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SvetlanaButosky t1_jb5yhil wrote

There are some depressing philosophies that argue life should not exist at all due to suffering.

This is their arguments, see if you can counter them.

  1. Life has many suffering due random bad luck, some humans and animals will always be suffering terribly and die in agony, living a life that is horribly not worth its existence by most standards.
  2. Since suffering is perpetual for the unlucky, therefore they argued that it is not fair for the rest of existence to continue at their expense, meaning if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist.
  3. So in order to permanently prevent future unlucky sufferers, it is our moral obligation to find a way to painlessly and instantaneously "Remove" all life from earth, think Thanos snap but with all life on earth. lol
  4. Basically, if suffering is perpetual or takes a long time to be solved by future technology, then life on earth should not continue, because the unlucky suffering of some lives far outweighs the "decent" lives of the rest. (ex: Negative utilitarianism)
  5. Since nobody asked to be born (animals as well), then nobody consented to their suffering and sacrifice, thus it is doubly immoral for life on earth to keep existing at their expense.

Ok, what is your counter for these arguments? lol

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[deleted] t1_jb98zqh wrote

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jba6umy wrote

>I feel like all these are built on the same foundations that suffering should be minimised to the extreme and suffering is unavoidable for life (at least some of it) so the only way to totally remove suffering is to remove life. If you reject the extreme minimisation premise then you don't have this dilemma. Perhaps we need to accept suffering as unavoidable and our philosophies should aim to avoid the creation of any avoidable suffering instead (and accept that we may not be able to get 100% of it)?

So if extreme minimization is not the goal, what is/are the goal(s)?

There has to be something much more valuable? Enough to make us accept the sacrifice of these unlucky sufferers? What is it though?

To become a zombie matrix is not the goal, the argument is to remove extreme suffering from existence, so that nobody has to go through it.

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[deleted] t1_jba8u6e wrote

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbaea3o wrote

>Life? Existence? Are those such throwaway things?

You know about the repugnant conclusion?

Life and existence itself are not the things people value, its the quality of it.

If most lives are horrible with no prospect of betterment, I doubt we would want it to continue. lol

This is not the case, hence we persist, but this IS the case for some unlucky victims, which is why some philosophies argue that we must evaluated life from their perspective and concluded that we should end it to spare future generation of victims.

It is an extreme position, but it is not without merit.

If we want to argue that something is so valuable that we have no choice but to accept the existence of these perpetual victims, then it better be something really worth it, but what would it be?

Positive conscious experience for the "majority" of luckier people? Is this drug addictive enough to continue our existence and risk the suffering of millions?

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Possibly_a_f1sh t1_jb743kd wrote

Every bullet except 5 in this list seems to boil down to the same, essentially utilitarian viewpoint. In order to come up with a plausible objection to the view as a whole I think one need only hold that morality as a whole is not (entirely) outcome-based. There are plenty of great theories of morality which reject utilitarianism and develop ways of thinking about morality more in line with our intuition that life ought not be completely extinguished. I also think that we don’t necessarily need to accept that a complete view of utilitarianism necessarily leads to the conclusion that life is inherently a bad thing. Suffering is without a doubt prevalent in the world, but there isn’t (and couldn’t possible be) any complete measure of suffering vs. pleasure that would be required to do the kind of utilitarian calculation required to follow this argument through to its conclusion. It may very well be that the pleasures of life outweigh the suffering.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jb76z89 wrote

Of course, if suffering far outweighs pleasures, most of us would prefer that life ends, this is objectively true as far as we can tell.

However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births.

It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

How do you counter this argument? Majority rule?

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Gamusino2021 t1_jb8a2qd wrote

Its not like we have only 2 choices. All of us live or all life goes extinct. If there is someone who was unlucky and preffers to cease to exist it is his choice, but why force the rest into extinction?

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbab9dz wrote

According to their arguments, it is because the victims never asked for it, they were forced into such horrible fates because we continue to exist, meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer.

Therefore we have a moral obligation to stop this once and for all, if we cant create a suffering free Utopia (which is near impossible), then it would be easier and more practical to just blow up earth or something similar.

They have basically compared the options and found total annihilation of life to be much more achievable so that's why they went for it.

To be fair, a suffering free Utopia is not totally impossible, its just very hard to achieve and will probably take thousands of years if not longer, it would be much easier and create much less victims if we just blow up earth. lol

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Gamusino2021 t1_jbaer0k wrote

"meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer."

Again, there is two independent things here. The existance of the "happy ones" and the existance of those that are so un happy that would want to cease to exist. The first doesnt affect the second. Those who dont want to exist can cease to exist if they want to.

Now they can say that if the happy ones continue existing and reproducing then there will be some new "Unhappy ones" that will have to pass through suffering until they decide to suicide. But that amount of suffering is supersmall compared with all the happiness. And also, if we dont bring a person into existance then this person cant even decide if exist or not. By making new people we are giving them the choice to exist or not for a very small risk of suffering briefly.

Its like for them 1 "unit" of suffering is more important than 1000 "units" of happiness and the choice to exist or not.

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lyremska t1_jbdke2q wrote

> The existance of the "happy ones" and the existance of those that are so un happy that would want to cease to exist. The first doesnt affect the second.

