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14-11-2015 @Meme Everything is worse than not existing! What is weird to me is that people have trouble imagining it for themselves, but not for squirrels or dogs or bacteria or trees, etc. Which means they really think there is some fundamental difference between humans and everything else in the universe, which just doesn't seem to have any evidence that it is true, and even if it was, doesn't mean that humans can't not exist.--- > Edited 14-11-2015 03:31:39 |
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14-11-2015 @Meme Everything is worse than not existing! What is weird to me is that people have trouble imagining it for themselves, but not for squirrels or dogs or bacteria or trees, etc. Which means there really think there is some fundamental difference between humans and everything else in the universe, which just doesn't seem to have any evidence that it is true, and even if it was, doesn't mean that humans can't not exist. |
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15-11-2015 quote:Everything is worse than not existing! Someone who is having a good time, might disagree with you there! But this got me thinking…actually I spend a whole afternoon with that question in mind. Can we really say that something is better or worse than nonexistence? I mean non-existence is basically something which doesn’t exist. So something is better than something which doesn’t exist? Can something which doesn’t exist have value? That doesn’t sound right to me. All that existence and non-existance stuff is very confusing for me, so I looked it up: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/ But this made me even more confused…Are non-existence objects really a problem when they don’t really exist? So is it a non-existent problem then? Does a non-existent proplem really exist? If death is basicly non-existence, does death even exist. Hmm..ummm…wait a minute..if death occurs in the future, and the future is not yet there, then the future does not exist..and so death does not exist. So does only the present really exist? How long is the present? Does the 'now' even exist?? Well, actually the 'now' does more feel like a 'compressed past'. So if the present is actually the past, and past is already over (or 'its always already too late' as we pessimists tend to say), so the past no longer exists, so the present does not really exist. Arggh..where the hell are my tranquilizers. Do tranquilizers exist when I don’t look at them? Not if look at them in future..or have looked at them in the past..but also the 'now' is the past…or something. Whaa what the hell! Kirk, that must be your cherished fractal-like quantum chaos at work, in my brain! --- > Edited 15-11-2015 15:59:41 |
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16-11-2015 @Meme I think you are making it far too complicated.For instance, if you consider that you can't afford to have a car accident, or buy insurance, or repair, or learn to drive, or park, or whatever, a *car*, then you can decide to not own one. The car you own does not exist, therefore you do not have to worry about insuring it, cleaning it, repairing it, parking it, buying it, driving it, etc. You will have no car problems due to your non-existent car. Make sense? In software, if you have a database with columns that represent data, such as name, address, etc. and there is a column such that it applies to some entries and not to others, such as cell phone number, you would be in error to put a zero in that space, because a zero implies that you have a quantity of something that happens to be zero, or is the value itself, like a cell number of 0, for instance. The proper entry would be NULL, which means that there is no value, not a value which happens to be zero. The value does not apply, it is non-existent for the entry in that column. The person has no cell phone and therefore no cell phone number. Make sense? |
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16-11-2015 Somehow I must think of a professor I had at the university. For example, when we did set-theory he always gave us exercises like: a set which contains an empty set from which we need the cartesian product with an infinite set which is itself a subset of an empty set intersected with an infinite set …and so on. And we exclusively did exercises like that. I had the impression that he was very obsessed with emptiness, nonexistence and infinites. So I thought that this must be pathological and we poor students had to suffer from his madness…quote:
You will have no car problems due to your non-existent car. Make sense? Makes sense. In a common-sense way. Buuuut..: As I see it, thinking only works with objects, and we can only think about nothing or nonexistence when we treat it as an object. But we easily forget that this nothing-objects are different. They don’t have attributes, value, which can be compared to something…yet we do as if they exist, which leads to all sorts of thinking errors (especially category errors). Analogies to databases or programming are a bit failing because, null usually means, a variable or db-entry with a certain type refers to nothing (but already has a type), or is not yet initialized. In some programming language it’s a type of its own, but usually its used to have something, to express: this variable does not refer to any specific memory address which contains a value. But still you run into trouble if you want use an operation on that (uninitialized) variable or try to compare it with an initialized variable of the same type (though some programming languages allow that, a crazy plunder which easily lead to all sort of errors). Point is: you cannot compare a nothing-object with an actually existing object. No? |
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16-11-2015 @Meme I don't think it is as complicated as you make out. People do have attributes, one can describe a person, eyes, brain, size, materials, whatever. You can imagine that a person doesn't exist, just like the fire that didn't burn your house or anything else. People buy insurance for accidents they haven't had, plan for colleges they never attend, it isn't that hard, really. Don't let that confusion get in the way of understanding that the child I don't have will never suffer nor create suffering. There are many more things that are much more complicated than this! |
