The underlying principle is "entropic heat death", and we are just staving it off on various short or shorter timescales. — schopenhauer1

That would be the negative framing. The positive one is that as physical creatures, we live off the negentropy we harvest as the free gift of the Cosmic entropy flow. The sun shines, plants grow. Hydrocarbon deposits are laid down by decaying ancient forests and ocean plankton and hundreds of millions of years later, workers turn up with fracking rigs to power proud nations.

Everything we love and value comes from harvesting nature’s bounty and spending that negentropy wisely. :razz:

However, is this not descriptive and not prescriptive? — schopenhauer1

Here we go. Morality locked into its old is/ought shibboleth.

A natural philosophy understanding of nature emphasises that global constraints and local degrees of freedom are what go together to constitute the holism of an evolutionary system. At the level of humans as a social organism, that cashes out as the organising dynamic of competition-cooperation. Our actions must achieve a world where there is a global cohesion and yet also a local differentiation.

Over all scales of our lives. Even nation states are meant to be a state of order where a planetary level of competition-cooperation is laid out in an institutional fashion. Nations have rights and responsibilities under international treaties. They can wage wars, but meant to follow the rules.

So it just is the case that everywhere, at every level, we organise in this win-win way where individual striving is set within a collective justice and morality.

The mistake humans make is believing that including the larger natural system that is our environment is a nice optional choice that good-hearted folk might choose to bleat about, but really that is not a central concern of debates over our moral choices. When it comes to the environment and ecosystem, well that is - as you say - merely a great big heat sink of no intrinsic value.

Not what is happening, but what ought to happen. — schopenhauer1

So you have set up the situation as I describe. A demand that society is set up according to some institutionalised understanding about rights and responsibilities. Justice becomes about a proper balance of interests. An algorithm of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” might help defuse this “your car vs their fishing” real world dilemma.

I’m sure those involved would love you to arrive as a third party to sit them all down, talk it through this way and see if some new general understanding comes to rule such incidents in the future. Or you could tell them to fight it out and see which one right now is the stronger or more determined.

There are always “free choices” to make. But natural order arises from just making some damn choice in terms of whether the approach you try is competition or cooperation. Do you seek short term advantage or long term understanding? It is not always clear which is “right”. Which you “ought” to do.

But what matters from an evolutionary systems point of view is that you frame your choices with a crisp dialectical counterfactuality. You don’t fluff about vaguely, sort of looking imploringly at the blocking anglers and hoping for the best. You choose a path and live by the consequences.

The way it works - as an organism seeking its adaptive balance to its world - is you always should be able to see clearly the two oughts of any social situation. To compete or to collaborate. And most every social situation is already institutionalised to make the balancing of the two imperatives an unthinking habit.

On the tennis court, if I hit a ball on the line it is in. That is the rule we all agreed. If my opponent pretends to see it out, I probably oughtn’t pull out a gun and shoot him dead. But that is still an option. It answers to the short term of one line call. However I might want to pause to consider the way it would interrupt the flow of the rest of the game, or even my entire day.

Now your point is that our moral dilemmas are always of the most immediate kind. The fate of the planet does not hang on every line call or traffic obstruction. Thermodynamics seems as remote from morality as you can imagine.

But humans have blown up their world in just 200 years. It all went exponential starting around 1800. And even then, not really until 1850. Thermodynamics was a remote issue for society even in my own childhood. But the planet has gone from 3 billion people to 8b since then.

I think it is time cosy notions - like an is/ought separation of powers - are consigned to the dustbin of academia. The house is burning down around us and folk are looking about in dazed moral confusion. Doing a bit of green tinkering and a lot of hand wringing. Ineffectually looking at those anglers with slightly imploring, yet also insisting eyes. As there’s more of them than you. But maybe if you waved your gun…

I guess, this might be the question here. Not what is happening, but what ought to happen. — schopenhauer1

Yes. We have the capacity to make things other than they are. So we must ask how things ought be. That question is not answered by physics.

