We generally agree that if one is in a coercive institution that restricts one's choice to such a complete extent that they have no non-trivial choices left to make on pain of violence, forcible restraint, etc. then they are not free in any interesting sense, as with going to prison.

I am simply pointing out that birth is such an institution, though people do not acknowledge this.

In those cases these measures are not taken to prevent intentional death but rather accidental death; preventing intentional death is an addition. — darthbarracuda

You are wrong about this. Some companies, for example, mix oxygen in with the gas in helium tanks specifically to prevent the tanks for being used for suicide.

We generally agree that if one is in a coercive institution that restricts one's choice to such a complete extent that they have no non-trivial choices left to make on pain of violence, forcible restraint, etc. then they are not free in any interesting sense, as with going to prison.

I am simply pointing out that birth is such an institution, though people do not acknowledge this. — The Great Whatever

That would be something worth acknowledging if all the choices that anyone makes in life are trivial and inconsequential. But this thesis more resemble a philosophically loaded nihilistic view of human existence than it does resemble a truism that one can simply "point out".

Well then today I learned. I doubt all companies do this, though, and let us not forget that helium tanks are not the only way of going out.

But this thesis more resemble a philosophically loaded nihilistic view of human existence than it does resemble a truism that one can simply "point out". — Pierre-Normand

Exactly what I've been trying to say this whole time.

I think that, ideally, most governmental institutions and ordinary people would forcibly restrain all people from committing suicide if they had the capacity. It is generally not recognized that people have the right to end their own life (see the 'debates' on euthanasia).

People also have the right to intervene if they see something that they feel is morally problematic. Hence why if you were to decide to commit suicide in public, you shouldn't be surprised when people try to stop you. What they think they are doing is helping you, and perhaps they actually would be.

I disagree; people do not see birth a a institution because they take for granted that it continues, has to continue, etc. It is not something within the public consciousness 'as an issue;' the notion that the mechanism and institution of birth itself might be questioned or even brought up is not really understood.

Those who think about birth seriously are in my experience (1) radical feminists, (2) racists (against race-mixing, etc.) and eugenicists, or (3) anti-natalists, including pessimists and fringe environmentalists, (4) people undergoing a pop-sci momentary scare about the earth being 'too populated,', (5) the Chinese government. Of these, only (1) and (2) question the legitimacy of the institution itself. The issue is not that this takes place in some special philosophical jargon (and if it did, it wouldn't matter), but rather that it is an issue accessible to ordinary opinion that does not receive much attention due to historical and biological pressures.

So everyone is free to kill themselves and should stop complaining about life being coercive, but literally anybody has the right (and moral entitlement) to forcibly stop you if they see you trying to?

Do you understand that your position makes no sense? Some rando on the street has more of a say than the person themselves as to whether they live or die? In what sense then do people's lives actually belong to them, and in what sense is the institution of life not obviously coercive?

but literally anybody has the right (and moral entitlement) to forcibly stop you if they see you trying to? — The Great Whatever

I never said I agreed with governmental enforcement of life. Straw man...

I would say that the institutions of society as well as the general impulsive fear of death (the self-preservation mechanism) is influential and typically enough to keep people from even considering death as an option (see: Becker). But it is not in the sense absolutely coercive as there are methods to get around these blocks if one thinks their life is truly not worth living. They might not be perfectly clean or easy but they are still viable options that can, and in fact do, work.

I would hesitate at your (seemingly) assumption that the only reason people continue to live is out of instinct. I would say that those who have not analyzed their lives sufficiently do indeed continue to live out of instinct and habit. But there are people, more rare though, that continue to live out of spite and out of rebellion (re Camus) or because they feel they have an overarching purpose behind their lives.

If you would argue that these too are indeed merely psychological walls to keep us entrapped, then I would hesitate and ask you if you believe that a person ought to end their lives. This does seem to be the deciding factor in whether or not instincts and society are indeed coercive. Because if there is no impetus to end one's life, then clearly this means that the influential forces of instinct and society have no weight as they aren't contributing to keeping you from ending your life.

