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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also think the idea life is good is warped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I don't believe most parents even put this depth of analysis into the reproductive act.. — Andrew4Handel

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having sex, either with or without contraceptives. I am not claiming that the only reason for sex is procreation,either. Many people want to have children and people also find great fulfillment in sex that is not engaged with that purpose in mind at all, but is just an expression of love. If people want children, they don't know beforehand what those children will be like. None of this is inconsistent with the idea of souls choosing where and from whom to be born. I am not at all asserting that this is the case, either; just that you don't know what is the case regarding the origin of persons; no one does.

There is no "evidence" for any metaphysical "scenario", and I agree that if a child murdered by her parents chose those parents it would certainly seem an unfortunate choice. But what if that were an experience needed for that soul's development? Surely that would make it less "grotesque" than if it were purely a senseless and meaningless death. Again, though, I am not arguing that this kind of theosophical or 'New Age' notion reflects reality. I don't know if it does or not; and neither do you know that, nor anybody else; it is simply a possibility we can imagine, that is the point. People choose for many reasons, none of them purely rational, what to believe about such things.

The imaginary scenario I have outlined would not contain the possibility that a soul would want you as parent unless you have fertilized (presuming you are male) an ovum, so you are not "preventing" anything.

I'm surprised you didn't realize that was not my statement, but was quoted from the OP. — John

I'm surprised that you didn't realise that I did in fact realise that. Although perhaps you did, and the above was an attempt to fight fire with fire - in which case, don't think I don't realise that, because I do. I realise everything. There's no pulling the wool over my eyes!

So, you were merely being flippant then? And now you contradict yourself in saying both that you are surprised I didn't realize that, and that you realize that I did realize that. In any case I agree, there's certainly no point pulling wool over the eyes of the blind.

I have decided to assume that in some way I did decide to be born. This can be understood metaphorically, in the sense that the processes leading to my birth were the actions of my forbears who were naturally possessed of the instinct to procreate - right back to the primeval slime, as it were. When I was born I carry on, or instantiate, that effort.

The only problem with that view is that most people identify with their conscious sense of who they are, for which those processes are not part of their conscious identity. But if you expand your sense of who you are to incorporate the unconscious, cultural archetypes, and so on, then you can learn to see yourself as part of a progression instead of a single isolated 'self' who started at Year X and will stop at Year Y.

Consent does come up when creating a child because a future child will have the ability to consent in the same way an unconscious person will when he or she awakes. — Andrew4Handel

But we weren't discussing a child in the future, or a conscious person, both of which can of course consent. We were discussing consent in relation to that which cannot consent - which is evident from your title - which is like discussing knowledge in relation to that which cannot know.

Your protest is ridiculous, as if you are incapable of imagining a future state of being. — Andrew4Handel

No, I am quite capable of doing that, but I'm not going to let you get away with this bait-and-switch. Presumably, you now mean to refer to a being in the future which can consent to things. That would make more sense, but still wouldn't make sense in relation to being born. That doesn't escape the problem, all that does is switch from
a problem in the present to a problem in the future. Either way, it makes no sense to consent to being born. Talking about a lack of consent makes about as much sense as talking about a lack of flamingos. And you call my position ridiculous?!

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

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

Consent is an issue because humans (or at least i certainly do) value consent. So because we cannot consent to come to exist here the whole act is undermined and dystopian. An analogy is if someone told you that they could make you an elixir of life that could only be made by killing ten people. The outcome desirable but the methodology is hopelessly flawed. — Andrew4Handel

Imagination is your criteria for what makes sense? So if I imagine that the walls are listening to me, and like what I have to say, then that makes sense, does it?

Of course people imagine what their baby would be like. Of course people make such preparations. Of course people value consent when it's meaningful. Only a tiny minority value consent when it isn't, as anti-natalists such as yourself argue for.

So, you were merely being flippant, then? And now you contradict yourself in saying both that you are surprised I didn't realize that, and that you realize that I did realize that. In any case I agree, there's certainly no point pulling wool over the eyes of the blind. — John

In what you quoted? Yes. In the rest of that comment? No. You addressed the flippant remark, but decided not to address the serious points.

(And I was being flippant when I contradicted myself, too. I'm always flippant, except when I'm not).

Fair enough, but although your "serious" points were perhaps not intended to be flippant I found them too lightweight/superficial/ ill-considered/trivial to warrant any kind of response,
let alone a serious one, so I passed on those.

Fair enough, but although your "serious" points were perhaps not intended to be flippant I found them too lightweight/superficial/ ill-considered/trivial to warrant any kind of response, let alone a serious one, so I passed on those. — John

That's also fair enough. I think that that's as much a comment on your own original comment, to which I replied, as it is to my reply. It was kind of like-for-like. I matched your if-then with a suitable if-then of my own.