Doing a bit of green tinkering and a lot of hand wringing. Ineffectually looking at those anglers with slightly imploring, yet also insisting eyes. As there’s more of them than you. But maybe if you waved your gun… — apokrisis

That's one way to handle it. But this way you speak of reminds me of problem with this thermodynamic way of looking at the world in the mind/body problem as well. That is to say, the morality is equivalent to the terrain. The physics surrounding it, the map. You are stuck in mapland. I need to navigate the actual terrain though. In mapland, guns and getting killed are hypotheticals because you are just entropic energy flowing in various ways. In terrainland I have fears, wants, desires, and values.

That question is not answered by physics. — Banno

Bang on. It is answered by our dialectically-structured interaction with "the physics".

It just helps not to talk like a lumpen realist about the physics and a fluffy idealist about the moral dilemmas. Biosemiosis helps us get our global metaphysics right.

All life and mind is an ecology living off an entropic bounty. Always has been and always will. And that could be the case because "is" and "ought" exists as a two-way feedback relationship that couples the organism to its environment in a pragmatic loop.

Any other way of looking at it is a few lifetimes out of date. There are moral philosophy attitudes we can no longer afford to espouse. In today's world, it counts for wilful blindness.

Yes. We have the capacity to make things other than they are. So we must ask how things ought be. That question is not answered by physics. — Banno

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/921725

Yes, there is a difference between a physical account and an intentional one. I'd explain this in terms of direction of fit - a physical account is produced by making our words fit the world, while an intentional account supposes that we can change the world to fit our "fears, wants, desires, and values".

..."is" and "ought" exists as a two-way feedback relationship that couples the organism to its environment in a... loop — apokrisis

Yep.

That is to say, the morality is equivalent to the terrain. The physics surrounding it, the map. You are stuck in mapland. — schopenhauer1

You assert this. But I don't see the substantiation by way of an argument.

It is plainly wrong that we are stuck in any map if the map is what we are always involved in writing.

Would you follow Google Maps off the edge of a cliff rather than believe your own eyes about the washed out road ahead? And if it were made easy, would you feel a social responsibility to rewrite that tiny bit of Google Maps to alert other road users in your immediate vicinity?

So physics is our map of reality at its broadest possible level. It is a map of the most cosmic scale constraints that frame our minute to minute existence. One might want to fly off the top of the building, but that free choice is a little constrained if we haven't yet evolved wings. Or at least have a jet pack attached to our backs and it is fully fuelled up for our little adventure.

I'm not sure how much more pointing out the bleeding obvious I have in me. I set out an OP in a reasonably developed fashion. This rehashing of old points is very stale.

So physics is our map of reality at its broadest possible level. It is a map of the most cosmic scale constraints that frame our minute to minute existence. One might want to fly off the top of the building, but that free choice is a little constrained if we haven't yet evolved wings. Or at least have a jet pack attached to our backs and it is fully fuelled up for our little adventure. — apokrisis

Yes, there is a difference between a physical account and an intentional one. I'd explain this in terms of direction of fit - a physical account is produced by making our words fit the world, while an intentional account supposes that we can change the world to fit our "fears, wants, desires, and values". — Banno

I guess what I'm getting at then is, what would be a justification for an ethical decision? If we said something like, "We are entropic beings with global constraints and local degrees of freedom", that would be some sort of category error, no?

So, looping back to the OP, what would be an ethical stance and what would be its justification towards resource management? What should we do?

@schopenhauer1, I haven't yet answered your fishing example.

If the bridge is private, then the ownership comes it to play. If the owner is fishing, then best find another crossing. If the owner is you, evict the trespassing fishermen.

If the bridge is public, then the fishermen blocking your way is inconsistent with the purpose of the bridge, and they ought let you cross.

