Don't give me a comparison.
Give me the reason as to why you are living right now. A straight answer.

If you cannot put the logic together, I can't help you.

I'm not asking for logic.
I asked you, why do you continue living?
Will you or won't you and can you or can't you answer why?

So it is good to bring about negative conditions for others because of the host of emotions you list? — schopenhauer1

Things are good because of the overall value taking into account all factors, not bad because you deliberately select just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the others.

Please, show some intellectual honesty.

Things are good because of the overall value taking into account all factors, not bad because you deliberately select just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the others.

Please, show some intellectual honesty. — S

What makes the emotions you list more important than causing the conditions for suffering for another though?

What makes the emotions you list more important than causing the conditions for suffering for another though? — schopenhauer1

Like I just said, a reasonable analysis must take into account all relevant factors. So by asking me only about suffering, you're effectively asking me to be unreasonable. This isn't controversial. It's a fallacy known as a hasty generalisation. And another fallacy you frequently commit is the fallacy of cherry picking. All emotions are obviously relevant because life consists of all emotions.

Like I just said, a reasonable analysis must take into account all relevant factors. So by asking me only about suffering, you're effectively asking me to be unreasonable. — S

This means nothing to me. Using "reasonable" or "common sensibility" I just won't accept as an argument. Argue something. Don't just use the ambiguousness of the word "reasonable" or the like make it for you. Explain.

It's a fallacy known as a hasty generalisation. And another fallacy you frequently commit is the fallacy of cherry picking. — S

Not if I admit that indeed, not causing all forms of suffering to another person, while not actually depriving that person of any of the emotions (or any other perceived good) is indeed the best decision and outcome.

This means nothing to me. Using "reasonable" or "common sensibility" I just won't accept as an argument. Argue something. Don't just use the ambiguousness of the word "reasonable" or the like make it for you. Explain. — schopenhauer1

Fallacious reasoning can't be reasonable, because it is by definition unreasonable. And you've committed a fallacy by drawing a conclusion based on just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the other relevant factors. I just explained that to you.

Not if I admit that indeed, not causing all forms of suffering to another person, while not actually depriving that person of any of the emotions (or any other perceived good) is indeed the best decision and outcome. — schopenhauer1

Are you abandoning antinatalism as you previously described it or not? Because you previously described it as a position essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from suffering, and my criticism still applies to that description. Again, the description is misleading and it's unreasonable to reach that conclusion from insufficient factors, and suffering alone is insufficient, because obviously life is a lot more than suffering. You would have to change your premise about the prevention of suffering, or add additional premises which actually take into account all of the other factors. Otherwise the argument will never be sound, because it's invalid.

That's an odd way to phrase that. Anyways, I don't know who said "all non-pregnant women are potential mothers".. but that is not quite true. — schopenhauer1

I meant that people who argue against anti-natalism make similar arguments to those the pro-lifers make, which are extremely incoherent. They basically argue that non-fertilized eggs have potential to be children (or already are), which doesn't make any sense. In other words, they are basically saying women with unfertilized eggs are all potential mothers as if the gestation process has begun in the first place.

Antinatalism is essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from either contingent or structural suffering. That is it. Whatever other odd choice of phrasing you want to add for a straw man or red herring, doesn't really matter to this argument. — schopenhauer1

Well, since nothing in my post is stating what I think anti-natalism is or about, and it's evident I am not making any type of argument, I don't know what you're even talking about at this point.

It's not "odd" phrasing just because you can't readily understand what is being said. Re-read it in the context of the thread and what I quoted.

Given that we all know what antinatalism entails, why do antinatalists always try to hide the full picture? They say that it's about the prevention of suffering, yet they know that by implication it's about the prevention of so much more than that. They could just as well say that it's about the prevention of joy as that it's about the prevention of suffering. I would like them to answer that themselves, because I think they ought to explain themselves, although I know the answer. The answer is surely that they do so because they know that their position will otherwise come across as much less convincing. A follow up question would be: why do they care so little about intellectual honesty?

Fallacious reasoning can't be reasonable, because it is by definition unreasonable. And you've committed a fallacy by drawing a conclusion based on just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the other relevant factors. I just explained that to you. — S

Ah I see how you are using that now. You didn't need "I just explained that to you", it's unnecessary (but based on your past posts "reasonable" to expect :)).

Are you abandoning antinatalism as you previously described it or not? Because you previously described it as a position essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from suffering, and my criticism still applies to that description. Again, the description is misleading and it's unreasonable to reach that conclusion from insufficient factors, and suffering alone is insufficient, because obviously life is a lot more than suffering. You would have to change your premise about the prevention of suffering, or add additional premises which actually take into account all of the other factors. Otherwise the argument will never be sound, because it's invalid. — S

No buddy, it's not. What I'm trying to say, is that upfront, that at the procreational decision (ONLY), prevention of suffering is above and beyond all else, because no actual person is alive to be deprived of the all else you described. Only AFTER they are created do they then have something to lose. And certainly valuing the prevention of suffering would have to come into play here as a premise.

