Anti-Natalism - A solution for ending materialistic human suffering

[zurew]

36 minutes ago, zazen said:

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.

Im not tracking how being an idealist would be relevant or how it would solve any of this.

Idealism doesnt presuppose moral realism and you can have any set of moral intutions as an idealist.

Do you think moral-antirealism is incompatible with idealism?

 

Also not sure what is meant by the view not being true. I understand that when it comes to metaphysics, but when it comes to moral realism I have no clue what kind of norm is invoked.

 

Or I could ask it this way: What do you think the error is in a person's position who is an idealist and an anti-natalist at  the same time?

Edited yesterday at 03:14 PM by zurew

[zazen]

6 hours ago, zurew said:

Im not tracking how being an idealist would be relevant or how it would solve any of this.

Idealism doesnt presuppose moral realism and you can have any set of moral intutions as an idealist.

Do you think moral-antirealism is incompatible with idealism?

 

Also not sure what is meant by the view not being true. I understand that when it comes to metaphysics, but when it comes to moral realism I have no clue what kind of norm is invoked.

 

Or I could ask it this way: What do you think the error is in a person's position who is an idealist and an anti-natalist at  the same time?

Not sure if you were also asking whether anti-realist views can exist within an idealist world? In which case yes, but belief being able to exist is different from it being true. Subjective anti-natalist views can exist within existence but that doesn’t make their universal claims about existence true. Just like someone can believe in Santa, without it being true.

As for idealism (non-materialist worldview) and anti-natalism being incompatible or not - they just don’t resonate with each other at the ontological level of how they view existence. Anti-natalism assumes creation as causation - that you can “bring a being into existence” who previously wasn’t. That idea only makes sense in materialism, where matter precedes consciousness.

But in idealism, consciousness is fundamental and eternal. No one “creates” a conscious being - consciousness already is and simply manifests through different forms. There’s no non-being to violate or new entity to “impose” existence upon.

So the antinatalist’s moral claim - “it’s wrong to force life into being” - loses its metaphysical ground. From idealisms pov it’s like saying the ocean is morally wrong for making waves

That’s why I said it’s not about their worldview being bad as much as it is about being untrue - unless seen from a purely materialist paradigm. But it doesn’t reflect how reality operates in an idealist paradigm. Their ethics depend on the metaphysics of materialism - which see’s a world of separate agents manufacturing life as if in a factory. Once the premise changes, the conclusion evaporates with it.

In other words: the idealist paradigm (that conciousness is primary) is at odds with the materialist paradigm on which anti-natalism depends. The foundational premise from which all assumptions are made is materialist. If the paradigm is widened to include a spiritual metaphysics then the old one is no longer coherent. The premise changes, and along with it the assumptions and the conclusions. The conclusion of the material paradigm is that life is a non-consensually imposed net negative on a new life - therefore anti-natalism makes the correct conclusion that life is best not perpetuated.

[zurew]

34 minutes ago, zazen said:

But in idealism, consciousness is fundamental and eternal. No one “creates” a conscious being - consciousness already is and simply manifests through different forms. There’s no non-being to violate or new entity to “impose” existence upon.

I think now I kind of track what you meant by it being false. You didnt try to make a case for moral realism, you simply said that if idealism is true, then certain moral claims become false (on descriptive grounds) just given the nature of the world.  So if a claim relies on X and there is no X, then the claim is false.

But I dont think thats the case, and here is why: there is an equivocation on consciousness there. Everything is consciousness, but not every single thing is conscious/sentient (unless you are a panpsychist).

 

And as a side note: You can be a physicalist and believe that the Universe is eternal (it doesnt have a beginning)

Edited 23 hours ago by zurew

[Twentyfirst]

Babies come from sex and you can't stop people from having sex. Best to regulate it and produce good families. People from good families don't even think about anti natalism. It's always people from messed up backgrounds now they automatically think that family = suffering 

[zazen]

17 hours ago, zurew said:

you simply said that if idealism is true, then certain moral claims become false (on descriptive grounds) just given the nature of the world.  So if a claim relies on X and there is no X, then the claim is false.

But I dont think thats the case, and here is why: there is an equivocation on consciousness there. Everything is consciousness, but not every single thing is conscious/sentient (unless you are a panpsychist).

True, it's not that their equivalent but that they are on a continuum. Their different degrees of the same phenomenon - different in degree but not in kind.  I think the best word to describe it is that there is distinction within consciousness, but not separateness. Consciousness and sentience are distinct but not separate. Sentience is in and of consciousness just like a wave is in and of the ocean  - the wave is in the domain of and of the same substance as the ocean.

From that view, sentience is never added or imported into consciousness as something separate. And if nothing new is being added from outside, then anti-natalism has no foundation - because anti-natalism requires separateness, and idealism denies separateness. That idea of separateness only works within a materialist paradigm. Idealism acknowledges distinction but not separateness. Materialism acknowledges everything as separate to each other - different materials coming together to be configured. In this case humans are made as if on a factory assembly line being configured like Lego.

The logic follows that if separateness is the case, then anti-natalists can argue something was added to reality (rather than emerging from it) - a new ''sentient being'' ie baby. Then they can make an argument against adding that new consciousness that will suffer and that didn't consent to that suffering. Anti-natalism hinges on that gap and separation existing - which idealism dissolves because it claims consciousness as a continuity. In idealism or a non-materialist worldview - everything only ever comes out of consciousness, rather than gets added and thrown in from somewhere else outside it.

If consciousness is primary and fundamental then birth isn't creation of a new consciousness but a transformation of existing consciousness. In that paradigm nothing new (a sentient being) is being brought into reality from the outside, but is emerging out of consciousness itself. Concioussness is just individualising or localising itself into a particular form, like the ocean forming a wave.

In the same way then - sentience is just consciousness configuring itself to such a degree as to become sentient and ultimately aware of itself.  Ice, water and steam are all water in kind, though they differ in form. There’s no clean break or gap between consciousness and sentience in which we can say that something new was added to consciousness from the outside - there was no addition to consciousness only transformation.

 

Again using the ocean/wave analogy:

Materialist view: Each wave is a NEW entity that gets ADDED to the ocean. Before the wave, there was just ocean. After the wave, there's ocean PLUS wave.

Idealist view: The wave IS ocean. It's not added TO the ocean, it arises FROM the ocean. It's ocean expressing itself in wave form. No addition occurred - just transformation.

Your trying to have it both ways which mixes a materialist ontology with a idealist one which then causes some incoherence - "everything is ocean (consciousness is primary)'' but waves are genuinely new separate things that get added (sentient beings emerge as new entities)" or ''everything is consciousness, BUT new sentient beings emerge as genuinely new separate entities that can then be morally wronged."

But if everything is ocean, waves aren't separate entities - they're temporary forms the ocean takes.We (sentient beings) don't arrive from somewhere else into this universe/consciousness. We arise out of it - like apples on a apple tree. The apple tree doesn't "create" the apple as something separate from itself. The apple IS the tree, expressing itself in fruit form.

Similarly, parents don't "create" consciousness as something separate. The child IS consciousness, expressing itself in human form. Humans can decide to participate in that impulse or not. Creation is happening within consciousness and emerges - but creation isn't happening externally and then getting added to consciousness or reality as something separate.

Edited 5 hours ago by zazen
Making it make sense in less words but hard lol