we go... — Tobias

Its not condescending. You are very wrong, and adamant about it. It's not easy to pretend that's a reasonable position to take.

It is indeed beyond you but that is not really my problem. — Tobias

It is if you wanted to make a point. You didn't. It was a red-herring.

No, it If I remembered making a promise but I did not make a promise, there is no promise. — Tobias

Ok, we're done here. Your inconsistency is becoming funny, and that's going to make me mean. ALmost every response you've made to the other two interlocutors instantiates my points and defeat your own. Wild.

This is perplexing to me. I say that because the use of hallucinogens or psychedelics are associated with psychotic states of the mind. Psychosis is by definition a break from reality. How can a break from reality bring one closer to reality? — Shawn

Regarding counterfactuals, and the doubt in your mind about these or some of these experiences, why is there so much glamourization of psychedelics? I mentioned this in another comment; but, people think there is some kind of 'truth' to these experiences; but is there really any truth to them? — Shawn

I can adequately respond to this one. As a precursor, though, all the data in this area is preliminary and you can't particularly take seriously un-replicated results that are experimental rather than reportage or observational. Therefore, all claims in this area need a pinch of salt. However, the overwhelming academic position is that its all 'leaning positive' rather than negative, when controlled and overseen.

In short, that claim is wrong:

https://psychedelics.berkeley.edu/challenging-old-assumptions-twin-study-reveals-surprising-connection-between-psychedelics-and-psychosis/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-link-found-between-psychedelics-and-psychosis1/ (its the same report, essentially)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0269881115596156 Krebs and Johanssen reply here if you scroll

Largely, that association is a media-driven one. What Psychedelics (though, this is more 'on-point' for MDMA as a conceptual description) tend to really do is reduce bloodflow in areas of the brain like the Thalamus and anterior cingulate cortex that help process emotional data and manifest "thoughts" with valences. Thus, you 'receive' thoughts without the (usually) highly-entrenched valence you have pre-recorded. This is why MDMA users in controlled environments can, for instance, process war trauma without the 'shell shock' reaction. It's a reason why Mescaline tends to be something that heals generational/family episodes of disconnection.

For these other psychedelics, the action is a little bit more ambiguous(mesc, particularly), but hte effect appears to be roughly the same. This can be applied to whatever psychology has caused an addiction or other self-destructive behaviour. This is also why the experiences tend to have a noetic (truer than true) quality to them. People have experiences of (real) clarity and insight into their own behaviour and psychology that (at least they believe) could not have been accessed another way. Arguable, its the experience per se, not the access point that matters, but in any case, the 'truth' of the experience seems to be far more to do with its practicable element.

Most psychedelics have a very different historical milieu and the overall experiences differ - but the detail, in terms of specific psycho-spiritual (as they say) outcomes is fairly uniform in these controlled environments. That can be expected when they're all roughly in the same two families (serotonergics and phenethylamines).

I think the problem is that people having these subjective experiences that result in objectively 'good' outcomes in their life find it hard to assign that as arbitrarily access as part of the drug experience. But, that's tough luck IMO. Its a drug experience.

This has been a rant, but it's also been a significant and important part of my personal and professional life for going on 20 years.

As a side note, which I think even the enquiry is, the 'glamorization' I think is a result of two things:
Psychedelics present one with novel psychology; colours, shapes, feelings, experiences you've never even conceived of before (in the best cases). They are extreme in terms of metaphysical thought. Its all bright, shiny, spectacular stuff - it's hard not to rave. Second, I think that the fact people are spending 20, 30, 50 years suffering heinously from a debilitating mental anguish that nothing has had any effect on - and within six hours you're 'healed' and on a path to true functionality gives reason enough to allow for some evangelising. But, salt to be taken: the risks are real too.

When paychologists and psychiatrists turn into modern day shamans, things usually go downhill. — Shawn

I don't think this is true. Psychology is largely nonsense anyway, but that aside, psychiatry has clearly failed in its endeavours. Shamanism, in general, seems to be doing a better job when syncretized with modern medicinal practices like control groups and mental support. In that environment, the results are rigorously outstanding.