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16-11-2015 @Meme I don't think it is as complicated as you make out. People do have attributes, one can describe a person, eyes, brain, size, materials, whatever. You can imagine that a person doesn't exist, just like the fire that didn't burn your house or anything else. People buy insurance for accidents they haven't had, plan for colleges they never attend, it isn't that hard, really. Don't let that confusion get in the way of understanding that the child I don't have will never suffer nor create suffering. There are many more things that are much more complicated than this! |
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16-11-2015 @KirkTs..ts..with your pragmatical thinking and unshakable trust in common sense you won't convince a smart ass, super deep thinking philosopher! So he would probably just say: Objection! Appeal to common sense!: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/107 |
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17-11-2015 @Meme What I love about AN is it cuts through the BS, is easy to understand, and can be easy to implement. It solves all problems, doesn't go against most religions (god won't send you to hell based on the number of children you have), really doesn't require much sacrifice, it can even be economically advantageous, besides environmentally sound. |
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23-11-2015 Well I still think, as we do it in everyday common-sense reasoning, to compare an existing object with a non-existing one, is a mistake. This also includes moral reasoning (Non-identity problem and so on…). For example in everyday reasoning, when we compare an existing Object with an existing attribute, with an non-existent Object with the same attribute as the existing Object, we often assign to the attribute of the non-existing Object a sort of 'neutral' value. (Ha, what a sentence). But I think this is invalid: Non-existence does not have an attribute to be compared to. So for example in moral reasoning, when we have an existing Person with an attribute 'moral status' and assign the value '-' to it, we wrongly assume that a non-existing Person also has an attribute 'moral status' and give it a value of 0 (or something that stands for 'neutral'). So we think, we have a comparable object since they have an attribute of the same class or type. That’s something I don't accept. Nonexistence doesn't have an attribute to be compared to (not even with a 'neutral'-value). But I don't think that this is even necessary for proper moral reasoning. Rather we should forget about the comparison of existing persons with non-existing ones and reason in a different way. Heidegger coined the phrase "Das Nichts nichtet". I don't know how to properly translate that into English, but it means something like "Nothing creates nothing" or "The nothing annihilates/destroys..". So we can argue in a fashion like: when an object becomes non-existing it attributes disappear, when an object comes into existence some particular attributes appear. For example, it would be incorrect to say: A person who is in constant irreversible great pain, is better off being dead. (invalid comparison of an existing person with an non-existing one). But it would we correct to say that: A person who becomes non-existent doesn't suffer (cause when a person/object becomes non-existent, it’s attributes disappear including something like 'moralStatus', 'sufferingAmount' or whatever). Or to say 'A non-existent person cannot suffer' is correct, but to say 'It would be better for a person to never have been' is incorrect. So one possibility for proper reasoning is to forget about comparison of entities with non-existence, and reason in way, that when an entity becomes existing/non-existing its properties (and possible values) appear/disappear. But still, for some moral reasoning comparisons are required: To do so, there’s no way around to accept an impersonal value (which not everyone will accept). For example when one says "The total amount of suffering in the world matters", we can give the world an attribute 'totalAmountOfSuffering' which gets calculated by summarizing the amount suffering of existing sentient beings. We then can compare a world with the attribute totalAmountOfSuffering in Scenario A (a person exist) with totalAmountOfSuffering in Scenario B (a person does not exist). So my summary: An existing person cannot directly compared to a non-existing one, but for a valid comparison, a comparable impersonal value is required that can be compared in various scenarios.--- > Edited 23-11-2015 19:22:54 |
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24-11-2015 @Meme If you understand the concept of prevention, you should be able to understand AN.--- > Edited 24-11-2015 04:22:33 |
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24-11-2015 @KirkYes I understand prevention, and many prevention-strategies are easy to defend (in rigorous way) as long as existing persons are involved, whose properties are compared in various scenarios. The non-identity problem not only applies to AN, but also to variety of problems like euthanasia, suicide, the ethics of killing, environmentalism, pollution control, preventing future generations from harm… Many of this reasoning fallacies stem from the fact that we want to compare existing persons with non-existence. I think the reason we fall for this fallacy, is because people have a hard time to imagine themselves as really non-existent. Instead, they imagine themselves being in a sort of state of non-existence (but there’s still a person who's in that state with properties on so on..), before they were born, or after they cease to exist. But non-existence is not a state anyone can be in. That's wrong. To avoid non-identity problems, I don't see a way around accepting (at least some) impersonal values. Not much of a problem for a moral realist. But for a (mostly) metaphysical naturalist like me, it's hard to reason for moral realism (at least not, if this moral values have same ontological status as for a moral realist). So I am still looking for ways to defend (in rigorous way) my intuitive aversion concerning procreation that avoids all this problems. In an upcoming book 'The Risk of a Lifetime' by Rivka Weinberg (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-risk-of-a-lifetime-9780190243708?cc=at&lang=en&#), the author seems to be aware of such problems, and seems to arrive at some interesting conclusions (https://books.google.at/books?id=gH-hCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA151#v=onepage&q&f=false). --Edit-: Ok, linking to the page is not working, the page i am refering to is page 151 of the preview -- So I wonder, because of such 'lingering worries' and using a principle of 'avoiding unnecessary risks' wouldn’t that be a good argument that also satisfies moral non-realists? --- > Edited 24-11-2015 15:14:33 |
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