Anti-Natalism - A solution for ending materialistic human suffering

[zazen]

21 minutes ago, zurew said:

Just to be clear, under your view  -  it wasnt rape , because there wasnt any conscious subject who could agree or disagree to the act. 

 

Also again under your view, the mother who is using heroin during pregnancy isnt doing anything bad, since its just a clump of cells and there isnt anyone (a subject) who is being harmed.

What kind of moral responsibility are you talking about there, the welfare of a clump of cells?

 

 

Yes and its very obvious that this is the case. 

 

I can easily generate more examples. 

One psychopath pays 10 million dollars to a dude to rape the next future sentient person. Its guaranteed that the rape will happen but the person who will be raped is just a clump of cells right now. Is the act of paying 10 million dollars to the future rapist a violation of future consent or not?

I already wrote “Someone who is unconscious still exists as a subject with right to bodily autonomy. Their capacity for consent exists even when they’re not currently exercising it - and that anyone overriding it makes it unethical to begin with.”

I also covered how moral responsibility still applies to actions that foreseeably affect a future subject. You’re responsible for what those cells will become, but you can’t “violate consent” of what doesn’t yet exist just as Basman is pointing out to you also. 

Your mistaking the intention to cause harm for the act of violating consent. 

Paying someone today to commit a future rape is morally evil because it expresses premeditated intent and complicity, not because it “violates future consent.” Consent can’t be violated until there’s a consenting subject - what exists now is your corrupt intention, not the act itself. The moral wrongness lies in planning harm, not in breaching an imaginary contract with a being who doesn’t yet exist. 

Your just doubling down, collapsing categories and trying to strawman me because your logic is incoherent and your Saturday night live performance of gotcha flopped.

[zurew]

2 hours ago, zazen said:

I already wrote “Someone who is unconscious still exists as a subject with right to bodily autonomy. Their capacity for consent exists even when they’re not currently exercising it - and that anyone overriding it makes it unethical to begin with.”

Making the subject a p-zombie who never was a subject and because of that never had bodiliy autonomy doesnt make the rape any more okay (at least not under my view, under your view it might be okay, because there isnt any such thing as future violation of consent).

2 hours ago, zazen said:

Paying someone today to commit a future rape is morally evil because it expresses premeditated intent and complicity, not because it “violates future consent.” Consent can’t be violated until there’s a consenting subject - what exists now is your corrupt intention, not the act itself. The moral wrongness lies in planning harm, not in breaching an imaginary contract with a being who doesn’t yet exist. 

Its entailed in the example that there will be a consenting subject (at the time when the act will be executed). Its literally entailed and decided at the moment of paying the psychopath for it. Its not just a plan to do it. Its a deterministic event  which caused at the moment of payment.

2 hours ago, zazen said:

Your mistaking the intention to cause harm for the act of violating consent. 

No im not mistaking it, you are trying to reduce the example down to just intent, but its not just intent, because in the example its entailed that it will necessarily happen once the payment is done.

The payment is the causal factor that necessarily leads to the rape.

Some guy already made this argument for me:

Quote

3 hours ago, zazen said:

The act was unethical the moment it began because it was done without consent. The subsequent reaction can bring about forgiveness  or trauma - but it can’t retroactively change the immoral nature of the initial choice. Consent is the necessary condition that must be present before the act, not a lucky outcome that might appear after.

 

2 hours ago, zazen said:

Your just doubling down, collapsing categories and trying to strawman me because your logic is incoherent and your Saturday night live performance of gotcha flopped.

No the main point  still stands regardless who wins the label battle. The only thing that was done is  a re-labeling and the categorization thats put on it.

Whether you want to label necessarily subjugating your future kid to having capacity for experiences and to a set of really negative experiences (including the realization that he/she will die) as a "violation of future consent" or  just "moral responsibility" doesnt change the substance in any way and it doesnt really refute the main point that most anti-natalists make.

You didnt show how they are wrong in any way, all you did was you appealed to a different set of moral intuitions that you have.

You also  managed to somehow tie another topic yet again back to"west is bad"  as if that would be relevant to anything. We understand your traumas dude, but this is not a therapy session. Is the west in the room with us right now? 

You also managed to bring up the beyond stupid bro science "argument" against veganism by appealing to history like how all low tier debaters approach the topic.

Edited Sunday at 02:24 AM by zurew

[ryoko]

Those who had children and is somewhat "functional" will reject these ideologies, because experience makes them "feel" otherwise. It's essential for their survival. You have to feel good while having children and looking after them. There's no point debating anti-natalism to most of the world, when having children is like the default, and it's a lot of work to get into a non default frame. 

I love non-existence. I'd rather never be born. The best gift I can give to my children is non existence, by never making them in the first place. 

I love life, I enjoy life despite all the suffering(of others). If that's a bucket of fun, non-existence is an ocean of fun, infinite. What I call life is inclusive of the non existence. May be that's why I love it, and I see earthly life as a pain in the matrix, what's the point of pointless distractions. 