Ill leave off the quote and go forth:

1. an adult is one who has reached sexual maturity. However, given that we're trying to argue about definitional norms, one who has reached the age of majority is hte correct answer. This leaves a huge amount of wiggle room for different institutions to think about different policies, and the knock-on effects of higher-level policies (like age of majority). I don't think, in that context, you can just throw up your hands - OR completely reinvent the wheel, with any success.

2. The 'what if's' are prevarication in this area. We all know what a human is. If you don't, that's not really an issue anyone else needs to explain. If your questioning tactic were taken seriously, we're looking at Furries are legitimately (lets say) reptilian beings, when that is not the case. The AI example is a red herring. Is the person Human? That can be ascertained prior to any 'changes'.

3. No. No it isn't. A female is well-defined across several contexts (electronics, for example) and humans are no different. There are precisely zero humans who are not male or female. There are no in-betweens. They do not exist (unless you've got one hidden away, which would be fine with me)This is because the species Human is sexually dimorphic. Phenotypic ambiguity is irrelevant. Is your SRY active?

None of this is to say "use the above to write policies, and leave the rest alone". But it is to say pretending these fundamental starting points are seriously questionable is not reasonable.

Oh, discrimination is not only not a negative, it's essential to human existance. Since in it's absence we'd treat each other identically ie we'd never learn from experience. — LuckyR

Discrimination is literally the function of higher-order thinking.

(thanks Leontiskos - I had missed this)

How can something that does not exist occur? — Tobias

A flight of fancy doesn't exist. Yet it occurs. Plenty of things occur without existing. Including causal relations, strictly put. Not sure you're thinking...

It shows that utterances, whether they are recorded or not, have actual legal consequences. — Tobias

False. I went through this giving examples of both conceptually. You are just wrong. A person claiming bare that someone promised them something isn't even a legal consideration. It's a nothing. A nonsense. It isn't going to even get you listened to by the judiciary in any form, unless you have some evidence. Even that, usually, needs leave to be adduced.

However, not all legal facts rely on them being recorded and entered into a registry of sorts. It is also wholly beside the point. — Tobias

That's true - but they must be presentable in a reliable and usually, corroborated form. You seem to think not? It is entirely on point re: whether you ahve a point.

They adjudicate claims. If I cannot prove my claim, then it is tossed out of the window, it is as easy as that — Tobias

You could have stopped here, acknowledged you have defeated your own point, and moved on. But here we go...

but that does not mean my claim to being married is somehow false — Tobias

If you can't prove it in court, it probably does. If there is literally no record of your marriage, you are not married. That's how a legal obligation works. If you're conflating moral obligations with legal ones, that's a bit rich.

Your materialist view, taken to its logical consequence, leads to idealism, 'to be is to be perceived' in your case, 'to be is to be recorded'. — Tobias

This is plainly self-contradictory. Not sure what you thought would come of it. It also really has nothing to do with my views. I am telling you what is required for a legal obligation to obtain.

That does not render them non existent though. The promise is there, the obligation has arisen, it simply cannot be proven. That is why I think your view comes down to a rather crude form of idealism. — Tobias

Why you are mentioning ontological positions is beyond me so I'm just going to ignore that dumbass conclusion.

It literally renders them non-existent. If you have a false memory of making a promise, does it exist? No. You can't prove it. You have absolutely nothing but your memory to rely on. THe promise doesn't exist. Your apparent attachment to it does.

1. There is no ethical way to treat non-existing people, — Fire Ologist

The ethics are to do with our actions now. Not unborn people. The potential suffering itself is not hte moral crux. The action that (on the balance of probabilities) will make it come about, are. This is a gross oversimplication (or, overcomplexification, depending where you stand) of the point of antinatalism. That said, this is just another notch in my belt of Emotivism. Only your emotional response to that potential suffering could inform any decision around it. There is no ethical, normative principle which could entail either having, or not having children in the strict sense of those statements.

Suffering is not enough a reason to eliminate all humanity. — Fire Ologist

This is, again, an emotive position. To some people it is. There isn't a way to argue for one or the other, really, other than Benatar's clearly apt a-symmetry argument. Accept, or don't.

Antinatalism is not directed at preventing suffering, as it prevents everything. — Fire Ologist

This is a non sequitur. It prevents the imposition of human life and nought else. The suffering goes with it. I can't quite grasp why you'd make such a wildly overt overstatement of the position. Another below..