If the bridge is public, but the fishermen are participating in the endorsed annual fishing competition that has been well advertised and sign posted, and you ought not have parked your car in an area that was closed off for the purposes of the competition, then your negative right is forfeit.

The force of moral quandaries often depends on their being removed from their context. With more background the difficulties are often resolved.

Ethical problems are embedded in our desires and values, and are often more intractable than physical problems that can be solved simply by looking around.

...what would be an ethical stance and what would be its justification towards resource management? What should we do? — schopenhauer1

One does not have to look far to find ethical stances quite divergent from those suggested in the OP. Indigenous ethics for example might involve circular time, self-control, self-reliance, courage, kinship and friendship, empathy, a holistic sense of oneness and interdependence, reverence for land and Country and a responsibility for others. The actions implicit in such a view are very different to those in either of options A or B in the OP. Yet such an approach might be quite conducive towards long-term stability.

Which might serve to show how ethical stances are embedded in what is loosely called a "form of life".

I guess what I'm getting at then is, what would be a justification for an ethical decision? If we said something like, "We are entropic beings with global constraints and local degrees of freedom", that would be some sort of category error, no?

So, looping back to the OP, what would be an ethical stance and what would be its justification towards resource management? What should we do? — schopenhauer1

Well given that I say this is all about the correctness of the dialectical view – the fact that nature organises itself as a local~global balancing act – then the answer should pop out of that presumption for me.

So I then ask, what is "justification" in that scalefree local~global sense? We always will have two poles, two equally justificatory alternatives, that orient our resulting argument. We can justify in terms of rights, or in terms of responsibilities. In terms of a natural inclination towards competition, or towards cooperation. And so on and so forth.

Individuals and communities. Cohesion and differentiation. Constraints and freedoms. Always some balance of justifications – a balance that can be struck as vagueness has been excluded by living in a dichotomised world. If we pretend the world is black and white, that is how we can then go on to discriminate all its possible shades of gray.

A map is no use if your roads and landscape are indistinctly marked out as two shades of near-identical gray. You want a map that asserts boldy, here is the ocean and here is where it falls of the cliff into the realm of monsters and dragons. Black lines on white pages.

So justification is always to be organised as this call for a negotiation. "I was travelling over the speed limit, m'lud. But not excessively. It was broad daylight and the road empty. etc." Rules need interpreting. Circumstances can be extenuating. That is to say, our actual justice system is set up on a systems' principle of laws as not the exceptionless judgement of a god but as constraints – general behavioural guidelines - that then allow some discretion in terms of an individual's degrees of freedom.

The guilty can plead passion, inattention, good character, reformed intentions, and any other spur of the moment shit to lessen the coming blow.

So the question in the modern era – given the same justice would now have to be extended to all the people of the planet, and perhaps all it sentient life as well – is what would that look like as a pragmatic intention?

And the usual two choices are possible, along with the third thing of all the balances that they would stand as the measuring poles to.

We could really go overboard and attempt to imagine a future where the whole planet is saved in some pristine sense where all ecosytsems return to as they were, at least in 1800. But we also end up with folk continuing to have as many babies, or houses as big, cars as fast, as has been the historic trend ever since then.

One can see the impracticalities of that. But hey, we start at the ultimate dream why not? And work our way back towards what might be the practical.

Does our utopia have to be so large that it includes the planet itself? Or even the bacterial scale of life which in fact dominates it? Well most will probably say no. We just don't want to flush ourselves down the toilet of history. But if we are gone, well practically speaking, who cares?

God may judge. But He was only ever a social fiction used to constrain human behaviour at a tribal or community scale of moral organisation. We were mature and responsible adults by the time we decided to drive the ecosystem over the edge of the cliff.

And do we owe some ought to the larger world that is the physical Cosmos. The Great Heat Sink in the sky? Well now you are taking the conversation in a really silly direction. If I don't exist, the Cosmos can go screw itself. It never cared for me in any discernible way. Why would I feel a duty of care to it? Or even a sentimental attachment like I might for the ecosystem of the 1800s? I can't stand in the dock accused of messing up "God's creation" like some kid throwing a house party while the parents were out of town.

