Right, but I wanna know what nothing is. If a square circle is synonymous with nothing, then what does nothing mean? What is nothing?

Nonsense. A square circle never has, nor does, nor ever will exist. It is not a possibility. — Thorongil

Then what exactly is it? You said it yourself: "It is not a possibility." Then what is it?

People think this a really esoteric metaphysics for some reason. :) — apokrisis

Probably because, as Heidegger says, all metaphysical questions put the questioner themselves into question. That the world exists "over there" and we exists "over here" is the duality from which the mind-body problem arises. So yes, a synthesis of mind and matter dissolves the problem, as does eliminative idealism (since we can be sure that we exist). It is this egological idealism that is immediately punctured by the il y a and our knowledge that the world transcends a total understanding.

Ask yourself what it is you're "talking about." — Thorongil

Possibility.

We can speak about things that have existed but no longer do, but we can't speak of that which never was, nor is, nor ever will be. — Thorongil

I think we can. That which does not exist and never has is possibility. That which existed but no longer does is a failed possibility.

Yes, this is why I said that the hard problem cannot be "resolved" given the current vogue metaphysics; it must be dissolved as a non-question through the re-interpretation of what "matter" is (by either merging mind and matter or reducing matter to mind).

Even granting this (which I do not; I would have to know more about what is meant by and how Levinas argues for this notion), it would only refute a certain type of idealism. — Thorongil

I grant this. Levinas attempts to refute egological or solipsistic idealism, the metaphysics of the totality where everything that exists must be discernible by the understanding. That there is Other that resists this assimilation into the totality is what Levinas is focused on.

I don't think we can make either claim here. If the nothingness spoken of is absolute, then we run into the argument of Parmenides on the impossibility of such a sojourn (which is another defeater of materialism, by the way). If it is relative, then the goal should be to determine if there are modes of contact between this mysterious reality beyond the world and the world rather than throw up one's hands at the suffering and absurdity on this side of the dichotomy. — Thorongil

Can you elaborate? I don't see anything wrong with talking about non-existence. The fact is that some things exist and some things do not, but we can still talk about either.

I think the unreasonableness of math and the study of its patterns in nature since Galileo has made science compelling, so I can see why there is so much confidence. Also, technology seems to indicate validation of some sort of its rightness. — schopenhauer1

Mathematics has fascinated people for longer than Galileo's rhetorical success. Pythagoreans worshiped mathematics. Mathematics was the model Platonic form and somehow was integral to the entire cosmological scene.

Yes, we have global communication networks and vaccines, transistors and atomic bombs. Good job everyone, rah rah rah, we're the best, I guess.

So it turns out Mephistofeles might be a neo-nazi group. :lol:

Which sucks, because I really liked this one song by them:

The Divided Self (An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness) by R. D. Laing.

"When I certify someone insane, I am not equivocating when I write that he is of unsound mind, may be dangerous to himself and others, and requires care and attention in a mental hospital. However, at the same time, I am also aware that, in my opinion, there are other people who are regarded as sane, whose minds are as radically unsound, who may be equally or more dangerous to themselves and others and whom society does not regard as psychotic and fit persons to be in a madhouse. I am aware that the man who is said to be deluded may be in his delusion telling me the truth, and this in no equivocal or metaphorical sense, but quite literally, and that the cracked mind of the schizophrenic may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people whose minds are closed. Ezekiel, in Jaspers's opinion, was a schizophrenic."

Should a proposal to eliminate men from society be allowed on the forum — T Clark

My initial view is that yes, even something as extreme as this should not be disallowed in virtue of it being extreme. Censoring bad ideas doesn't solve anything and only opens up the possibility of censoring good (and perhaps also extreme) ideas.

To a certain extent I think having a thick skin is a necessary requirement for having free speech. Let the stupid people talk. Smart people listen and know it's stupid.

Thank you all for the suggestions.

Thanks.