Edited Sunday at 05:09 AM by ryoko

[Basman]

6 hours ago, zazen said:

Agreed. It's difficult for many people to get by on their own let alone support a family, if they can even partner up with someone to begin with. The problem comes when suffering is taken and universalized as a moral stance in the form of a philosophy in order to cope with that suffering. People feel a need to identity their stance and choices as ''positions''.

They journey from identifying as childless - which sounds negative (because less implies lack), then it becomes childfree (which sounds more noble because ''freedom''), but then that sound selfish so it must go the next step and become a ethical concern that shows how much you care - anti-natalism.

Lifestyle choices are elevated into ''identities'' and moral philosophies as a compensation for being metaphysically displaced and uprooted from any sort of transcendent identity or belonging - that a mechanised, scientifically rational, materialist culture stripped from them. That's why we have all kinds of subgroups propping up and peoples identities tied to them.

It's not simply ''I don't want to have children due to my personal circumstance not being viable'' instead its ''having children is unethical due to lack of consent and introducing them to a life of suffering they have no say in'' and subjecting this moral standard onto others who fall short of it. The philosophy itself is self-negating and self-terminating if adopted at scale and if it were to be a universal ethic or truth. But it’s just a circumstantial choice in a persons life.

I'd be very careful with characterizing ethical beliefs as instrumentalizing as it can quickly become a kind of charicature. They might be influenced by certain factors, but that doesn't mean that their values aren't genuine necessarilly. Its more important to look at the validity of their arguments. 

[Basman]

8 hours ago, zurew said:

So under your view this is not a violation of future consent - One psychopath pays 10 million dollars to a dude to rape the next future sentient person. Its guaranteed that the rape will happen but the person who will be raped is just a clump of cells right now. 

You can't rape somebody without it being a consent question by definition. Consent is a material factor when the conspiracy to rape you does materialize unlike being born, which is not possible to consent for or against. 

The subtle logic here in relative to natalism is that being concieved is something that happens to you (in the negative sense), but for something to happen to you technically requires a past self which is changed negatively by being concieved. You don't exist prior to conception therefor conception can't be an infringement in of itself since you have nothing to compare it to. 

[zazen]

20 hours ago, zurew said:

 

20 hours ago, Something Funny said:

It's about consent.

No it isnt.

So in a hypothetical where there is no chance of any suffering at all and there is guaranteed pure bliss , you are telling me that these people would still be against having children?

 

@zurew Didn’t you already discuss how anti-natalism isn’t about consent with somethingfunny?

If you reject the anti-natalist view of “non-consent to being born” because “you can’t ask a non-being”, yet insist you can violate the consent of a non-being that doesn’t yet exist in the future - that’s self-refuting.

 

On your rape example - an unconscious person still exists as a subject with bodily autonomy - they have a continuing identity and rights that persist through unconsciousness. Even a corpse has rights despite no capacity for consent because ethics is relational - it arises from continuity between beings who exist or have existed. The dead still exist in relation - through memory and continuity. The non-existent exist in abstraction -without relation or continuity.

Assaulting someone in a coma is still rape - because consent is temporarily inaccessible, not ontologically impossible. Latent rights belong to existing subjects whose capacity to exercise them is currently dormant - their rights persist because their being and subject hood persists. Potential rights, on the other hand, refer to non-existent or not-yet-subject entities - possible persons.

You can’t wrong a non-subject or one who hasn’t existed as one - only prepare conditions that may later affect one ie be irresponsible but not “violate” consent when no subject exists to grant it or not.

A living subject has intrinsic rights (active). A dead person has derivative rights (symbolic/relational). A non-existent has no rights, because they’ve never entered relation or continuity.

 

On your latest example - you’re mixing up intent and violation. Just because one act leads to another doesn’t mean they’re the same act or carry the same kind of guilt. Paying someone to commit rape is wrong for the intent - the rape itself is wrong for violating consent when it happens. Determinism doesn’t erase that difference - it explains how one led to the other. Mixing up cause and morality is like blaming gravity for murder because it pulled the bullet down.

Honest question - how do you live day to day by your logic? Every meal, car ride or consumer choice would be a “violation of future consent” from someone not yet born but guaranteed to exist. You’d need prophetic knowledge of every potential consequence before acting.

Also - you think our brains grew this large because we ate grass and nuts and not all the other nutrients derived from non-vegan sources?

[zazen]

10 hours ago, zurew said:

No the main point  still stands regardless who wins the label battle. The only thing that was done is  a re-labeling and the categorization thats put on it.

Whether you want to label necessarily subjugating your future kid to having capacity for experiences and to a set of really negative experiences (including the realization that he/she will die) as a "violation of future consent" or  just "moral responsibility" doesnt change the substance in any way and it doesnt really refute the main point that most anti-natalists make

“Whether you call it consent violation or moral responsibility doesn’t matter” - of course it matters. The rhetorical position of antinatalism rests on framing procreation as a consent violation. That’s what elevates a personal choice into a moral emergency and totalizing ethic.