But I did provide a resolution to your nitpicking in the second point, if I understood it correctly. If the reference to a person is problematic, as it implies someone where there is no one, then lose the reference to a person.

Consent is a huge moral and legal issue yet life is not founded on it. — Andrew4Handel

Right, affirmative ethics eschews harm and manipulation of other people but fails to account for the single instance of harm and manipulation that makes the rest of harm and manipulation possible (and affirmative ethics as well).

It's unreasonable to think someone has to be consciously aware at the present state in order to qualify for respecting consent. For consent has to do with what a person would like to have done to them, which implies a future instance of that person, even if this person has no instances at the present.

If a person is born and finds they do not like existing, and wish they had never been born, it is coherent for them to say that their capacity to consent was not respected, even if it is true that, if it was respected, they would not exist in the first place. The situation can be revealed in a different way: had this person actually existed before they existed, would they have consented? So it's really actually less about the actual action of violating consent and more about avoiding a problematic situation in which someone feels as though their consent has been violated.

The same "issue" can be seemingly applied to instances of obvious wronged births, such as people born with Tay-Sach's disease. Does it really make sense to say these people are not harmed when coming into existence? Perhaps - but perhaps we can just say that those who exist with Tay-Sach's disease are harmed, and therefore to exist with Tay-Sach's disease is to be harmed.

Existence being the base conditional requirement for a harm or a manipulation does not make it less problematic. It actually makes it more problematic. And these qualms about non-existence are easily solved with some language analysis.

That's also fair enough. I think that that's as much a comment on your own original comment, to which I replied, as it is to my reply. It was kind of like-for-like. I matched your if-then with a suitable if-then of my own. — Sapientia

Rubbish. My comment was not intended to be flippant or significant, I just responded assuming that you must have been silly enough to seriously believe it was my comment you were responding to, as unlikely as that may have seemed that anyone would think that: since I couldn't think of any other sensible reason why you would bother saying you were glad that we agreed. I was being charitable in fact.

But I did provide a resolution to your nitpicking in the second point, if I understood it correctly. If the reference to a person is problematic, as it implies someone where there is no one, then lose the reference to a person. — Sapientia

Again rubbish. If you read it carefully you will see that you just repeated in different words the same point I made in my comment, and didn't "resolve" anything at all. Basically, as I see it at least, you're a carping, pedantic competitive poster with nothing of much seriousness or interest to say, Sap, and to be honest I'm not interested in attempting to carry on discussions with such kinds of uncharitable minds. I know I've said this before; hopefully next time I'll be sensible enough not to take the bait. If you want to get serious and change to a less tendentious style, of course I'm prepared to revise my assessment. It's nothing personal. :)

How in the world are you figuring that mutilation and "physical effect of them physically existing" would be at all the same thing in my view? — Terrapin Station

How are they not? You yourself said you don't consider the baby to be a person yet, so within the premise of OP that life is suffering and pain the situations are very similar. Of course the premise is wrong but my objective is showing that your arguments don't prove the OP wrong without directly attacking the premise instead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I believe we can freely think and move our bodies (usually) but..we can't choose our parents, our gender, our race,our school etc. — Andrew4Handel

The famous Libet experiments appear to demonstrate that there is a decision to act before one is consciously aware of it. These are often taken to disprove that free will or free choice exists. However another interpretation is that the conscious mind, the part of the mind that thinks it controls things and makes decisions, which we usually take to be the seat of the will, actually isn't the seat of the will at all. So what we take to be 'ourselves' might really only be an artefact of thought. That is what gives rise to the notion that we didn't choose to be born - because, of course, 'I' can choose no such thing, prior to being born. But what if the real seat of the will is not the 'I' that imagines itself to be in charge of itself?

I'm not saying anything about suffering or pain or anything mental. One is mutilation. The other isn't.

Rubbish. My comment was not intended to be flippant or significant, I just responded assuming that you must have been silly enough to seriously believe it was my comment you were responding to, as unlikely as that may have seemed that anyone would think that: since I couldn't think of any other sensible reason why you would bother saying you were glad that we agreed. I was being charitable in fact. — John

You seem to have misunderstood again. That wasn't what I was talking about. I've moved on from that. I specifically referred to the if-then in your original comment, by which I meant the following:

Firstly, you don't know that. If people are souls, and souls exist prior to birth, then it is possible they do consent to being born. — John

I was saying that I matched your "lightweight/superficial/ill-considered/trivial" if-then above with a "lightweight/superficial/ill considered/trivial" if-then of my own.