I agree! We're getting lots of rain here in CO. Perfect weather.

Easily their best song.

You can't have free will if everything is random. That's not free, that's random.

If you don't do it, someone else will and they might fuck it up.

:up:

In my experience, it's not antinatalism that makes people queasy, but its pessimistic undertones. Antinatalism reminds us of the awfulness of existence. Some form of asceticism or melancholic life seems to me to be the obvious consequence.

Apokrisis has failed to provide a convincing reason why we should see nature as fundamentally agreeable and right.

Yeah. And what would Nature be diametrically opposed to here. The Artificial? The Unnatural? The Supernatural? Which of these is your chosen basis for moral imperatives? What makes them better, exactly? — apokrisis

I might ask the same of your naturalism. There's a common trend in philosophical trends around the globe that see the Good as transcending the material and/or natural realm, often in a spiritual way. Morality is a system of imperatives that manifest as commands from afar and beyond. I think there is something atomically inescapable about this phenomenology, that it has not from what we consider to be the natural world around us. As I see it, if morality doesn't come from beyond the world, it certainly aims at it.

Antinatalism, in a philosophical pessimistic sense, is a spiritual position in that it tries to deny the immanent, natural world in favor of an alternate reality - typically Nothing. The world is bad, says the pessimist, but there is a good thing we can do, a right thing to do. The soteriology is to cease reproduction, and thus escape and stop the cycle of suffering. This helps form the basis of the antinatalist's rationale.

You'll never understand something like antinatalism if you refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of a moral criticism of life. Do you ever think all the suffering on Earth since day uno of its inception maybe isn't a good thing? Do you ever wonder what a God might say in his defense if asked why he made the world?

A constraint??? :gasp: — apokrisis

Yeah a constraint might be a good word for it, although it's imposed by a supernatural rather than a natural entity.

God constrained morality, enough so that society may operate effectively (so that religion was and is an essential feature of capitalism). It was really just humans all along.

Alternatively, there is Naturalism. Wave goodbye to the Big Daddy in the sky, say hello Mama Nature. — apokrisis

Soooo ..... rejecting a mistaken impression of monotheism for an environmental chad pantheism?

Mama Nature rejected us.

Why wouldn't we want to understand life and mind, hence even morality, as natural phenomena? What good argument do you have on that? — apokrisis

Because morality is oftentimes diametrically opposed to the natural. With the advancements in the biological sciences came a renewed fervor for the problem of evil based on the sheer magnitude of suffering in the natural world.

I've said this already, secular societies inherit the problem of evil from their theological ancestors. A morality based on the natural world would be a non-morality, akin to basing morality on a deity that, by any modern standard of morality, is a twisted psycho.

So there is a stark choice when it comes to metaphysics. You can be like me, or be like you. — apokrisis

A dualism??? :gasp:

God is dead. He never lived. Moral dilemmas can only find a grounding context in Nature itself. Get used to it. ;) — apokrisis

Bullshit, God lived in the hearts of countless human beings over the course of millennia. God was said to have grounded morality, and the death of God is typically seen as a threat to this morality. But really I would argue that God didn't ground morality so much as he limited it. Morality already existed without God. When God is real, humans have a limited responsibility and don't have to ask too many questions - the big guy will figure out the details, and in the end everything will be alright and make sense (theodicy).

When God is dead, humans are confronted with a vast sense of moral responsibility, being the sole reservoirs with any moral sense in the universe. No God to help, no God to alleviate this burden. The post-modern moral view isn't necessarily relativism, but can rather be a sense of infinite responsibility and a radical devaluing of existence. I'm saying the only way life continues is by its responsive devaluing of philosophy, just as Nietzsche articulated. Life can only continue if we stop thinking so much.

But why should I accept your dualism? You can propose it. I simply show its incoherence. — apokrisis

You don't have to, but then we wouldn't have much to talk about, then. None of this pragmatism talk looks anything like ethics or value theory to me at all.