Strip away the consent language and what are we left with? “You’re subjecting someone to experiences including negative ones and mortality” Yeah - that’s called existence lol you’ve discovered the human condition. 

If that’s framed as consent violation then suddenly we’re not just describing reality - but making parenthood analogous to assault. We’re weaponizing liberal individualist frameworks (autonomy, consent) and extending them into metaphysical absurdity (demanding consent from the non-existent).

Your collapsing the distinction to maintain your narrative - which depends on treating potential people as right bearing individuals whose consent can be violated.

@Basman Related to your comment and to Zurew bringing up how I tie in an unrelated topic when it’s very much is related.

These stage green philosophies aren’t errors due to compassion or their original intent that is sincere and valid - it’s that they’re taking what are situational individual choices and universalizing them into a cosmic ethic. Why can’t lifestyle choices remain as such? Why do they need to become moral crusades and isms?

The wider point about this phenemona emerging in the West is that these moral overextensions keep emerging in the context of a culture trying to re-soul itself through moral absolutism - because for a long time it submerged itself in rational scientific materialism that metaphysically unmoored it.

They are symptoms of what happens when you have a correct moral intuition (suffering is bad) but no metaphysical container for it (no understanding of suffering’s role in growth, or a transcendent meaning that contextualizes earthly pain, or spiritual framework that grounds existence as fundamentally good despite its difficulties).

So that moral impulse - which in a traditional framework would be tempered by wisdom, cosmology or initiation into life - instead becomes absolute. It eats itself. “Suffering is bad” becomes “therefore existence is bad” becomes “therefore reproduction is unethical.”

This is the West’s particular pathology: we rejected a transcendent metaphysics, kept the moral sensitivity, and now that sensitivity has nowhere to go but into increasingly totalizing, life negating philosophies that we call progress.

Spiral Dynamics assumes a linear, universal trajectory of development that’s actually Western centric in both its aesthetic and milestones. It interprets progress through the lens of the Western psyche: material mastery (Orange), then moral overreach and empathy (Green), then synthesis of the tensions and contradictions in the below stages (Yellow).

Other cultures with a spiritual or metaphysical anchor already resolved these tensions without collapsing into nihilism. Spiral Dynamics can’t see that because it reads history through a Western teleology and developmental arc, where everyone else looks like a “lower stage” for not following. It universalizes the Western developmental arc - as if that trajectory is the natural path for all humans. Every other culture is measured against this Western timeline and implicitly cast as “behind in development” rather than “differently developed”.

The West lost its metaphysical grounding and then tried to reconstruct it through psychology - then mistake its own rediscovery of balance as “the next stage of evolution.” It’s civilizational amnesia posturing as progress. As if these colour coded values never existed before and only “came online” in Ken Wilber’s terms - in recent history. How does stage green or yellow values only come online recently - as if they never existed before lol. It’s called spiral dynamics yet approached as if it’s ladder dynamics in some linear manner.

Concern for the environment and marginalized is a recent evolution? Tell that to Jains who’ve been practicing radical non-harm for 2,500 years, or indigenous cultures with sophisticated ecological wisdom embedded in their cosmologies, or mystics who experienced universal divine love. Tell that to every traditional culture that understood humans as embedded in - not separate from - the web of life.

Apparently none of that counts because it was wrapped in “mythic” or “magic” worldviews. It only becomes a real developmental stage when white Western baby boomers discovered empathy after dropping acid lol. The model literally takes Western culture’s temporary pathological detour through mechanistic rationalism and calls it a necessary path of evolution for the entire globe. It treats these values as novelties that “emerged” rather than a recovery from lost and found.

I’m not saying spiral dynamics is junk - just that “the map is not the territory” - and this map doesn’t map onto the territory of reality so cleanly and neatly in the way we think it does.

Edited Sunday at 12:02 PM by zazen

[zurew]

15 minutes ago, zazen said:

Yeah - that’s called existence lol you’ve discovered the human condition. 

The whole point is that anti-natalist consider the "human condition" to be bad.

Your are not making it not bad , by harping on it not being a consent violation.

 

[StaraX]

On 1.11.2025 at 9:40 AM, Leo Gura said:

This makes no sense.

The economy requires procreation to be robust.

There is no problem with over-population. The Earth can easily sustain 10B+ people. And those extra people will invent new tech.

@Leo Gura What about the idea that AI will replace more than 90% of jobs this decade? The economy wouldn’t need people at all then.

[zazen]

35 minutes ago, zurew said:

The whole point is that anti-natalist consider the "human condition" to be bad.

Your are not making it not bad , by harping on it not being a consent violation.

 

You haven’t engaged any of the points but instead moved the goalpost because I keep playing whack a mole by shutting down your points. You haven’t even responded to Basman making the same point about consent and responsibility being distinct.

Anti-natalism can’t survive on its own logic, because it keeps borrowing the language of life to argue against life. They talk about ethics while denying the subject that makes ethics possible, talk about consent while erasing the being that can consent, and  talk about compassion while annihilating the context where compassion has meaning.