The suffering in the world still isn’t enough to justify ending the world. — Fire Ologist

-------------------

It is wishful thinking to prevent potential suffering in non-existing beings. — Fire Ologist

Then it would stand to reason you are an anti-abortionist? Someone who would not look twice pulling out in the road? Wouldn't remove broken glass from a playground? These are all potential harms to no one in particular (the A-symmetry argument beats this anyway). A starker example is, why keep NICU's sterile? Hehehe.

The vast majority would rather live this life than no life at all. — Fire Ologist

Benatar, particularly, addresses this issue. It is far more likely the figure is closer to 80% (this is interpolation based on my thoughts along with his arguments around it). Polly-Anna syndrome is rife. Most people are genuinely mistaken about how often they suffer. That said, I'm unsure this is a particularly strong anti-natalist argument anyway. I don't care what living people think about their lives. The vast majority of anti-natalists hold that the living have a deep interest in continuing to live. Perhaps there are situations in whcih this isn't the case, but overall, its hard to find examples of that.

Your earlier two objections are to stronger arguments, and I think your objections are just your taste. They aren't logic objections or reasonable ways around the claims made. They just illustrate that you do not accept htem, prima facie. That's fine. None of that has to do with the strength or weakness of hte anti-natalist position other than how it strikes you (weakly, it seems).

Antinatalism isn’t tailored to the specific problem it is trying to prevent, and is way overboard of a response to just suffering. — Fire Ologist

It is a 1:1 match with its aim. That you're averse to non-existence is expected, but not relevant.

Nor is there any differential value in the variant examples I offered unless you have something against fat men or people who need transplants. Let me say something callous sounding.

There are way more people in the world than it can sustain, and we are destroying the ecosystem on which we depend. Therefore it is better that five people die than one. Assume the facts are true; is the moral logic wrong? This is the logic of accelerationism. Human population is in overshoot and the sooner it is radically reduced, the better it will be both for the planet and for humanity. Only the most fortunate will have a quick death by trolley; most will die of heat-stroke or starvation. — unenlightened

Hoo boy, this is going to be fun.

There is a patent difference between not knowing the identity(and potential value) of the people, and knowing the identity (and potential value) of those people. Ignore it? Sure. That's probably more moral. But if you simply don't see it - well, that's something for you to have a look at.

The bolded is clearly wrong. If you've had a look at the concentration of populations (take Bangladesh as an extremely inarguable example) resource management is clearly humanity's problem. Not space or available resource. Particularly not now (as opposed to say 1400AD (pretend the population was comparable globally)). It is absolutely stupidity to think that humans have somehow outgrown the planet. Like - that's Mikie level delusional.

That takes care of hte remainder, save for one thing: As against your suggestion, it is better for humanity and the planet that we go extinct over a reasonable time-line. These are simply positions we can claim without argument. I don't really understand how this comes along with 'the arguments' anyway.

I see this thread has once again gone entirely off the rails into territory it neither should be covering, or makes for sensible exchanges.

*sigh*. The more philosophy i do outside of this forum the less appealing smart-sounding, but un(der)regulated discussion becomes.

'A' is a contradiction of orthodoxy which denies the heretical Gnostic principle that God can be known. So, it should be "I am convinced there is a God".
'B' is, most moderately, "I find no reason to believe in God, so I lack such a belief."
'C' is about right, it being a denial of Gnosticism, which paradoxically orthodoxy also is, rendering it in line with agnosticism, the difference being that the believer has faith in the existence of God, whereas the agnostic finds no reason to have such a faith, nor any reason to have faith in God's non-existence.
'D' is not I know there is not a God", but "I am against the very idea" (for whatever reasons, rational, moral, etc.) — Janus

In turn:

A. You're going to need to overturn orthodoxy to establish an orthodoxy. It is orthodox in the Abrahamic's to know God through his works. Not sure where you're coming from here... It also isn't that relevant. Being convinced results in the statement I used. There's no contradiction, even if your point is 'true' as such. /

B. Yes. This is a redundant reply.

C. Gnosis is not Gnosticism.

D. No, it isn't.

A. I believe in a God.
B. I do not believe in a God.
C. I do not know whether or not there is a God.
D. I claim that 'theism is not true, therefore theistic deities are fictions, and therefore theistic religions are immoral'.