So yes, if we go your pragmatism route then many ethical categories don't make sense. I'm saying that's an argument against your pragmatism, and a very powerful one too given your apparent inability to shrug off what you claim is romantic nonsense.

Yet you are fine telling all natalists how they are simply irrational in their delusions about life having a value for them. — apokrisis

There's no equivalency here. On either end we are using science to help support our views. I'm being more honest, though, when I say science merely supports my views instead of claiming that science just is my view. I don't use science as a trump card like that.

And I'm sure you are aware that disagreement abounds in science, so much so that broad sweeping claims about "positive psychology" being the only relevant authority cannot possibly be taken for granted, since there are competing scientific theories that are contradictory to the nauseating feel-good paradigm leaking around the psychology departments.

There must be a fallacy which is the fallacy of posters hoping to win debates by claiming every possible fallacy that springs to mind once all their other arguments have disintegrated. — apokrisis

Yeah, I think it has something to do with making false dichotomies...

I thought it funny that you again wheel out a theory about the extremes that people will go to to avoid confronting an end to their lives when you are so busy trying to claim folk would universally be happier never to have been born. — apokrisis

Well, they wouldn't actually be happier since they wouldn't be alive. But yeah I think if people were a little more observant and candid about their own lives to themselves, birthday parties wouldn't be so common. Actually things like birthdays parties are effective ways of reinforcing the "life is good" mantra that is so ball-numbingly repetitive.

I didn't think it relevant, and thought you'd straw man it anyway.

Either you go with the subjectivity being expressed by all you anti-natalists - where your personal preferences are treated as a self-evident moral ought - or you are prepared to follow the natural philosophy route that became the pragmatic scientific method. — apokrisis

Yet the choice to commit to the "pragmatic route" must also be subjectively motivated, no? As I said before, there are multiple perspectives on procreation. I'm fine with you going the pragmatic route, so long as you recognize that this isn't a moral avenue. Your decision to pursue the "scientific" route here is not a God-given decree but probably something to do with your character and background.

So mine is the evidence-demanding approach that stands against your subjective articles of faith. :) — apokrisis

But again this is a false dichotomy, your favorite straw man between romanticism and science. I dislike how you claim to speak for all scientists on matters outside of the domain of science.

LOL. I listen to the science. Sue me. — apokrisis

It's not that you're listening to what science is saying more than it's that you're interpreting certain cherry-picked scientific theories in a particular way and claiming this interpretation is what necessarily holds when this interpretation is exactly what's in question. This modern scientific Taoism of yours may be aesthetically pleasing but it certainly doesn't provide the theodicy we're looking for.

Am I to see you as an oracle, proclaiming the truths of reality? Of course I believe what I think is reasonable.

I don't see why anything I said would have left you speechless. Antinatalism, at least in the form I'm delivering here, is simply the consistent application of general ethical categories. It is the problem of evil, consistently applied not just to God but to his imitators.

One thing that seems to separate you and I are our views on the nature of reality. You seem to take reality to be a creative and ultimately playful process of development - a few cuts and burns here and there but who cares?, the world and the synergistic melody of the universe plays on. This is completely alien to me. Reason and life do not always parallel each other, and when they intersect it's not always beautiful. Probably the biggest obstacle antinatalism faces is providing people with a sense of beauty and meaning in the absence of a future society. Samuel Scheffler has a good take on the importance of the "afterlife" (future society that remembers us after we die).

Yes, it seems as though antinatalism can be but one manifestation of the problem of evil. Atheists can complain that God sits by idly, watching innocent people suffer. But parents are like gods in themselves with their creative capabilities. A consistent atheist committed to a logical problem of evil seems, on pain of inconsistency, to be required to endorse some form of antinatalism as well. It seems inconsistent to accuse God of being evil and yet turn a blind eye to the human imitators of God.