No buddy, it's not. What I'm trying to say, is that upfront, that at the procreational decision (ONLY), prevention of suffering is above and beyond all else, because no actual person is alive to be deprived of the all else you described. Only AFTER they are created do they then have something to lose. And certainly valuing the prevention of suffering would have to come into play here as a premise. — schopenhauer1

You aren't addressing the problem. The problem is that life consists of a lot more than suffering. And given that life consists of a lot more than suffering, you aren't warranted to talk only about the prevention of suffering. Suffering is a part of life just like all of the other emotions are a part of life. You haven't justified talking about the prevention of suffering alone. Do you understand that or not? If so, please produce a valid response in your next reply.

Antinatalism is essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from either contingent or structural suffering. — schopenhauer1

Structural suffering? What is that?

You aren't addressing the problem. The problem is that life consists of a lot more than suffering. And given that life consists of a lot more than suffering, you aren't warranted to talk only about the prevention of suffering. Suffering is a part of life just like all of the other emotions are a part of life. You haven't justified talking about the prevention of suffering alone. Do you understand that or not? If so, please produce a valid response in your next reply. — S

From previous discussions, the answer to that seemed to be a stance that prevention of suffering was all that mattered.

Structural suffering? What is that? — Terrapin Station

This is from a previous post I wrote:

However, what is not usually recognized is the structural suffering inherent in existence- built into the human affair. Structural means that it is not based on contingent circumstances like genetics, place of birth, circumstances in time/place, or fortune. Structural suffering can be seen in things like the inherent "lack" that pervades the animal/human psyche. We are lacking at almost all times. The need for food and shelter, the need for mates, the need for friends, the need for interesting projects, the need for flow states, the need for comfortable environments. These "goods" represents things WE DO NOT HAVE (aka lack). We are constantly STRIVING for what is hoped to be fulfilling, but at the end, only temporarily fills the lack state, and for short duration. Structural suffering can also be seen in the psychological state of boredom. I don't see boredom as just another state, I see it as an almost baseline- state. It is a "proof" of existence's own unfulfilled state. This leads again, striving for what we lack. There is a certain burden of being- the burdens of making do- of getting by, of surviving, of filling the lack, of dealing with existence. That we have to deal in the first place is suspect. That not everyone is committing suicide is not a "pro" for the "post facto, people being born is justified" stance. Rather, suicide and being born in the first place are incommensurable.

Then of course, there is the contingent suffering (what is commonly what is thought of as suffering). This is the circumstantial suffering of physical/psychological pains that pervade an individual's life. This may be any form of physical or more emotional pain that befalls a person.

The parents' perspective are that the goods of life, the encultration into society for which these goods are to be had, is something to be experienced and carried forward. Structural suffering is not even seen in the picture. You only go with the information you have at hand, and you deem most important. Structural suffering is not a concept most parents think about, even if it is the main governing principle of animal/human existence. As far as contingent suffering, it has been well-documented the optimism bias that we have in underestimating the harms for past and future events.

You aren't addressing the problem. The problem is that life consists of a lot more than suffering. And given that life consists of a lot more than suffering, you aren't warranted to talk only about the prevention of suffering. Suffering is a part of life just like all of the other emotions are a part of life. You haven't justified talking about the prevention of suffering alone. Do you understand that or not? If so, please produce a valid response in your next reply. — S

Why is anything more important than the new person's suffering? What about the other stuff makes the threshold to procreate that much more? Because people are not killing themselves left and right?

From previous discussions, the answer to that seemed to be a stance that prevention of suffering was all that mattered. — Terrapin Station

Which is ludicrous.

However, what is not usually recognized is the structural suffering inherent in existence- built into the human affair. Structural means that it is not based on contingent circumstances like genetics, place of birth, circumstances in time/place, or fortune. Structural suffering can be seen in things like the inherent "lack" that pervades the animal/human psyche. We are lacking at almost all times. The need for food and shelter, the need for mates, the need for friends, the need for interesting projects, the need for flow states, the need for comfortable environments. These "goods" represents things WE DO NOT HAVE (aka lack). We are constantly STRIVING for what is hoped to be fulfilling, but at the end, only temporarily fills the lack state, and for short duration. Structural suffering can also be seen in the psychological state of boredom. I don't see boredom as just another state, I see it as an almost baseline- state. It is a "proof" of existence's own unfulfilled state. This leads again, striving for what we lack. There is a certain burden of being- the burdens of making do- of getting by, of surviving, of filling the lack, of dealing with existence. That we have to deal in the first place is suspect. That not everyone is committing suicide is not a "pro" for the "post facto, people being born is justified" stance. Rather, suicide and being born in the first place are incommensurable. — schopenhauer1

That sounds like you're saying the following for example:

Joe has a desire for food, so Joe has to get food however he gets it (maybe as a baby it's opening his mouth for a nipple, and then maybe later in his life it's getting off the couch and opening the refrigerator, and so on), and even though Joe doesn't have a problem with any of this, it's something that needs to be avoided on moral grounds.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding it (partially because it's difficult to believe that the above is something you'd be arguing)