It’s the terminal stage of a disenchanted, disillusioned and metaphysically displaced culture. How sad. I don’t even say this as a dig - I am Western and in the West myself.

You still haven’t answered how you live day to day life and make decisions - haven’t you made multiple consent violations of future non existent people before breakfast this morning?

Your logic is only for the prophets who can forsee the future and teleport in some multi-verse to seek consent of the non-existent. Maybe you are a prophet and ahead of us - maybe when we’re all prophets at stage turquoise we’ll take up this logic and incorporate it into our own laws.

If this logic was sound, coherent and most of all applicable - we’d see it codified into law and practiced.

From Chat GPT:

Zurew’s logic doesn’t appear anywhere in real-world legal or medical ethics, because it’s philosophically incoherent and legally unusable. Let’s break that down with examples:

⚖️ 1. 

Criminal Law (Rape and Consent)

In criminal law, consent is strictly present and relational — between existing persons capable of giving or denying it.

Example:
In a rape case, if a victim is unconscious, the act is considered non-consensual because the person exists and has rights that persist during unconsciousness.
However, no court recognizes “future consent violations.” You can’t be charged with “violating the consent of a person who doesn’t exist yet.”

 

That’s why paying someone to commit a rape is punished under conspiracy or solicitation, not as “violating the future victim’s consent.” The law distinguishes between intent and violation — exactly what Zurew blurs.

 

🏥 2. 

Medical Ethics

Medical ethics operates on informed consent, again requiring an existing, identifiable patient who can understand and agree.

 

Example:
Performing a medical procedure on an unconscious patient is only ethical if prior consent was given (e.g. a DNR form) or if the situation is life-threatening and consent is presumed.
No medical system treats a future person as a moral subject whose consent can be violated. That’s why doctors don’t need “consent from future generations” to perform life-saving research — they’re judged by current professional duty, not speculative future consent.

 

So in both criminal and medical ethics, Zurew’s logic fails completely.

It doesn’t map onto any framework because consent presupposes subjecthood, and subjecthood presupposes existence.

If his logic were real, you’d have absurd results like:

Doctors being guilty of “violating the consent of future patients” by discovering antibiotics.

Parents being guilty of “pre-consensual harm” for conceiving children.

That’s why no legal or medical code uses it — it’s philosophically fanciful and legally unusable.”

I’m only this cheeky and blunt because you called my comment stupid, weird and claimed me to be butt hurt. Next time you’ll think twice about being naughty and rude. Naughty zurew.

 

Edited Sunday at 12:36 PM by zazen

[zurew]

 

4 hours ago, zazen said:

@zurew Didn’t you already discuss how anti-natalism isn’t about consent with somethingfunny?

Yes I said that, but I didnt mean what you mean by that sentence. I meant the fact that most people are not against all consent violations in a principled way not that there cant be consent violation.

 

22 minutes ago, zazen said:

They talk about ethics while denying the subject that makes ethics possible, talk about consent while erasing the being that can consent, and  talk about compassion while annihilating the context where compassion has meaning. It’s the terminal stage of a disenchanted, disillusioned and metaphysically displaced culture.

There isnt any internal contradiciton shown there.

Spell out the p and not p if you think there are internal contradicitions.

Also, again, none of what you said  shows to antinatalists that the human condition is not bad.

16 minutes ago, zazen said:

You haven’t even responded to Basman making the same point about consent and responsibility being distinct.

Where do you think I made the point that those two are not distinct? My exact point is that these two things are distinct and that both of them are important to consider.

Violation of consent means that you subjugate an individual to a set of unwanted experiences. Future violation of consent means that you subjugate a future sentient being to a set of unwanted experiences. Now try to apply and use my semantics and show under how I use these terms whats the contradicition or the incoherence without switching back to how you use these terms.

Like knowing that once your daughter will be born she will be a sex-slave. You know before your kid is born what set of unwanted experiences she will go through and that was the meat of the 'violation of future consent' all along.

Quote

4 hours ago, zazen said:

You can’t wrong a non-subject or one who hasn’t existed as one - only prepare conditions that may later affect one ie be irresponsible but not “violate” consent when no subject exists to grant it or not.

This is why I implied that you using a different definition of consent that is incoherent with there being a future violation of consent doesnt really change substantially anything. Applying your semantics to the sex-slave example doesnt at all change the gravity of what you do once you decide to birth the kid. You know what set of unwanted experiences you will make her live through.

Applying it to the p-zombie example, you know that once it actually becomes a sentient being for the first time and its reminded about the rape, that it will go through a set of very negative experiences. 

The same goes for the comatosed and the sleeping example.

 

You having a broader definition for moral responsibility doesnt change the core of what the antinatalists saying. Using your semantics antinatalist would just say that you cant be morally responsible then, because the very act of creating life is morally irresponsible rather than a violation of future consent (under how I use the term).