Minor boo-boos like paper cuts are so trivial that they can form a problem of evil in themselves. Forget the Holocaust for a second - what possible benefit would a person get from stubbing their toe? Is stubbing a toe a necessary part of God's great plan? Do papers cuts actually refine our moral character? Or are these "minor evils", as minor as they may be, simply useless?

These minor evils are still very minor and so are not something we ought to worry about. Instead they act more as indicators of the overall absurd quality of life.

No. It is unreasonable because the facts are that the majority of people don't go through life wishing they had never been born.

Antinatalism is only logical to those who take a black and white absolutist stance on things. Any pain or suffering - even a papercut - makes existence structurally intolerable.

For most people, life is a mixed bag. And yet overall, they don't regret living. So if you are going to take on moral guardianship for the unborn, deal with the facts as they actually are out there in the world. — apokrisis

Once again, the fact that the majority of people do not often wish they had never been born (but actually claims about being glad you were born are often not about being born but continuing living) is not a counterargument to antinatalism. And once again antinatalism is not concerned about paper cuts and minor boo-boos.

Yes, it is true that many people irrationally find life to be something positive. Yet people can be profoundly misled. And there are many people who do not find life to be something positive. The latter are those whom I am most concerned with here. If you procreate, you make possible the existence of a suicidal person. The claim is that the possible good that may come from bringing someone into existence (such as their happiness, fulfillment, or whatever) does not justify the possible evil that may (and often does) come from doing the same.

Really, then, this particular argument is that the extinction of the human race is preferable to the existence of agony. Pain is the most real thing a person can experience. A billion happy people has no value when it depends on a single victim of torture. You may call that absolutist, and if that is so, then so be it. Every single person who exists is a possible suicide. That's a fact.

Elsewhere I have tried to emphasize how antinatalism is but one perspective on procreation - an ethical perspective. Procreation can be seen in other perspectives that are more favorable to it, such as from the perspective of the continuation of the human species, or the perspective of a prospective parent who wishes to have an intimate relationship with their young. I don't think I'm being absolutist when I say procreation is morally wrong. I'm merely pronouncing a perspective on procreation that is based on moral categories. Feel free to take a different perspective - the argument is not that birth is absolutely bad from all perspectives, but rather that it is bad from the moral perspective.

If we are reasonable people, we could make reasonable judgements about whether on average those babies will later feel grateful.

And being reasonable, it would be on average rather than absolutely. Practical reason also includes the principle of indifference. Near enough is good enough. We don’t have to be fanatics about these things. — apokrisis

It's not fanatical to abstain from having children. People do it all the time.

And I think you are using the term "reasonable" illicitly here, in that you effectively monopolize the term to refer to anything you agree with. I can just as easily say that reasonable people do not take unnecessary risks, especially when other people (who cannot consent) are directly involved. In this form antinatalism is the logical extension of the common ethical categories (common-sense morality), and it's only because of the affirmative assumption that life and reason must never intersect that antinatalism is seen as unreasonable.

The reason as to why this assumption is so prevalent is probably evolution and the basic biological drive to survive.

why though? Do you actually agree with everything he wrote about the will and how it manifests overtime including all the supernatural implications eg the animal magnetism essay ect. — JupiterJess

No, I don't agree with everything Schopenhauer said.

but I was wondering if anyone had ideas for categories one would use for Top Trumps for philosophers. — jkg20

Top ten anime betrayals western philosophers of all time, in order based on nothing but my personal opinion:

• Plato
• Hegel Schopenhauer
• Augustine
• Nietzsche
• Kant
• Heidegger
• Aquinas
• Peirce
• Descartes
• Wittgenstein

Top ten philosophers of all time:

• Schopenhauer
• Plato
• Siddhartha Gautama
• Schopenhauer
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Schopenhauer
• Nietzsche
• Schopenhauer
• Schopenhauer
• Schopenhauer

Trump philosophers — jkg20

A contradiction in terms!