ABC are standard definitions and D is nonstandard (which I prefer). — 180 Proof

A. This is not at all how this appears in the world, so I'm just going to say 'no' given these definitions are meant to be practical. All you've done is stepped down to a less helpful version.

B. See above.

C. This is simply not what that word refers to.

D. This is just you being a bit weird, imo - possibly silly.

I gave the definitions to avoid, exactly, the dumb missteps you're making. As below:

There are four words we can use to adequately, discreetly and clearly delineate the four positions of relevance:

A. Theism=I know there's a God;
B. Atheism = I do not know whether there's a God;
C. Agnosticism = I cannot know whether there is a God; and
D. Anti-Theism = I know there is not a God. — AmadeusD

A prime example of trying to sound cool, while entirely ruining the project.

Obviously. Not sure what the inference is though so apologise for the stark reply lol

A state of affairs is truth-apt — Ludwig V

It is not. A state of affairs is that against which somethign truth apt is held to standard. The state itself is brute (in any sense that can actually be grasped, anyway).

A value is more like an imperative than a statement, in that it relates to action in a way that a state of affairs does not. A value can be the major premiss of a practical syllogism; a state of affairs an only be a minor premiss in such a syllogism. — Ludwig V

I may not be quite understanding what you're saying here, as it seems artificially complicated - but my response is 'no, that is absurd' the same way it was to (apparently) Janus' position.
My position is a value isn't anything but an expression of someone/thing's mental hierarchy of achievable realities. 'Values' in the sense of 'communicable visions for the world' capture mental content in words. Nothing more. They are responses to propositions(or, inductive pre-empts - kinda - to possible propositions). Both yours, and Janus' formulations are roughly the same thing, I also note. Neither has any 'truth' value.

This is why the moral debate between 'objective' and 'subjective' morals is so utterly ridiculous and intractable. They aren't either, independently: They are. together, states of people's minds. They are objectively(again, ignoring dishonesty) the subjective mental states of affairs within any given person's mind, or collective (that one gets murky -but hte principle is the same) in relation to a proposition.

and yet we know them and they are true. — Ludwig V

Usually, we do not 'know' our values in any meaningful sense. It would be helpful to elaborate what you mean here. It seems prima facie absurd.
Values cannot be truth-apt. They are intellectual states of affairs. They are what they are. If we ignore the issue of lying (or, the problem of other minds more fully) then there's no way to claim truth for a value.

I think that's what Wittgenstein was trying to face up to — Ludwig V

This might explain why it's so silly...

If there is a principle that it is right to act to kill 1 to save 5, the principle should apply to both scenarios. Since it doesn't apply to both scenarios, there must be another principle that overrides the numbers principle that makes the difference. This is the idea of doing thought experiments, that you test how you justify things. — unenlightened

This ignores what he's actually said. In the OG scenario, you have no idea about differential value. You couldn't employ such a principle.

IN the subsequent, it is available to you. Unless i've missed something fundamentally esoteric about hte cases, this seems obvious.

I think this is possible with groups small enough to everyone, on average, is aware of everyone else, in some either direct or minimally indirect way. Say groups up to 5000 or so.

You could, pursuant to another thread here this morning, elicit 'good faith' and collectively deal with 'bad faith' essentially as it arises. THe distribution of 'goods' wouldn't matter much until everyone was bored.

However, this is the story of humanity writ small. We're beyond it. We did this, a few thousand times, got bored and pooled further - now we're a 'global' society unable to even consider this type of carry-on. Rightly, imo. But there's no good justification - just an opinion.

making a great point there. What would 'ownership' relate to, in such a world? Would bodily autonomy matter? What about rearing children? Are we morally able to retain items for that purpose? Hm.

...........Yes. lol.

…..and yet, methodological dualism is still not granted as necessarily the case with respect to human intelligence. — Mww

To be clear, he's quoting me here.
I can't entirely grok from you where you sit, but I think we're seeing hte same issue with that quoted passage in relation to Ausp's position that dualism is inherently incoherent. IT is required to speak about what we currently know as to a relationship between the brain an experience. Only a gap serves to plug the gap hehehehehe.