Even as a collective moral economy – the planetary civilisation imagined by the Enlightenment – there is no ultimate feedback loop where we humans could destroy the Cosmos in any meaningful sense. The only judgement being passed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics is "did those little shits entropify".

On a finite planet of finite energy and resources, we do have a choice of doing that slowly for a long time, or very quickly all at once. That is a completely free choice from the Cosmic point of view.

But then what use is having a free choice if we are not even claiming that possibility? The Second Law sets up the large scale flow. We get to harvest that with our ingenuity. It is then up to us to ensure we have a morality that scales – a system of social justification that adapts to the change that change itself produces.

If you want to focus on resource management, it is a little late in the day of course. Harsh rationing or fewer mouths seem the general dichotomy that composes the immediate future. Given green tech became instead a politically-engineered exercise in corporate greenwashing.

If the bridge is public, then the fishermen blocking your way is inconsistent with the purpose of the bridge, and they ought let you cross. — Banno

Let's say the context is this one.. You said the answer would then be:

If the bridge is public, then the fishermen blocking your way is inconsistent with the purpose of the bridge, and they ought let you cross. — Banno

So, leaving legality out of this, what would be the answer to the utilitarian that says that the fishermen will get more satisfaction, so have such a moral right, even if it's against common understanding of "public space/commons"? Let's say no one else is affected that day except I, the misfortunate park-goer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seems.

The deontologist would likely point to inherent dignity or rights that is being violated by not letting me pass to my car, despite their pursuing their happiness of fishing.

An ethical egoist might argue that actions are morally right if they promote one's self-interest. The fisherman and I would invoke this, so it would be a continued standoff until someone budges or forces the situation.

A communitarian might emphasize values of the community. However, this too leads to possible stalemates.

A virtue theorist might say that either of our character's are flawed to a degree- perhaps mine cowardice or there's unaccommodatingness.

Mind you, this is not about necessarily goals but values. You can always say, "What is my goal? How do I get there", but then we are stepping away from morality. If my goal is to cross the bridge, I can do any number of things, including using physical force, calling some park service authority, etc. But the issue is what ought to happen, so we cannot misconstrue that point to simply provide a neat hypothetical imperative (If you want to cross the bridge, just push the bastards out of the way!).

One does not have to look far to find ethical stances quite divergent from those suggested in the OP. Indigenous ethics for example might involve circular time, self-control, self-reliance, courage, kinship and friendship, empathy, a holistic sense of oneness and interdependence, reverence for land and Country and a responsibility for others. The actions implicit in such a view are very different to those in either of options A or B in the OP. Yet such an approach might be quite conducive towards long-term stability.

Which might serve to show how ethical stances are embedded in what is loosely called a "form of life". — Banno

Isn't this sort of @apokrisis Model B steady state notion? I guess it's a more explicitly green version of this? Seems to be a variation nonetheless.

Sure, disparate views. We can answer each, in different ways. So we say tot he utilitarian that while the fishermen will gain short-term satisfaction, the undermining of the institution of a commonwealth that includes public bridges will bring about an overall decrease in satisfaction; to the egoist we point out that their self-interest will not be served by getting in a fist fight ; and so on. In each case we can pursue the discussion where it leads. And what ought happen is embedded in these discussions. Even a simple issue such as this is intractable. Ethics is difficult.

Isn't this sort of apokrisis Model B steady state notion? — schopenhauer1

Perhaps, but I wouldn't have thought so - his Mad Max Model B involves "bug-out survivalist with guns", and no home garden will feed a family. Indigenous ethics appear to depend on a level of cooperation absent from Model B. But the point I would contend is not just that the only options are Model A or Model B, but that a better response to your question of "what would be an ethical stance" is not various ethical theories so much as whole ways of living. This by way of bringing us back to ethics as about what we should do, not what is the case.