50 minutes ago, zazen said:

From Chat GPT:

I was suspicious that I was arguing against AI, but now I can be sure about it.

Well, in that case I will open a new tab and will argue it out with chatgpt and claude then and  see what other things they have to say.

[zurew]

3 hours ago, zazen said:

If this logic was sound, coherent and most of all applicable - we’d see it codified into law and practiced.

Im genuinely surprised that AI is still this stupid.

Next time try to use claude to think for you, because chatgpt make you look bad.

Edited Sunday at 03:39 PM by zurew

[zazen]

@zurew Separate responsibility from consent. We can do our best to create good conditions for current and future life on earth - without any violation of consent for that future life occurring - which is an impossibility to begin with.

We can be responsible for creating conditions, but can’t be guilty for violating consent of a being or subject that doesn’t yet exist. Otherwise how are you making all your decisions day to day - which are violating trillions of future lives consents?

Was your own birth a violation of consent? Or just morally irresponsible because you’ll suffer and die one day?

If it’s a violation of consent, who violated it? If it’s irresponsibility - then you’re admitting the question depends on conditions, not a universal moral law which anti-natalists depends on.

Anti-natalism needs the “consent violation” framing to maintain their universal ethic of non-consensual birth being bad, thus procreation itself being bad. Without it, they’re just saying “be a good parent if you have kids” which isn’t a revolutionary position - it’s common sense and just being responsible.

If someone finds life to be hard, and that them having kids would compound that suffering and be passed onto the kids - then don’t have them. That’s responsible and fair - but it isn’t about violating consent. These are distinct from each other.

Once the consent argument flops the next one is that life itself is more bad than good. This is where anti-natalism can actually have some coherence - if one comes at it from a purely materialist view - hence the thread is even called “a solution for ending materialist human suffering”.

But most humans intuit the metaphysical (soul) beyond just the physical (material) - which is why most people don’t overreact to their experience of suffering with nihilistic philosophies and a negative universal claims about life itself.

Something in us wants to live, despite suffering and outside of just biology -something beyond matter, that seems to matter enough to enough people to keep on living. People are still out there creating and risking the heartbreak of love, and contextualizing the inevitability of death in various ways to deal with it.

There’s a metaphysical pulse running through the physical - that if we don’t numb ourselves to and sever ourselves from - help us have a appropriate relationship to suffering. Often it makes life even more beautiful.

 

I shared the part I used for AI and said it’s from Chat GPT. Go back to my older posts or topics before AI was even a thing to see that I don’t just write and explore things in such a shallow manner, or that I’m incapable of depth without AI. Feel free to use AI yourself and bring clarity to the subject.

Edited Sunday at 06:45 PM by zazen

[zazen]

5 hours ago, zazen said:

Once the consent argument flops the next one is that life itself is more bad than good. This is where anti-natalism can actually have some coherence - if one comes at it from a purely materialist view - hence the thread is even called “a solution for ending materialist human suffering”.

Going further into this. The consent argument can logically be dismantled. But the argument for life having more suffering and pain than pleasure is trickier.

We can weigh things up to conclude (based upon conditions) that certain lives will suffer more than they will experience pleasure. Which is why I said the coherence is there  “if coming at it from a purely materialist view”.

But the deeper experiences of life aren’t quantifiable, but are instead qualitative and transcendent - which includes them transcending the measurement of the balance sheet on which we are trying to weight up life as a net negative or positive.

Love, meaning, beauty and presence transcend the entire calculus and binary of pain / pleasure - they include yet transcend them. Like a mother going through motherhood with sleepless nights and all it entails - there’s pain and discomfort, but immense meaning and love at the same time that transcends it all.

Quality is denser than quantity - we can quantitatively count the same number of gold and silver coins - yet the gold coins weigh more than the silver. Quantity measures the surface, is horizontal. Quality is of depth, vertical. The anti-natalist is applying a mathematical logic to a realm that is fundamentally alogical.

The fact that those transcendent states are alogical makes them even harder to logically discuss and convince an anti-natalist of them - or of the asymmetrical value in them against the more measurable moments of suffering. It’s basically the calculator vs the poet - asking someone to weight the soul on a scale built for bricks.

The cold calculus of suffering is logically coherent but existentially hollow - because it fails to account for the very things that make life worth living, even despite the calculator showing we suffer more on paper.

It’s almost impossible to logically convey the value of that which is beyond logic - but that is of value that trumps logic altogether. That is the domain of the master and the mystics -  who use mechanisms to bring us to an experience of life, that shows us life definitely isn’t just mechanistic. That it isn’t simply physical matter, but that a meta-physical reality exists.

I can never point directly to the value of life, or logically explain it. That’s where art, music, poetry step in - or the experience of love, beauty and presence. Love, presence and meaning don’t erase suffering, pain or loss but instead redeem them.

Anti-natalists are the accountants of existence using a sterile weighing scale. The lovers of life or even those who have experienced love just once - know life transcends the scale altogether.

Logic coldly asks why? Love asks why not? 