Additionally, I would also argue that these instincts are not necessarily bad in themselves. I believe Becker himself argued that one thing humans need are better, sturdier psychological walls in which we can live our lives in peace without the looming threat of death always on our shoulders. This goes back to what I was saying about the normativity of death. If these psychological walls not only shield us from thinking about death but also give us bountiful purpose and meaning from culture, art, music, philosophy, scientific inquiry, relationships, etc, then surely there is no inherent problem with the implementation of these walls. They may distract us, sure, but they work. Even Zapffe knew that there was a fourth option for those who cannot seem to attach, distract, or isolate themselves: sublimation.

And so we can live Absurdly and change these "coercive" "influential" modes of thinking into something that we simply accept and move on. We can treat it as one would treat the ability to fly: ultimately not possible for a naked man but given his intellect and ability to use tools, actually possible if he does so desire. It only seems coercive if you have never tried or have tried and failed due to poor planning, but it's not coercive in the way a jail cell is. The ones who have succeeded are proof that our instincts are only "coercive" insofar as we allow them to be. And sometimes if we give in to our instincts, they can lead to some great things (mentioned above) that doesn't make it seem like it is "coercion".

So the question here is whether or not it is in the best interests of an agent to die, and if so, then the instincts and societal institutions do indeed act as some kind of barrier, obstacle, or Catch-22 that a person must overcome in order to perish. But let us not forget that the existence of a barrier does not prevent one from breaching it, nor does it prevent one from living a life peacefully and in harmony.

If you believe the nonsense that human action is somehow defined without any reference to our circumstances, sure. The compatibilist rejects this. For them the sort of freedom you are talking about doesn't exist. Free will doesn't exist in that sense for them. In this respect they are in perfect agreement with you. No human action takes place in an environment without the presence of some sort of force which limits or threatens the actor involved.

No human action takes place in an environment without the presence of some sort of force which limits or threatens the actor involved. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is an excellent point. Without adversary, without need, humans would do nothing or perhaps die of boredom. The very existence of an adversary to our wants and needs creates a system of value.

From Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus:

"In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we
conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has
about life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us not
exaggerate in this direction. In a man’s attachment to life there is
something stronger than all the ills in the world. The body’s
judgment is as good as the mind’s and the body shrinks from
annihilation. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the
habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death,
the body maintains its irreparable lead. In short, the essence of that
contradiction lies in what I shall call the act of eluding because it is
both less and more than diversion in the Pascalian sense. Eluding is
the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion
that constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope. Hope of
another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not
for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it,
give it a meaning, and betray it.
Thus everything contributes to spreading confusion"

It is the contradiction between the body's will and the mind's will that leads to the Absurd. Is this the kind of "coercion" that you are speaking of, that the mind sees true that suicide is rational yet the body prevents it from annihilation?

It is the contradiction between the body's will and the mind's will that leads to the Absurd. Is this the kind of "coercion" that you are speaking of, that the mind sees true that suicide is rational yet the body prevents it from annihilation? — darthbarracuda

No.

Then please enlighten me to your exclusive definition of what coercion means to you.

I don't have an exclusive definition. 'Coercion' is an English word that it is not in my power to define. If you speak English, you presumably also know what the word means.

But you replied to my post (that I spent some time writing out might I add) with a simple "no", which presumably means that you have a different definition of what "coerce" means. I would like to know what it is that is different, unless of course you wish to continue to dodge questions.

I wasn't talking about 'the Absurd' (whatever that is) or Camus at all.

Okay, but the part after the Absurd, where the mind sees true the rationality of suicide while the body resists?

I'm not talking about suicide, but birth. If what I've said is right, suicide itself is also not really blameworthy or commendable, or the wrong or right choice to make, because it takes place also under coercive circumstances.

This does not follow. Whether an idea is right or not can be judged by its own internal coherence and explanatory merit. Whether it was coerced or determined or not makes no difference to the quality of an argument, nor does it make it 'meaningless.' — The Great Whatever

No, assuming determinism true, an idea will be judged by pre-existing causes and whether your conclusion is actually based on internal coherence and explanatory merit will be entirely happenstance. That is, all your discussion of what can be is meaningless. Everything is predetermined and there is no way to speak in terms of what could be or not.

Your belief that free will is incompatible with determinism is due to the fact that you are required by the laws of determinism to think that period. The justification that you provide for your belief is simply what the laws of determinism require you to think is an adequate justification. Any suggestion that you can consider various reasons and choose the correct one assumes the ability to meaningfully choose, which you reject.