It does, if the existence of the happy ones relies on the suffering of the others - like it does in our world.

> Those who dont want to exist can cease to exist if they want to.

Which in turn will make other people suffer (family, closed ones etc).

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Gamusino2021 t1_jbf0glp wrote

Number 1 is totally true. But that doesnt mean we should make humans extinct, that means we should fight for justice.

Number second is not a valid argument, because yeah, that would make other people suffer, but making humans extinct would make them lot more suffer, so its not a valid argument to make humans extinct

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slickwombat t1_jba892z wrote

>However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births. It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

What is an "axiomatic claim" and what makes this one "valid"?

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbaegb0 wrote

google it? lol

Axiom is a very basic claim of most philosophies, its valid when you have no objective ways of proving it "wrong".

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slickwombat t1_jbagjng wrote

Well no, axioms are not typically a thing in philosophy. In philosophy we are concerned with trying to figure out what's true, not just declaring random things are "axioms" and thus true unless proved false. The latter approach would make just about anything an equally "valid" candidate for truth, and suggest, contrary to basic principles of reason, that we should believe things without having sufficient reasons to believe them.

With that in mind, the question has to be: why should we take your antinatalist principle to be true? Or perhaps, what makes it more plausibly true than the other things people typically believe that it conflicts with, e.g., that life has inherent value, that procreation is an inherent right, or that happiness as well as suffering is morally significant?

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Goonerlouie t1_jbgrmre wrote

I am still new to all philosophical l thinking so my answers will be simple compared to most here. To me, suffering is subjective. An animal half eaten by a lion has suffered, felt sorrow and pain but to us, it's a part of life and a necessity. Never thought of it this way but I guess nature will always have perpetual suffering for the unlucky so it's inevitable that some have to suffer in life for the greater good.

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Relevant_Occasion_33 t1_jbnk8y5 wrote

An easy rebuttal is that they have to justify why suffering is so important that everything else has to be sacrificed to reduce it. Considering all the people talking about this haven’t killed themselves, clearly they don’t think ending individual suffering is enough to justify ending life.

Not to mention that even if life on Earth were eliminated, that doesn’t mean the amount of suffering in the universe would drop to zero. For all we know, life would emerge and suffer again or aliens would continue suffering.

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imperialistneonazi t1_jbwvvho wrote

Augustine’s aesthetic principle reminds us that we need the bad to see the good - in other words, suffering only exists because we have something else to compare it to, this being lesser suffering or happiness - this means that by removing all the suffering in the world you would be removing all the happiness in the world (also a classic political/philosophical debate, what is more important suffering or freedom)

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pallavkulhari t1_jb8dgxy wrote

Think of a kid! They have minimum suffering which arises out of basic needs like food, sleep, etc. Our world today has prevalent suffering but this wasn’t the case always. Suffering is mostly constructed by human brain with the help of language and thoughts around pain. Think of animals! They have pains, sometimes, but they don’t suffer because they don’t have to think of past or future and just stay mindful, mostly always. They don’t have words like “suffering” and “pain” and “what would others think” or even a sense of self.

Most philosophers propose that shedding of the identity can remove all sufferings.

Today, major sufferings are a result of mental constructs rather something tangible. We can and definitely will solve them easily in a few thousand years which is a small period of time, on the scale of universe.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jba8s2g wrote

lol I doubt suffering is just mental.

Stage 4 bone cancer, raped to death by gangs, tortured and murdered by ISIS, a lifetime of abuse, violence and deaths for some of the most unlucky people on earth.

Its both mental and physical.

The argument here is that if some of them have to suffer so horribly unworthy existence, then non of us have the right to exist. lol

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lyremska t1_jbdokm6 wrote

> Suffering is mostly constructed by human brain with the help of language and thoughts around pain. Think of animals! They have pains, sometimes, but they don’t suffer because they don’t have to think of past or future and just stay mindful, mostly always. They don’t have words like “suffering” and “pain” and “what would others think” or even a sense of self.

Please go read some science before saying shit like this based on intuition. Litteraly none of this is true. You can look up ethology books, for exemple. Or actually any article about animal behavior and intelligence will teach you more than you seem to currently know.

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pallavkulhari t1_jbdov94 wrote

Please share some relevant links. I am not saying that animals are dumb, I am trying to highlight the difference between pain and suffering here.

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lyremska t1_jbhaby8 wrote

I cannot recommend specific works cause most I've read were in not english. Ethology is the field that studies animal behaviour and cognition. I'll brush up on a few thoughts, you can verify them if in doubt/interested. Another comment replied to you with exemples of painful events that can make one suffer badly: having your bodily autonomy violated especially is pretty traumatic whether you have language to rationalize it or not, for humans as for animals. That's because animals do have a sense of self - a lot more than a newborn human. Besides, animals worry for their future and try to prevent bad things from happening to them. There are also universal things that go beyond language, abstract thinking and society - think motherly love - and it can lead to huge amounts of suffering even without complex thoughts around it. Animals grieve, and allegedly may have committed suicide on occasion.

I understand the difference between pain and suffering you're meaning to convey, but animals are not a good exemple here.

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