Posted: Apr 14, 2012 4:43 am
jamest wrote:
His argument only works if there is a universal consensus that there is no reason for living, which there is not. Even at Auschwitz, where we might say that suffering reigned supreme, most of the inmates wanted to carry on living. Clearly, even when suffering reaches such extremes, humanity has reasons for wanting to live. If hope and purpose can survive such an ordeal, then there really cannot be any suffering sufficient to deny the possibility of future human experience.
I don't think you can decide for other people how much suffering they can tolerate and as a parent you are inflicting inevitable suffering (illness and eventual death) on a new sentience not at its request.
The reality is that a significant amount of people will be brought into the world that reject it (over a million suicides a year) or who inevitable live mostly in suffering (Children who die in a famine) (adults who experience life longing grinding poverty)
My only concern is to prevent the propogation of suffering.
Based on your argument I could have a child and torture constantly til it died but that would be okay because it still would have had an innate will to live in the face of its suffering.
However I don't think the will to survive is rational considering that life is hard and death is inevitable. So just citing the fact that people persevere in the face of gross suffering is a flawed argument and bad justification for procreating.
At the same time I have my own perspective and it is entirely relevant and I feel forced into existence against my wishes into a world and body I would not have chosen. I have attempted suicide in the past because of this and my inability to find life pleasurable (although anti depressants help superficially boost my positive (sensations) and yet more people like me will be forced into existence based now it seems on a utilitarian gamble in that you are willing for their to be constant suffering and death for the sake of transient happiness of what is not even necessarily the majority in what maybe a pointless universe.
If you are someone who draws wider conclusions from evolution then it is clear that we have been cooerced into procreation by inhereting dispositions that perpetuate mindless procreation. I can't read anything positive or life affirming in that account.
If you dissect peoples given reasons for procreating I doubt any of them would stand up to scrutiny or even be the same as each other.
I just know that after I die there will be more war, natural disasters, AIDs and cancer and starving children and paedophilia and who is trying to stop this viscious cycle? having children wont...