Which is ludicrous — S

Well, it's certainly not something I agree with . . . and it's difficult for me to imagine why or how anyone would feel that way. But I can buy that maybe some people do. I've known plenty of weirdos, as you can imagine. ;-)

Joe has a desire for food, so Joe has to get food however he gets it (maybe as a baby it's opening his mouth for a nipple, and then maybe later in his life it's getting off the couch and opening the refrigerator, and so on), and even though Joe doesn't have a problem with any of this, it's something that needs to be avoided on moral grounds.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding it (partially because it's difficult to believe that the above is something you'd be arguing) — Terrapin Station

It is the "dealing with" we discussed earlier. That there is an unfulfillment that needs addressing. Dissatisfaction. The First Noble Truth. That sort of thing. That is the baseline structural suffering that is the background for all the other stuff that takes place, including contingent forms of suffering, which are circumstantial physical/psychological pain. Why create the need for needs in the first place?

Why is anything more important than the new person's suffering? — schopenhauer1

Personally, I think all sorts of things are more weighty than suffering, and I don't seem to be alone in that. Not that agreement matters, but I guess you're saying that you don't consider anything more important in your life than your suffering?

It is the "dealing with" we discussed earlier. That there is an unfulfillment that needs addressing. Dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1

But you're positing dissatisfaction as a state that's not necessarily negative for Joe, right (that is, in terms of how he feels about it)?

Right you are psychological there- I see what you're doing. No, dissatisfaction is precisely negative, in that there is a near constant lack.

I'm not sure I understand that response. Are you saying that it's impossible for Joe to feel that it's not negative that he has to get off the couch and open the refrigerator, say?

I'm not sure I understand that response. Are you saying that it's impossible for Joe to feel that it's negative that he has to get off the couch and open the refrigerator, say? — Terrapin Station

Here is a quote from Schopenhauer to help you decipher the meaning:

I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering — from positive evil. If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a little more closely.

However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain. This basis is very restricted: it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the absence of these things. Consequently, as far as real physical pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much stronger are the passions aroused in him! what an immeasurable difference there is in the depth and vehemence of his emotions! — and yet, in the one case, as in the other, all to produce the same result in the end: namely, health, food, clothing, and so on. — Schopenhauer

Why is anything more important than the new person's suffering? What about the other stuff makes the threshold to procreate that much more? Because people are not killing themselves left and right? — schopenhauer1

You don't seem to be listening.

The overall value of life is what primarily matters here, over and above any one particular factor of life taken in isolation. You can't reasonably assess the overall value of life by only taking into consideration a single factor such as suffering. It's easy to come up with examples of this methodology failing in other contexts as well as this one. So your method is doomed to failure from the start. It doesn't even get off the ground.

And when people do take all of the relevant factors into reasonable consideration, funnily enough, they reach a different conclusion to you. Coincidence? I think not.

I fixed an important typo after you hit reply by the way. I forgot a "not" initially.



Okay, but I'm saying that there are people who don't feel anything like pain or feel that it's "positive evil" to have to get off of the couch and open the refrigerator, for example (in order to get food because they're hungry).

Are you disagreeing that there are people who don't see this as pain/evil/something experientially negative?

Okay, but I'm saying that there are people who don't feel anything like pain or feel that it's "positive evil" to have to get off of the couch and open the refrigerator, for example (in order to get food because they're hungry).

Are you disagreeing that there are people who don't see this as pain/evil/something experientially negative? — Terrapin Station

I disagree with your assessment. You are going to a secondary level when I am not. The primary level- there is an initial dissatisfaction. Why is the person getting off the couch?

The primary level- there is an initial dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1

What I'm getting at is that there's a difference between "I want food," which you seem to be categorically calling a "dissatisfaction," and having a negative experience in conjunction with wanting food.

In other words, someone can just want food without having an attendant value assessment of that experience, where they assign a negative or "bad" value to it. It can just be an experience without a valuation.

The overall value of life is what primarily matters here, over and above any one particular factor taken in isolation. You can't reasonably assess the overall value of life by only taking into consideration a single factor such as suffering. It's easy to come up with examples of this methodology failing in other contexts as well. So your method is doomed to failure from the start. It doesn't even get off the ground.

And when people do take all of the relevant factors into reasonable consideration, funnily enough, they reach a different conclusion to you. Coincidence? I think not. — S

Suffering, at this level, is the most important thing to take into consideration. Anything else is having an agenda for another person. So not only are you not taking proper account of suffering in comparison to other stuff, you are putting the other stuff as something that "needs" to be experienced- forcing others into this game so that they "need" to experience this stuff. Putting an agenda above the interest of suffering. This is essentially the axiom. There is no further here we can go. I've said that before. You can disagree with the premise, but at the end, emotional levels of interest in the premise are going to decide if you follow it.