Yep. By definition, anyone posting here about antinatalism has a full belly, a roof over their heads, time on their hands. They can take for granted all the civilised advantages that hold real discomfort at bay. — apokrisis

By definition, just about anybody posting here about anything at all has a full belly, a roof over their heads, and time on their hands. And they all certainly do take for granted all the civilized advantages that hold real discomfort at bay. :roll:

So it is easy to see how a generalised dissatisfaction arises. The more luxurious your life, the more you can become overwhelmed by everything that is just slightly not perfect about it. — apokrisis

Alongside? In what sense are they treated with the same scientific/therapeutic respect? — apokrisis

Terror management theory has been around for a while, and depressive realism is only slightly younger than positive psychology, as far as I am aware.

Ah. So they are better because they don't paper over the essential badness of existence! For people in a hole, they are a help to dig the hole deeper. — apokrisis

No, I think TMT, et al are important because they fundamentally put into question some of the things about positive psychology. Incidentally, Ernest Becker would have wanted TMT to help create a more meaningful and positive society.

Probably because antinatalists keep mentioning it. Although I agree, you might take the more interesting position that basically life is 99% OK for you, but the 1% that sucks then makes the very idea of living an intolerable burden. Even the possibility of dying slowly in a mangled car wreck means an otherwise cheerful life is a metaphysical no no. — apokrisis

Yeah, dying slowly and in great pain sounds awful.

Well I can't get over the hopeless irrationality of a view that says a 99% full glass is still a cosmic tragedy in its 1% emptiness.

I mean I scrapped a knuckle doing some gardening this afternoon. It bled a little.

Even worse, the fibre cable installers cut through the underlawn irrigation despite me telling them exactly where to look out for it. Oh, the agony.

And yet I don't regret having been born. It's been another great day. — apokrisis

You persistently bring up the most unimportant aches and pains as a reductio of antinatalism. It would be absurd if little finger scrapes and boo-boos were what we were concerned about.

Instead of taking the 1% to mean the minor aches and pains you may experience, instead take the 1% to mean the percentage of individuals with, say, debilitating neurological disorders which cause intolerable pain and premature death. Think about innocent children who die from medical complications in their early youth - think about how terrified this child must be, to have just barely come into this world before being violently yanked out of it again. Consider the countless individuals who have and will be tortured by governments. Or wild animals, where the rules are that you run or you die. If not anything else, consider what your progeny will think about the world you bring them into. Will they ever feel appalled, even if they're not personally experiencing the brunt of it?

The antinatalist point is that it does not make sense to mourn the existence of these terrible things, yet accept and even support an institution that single-handedly perpetuates them (procreation). The basic point is that very bad things only happen to people who are born.

You may object that technology + human will = a better future where these horrible things do not occur to people who are born. But this is going to lead to a more broader pessimistic point, which is that problems seem to find a way of popping back up again. Solving one problem creates the opportunity for another problem to fill the role. There is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes has it.

I accept one part of antinatalism. We ought to consider long and hard about bringing kids into the world. The future could be quite dicey.

But then that just commits you morally to doing the best that you can for them if you do. There is nothing particular to fear about life as a journey in itself. The variety of that journey, the challenges it presents, is pretty much the point.

To build a cult around persuading everyone to stop having kids seems weird. Frankly it is weird. It has value only as an illustration of what bad philosophy looks like. — apokrisis

Another way of putting the antinatalist point could be: the best parent is the one who never is one (biologically, speaking at least). As Cabrera said: "Because I love you, you will not be born!"

The current way of looking at things has it that you can be irresponsible as a parent of a child by how you provide for them and treat them, but hardly ever is it considered that having children tout court is irresponsible. This is what makes antinatalism a radical position, one that may seem "weird". It questions a fundamental, fundamental assumption of affirmative societies, that life is good and having children is also good. It is a culture of parenting, made and perpetuated by parents.

