Because we live in a world filled with extreme suffering, pain and death. Parents are aware of the possibility of suffering and still procreate to satisfy their selfish desires. Since it’s morally wrong to cause or not to prevent suffering, having children in a world like this is immoral.
And yet intentionally not having any children at all, is tantamount to suicide.
Isn’t suicide also immoral?
The world has always been full of suffering, pain and death. The only difference between today and thousands of years ago is that we’re more widely connected, so we see suffering from more places than our immediate surroundings.
Well, voluntary extinction is probably a little more serious than suicide (species contra specimen), and I’m not sure suicide is universally immoral, but yeah; basically what you said.
And therefor…?
Therefore, if we were to stop having children based on the amount of suffering in the world, we wouldn’t be around to have this conversation right now because we would have ceased to exist ages ago. There are plenty who would consider that the more selfish and immoral act. Hell, there are people even now who believe it’s wrong and selfish for a healthy adult person to make the decision to not have children.
It’s really just a matter of perspective, as are all arguments about morality, but basing the argument on the amount of suffering in the world is misguided, as plenty would say that suffering makes the good times even sweeter.
The world is not filled with extreme suffering, for everyone. For some people, life has more pleasure than suffering in it. And therefore, since it’s morally wrong to prevent pleasure, (just as it is to cause pain), it’s sometimes morally wrong not to have children.
…See what I did there?
No, it’s not. And nor is not procreating like suicide.
It’s also immoral to let people run marathons, apparently.
Are you using this as an objection to the idea that it’s wrong to cause pain?
Marathons don’t cause pain. —Short term, sure. Bodily, sure. (You can see how those might be outweighed, right? I.e., what the greater pleasure of them might be?)
Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the antinatalist’s objection.
If not having children causes you to suffer, then you should have them to prevent your own suffering. Therefore what you call a ‘selfish desire’ is a moral act which prevents suffering.
Well that would be a nice response if the portion you quoted was my conclusion, but that was merely a point used to arrive at my conclusion, so…
\What exactly are you trying to say?
ROTFLMAO! Another confrontational character. This post is supposed to cause a fight not a real discussion. I will bite WTH.
Nope, it would be immoral to deny such an important facet of education, children that never suffer tend to grow up into spoiled selfish pain inthe butt dangerous humans.
With the hope that my children and your children can create a better world for them and their children. That would seem to be a pretty good fix.
Good to see you back, TAFKAMIAC.
It seems to me that if one would not choose, right now, to be painlessly put to Death, say with a Little heroin tossed in so the Death might even be pleasant, then one has the root in oneself for why the argument does not make sense. We want to live, and we would miss, in advance, the coming cessation of Life. Most of us. There is something that makes us want Life, even with whatever levels of suffering we have. So there is no convincing reason not to follow the desire to have Children, because there is something more important for us than eliminating suffering. Von River raised the issue of pleasure, but my sense is there is something even deeper than pleasure involved and we value it and we have good expectations that our Children will value this also. (Von River could argue that whatever that is I am valuing is a form of pleasure, a very subtle pleasure in mere being, and I have no good way to counter that except to say it sounds wrong to me. Or incomplete, would be putting it better.)
The term ‘pleasure’ sometimes works just like an empty label; a sticker you put on someone’s raison d’etre so that it can be packaged neatly along side someone else’s. What would be interesting is if someone could come up with a value—since we can be pluralists about value—that is inversely proportional to pleasure. When you have this valuable thing X, your pleasure actually goes down—but yet X is still valuable. That’d be interesting.
The fact that I can’t think of one might just be a sign of how empty the term ‘pleasure’ is—or how versatile it is, whichever. But I don’t think the term is empty. It’s not empty if you have a good idea of when it applies and when it doesn’t. (And you do). —It seems to work like a measure of every actual particular worldly thing that’s valuable—up and down like the mercury in a thermometer. It’s a decent enough guage.
OP I think the best position you can be in is to have kids that no one knows are yours. Then no one can blame you for bringing em into the world, because they’d have no proof, plus, you wouldn’t be committing suicide because your dna would live on through your bastard children.
If we take the idea of masochism very broadly, I Think we all have examples of this. Runners which came up earlier. My thoughts go like this. Some people get secondary gain from struggle and pain - which would register as pain or discomfort or negative stress if their nervous system or cortisol levels were monitored. The secondary gain it seems can be as thin as meaning can be thin. Things like self-image, self-worth, being good, not being lazy and other nebulous to not so nebulous values giving the secondary gain. But then I wonder, wouldn’t this secondary gain also register as pleasure in its own physical ‘symptoms’. I would guess sometimes yes, sometimes no. Just going on the feeling in my own body.
I guess if we take ‘pleasure’ as positively valued aspects of experience or some such vague term, I could go along with pleasure.
Thinking of the anti-natalists, however, I Think an issue gets raised in relation to pain/pleasure. Even if there is a net negative - more pain than pleasure - at least by any measures we can come up with, most of us will desire more Life, and I Think not simply hoping it will get better, but because we value it, even at net loss levels. Somewhere in there is my quibble about pleasure. And also that this is not simply a fear of Death or non-being. Perhaps it is pleasurable to exist and this forms a very powerful backdrop in front of which pains and more aspect-like pleasures take their Place on the stage. (I have the senses that some philosophers have argued that the backdrop is actually pain, but I don’t Think this works given that most of them kept on living.)
It’s relative to the individual.
Some ought have children, others ought not.
All we can do is act to the best of our knowledge.
It’s an objection to the antinatalist stance that it’s flat out immoral to allow suffering to happen, as suffering can be a necessary part of a greater good.
If running a marathon is more good than the pain entailed training for and running it, and I think it is, then that good is not measured purely as a hedonic calculus, but in eudaimonic terms.
I think there would be a contradiction to be addressed by an antinatalist who also holds a (non-suicide) conception of eudaimonia.