Presentism seems the only one with anything even approaching any evidence behind it. The rest are entirely speculative, or interpretive - meaning not empirically interesting.

Have read the thread and that's somewhat why I say the above.

But that would mean that the simulation is a reality of its own, independently of the "real" reality. — Ludwig V

I think is entirely dependent on S's use of the word 'reality'. The way i use, it is expressly apt to delineate between a simulated, and a non-simulated 'reality'. The former would not actually be able to come undert this label. I think the term is complete incoherent if it isn't doing this job. I realise others use it differently.

they wouldn't really be algorithms if they were simulated. — Ludwig V

I think algorithms are simulations of behavioural matrices. I can't understand the above claim, really.

but it needs to be built from and in the real world. — Ludwig V

Which is why the previous two claims seem fishy to me. It is patently obvious they are not analogous or parallel scenarios to be in, for any given S.

If this world is simulated, the "real" world must be very like this one — Ludwig V

I'm unsure that's true. The fine-grained nature of the world we live it might just be a function of adaptive creative algorithms which feed off of past events, in the simulation. This would also explain the wildly increasing complexity across time.

Havent recently jumped back into the Hobby (though, think "autistic obsession") of analyzing, noting and systematizing the ranges and catalogues of various singers in all areas (opera, pop, rock, avant garde etc.. etc.. )

It's an extremely fun and satisfying game. www.therangeplanet.proboards.com

The asshole being the deceased?

Everything in this response further entrenches the clear fact you are confusing cognition and experience. They are patently separate events.
The charge that I'm invoking some mysterious unobservable is risible, in that context. The causal link between cognition and experience is unobservable, as all causal relationships are. I have not posited that cognition is unobservable. Again, betraying your clear lack of comprehension of what's been said. I am unsure why you're bothering with length replies at this stage.

Very much so. It would be ...bizarre... if we weren't. Huehuehue

The Sun's formatting is too bizarre to make the page readable, unfortunately.

But Murray rarely misses, despite being a bit of a dick.

This explains so much about your comportment.

I think, Vera, you are for some reason insisting that what people say about God is all there is. Given you've acknowledge the wide breadth of what's said about God, it seems entirely irrational to simply ignore that in almost all other cases, there is something empirical behind that swathe of (potential) nonsense. Thunder/rain Gods are one.

The idea that because people are necessarily limited, you're allowed to rationally reject, wholesale, the concept of god (not God) is bizarre to me. Its patently not rational.
This is weird wording though - obviously you're allowed to do what you want intellectually - I'm pointing out the hilarious irony in trying to rationally achieve a position which is irrational.

I don't particularly care to, personally.

Literally nothing he said indicates this.
A grift can be in service of a legitimate cause. And it does undermine the credibility of the movement.
If it doesn't to you, you're short of a full deck. And yeah. No surprise if so. This isn't even moral - it's based on the fact that this is what it has done

You didn't understand what I was saying — Apustimelogist

False. Much of this response confirms.

Not one of these is not something you are not directly aquainted with by experience. Perception? Obviously experience. Attention? Obviously attending to experiences. Imagination? Bring up mental images, talk about narratives. Intelligence? Do an intelligence test, you have the experience of doing it and coming up with the answers. Memory? You experience your recollection of a fact or event. Judgement? You experience yourself looking at something and experiencing it and then making the judgement or reporting it and how you feel. Problem Solving? you experience yourself thinking and engaging with a problem. Language? You experience yourself reading or bringing up words. — Apustimelogist

You do not understand what you're talking about given the above. You're conflating the activitiy in the brain with the (abstract) experience which is not of that action. We are blatantly speaking past each other and you are, unfortunately, flat-the-heck-out-wrong.

I was talking about dualism being incoherent, i.e. conscious experiemce arising out of and separate to something elae. — Apustimelogist

Which makes it all the more clear that you're confusing not only the concepts you're discussing, but yourself in the process.

I tried to end this exchange to avoid having to get this 'dirty' but its just blatantly obvious you're protecting positions that are wrong on every level.