Again rubbish. If you read it carefully you will see that you just repeated in different words the same point I made in my comment, and didn't "resolve" anything at all. — John

Yes, I think I misinterpreted it. It does resolve a problem, actually, but not one that needed to be brought up in reply to your second point, so never mind. Just shadowboxing, it turns out. No need to get your knickers in a twist. If we weren't saying anything different, then I can now say with sincerity that I'm glad that we agree on that particular point.

Which is wrong why? The exact act of mutilation is wrong for no reason because it has intrinsic moral value? No, it's wrong because it's harmful and causes pain (mainly mental) to the object.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm making a statement not an argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so on

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

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

Which is wrong why? The exact act of mutilation is wrong for no reason because it has intrinsic moral value? No, it's wrong because it's harmful and causes pain (mainly mental) to the object. — BlueBanana

Again, I'm a moral subjectivist, and more specifically I'm basically an emotivist. To emotivists, the reason that anything is right or wrong, morally permissible or impermissible, etc., is simply because we feel that something should be allowed or not--the idea is that people are effectively "yaying" or "booing" behavior.

Nothing has intrinsic moral value. That's moral objectivism. I'm not a moral objectivist. I'm a moral subjectivist. A noncognitivist. Under noncognitivism, there are no moral truth values. No statement of the type "It is wrong to murder" is true (or false). It's simply a matter of whether an individual yays or boos something. I boo physical nonconsensual (or against consent) violence, mutilation etc. with long-lasting effects. (I don't boo it with short-term effects, or at least I don't boo it very strongly.) On my view, nothing is wrong because "it's harmful and causes pain." That's way too broad/vague. On my view, there are no "mental harm" wrongs. I don't boo any of that.

And by the way, on my view, nothing has intrinsic value period. Value is always simply how an individual feels about the thing in question--how much they care about it, what it's worth to them, etc.Of course, it gets more complicated than that when we're talking about stuff like money, because that only works when we're interacting with others and value conventions end up being either practically or legally enforced--and that's the same thing with morality a la laws, but that interaction and those interactive facts do not change the fact that there is no value aside from individuals caring about things (or not) however they do.

I don't really get the logic that not procreating does not equate to preventing at least one 'something' to exist once born and suffer. — OglopTo

What's that an argument for? Extermination or time travel? When a person is born, there's a person we need to think about. We could try to address those issues in a sensible manner. — Sapientia

So, there is no someone who is harmed by virtue of coming into existence in and of itself. Merely coming to exist isn't a harm. After coming into existence, a person is subject to harm for a number of reasons, virtually all of them identifiable as people, things, other causal agents, to which the responsibility for harm may be attributed. — Ciceronianus the White

This is the reason why I brought up the issue I quoted above, there are arguments that decouple the following claims: (1) coming to exists isn't a harm in and of itself and (2) the harm done after being born may be attributed to the causal agents. The two statements are coupled, in my view, and the intrinsic harms/suffering experienced after being born, while not a DIRECT cause of existing, are an inherent part of existing and hence it's useless to make the distinction.

Nitpicking on the actual agent that caused the harm on localized life events is only useful if you intend to do something about the causal agent. In the case of inherent harms in life like old age, sickness, loneliness, boredom, and anxiety/sadness about death which can at best be mitigated, coped with, or postponed, I don't think much can be done to "address those issues in a sensible manner". The point is, there's little use in decoupling the mere fact of existing with causal agents causing each particular localized harms.

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


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


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

If you read the article, he's actually been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography and soliciting the kidnapping of a child. He's not jailed simply because he wanted to harm children in the future. It's two different types of acts that are illegal that he allegedly committed. (Your posting strategy here is similar to the old IMDb Politics board--people continually misrepresented news stories there.)

You could just point out that soliciting is a category of illegal act that is about something that could have happened in the future but that didn't happen yet--the objection isn't to making an agreement, it's to the act(s) that one is agreeing or urging others to engage in, but then someone like me would just point out that we disagree with solicitation being illegal. There are a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal in my view.

I would keep a category of "criminal threatening," but I define that very specifically.

What you've quoted me as saying there was not directed at the quote above it, as you've made it appear. I addressed that quote with a different comment.

(2) the harm done after being born may be attributed to the causal agents. — OglopTo

No, I think that'd be a fallacy of questionable cause, given what you have in mind. If I stub my toe, it would make very little sense to say that being born was the cause of my resultant pain.

I think it is a semantic quibble nonetheless people can't consent before they come to exist but we know they will be able to withhold consent and that we are not creating a robot. — Andrew4Handel

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