Imagine that there is a button which if pushed would annihilate existence. If you don’t believe existence must be good, then it doesn’t matter if someone pushed that button. Clearly you would stop that person. Since you would stop that person then it follows that you do it because you believe existence is good.
An explanation is true because two other statements are true. An axiom is true by itself.
Good thing you don’t back that feeling up with a reason. Just another piece of evidence that you don’t know what reason is.
Dude, see a doctor.
That’s only your assumption. It’s not all that clear. I can easily imagine that not everyone would act that way. Therefore existence is only ‘good’ for some.
Instead of providing a reason you make an ad hominem. More evidence that you don’t understand reason.
Everyone resists death.
If someone resists death, then they would resist someone who would push a button that would cause their death.
An obvious counterexample is someone who commits suicide.
The suicidal resists suicide before they commit suicide.
Everyone includes all those who have actual existence.
The suicided (those who have committed suicided) have historic existence, not actual (present) existence.
Therefore, the suicided is not included in the class of everyone.
So you exclude anyone who has actually ‘pushed the button’ and chosen to ‘annihilate existence’. That’s sophistry at best.
Many people have acted to end their own existence - suicides, altruists, combatants, heroes, terrorists. They chose to die for a variety of reasons.
Your axiom appears not to be true.
This is an argumentum ad ridiculum and hence a fallacy.
These people believed that THEIR existence was not good, not that existence ITSELF was not good. There’s a difference. You sacrifice your life for your country because you believe that it will be better for existence. You kill yourself because you believe your existence is not good, not because all existence is bad. Hans Brevik killed 80 or so people in Norway because he thought it would make Norway better not because he thought existence itself should be annihilated.
I’m just curious what the relevance of existence being “good” or not is.
Since there is no thing as non-existence, it seems a moot point.
This is so true. Good work.
Well, thank you. Such is typically difficult to recognize.
That is often your response. But what else could you say? You have no valid reason for ignoring the decision of a successful suicide.
People terminate their own existence. People terminate the existence of other people, animals and inanimate objects. And they have reasons for doing it.
Existence in itself is neither good or bad … it is evaluated as good or bad by sentient beings. It’s an opinion.
No, it’s not; the accusation that your argument is sophistry implies that you are dishonestly playing with words to exclude the counterexamples that falsify it. The force of the argument is not in ridiculing you, but in pointing out weakness in your argument.
In any case, there are profoundly apathetic or depressed people living who would not resist death, but also take no action to achieve it. These fall under the category of everyone, and they would not resist destruction of themselves or everything as they see no meaning in it.
This is muddying the waters between specific and general existence. Which is not addressed in the axiom. Existence in general may be good; does this mean more existence is more good? Is anything that exists therefore good?
How does one quantify existence? Are ten grapes better than one melon, numerically, or does the melon win by mass? What’s the morally better of the two?
As Hume said: “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. `Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledge’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation.”
Of course there is. We have a language that can form hypotheticals; “existence” is the concept used to separate things that are instantiated in reality like cats and tables, with those that are not, like unicorns and dragons. That a concept exists is clear as soon as it is talked about meaningfully; if it has no referent outside language, then we say it is non-existent.
117938a and PhysBang, please keep things civil.
I agree with the rest of your post, but you seemed to have missed a couple of points regarding the issue of the relevance of existence being “good” or not. That which truly has no existence is irrelevant (by definition). As someone already pointed out, the concept of a unicorn might well have relevance even though the entity referred to doesn’t exist. A dream is real even though the scenario of the dream is not. An “actual unicorn” doesn’t exist, cannot be accredited with any affects in the universe, and is thus irrelevant or irrational to be concerned with.
It is equally irrational to attribute the quality of good or bad to existence itself. Without existence there would be nothing, but then again, who would care? Also the notion of total nothingness is irrational in itself, yet the implication is that nothingness must be bad. How can an irrational concept (such as a square circle) possess a quality, either good or bad, or any quality at all?
One has to assume that the intent was “one’s own existence” is “good”, rather than “any and all existence” is “good”. But that distinction wasn’t really being made and I’m still uncertain that was the intent. 
You make my point: an “actual unicorn” is non-existent. So there is such a thing as non-existence. The existence or non-existence of many things is a crucial consideration in taking actions.
A person that successfully commits suicide cannot argue that something is more valuable than existence ITSELF for the obvious reason that they are dead and can no longer speak.
True, they have reasons, it doesn’t follow that those reasons are noncontradictory. It is also true that people terminate the existence of others, that also does not prove that there is something which is more valuable than existence. In order to refute me you have to assert:
x is more valuable than existence, then propose what x might be.
[/quote]
Existence is good. Something is good if it is desired and if the desire does not prevent a more valuable thing. If you don’t have existence, then you can’t have anything. If you can’t have anything, then you can’t value anything.
Perhaps if you called it “self-existence”… “is good”…?
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that they never existed.
We all know that 117938a is not interested in arguing: he/she/it is only interested in presenting something to make him/her/itself feel smart and in belittling anyone who points out the obvious facts that contradict his/her/its claims.
117938Aa denies that they’re talking about the self.
And they missed/ignored my questions concerning the distinction.
Nothing must be more important than [the] existence - of what?
Is nothing more important than the existence of hell? Would you will for existence if it only offered hell for it’s inhabitants?
[/quote]
Existence itself. You’re assuming that I mean: “existence of a particular thing,” which clearly that is not what I’m saying.