“Metaphysical syllables riddled by the invisible”

 

Edited Sunday at 11:54 PM by zazen

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Nice little heated debate you guys have here

Was listening to this earlier - the segment below beginning 33:41 (linked) applies.

You guys might enjoy 

 

[zurew]

Its confused all around the place. Anti-natalists dont need to be moral realists, they can be antirealists and think given their moral intuitions its wrong to give birth to kids.

The materialist comment is also confused, because you can care about suffering the most regardless  if you are a materialist or not. Its just based on how you personally weigh things. Caring about suffering the most is comaptible with any non-materialist metaphyiscs as well.

An afterlife can also make this whole thing worse, because you created a life, and now they have to exist forever.

 

 

Again - Rather than desperately holding on to labels, you should engage with the substance thats being said, because no, it doesnt make things rhetorically any better. Engage with what I mean by the phrases I use, not what you mean by those terms.

Yes, you cant ask for consent from a non-existent thing, but by creating it you necessarily subject it to a set of experiences and death. And no, it doesnt have to be outcome dependent , just the fact that kid will have any experience can be considered bad under their view, because regardless what kind of measurement you use, what matters is how the kid subjectively end up evaluating the whole thing, not what values you have. So yes, even if you would give birth to the kid in Heaven, under this view, it could still be considered bad, because you are gambling with the kid disliking having capacity for experience in the firstplace (regardless how heaven like you picture his/her future life to be like).

The only way you can get around this, if you are an all-knowing God and you know that they will be okay with existing, but the moment any gambling is involved epistemically on your part, it will be considered bad.

All the arguments you make for any kind of moral realism will be irrelevant, because it doesnt matter what kind of abstract moral system you think is objectively true, again what matters is how the kid end up evaluating things. And yes again, antinatalists dont need to think that their views are objectively true, they can be subjectivists.

 

Their view is coherent, there is no contradiciton in the view.

I will flag this again, I dont think it makes sense for you to make a case for any kind of objective morality, because its not motivating at all. Even if its actually true, it doesnt change anything ,because why would anyone care about abiding by the objective moral system you are describing? They will only care about things as long as their own moral intuitions and preferences are being violated. This is why going to Hell works, because its negatively motivating people to not do certain things, not because its objectively true , but because of the actual consequences people subjectively care about. If their would be no consequences that people care about, no one would give a fuck about what moral system is objectively true. The system's objectivity or subjectivity is irrelevant, only the consequences people care about matter.

And this is why arguing against moral systems is a waste of time, if you dont appeal to people's moral intuitions in some way. 

And yes , you can reply with "okay, but who cares , I have different moral intuitions", but you are not really showing any issue with their view.

Edited yesterday at 12:52 AM by zurew

[Basman]

12 hours ago, zurew said:

Its confused all around the place. Anti-natalists dont need to be moral realists, they can be antirealists and think given their moral intuitions its wrong to give birth to kids.

The materialist comment is also confused, because you can care about suffering the most regardless  if you are a materialist or not. Its just based on how you personally weigh things. Caring about suffering the most is comaptible with any non-materialist metaphyiscs as well.

An afterlife can also make this whole thing worse, because you created a life, and now they have to exist forever.

 

 

Again - Rather than desperately holding on to labels, you should engage with the substance thats being said, because no, it doesnt make things rhetorically any better. Engage with what I mean by the phrases I use, not what you mean by those terms.

Yes, you cant ask for consent from a non-existent thing, but by creating it you necessarily subject it to a set of experiences and death. And no, it doesnt have to be outcome dependent , just the fact that kid will have any experience can be considered bad under their view, because regardless what kind of measurement you use, what matters is how the kid subjectively end up evaluating the whole thing, not what values you have. So yes, even if you would give birth to the kid in Heaven, under this view, it could still be considered bad, because you are gambling with the kid disliking having capacity for experience in the firstplace (regardless how heaven like you picture his/her future life to be like).

The only way you can get around this, if you are an all-knowing God and you know that they will be okay with existing, but the moment any gambling is involved epistemically on your part, it will be considered bad.

All the arguments you make for any kind of moral realism will be irrelevant, because it doesnt matter what kind of abstract moral system you think is objectively true, again what matters is how the kid end up evaluating things. And yes again, antinatalists dont need to think that their views are objectively true, they can be subjectivists.

 

Their view is coherent, there is no contradiciton in the view.

I will flag this again, I dont think it makes sense for you to make a case for any kind of objective morality, because its not motivating at all. Even if its actually true, it doesnt change anything ,because why would anyone care about abiding by the objective moral system you are describing? They will only care about things as long as their own moral intuitions and preferences are being violated. This is why going to Hell works, because its negatively motivating people to not do certain things, not because its objectively true , but because of the actual consequences people subjectively care about. If their would be no consequences that people care about, no one would give a fuck about what moral system is objectively true. The system's objectivity or subjectivity is irrelevant, only the consequences people care about matter.

And this is why arguing against moral systems is a waste of time, if you dont appeal to people's moral intuitions in some way. 

