Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2017 21:01:08 GMT
Sept 17, 2017 18:49:18 GMT @miccee said:
Sept 17, 2017 18:15:51 GMT @falconia said:
I was more wanting to talk about the objective purpose, and how an evolutionary purpose would override the one people decide for it. A quick thought experiment: Say the human menopause came about through natural selection to reduce the number of older women. Hot flashes make you faint and make you more susceptible to predators. (So it is something deadly).
Modern science discovers a way to prevent it. However certain societies/individuals decide to keep it because it constrains them to be better grandmothers, form closer social circles ect. After that point is its purpose its original evolutionary one, or the one decided for by society?
I actually agree with your views on suicide because the odds are against you being sucessful. (The odds are currently 100 and 200 to 1 against). So in the same way it should be one's right to take a pill to prevent menopause (or any suffering) it should be their right to have a safe way to opt out of life. Afaik, only living sentient beings can have some form of (subjective) purpose so I disagree they are having something imposed on them before they are born because they are by default non-existent.
I disagree that suffering is by default the worst thing ever that should never happen because of the reason below in ii:
ii. to reply to your new post. If you're stating it's a numbers thing then you have the problem that not everyone is committing mass suicide or curling up not doing anything as if to avoid being shocked by whatever comes their way.
So suffering must be in fact less efficacious/prolific than the other traits/qualia. So it's either less than the positive traits or suffering is being reworked in such a way that it becomes something positive for the individual.
iii.
I also think you're taking "suffering being the ultimate bad" as an a priori (a self evident truth). That's fine. I think Sam Harris does something similar and anyone who disagrees he can't relate to. I recall he was shocked when Dennett asked him "why? (Ayn Randian traits should be removed from the brain to reduce suffering)" on his podcast. The problem is others won't agree because for most people it is not a self evident truth. So the debate will just go in circles.
ii)I'm glad that you're in favour of having the right to die. Unfortunately, that simply is not the world that we are bringing more children in to, and it only seems more likely that society is going to become ever more aggressive in eliminating suicide as an option for those in suffering.
I'm not saying that the majority of people hate their lives, although I would arguing that life is usually more 'tolerable' than it is 'enjoyable'. My point really is that some people are always going to end up with the shitty end of the stick and are going to experience truly appalling suffering throughout their life. There is no fairness built in to the system, so we can't ensure that everyone ends up with the same amount of suffering, or only the amount of suffering that they are capable of tolerating. Therefore, even if you could say that only 1 person out of 100 absolutely hated their existence, that means that you're excusing the suffering of the 1% as acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of a goal that is not necessarily shared by them. And my point is that individuals ought not to be forced to contribute to a shared goal with which they do not agree, or be collateral damage that is caused in the process of pursuing that goal.
iii)If suffering isn't the ultimate bad, then I don't know what else could be the ultimate bad. Death isn't, because death is just the cessation of experience and is qualitatively no different than the state before birth. Nobody laments the lack of life on Pluto, and for a very good reason; non-existent organisms do not feel deprivation. Consciousness is the source of all value in the universe (a completely barren universe is one without values), and suffering is the one unpleasant and undesirable side effect of consciousness. As far as I can tell, everything that we deem to be 'bad' is only bad because it entails suffering. Even with death (which is an absence of suffering), we mainly deem this to be bad because of how it makes those of us still living feel.
i) & iii)
I'm referring to the problem of an earlier function dictating its current function. eg: A church that has become a gothic nightclub no longer serves the role of being a church.
There would have to be a reason to take "I need suffering because it helps me survive long enough to reproduce" over "I need suffering because it makes life more interesting." In existentialist terms, I don't think there is meaning beyond what people give it. For it to be bad it must be thought of as bad, and we know this changes from person to person. Sadists believe it to be a good thing. Sounding slightly Wittgenstein-esque, concepts mean things to different people. They are interpretational.
I do not believe that most people take the absence of all suffering being bad as a priori. Some may contrast their views with it, sure, but think of all the people who watch sport. Would they believe the games would be better without suffering? What people interpret as bad varies at different times. Being the living beings we are, it is usually some event combined with a level of misery, never really the same ontological state of affairs, and never suffering in itself hanging as a platonic ideal. To isolate it as such, with it existing in each and every situation seems too artificial.
ii) "And my point is that individuals ought not to be forced to contribute to a shared goal with which they do not agree, or be collateral damage that is caused in the process of pursuing that goal."
Regarding goals, I believe there are reasonable demands and unreasonable demands. I think being forced to stay alive is an unreasonable one, however I do not think simply being born is an unreasonable one. Yes, the smaller (and it must be small or everyone would have given up already) collateral damage is worth the risk for most people because the joy of having children outweighs the negatives for them.
Even if antinatalist philosophy is employed, there may still be natural evil occurring somewhere in the universe. One of Nietzsche's (the anti-pessimist) big concepts was his eternal recurrence. If you're a strict naturalist and believe the first law of thermodynamics holds then infinity may be in play and life may just be a reoccurring event by chance alone. (That is how life on earth is believed to have started). No matter how many people or animals are sterilized, there will eventually be new "life" or floating minds in some form or another. You have to become an anime villain with omnipotence/omniscience to make it work.
If we are to take that to its logical end, it is likely better to be born in a controlled environment than being born into chaos. Schopenhauer (the big pessimist) believed that the will (beings, minds) simply manifests again at another vent which was why he did not encourage suicide but asceticism. If we go full scientism then antinatalism vanishes from the meme pool because it does not encourage survival. It is only within collapsing civilisations it will take hold and then other people (or other animals) who are not persuaded or lack the mental equipment to be persuaded will take advantage of that.