Biosemiosis helps us get our global metaphysics right. — apokrisis

That... is highly doubtful. Definitely not a map I would follow.

The future is open. The question becomes how we can expect the predictable state of the world to reshape our social values at a fundamental level. — apokrisis

First principle for the mapmaker to acknowledge, as the essential aspect of making a good map for the future, is that the future is in no way predictable. To start with a principle of predictability will not produce a map, but a step toward hell.

Perhaps, but I wouldn't have thought so - his Mad Max Model B involves "bug-out survivalist with guns", and no home garden will feed a family. Indigenous ethics appear to depend on a level of cooperation absent from Model B. But the point I would contend is not just that the only options are Model A or Model B, but that a better response to your question of "what would be an ethical stance" is not various ethical theories so much as whole ways of living. This by way of bringing us back to ethics as about what we should do, not what is the case. — Banno

I could be way off, so @apokrisis can correct me on his own notions, but it seems like apokrisis mentioned this kind of "indigenous" model (though he didn't use that term) as once in play, but that it would no longer matter as it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle as far as the runaway entropy we've unleashed since the Industrial Revolution. So I think he acknowledges this would have been the way to go, but now the best we can do is maintain since reversing is out of the question (in his notion). So, your theory would be simply performative, but not really working towards fixing anything.

One does not have to look far to find ethical stances quite divergent from those suggested in the OP. — Banno

In their details but not in their architecture. As any fool anthropologist kno'.

A religious and conservative community might come up with a grounding dichotomy such as the sacred and profane. God's eye is ever upon thee. The social constraint dial is turned up high. But in a small medieval peasant village, there isn't much mischief one could get up to anyways.

Foraging communities are likewise quite dichotomising. In a tribe, the in-group vs out-group kinship dynamic is very strong. Wrangham writes about this in his The Goodness Paradox. He argues humans are even neurobiology adapted to this way of responding. We became a "self-domesticated" species that could balance the cooperative aspects of a life based on collective hunting, sharing and child rearing with its dialectical other of a species able to engage in cold-blooded and quietly calculated murder.

Apes have reactive aggression. Humans became more polar in terms both of being able to live more closely as a group and to be proactively aggressive against those outside the group. Even an obnoxious or selfish tribe member could find themselves at the wrong end of a hunting party once that bistable switch of empathy~hostility got flipped. A socially-sanctioned assassination to restore the group equanimity.

It is worth understanding this moral reality as that is the one we may be heading back to under a Model B future. We are set up by our genes to revert to this if also forced back into the entropic status of scratching a living foragers.

The Enlightenment felt like it got it right as it drilled down to the dialectical logic of nature in its most universalised description – the dichotomous balance of competition~cooperation. But that same scientific mindset, that same application of pure reason, was also in the middle of releasing the Industrial Revolution as the next big thing after foraging and agriculture.

So we did as a species find our way into a morality that could scale. One that enshrine competition and cooperation as the dynamic duo – the two halves of the one good, the opposites that produced a unity which could scale all the way to life across a planet.

But that also set us up to ride the techo-fossil fuel train to an exponentialising future. As a political/ethical idea, it could regulate any powerlaw growth regime. And a barrel of oil is as dense and deliverable a jolt of entropification that the Cosmos could possibly offer.

The actions implicit in such a view are very different to those in either of options A or B in the OP. Yet such an approach might be quite conducive towards long-term stability. — Banno

But as I've pointed out, you haven't inquired deeply enough into how indigenous lives are actually structured, both as biology and sociology.

My own position here is based on a deep knowledge of all that.