And yes , you can reply with "okay, but who cares , I have different moral intuitions", but you are not really showing any issue with their view.

This is just a kind of post-modern style of ethics, where moral intuitions are presented as both relative and inherently valid regardless of how they compare to various measure. Much of the same criticism that applies to post-modernism applies here as well, namely that just because you can have a moral intuition doesn't automatically mean it's true, and if its not true its not grounded in any sense of realness. Then it's literally fantasy.

Also, if you are going to assume a relativistic stance, you have to acknowledge that anti-natalism is merely one possible perspective and that pro-natalism is equally correct as a perspective. Ultimately, you are not really saying anything substantial besides "this perspective exists". 

For anti-natalism to be a valid perspective it has to be true, at least by my standard (or at least parts of it). If it is not based in reality then its just hot air. What is missing is substantial proof that life disavows itself which doesn't rely on speculation and whataboutism. It's impossible to make a serious logical deduction based on for example the after life because it is impossible for us to know what it even really is. It's philosophically a dead end.  

Edited yesterday at 12:51 PM by Basman

[zurew]

29 minutes ago, Basman said:

This is just a kind of post-modern style of ethics, where moral intuitions are presented as both relative and inherently valid regardless of how they compare to various measure. Much of the same criticism that applies to post-modernism applies here as well, namely that just because you can have a moral intuition doesn't automatically mean it's true, and if its not true its not grounded in any sense of realness. Then it's literally fantasy.

This is so confused I dont even know where and how to even begin to reply to this.

"validity" and "true-ness" is indexed to the moral intuitions these people have, I dont know what you invoke when you use those terms. You already presuppose some kind of moral realism probably, but thats just simply not engaging with what these people are saying.

The cricism that you bring up is simply silly, because there you presuppose that its either the case that moral realism is true or its just all fantasy, which doesnt follow and doesnt even make sense as a reply, its just a complete misunderstanding of moral anti-realism.

 

29 minutes ago, Basman said:

Also, if you are going to assume a relativistic stance, you have to acknowledge that anti-natalism is merely one possible perspective and that pro-natalism is equally correct as a perspective. Ultimately, you are not really saying anything substantial besides "this perspective exists". 

1) It almost as if I already predicted this here:

12 hours ago, zurew said:

And yes , you can reply with "okay, but who cares , I have different moral intuitions", but you are not really showing any issue with their view.

 It seems that you havent even read the thing that you quoted.  2) You just embodied  people who dont understand how anti realism works. Validity is defined by their system not by something outside of their system, so when you say "they are all equal", you are making the mistake of appealing to some kind of norm outside of all those systems, which is the very thing they reject. So no, the consclusion "therefore all perspectives are equal" doesnt follow.

Edited yesterday at 01:20 PM by zurew

[zurew]

Its also funny that post-modernism is invoked as a bad thing, as if you wouldnt be a "post-modernist" in many many domains in life.

Are you a gastronomical realist?

 

 

The other confusion is that anti-natalism has to be either an anti-realist or realist position. No, it can be compatible with both, its just that depending on which one is affirmed, the defense will be different for it. Its just obvious to me ,that none of you can actually establish any coherent and meaningful moral realist stance against anti-realism and even if you could it still wouldnt be motivating in any way at all for anti realist to abide by that system.

Edited yesterday at 01:20 PM by zurew

[zazen]

9 hours ago, zurew said:

Anti-natalists dont need to be moral realists, they can be antirealists and think given their moral intuitions its wrong to give birth to kids.

I agree - it's fine as a personal intuition and choice they make, but where I challenge it on is that they take a subjective moral intuition and turn it into a universal claim about reality. They believe their subjective anti-realist view is actually a objective view of reality - by taking something which is particular, relative, and subjective and making it objective, absolute, and universal.

The claim isn't that ''giving birth for me is wrong'' - its that ''giving birth itself is wrong''. It's the same error dogmatic religious people make - even if they don't impose their views on others, from within their moral paradigm they view others as sinning because their actions aren't in line with their universal truth and moral law.

It's in the name itself - anti-natalist (against, birth) - that's a moral position against the act of birth itself, claimed as a universal wrong. So it's not just a personal preference based on case by case circumstance that may be relatively true for a certain individual - its a philosophy believing it describes a absolute truth about existence.

10 hours ago, zurew said:

The materialist comment is also confused, because you can care about suffering the most regardless  if you are a materialist or not. Its just based on how you personally weigh things. Caring about suffering the most is comaptible with any non-materialist metaphyiscs as well.

Yeah - no doubt even non-materialists care about suffering, they just contextualize it differently. For the materialist, suffering is unredeemable except by its elimination. The moral logic is that if life produces suffering, the ethical ideal is to stop life. They treat suffering as ultimate because there’s nothing beyond it - no larger field (meta-physic/physical) in which pain and joy have meaning or can be redeemed by higher goods beyond measure like love, awareness, beauty etc.