Well, now you are talking about birth. Before you were specifically mentioning how someone is coerced into continuing their life.

Even more critically, it is required for free will. The point of free will is that , in our consciousness of the world and actions, a state of ourselves determines what our future actions are. The point of thinking: "I will now write this post rather than read my book," in the context of free will, is it is a causal state which results in my future action. "Freedom" with respect free will is pointless. If the state of myself (which we might call "The Decision" ) doesn't cause my action in the future, if it doesn't set me taking one specific action in the future, I cannot control my actions. If I was "free" to be anything at any moment, I could not have functioning free will. My actions would be entirely random. What I thought I would to in the future could have no causal effect on what I ended-up doing. Free will is necessarily deterministic and requires the absence of absolute "freedom."

Free will is necessarily deterministic and requires the absence of absolute "freedom." — TheWillowOfDarkness

One can distinguish two concepts, or two conditions, maybe, of freedom, called liberty of indifference and liberty of spontaneity. Liberty of indifference is the condition under which human actions aren't fully determined by their antecedent circumstances conjoined with deterministic laws. This is the stringent incompatibilist requirement that if someone freely performed some actions A, in given antecedent circumstances, then it should have been possible for this person to have refrained from doing A, or done something else, in those exact same circumstances. The requirement that you are stressing is the requirement of liberty of spontaneity. This is the requirement that actions not occur at random but rather conform with what the agent wants or decides. For this requirement to be satisfied there indeed seems to be required an effective causal link between, on the one hand, the agent's decision (or, broadly, her antecedent motivations and beliefs) and, on the second hand, her subsequent actions. Her action must be intelligible in light of her reasons and motivations in order that it could be ascribed to her qua agent, let alone be ascribed to her as her free action

It's not clear that the second requirement entails that determinism must be true, however, since the sort of law of causation at issue, which links an agent's motivations and practical deliberation abilities to her subsequent actions, need not have the same form as deterministic and exceptionless laws of natures (assuming there are any such things). They may rather be principles of practical rationality, and there is no reason why one ought to assimilate such principles to deterministic laws. Under some accounts of action, the causal model that links antecedent psychological states of agent, including states of the will, to actions, is indirect. It is a model of agent causation, where the antecedent cause is an agent -- a substance -- rather than events or states. Hence, one can have liberty of spontaneity consistently with the negation of determinism. The negation of determinism mustn't be assimilated, though, with the idea that events or processes (or actions) that aren't determined by the conjunction of laws of nature and antecedents circumstances thereby are uncaused or random. It may be the case that the stringent requirement from the incompatibilist libertarian is indeed too stringent, and that it is not possible that the agent who did A could have done something different in the exact same circumstances. But it need not follow from this that her action was determined by those circumstances since there is no law of nature that links those circumstances with the action.

In the Third Antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes the empirical character of causality from the intelligible character of causality. The former reveals empirical "events" in nature to follow from antecedent "events" in accordance with deterministic laws. The latter reveals other "events" (i.e. actions) to follow intelligibly from non-deterministic principles of practical rationality, on the basis of an agent's assessment of her own practical situation (not quite Kant's own formulation, but rather my gloss on it). The two sorts of accounts seem to conflict when actions are identified with (some of) the "events" that natural sciences disclose as conforming with deterministic laws. But it is unclear that human actions can be disclosed through such an empirical stances, and hence that they can be identified at all outside of the proper hermeneutical context within which alone they are disclosed as intelligible occurrences in the life of rational animals.

It doesn't matter whether my thoughts are determined or not, that doesn't affect the quality of the argument or my ability to think rationally.

Honestly, this argument is so bad I don't really think it's worth responding to. Sorry.

I was talking about birth the whole time. Everything I mentioned about suicide was in explicit response to you.

Your OP is specifically about not only birth but also being seemingly coerced into a continued life.

The operative quote:

Unfortunately, life itself is such a coercive situation, since it is impossible to consent to being born, and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment. — The Great Whatever

and all 'decisions' made while alive are within the context of that coercive establishment. — The Great Whatever

Pretty sure that means that society/instincts are keeping us from killing ourselves (the "coercive establishment").

Regardless of how you interpret your own OP, this is how it came across and furthermore, you have responded to me defending the position that we cannot commit suicide because of this coercive establishment.