That... is highly doubtful. Definitely not a map I would follow. — Metaphysician Undercover

Good to know. :up:

I could be way off, so apokrisis can correct me on his own notions, but it seems like apokrisis mentioned this kind of "indigenous" model as once in play, but that it would not longer matter as it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle as far as the runaway entropy we've unleashed since the Industrial Revolution. — schopenhauer1

I'm arguing that we don't really want to go all the way back to this kind of foraging future. That would require getting the population back down to the 300 million or so that a pre-climate change and pre-ecosystem-ravaged planet could sustain – the world of the Roman empire. Actual foraging sustained a population of about a million indigenous souls crouched around their campfires.

We are what we eat and we now eat fossil fuel. Coal saw world population explode from 0.5 to 2 billion. Fertilizer and oil resulted in a population increase to almost 8 billion by 2020. For a while, until middleclass antinatalism started to kick in, we were going not just exponential but super-exponential.

So Model B says we should expect folk everywhere to seek to organise in whatever way works in their corner of the world. How much industrial capacity does a community retain? How defensible are its borders? What constraints does a different climate put on them? So on and so forth.

But a drastic change in circumstance is the time to be armed with some real insight into the mechanics of social organisation. The past can reveal who we really are as ethical creatures when placed in a survival situation. If we default to something, Wrangham can tell us about the kind of very basic settings which made us the highly-organised social creatures that we have the evolved instinct to be.

We "is" constrained by our genetics unless you happen to want to make the other choice and dial up Elon for a tech solution to our ingrained capacity for a cold-blooded hunter's violence that exists in fine-tuned evolved balance with our propensity for cosy campfire singalongs.

Good to know. :up: — apokrisis

I think you already knew that.

We are what we eat and we now eat fossil fuel. Coal saw world population explode from 0.5 to 2 billion. Fertilizer and oil resulted in a population increase to almost 8 billion by 2020. For a while, until middleclass antinatalism started to kick in, we were going not just exponential but super-exponential. — apokrisis

You are framing things to suit your purpose. There was many factors involved in the population explosion,, medicine, antibiotics, etc..

We "is" constrained by our genetics... — apokrisis

Being constrained by genetics is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

For a while, until middleclass antinatalism started to kick in, we were going not just exponential but super-exponential. — apokrisis

Interesting how that works. But on a technical note, "antinatalism" as you are using it is not quite how it is used in the philosophical literature in the last 20 years or so. For the most part, "antinatalism" has been associated with prevention of suffering as the primary ethical reason for not procreating. Simply not having kids because of a lifestyle choice, it's too expensive, etc. would simply be considered living out a "childfree" lifestyle. It's a bit spottier when it comes to "antinatalism" and environmental reasons. That is because potentially, people would say it is permissible to have children again when a certain population level has been deemed acceptable again. In that case, you may say it is "limited" or "contingent" antinatalism. However, I think this also does a disservice to the actual term-proper. Rather, I would look at that kind of philosophy as the other way around- as limited natalism instead. That is to say, they believe people can at some point have children, but the bar to meet this is contingent on whether environmental conditions are met.

But on a technical note, "antinatalism" as you are using it is not quite how it is used in the philosophical literature in the last 20 years or so. — schopenhauer1

Yep. I joke when using it as I don't take it as a serious ethical response to the brute fact of existence.

Sure, we might want a politics that can smooth the baby production to a sustainable rate. But who wants to turn off the tap just because of "the inevitable suffering imposed on those who were never asked"?

Prospective parents are turning off that tap as the future can look pretty dire. Another reason to give folk a political roadmap they can believe in. Not simply tell them your kids are screwed and so are you, so just die now please. No point hanging on for the bitter end.

In the meantime, celebrate a world where you get to make your personal choice on procreation. At least until - in the US – the Supreme Court gets around to dealing with anomalies like you.

a physical account is produced by making our words fit the world, while an intentional account supposes that we can change the world to fit our [words]. — Banno

I revised your quote because I think you are right there anyway. Take out the “supposes” too, because it is no different than “desires or intentions or fears, etc.”

An account of something physical (like the physical world) is produced by making our words fit the world; while an intentional account is produced by making the world fit my words (my ‘own’ words, my intentions, desires, myself, etc.).