Again, appreciate the time - but at this point I really don't care. This is stupid.

as at present conducted, the debate will not be resolved, because the two sides talk past each other. On that assumption, agnosticism is the only rational possibility. — Ludwig V

Ah ok, this clarifies. Thank you.

If God did turn up in some way, I would have a great many unanswerable questions to discuss with them. — Ludwig V

LMAO yes - this might be the more intractable issue.

My actual position is that the concept of God is incoherent, which means that I can neither assert not deny that such a person exists — Ludwig V

Perfectly reasonable, IMO. It does seem to exist by definition, rather than anything else (conceptually).

Atheism, then, would be the adoption of the non-existence of God as an axiom — Ludwig V

I don't quite understand why this would be the case? There's no commitment at all behind atheism, on my account (and the one i'm importing into the above table of possible positions.. feel free to just not use them though. That' sjust my account).

What could I do to bring matters to a head? — Ludwig V

I think what I'm highlighting here (and in retrospect, is not likely to be part of your position) is that many agnostics (on the account given above) take that position to avoid the discomfort of either anticipating, or failing to find, the evidence required (the latter would be your religiously-inclined atheist, the former, the neutral atheist) for God. A girl/woman (dunno what she'd prefer) from my class last night was outlining why she thinks objectivity is impossible, but it boiled down to just not liking uncertainty. I think this the case for a lot of agnostics - they can just leave off the issue entirely by claiming that looking for the evidence is a fools errand.

That means that the proposition that God exists is not empirical, but is a principle of interpretation. — Ludwig V

Do you not think this could just be a result of 'mistake'?
That there really is possible 'evidence' for God which is 'true' regardless of how any particular human sees it? This is essentially my position. I don't know why we would somehow attribute an ontological free lunch to the concept of God simply to avoid having to resolve the issue.

I have made it clear in this discussion that I am not a dualist so why are you interpreting my words in a dualist fashion? — Apustimelogist

I'm not. This follows from what i take to be your (rather extremely) misguided conception of cognition in relation to phenomenal experience. It seems quite clear to me your monist conception is arbitrary and counter to what's presented to you. The line of yours I quoted should make it sufficient clear that your objection here is not apt, at all, in any way, to my objection/s.

there is no way that what I have said in the last post could "explain [my] entire rationale". — Apustimelogist

And yet, it does. If that quoted line is incorrect (it factually is incorrect) then your position fails to cohere with anything in reality.

Is therefore in no way contradictory to anything that I have said. The issue is you are interpreting what I have said as some kind of dualist would even though I am not one. — Apustimelogist

Suffice to say: No. This is squirming away from your position, as supported by the quote I responded to. It is wrong, and it pulls the rug from you reductive position. Nothing I have said intimates any kind of dualist position on your part. It categorically precludes your monist position. If this isn't sufficiently clear, I really don't know what to say. I simply have not inferred what you're getting here - and it seems you're doing it on purpose at this stage.

We can think of cognition as latent models created to explain this empirical data in the flow of experiences and behavioural responses. — Apustimelogist

No we can't. We can understand it as an underlying organisational structure that informs experience in some way, but given we already know 90% of our cognition has absolutely no noticeable effect on our phenomenal experience, this is just not plausible. Experience is irrelevant to the explanations and organisations of cognition. There is nothing in cognitive science that would lead us to predict conscious experience from the underlying structure of, lets call it awareness, which is in turn strictly tied to (theoretically) the underlying physical relational structure of information processing in the brain. This is so much more fine-grained than you're allowing for, while simultaneous so much simpler than you seem to think it really is. Cognition has no per se relationship to experience. This is, in fact, in what that mystery largely consists in. Even if we are to grant a 100% reductive concept of 'consciousness' there is no current, plausible way to connect cognition with experience beyond some vague, uninteresting correlates that amount to 'vibes'.

So I don't see any fundamental difference between "conscious" and "unconscious" cognition. — Apustimelogist

One is conscious experience, and one is not experience at all, the way we understand experience. We simply have no experiential correlate to the majority of our cognition. This isn't really controversial. And so..