It makes sense why the logical endpoint of the materialist paradigm would lead to minimizing ''potential'' lives because life is (mainly) suffering, so fewer beings = less suffering. Anti-natalism emerges from that, as I mentioned - they do have coherence within the materialist paradigm. Non-materialists can still care about suffering and choose to not give birth - but it won't be for the same reasons ie based upon consent violation or from the view that life is suffering and inherently bad - a universal claim and verdict of existence. One can still view the value of life, the inherent beauty and goodness - whilst still deciding not to procreate based upon the relative truth that their circumstances would most likely cause more suffering for the child than not - including for the parent themselves. It's simply a assessment on your circumstances not being viable - not a verdict that life itself is a cosmic mistake.

Note also how they usually talk of suffering and not just pain. Suffering is the experience of pain, experience implies someone who experiences ( a sufferer ), which implies a consciousness that suffers - which undermines the materialist paradigm itself. A moral intuition and value judgment of suffering being a bad that should be minimised (instead of also contextualised) comes from a consciousness being there in the first place.

The anti-natalists own capacity to contemplate existence, make moral judgments or value life enough to want to prevent suffering and philosophize about it - point to something beyond just the material. Even for spiritual anti-natalists (who are opposed to natalism yet still believe in the spiritual) - they simply haven't gone full circle to the point of understanding a metaphysics (spiritual reality) within which suffering can be redeemed by states that are themselves spiritual and beyond any material measure. 

10 hours ago, zurew said:

And yes , you can reply with "okay, but who cares , I have different moral intuitions", but you are not really showing any issue with their view.

The issue is less of their worldview being bad or good and more about it being untrue. It essentially boils down to a materialist vs anti-materialist debate because its from that premises that follows all the assumptions and views being made. That's the foundation. Doesn't actualized.org and Leo etc already cover how the materialist worldview is untrue? Like that thread where someone shared Bernardo Kastrup and Alex O'Connor discussing materialism and idealism on the philosophy sub-forum.

11 hours ago, zurew said:

An afterlife can also make this whole thing worse, because you created a life, and now they have to exist forever.

Eternity can't be imposed on that which is already eternal - consciousness. This is why each paradigm approaches this so differently.

Without a spiritual lens, anti-natalisms logic is hard to refute, because it’s made inside a materialist worldview where we should minimize suffering. Trying to debate that from their paradigm is already a loss because we've conceded to their paradigm and all the assumptions that follow it (which are then coherent) - instead of debating the paradigm itself.

If we include a metaphysical dimension - soul, evolution of consciousness, divine play etc - the logic dissolves. If life is the universe experiencing itself, then birth isn't a imposition but a participation. Deciding not to participate is a choice - but it isn't a condemnation of life itself being bad. It can be bad from a relative sense, but not a absolute sense from which we then make existential universal claims about life. Anti-natalists mistake suffering in life, for the the nature of life.

From a materialist view it makes sense that life is imposed upon a being because life looks like a product made in a assembly line - two physical meat suits rubbing each other and bang (big or small lol) - a new consciousness appears that needs to suffer a life it didn't consent to. It makes sense if the universe is a dead machine (mechanistic) and that consciousness is a by product / side effect of biology and matter rather than its source. But from a metaphysical view there only ever is Consciousness or a Being that is eternal, only shifting in form.  In that paradigm we aren't condemning a life to exist and suffer forever because it already was existing - just in different form- as the formless.

From that paradigm its not a question of a new being, being created from thin air - Being already is the case, existence already is the case and is eternal - it isn't imposed but only unfolds. The ocean and wave metaphor (Alan Watts) is useful: the ocean doesn’t ask the wave if it wants to exist, the wave is the ocean expressing itself and was never separate to begin with. Violation can still happen between forms (waves), but never to Being (ocean) itself.

At a metaphysical level - Being can't be violated, because nothing stands outside it to harm or destroy it. The ocean isn't damaged by one wave smashing another. Ethical dynamics (consent, violations etc) emerge in the relative sense within the domain of forms - between waves, not in the absolute sense of violating Being itself. When the wave rises, it doesn’t violate anything - it just fulfills what it already is, the impulse of the ocean / life / Being.

The burden of proof is on the antinatalists to show that the inherent impulse of life is not to be and that life is solely material. Everything says otherwise - including the antinatalists themselves who are standing as a being - living, breathing and not ceasing to be themselves. The impulse of life is to be and Being wants to be. That's why most people oppose the notion of anti-natalism that makes universal claims about life as a net negative of little to no value.

On some level most people feel it to be off. Anti-natalism is moral intuition that’s right but incompletely applied to life because its stripped of a larger metaphysical context within which to make sense of suffering. Whether people can articulate it or not - the same thing in people that responds to art, love and beauty is the same thing that rejects anti-natalisms universal claims about life being net negative. Anti-natalists themselves are living proof of the thing they condemn. They are a life passionately arguing that life shouldn't continue to exist through natalism - while demonstrating through that very passion that life finds meaning, purpose, and value in its own expression.