Words to fit the world of other things besides me and besides my words, but now, accounted for as words - that’s a physical account.

Or, words can instead fit something (any else than solely/simply physical), like the world of thinking, where words are made to fit anything at all, where one intends something like “not this word but that one”, shaping a new world, bent not towards the physical world but to somewhere more specific, in the mind, or for another minds, now made of words in the accounting.

I love the short phrases that say a lot.

:up:

Prospective parents are turning off that tap as the future can look pretty dire. Another reason to give folk a political roadmap they can believe in. Not simply tell them your kids are screwed and so are you, so just die now please. No point hanging on for the bitter end. — apokrisis

But for dramatic effect, you are of course conflating "individual death" and "species death". So, to use your ubiquitous analogy, the "global constraint" might be species death, but the local-specific cases of each individual will live just fine (without kids).

I love the short phrases that say a lot. — Fire Ologist

Yep. You brought out the dialectical structure of the thought very nicely. :ok:

So what does that change? My systems story says there are global constraints and local degrees of freedom. Choice exists for the individual on all things. All that changes is the degree of constraint.

The tie you wear is such a free choice it might as well be random. Unless it is decorated in swastikas or something.

Having children isn’t compulsory. Your parents and friends may have views. Financial circumstances may impinge. As may fears for the future. As a decision it is complex because it does add real meaning to most lives but is also your biggest single life commitment.

This would be a reason why antinatalism seems wrong in trying to impose some global ought on the basis of a very false premise about the universality of human suffering.

Making a personal decision based on clear information about the collective future is quite a different thing.

In the meantime, celebrate a world where you get to make your personal choice on procreation. At least until - in the US – the Supreme Court gets around to dealing with anomalies like you. — apokrisis

Antinatalism doesn't look so weird now, eh? ANs the next politically persecuted class?? The childfree will be lumped in, so it won't really be AN as much as the "childless"...But is this the new trend? Some nations are trying the carrot approach, are we going to the stick now?

I've stated in previous posts that AN is indeed a political statement to some extent. You are voting "YES" on existence being okay to start for someone else. Even if people (aren't enlightened yet) to be full-fledged ANs, they are at least seeing the material conditions of the present and future to be such that it wouldn't be worth bringing more people into it. It's AN-adjacent, even if not full-AN.

Here is an example of a respectful discussion in the real world between an antinatalist and pro-natalist:

So what does that change? My systems story says there are global constraints and local degrees of freedom. Choice exists for the individual on all things. All that changes is the degree of constraint. — apokrisis

Interestingly enough, one of the main reasons I am a "pessimist" (a bit different but underlies a lot of some antinatalist thinking), is that humans have such degrees of freedom. As Wittgenstein might phrase it, our degrees of freedom might be part of our very "form of life". But, it's another question of whether it's a good one. The Existentialists are philosophers who delve deeper into this question of freedom, and its burdens. What do we mean here by burdens? Well, how I see it, it is burdens in comparison with other animals (albeit from the perspective of this animal, the one with a certain kind of self-awareness where this can be recognized). That is to say, other forms of life (like dogs, bats, monkeys, etc. etc.) have a form of life whereby this secondary or tertiary form of self-awareness (and its entailed "degrees of freedom") are not a part of it. However, humans must deal with the burdens of counterfactual thinking, that they could always make a different choice (better, worse, or just different). Now, I know your style pretty well by now, and you will start discussing why nature has formed us this way in some therodynamic (symmetry-breaking, triadic semiosis, biosemiosis) way. But that is missing my point of the "What it's like" being an ACTUAL form of life that deals with this way of moving through the world (self-aware, with a high degree of freedom). It is not like the rest of animals in nature, and it is not necessarily GOOD (because of the burdens of these freedoms and ones choices).