Antinatalism, at least in the way I'm presenting it, is an ethical orientation that doesn't require any sophisticated metaphysics beyond what the average person already believes. Antinatalism is a final consequence of taking the contemporary ethical categories and applying them radically and consistently.

With respect to antinatalism being a "cult" - I admit that many prominent and "vocal" antinatalists on the internet are cultish and probably narcissists/schizoids/avoidants. Separate the substance from the shit.

Why does that have to be so? I absolutely don't see it that way. A rational science like positive psychology certainly wouldn't teach things to be that way.

It is only if you can't escape the clutches of literature and religion that you would be trapped in such a myopic view of personal identity. — apokrisis

This sounds too good to be true, probably because it is. Alongside positive psychology, we have theories such as depressive realism and terror management theory. But those don't make people feel good.

Literature and, to an extent, religion, are treasures that are manifestations of hopes and dreams of real human beings. They ought to be taken as testimonies of the experiences of real people, not dismissed as being somehow fake or opaque.

So just note how you choose the third person voice. You already presume that objectively, for any possible person, life doesn't work. Thus you hope to win by rhetoric an argument you can't sustain by logic. — apokrisis

First off, antinatalism need not depend on the claim that everyone's lives suck. I don't know why you keep bringing this up, apart from as a rhetorical strategy. That, or you never took the time to really understand the antinatalist point of view.

That being said, I do think even the best lives are still quite atrocious. And I'm allowed this opinion. I'm not telling people to kill themselves. The strong argument is that life necessarily is horrible for the person living it and thus birth is always a harm to the person being born. The weaker argument draws from the indisputable fact that many people have horrible lives and that this reality depends on them having been born. Any counterargument to this will require some form of justification of this reality - basically you need to provide a theodicy.

So this is the science-based framework through which I would view the "philosophy" of antinatalism.

Antinatalism depends on a theistic/romantic metaphysical model - one that treats mind or identity as something inherent to a body. A soul stuff of some sort or other. But I am arguing from the point of view where the mind or the self is emergent from the pragmatism of a modelling relation. — apokrisis

Yet there is a difference between science of life and life as it is lived. You say the self is fluid, but the self we value as a self is precisely the differentiating self. It's rather akin to religious interpretations of the cosmos - we cannot help but wonder "where it all came from" or "why it's all here", even if something like the anthropic principle dissolves these issues. And so similarly we cannot help but see the self as a soul-like resident of the body. As it stands, there are individual, different physical bodies that are often reflective and solitary - most notably in the moments of pain, suffering and anguish. Coincidentally enough these are exactly the things antinatalists tend to be concerned about.

To say the antinatalist point doesn't work because soul-like selves do not exist in reality is akin to saying the antinatalist point doesn't work because there is no such thing as free will, or God, or whatever, and this risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Antinatalism is instead about curling up in the corner and wishing you were dead. It is giving up on the possibility of "controlling things" - or rather, being a properly active part of the negotiations always going on "out there" in the real social world. — apokrisis

This is about as true as the claim that pragmatism is about incessantly accusing others of romanticism and sentimentality. :meh:

Antinatalism is about taking control of one of the few things we actually do have control over. Life is not "working". It's not up to standards and it never will be. The pragmatic solution is to conserve what resources you do have and stop wasting them on future progeny. Of course, that's a pragmatic, intra-wordly justification - but I've already explained in this thread why I don't regard intra-wordly ethics as anything more than a prejudice.

Word play. My argument was that selfhood is fluid. So we can (socially) construct a contracted definition of the self - as a solipsistic soul stuff. Or we can recognise that selves arise contextually to serve purposes, and so a social-level of self is also a thing. — apokrisis

The objection I will raise here is that you are making it seem as though because the self is socially constructed, it must be within our control to destroy this same self.

So yeah, we can see how selves serve contextual purposes, etc etc. But that doesn't mean it fails to be an enduring concept that breaks its own limits.