They are both embedded in experience and have the same fundamental explanation. — Apustimelogist

They are empirically not. I will leave further comments on this point alone. This may seem glib, but i am of the view you are woefully, willfully ignorant about hte nature of cognition->experience. Feel free to think the same. Either way, there's no good reason to continue debating it on that view.

perception involves our experiences and behavioural responses. — Apustimelogist

As above.

Otherwise how else you would know about these things? — Apustimelogist

This is the entire f-ing point my dude. We dont. And this is a known fact. We have no idea about most of our cognition. Because "as above.."

experience or behaviour, — Apustimelogist

These are completely different things and confusing them has wasted the vast majority of your time typing about them.

You experience your losses of attention. — Apustimelogist

No. You cannot 'remember to forget'. This is a nonsense. By definition.

Unfortunately, the rest of that paragraph is pretty hard to grasp. Nothing represents anything i've said though, so I'll leave it given it was mostly questions.

I don't think my view is waving it away in any sense because as I have already said, I believe there is very good reason to think that we cannot have access to the fundamental nature of reality in any objective sense while what we perceive and the beliefs about them we come to are obviously constrained by the informational processing of a brain. — Apustimelogist

This has literally zero to do with the disagreement we've had here. I am indirect realist, and as such I can assent to all of this and maintain my position both as a positive position, and all of my objections to yours go through. I have no idea what you thought this was addressing? It doesn't touch on the 'nature' of experience (particularly vs cognition).

On the other hand, you seem to think the problem of irreducibility can be solved when arguably irreducibility by virtue of its meaning means it will never be solved. — Apustimelogist

This is so incoherent I have no idea what to say. You're charging me with dualism (yes, but you're wrong about how property dualism works - it still posits consciousness arises from cognition in some way, but is over-and-above it) and then pretending I think the apparent irreducibility issue could be solved. Woo! But no.

Stands to reason that if dualism is true and we have a complete explanation of both "mental" and "physical" stuff, there would still be a problem of consciousness — Apustimelogist

It seems you simply have no idea about hte arguments in this area. If property dualism were true, we could formulate and test psychophysical laws the same way we test physical laws, and come to the same levels of causal, relational and phenomenal certainty about them (what level you take that to be is not tied to the theory, but your view on scientific objectivity in general).

I believe such a view is incoherent. — Apustimelogist

You think a reductionist account is incoherent? Then what do you think is happening? You've rejected dualism fairly clearly, but you are not positing a reductionist account is incoherent? Slippery.

The basic stipulation of two substances / properties is really as far as you can get; the irreducibility hurdle cannot be overcome because thats what irreducibility means. — Apustimelogist

Ha....ha??

There doesn't seem any way to get away from Chalmers' paradoxes without getting rid of dualism — Apustimelogist

There is though. I think i'll just leave you to discover the discussions on your own, at this stage. Chalmers himself deals with these issues in the work we're referring to.

If you recall the Mary's room knowledge argument against physicalism — Apustimelogist

Chinese Room*. Chalmers deals with it head-on aimed at Searle.

in principle there are reasons we think or perceive things in the way we do which are constrained by physics in the same way a car runs in ways constrained by physics — Apustimelogist

This, again, has literally nothing to do with the discussion we're having.

I am happy at this stage to just eat the shit and say I've entirely misunderstood you, but on your key points you're simply empirically wrong.

I see no reason to continue. THank you very much for a long, thoughtful exchange! Rare.

For me, both theism and atheism are irrational, even if they are empirical claims. Which leaves agnosticism as the only rational position. — Ludwig V

Not to re-bump that extremely frustrating argument from earlier this year but this is a common problem with misusing the word 'atheist'(or, at least, not adequately paying attention to it). There are four words we can use to adequately, discreetly and clearly delineate the four positions of relevance:

A. Theism=I know there's a God;
B. Atheism = I do not know whether there's a God;
C. Agnosticism = I cannot know whether there is a God; and
D. Anti-Theism = I know there is not a God.

Given all discussions that refuse to accept an adjustment such as the above all turn out into the same mess of bollocks every time, It doesn't matter to me that others might disagree on the format. The above solves the semantic issues and makes it quite clear which position makes the most sense given any S's particular perspective. From my perspective B. is the only rational take. For others, the other three may meet that benchmark based on what they believe.