Having children isn’t compulsory. Your parents and friends may have views. Financial circumstances may impinge. As may fears for the future. As a decision it is complex because it does add real meaning to most lives but is also your biggest single life commitment.

This would be a reason why antinatalism seems wrong in trying to impose some global ought on the basis of a very false premise about the universality of human suffering. — apokrisis

So you proposed a bit of a strawman here. Antinatalism is not a political policy but an ethical one. Most ANs don't advocate for "imposing" not having children anymore than (JD Vance aside?) politicans would be proposing we must have children (to count politically at least). That is to say, there is no "imposing" (politically) going on here, simply an ethical theory by which one can adhere to or not. This can be akin to veganism, let's say. Now,

As far as being a "very false premise of human suffering", I obviously disagree. @Banno for example, asked you to make ethical arguments rather than what appears to be descriptive ones, which usually differ in ways he has explained being one is about nature's workings, and one is our intentional stance. So, if we take that as a starting point, whereby ethics is a subcategory of an axiology (a worldview regarding what is valuable in the world), suffering seems to be a good place to start for a basis of ethics. It can also be said that humans being creatures that can suffer, can be said to have some value and some intrinsic dignity whereby it is best not to cause unnecessary harm to them (as they should not do to you). This can be the basis of a sort of deontological ethics, a "negative ethic" of not being harmed (when it is wasn't necessary to do this). Anyways, that is the beginning of my foundation of ethics. This goes into answering the question of the bridge I outlined earlier as well. That is to say, the fishermen blocking you to get to your car is an example of a positive project (fishing) getting in the way of your negative right. Similarly, parents wanting some sort of meaning (the positive project) is overriding the negative ethic of not causing unnecessary harm to someone. Thus positive projects (human civilization, fishing, your wanting more meaning in your life) shouldn't be the REASON for harming (*unnecessarily) other people.

*Unnecessarily here means not causing harm to another unless it was mitigating a greater harm to that person, like a child already born and some harm is needed to ensure their future safety, like forced education or vaccines.

Making a personal decision based on clear information about the collective future is quite a different thing. — apokrisis

Sure, but obviously this is in the same spirit as not wanting an individual to suffer, as it's an aggregated version whereby you do not want future human(s) to suffer more than is necessary. It just doesn't go far enough into what is acceptable as far as causing suffering is concerned.

Even if people (aren't enlightened yet) to be full-fledged ANs, they are at least seeing the material conditions of the present and future to be such that it wouldn't be worth bringing more people into it. It's AN-adjacent, even if not full-AN. — schopenhauer1

So a cult? But passive-aggressive?

So you proposed a bit of a strawman here. Antinatalism is not a political policy but an ethical one — schopenhauer1

How could it be a strawman when my OP is about ethical precepts that can scale as political organisation?

l. That is to say, the fishermen blocking you to get to your car is an example of a positive project (fishing) getting in the way of your negative right. — schopenhauer1

Another way of talking about the competition-cooperation dynamic. Except you prefer to see constraints as imposed burdens in this cruel life we are forced to live, etc.

So a cult? But passive-aggressive? — apokrisis

Funny you say this because Ligotti in his book called pro-natalists as part of the "Cult of the Grinning Martyrs". So, this name-calling can go both ways. Also, I know you are probably trying to be cheeky, but why would you misconstrue a reasoned ethic with a cult, whereby people blindly believe unreasoned ideas and charismatic cult leaders? At least be apt with your derisions.

How could it be a strawman when my OP is about ethical precepts that can scale as political organisation? — apokrisis

The straw man was that you implied that antinatalists are trying to (politically) impose policies on people, rather than providing reasoned arguments that you can either find compelling or not.

Another way of talking about the competition-cooperation dynamic. Except you prefer to see constraints as imposed burdens in this cruel life we are forced to live, etc. — apokrisis

This is yet more sidelining the ethical issue into some vague descriptive one. The ethical dilemma is clear, the answer may not be, but it's an ethical axiological one, not a descriptive one.