It’s impossible to define it or do anything requiring verbs if you don’t have free will, so it’s tautologically impossible to satisfy this class of solipsistic ideas.
A machine can type, so this is not a logically valid argument. You've also presented no argument for why it is impossible to define. If free will is possible, there should be no reason you can't define what it is.
If there is no free will, it’s tautologically impossible to define anything, therefore there is no reason to make an argument for free will, because in doing so I would be using free will.
That listing of people seems pretty comprehensive. If that’s not the “whole world” it comes pretty close! And to be clear, us parents think that being “childfree” is shallow and selfish, like being one of those sovereign citizens who doesn’t want to pay taxes. It’s basically being the ultimate hipster—thinking of oneself as being too special for something hominids have been doing for millions of years.
The selfish/selfless thing has never made much sense to me apropos of children; they seem to be about fulfilling some personal want. Is the woman who has 3 kids from 3 different dads being selfless? I've never heard anyone say they want to have kids to go onto work menial jobs and pay taxes; frankly that's my every day and I don't have much interest in inflicting it on some poor, unsuspecting child.
For society to continue existing, which let’s say is axiomatically desirable, on average each person must reproduce themselves. Those kids, moreover, must be raised and socialized into the rules of the society, which requires labor. By having kids, therefore, you’re performing a function that enables society to keep existing. It’s a contribution to society in kind, similar to how taxes are a contribution to society in money. Someone who doesn’t play their part in that is selfish, in the same way as someone who doesn’t pay taxes or perform other obligations that enable society to exist.
"the whole world": - economists & businesspeople who can't conceive of a world without growth - religious people who think God wants them to be fruitful and multiply - atheists who think we have some kind of evolutionary imperative - parents who think that being childfree is an affront to their choices
wow, that’s really quite reductive. It sounds more like this might be a choice you feel strongly about but are projecting selfishness on to others? This can be a totally fine choice for someone to make personally (which I support), but also not good for society as a whole. Both things can objectively be true.
The selfish/selfless thing has never made much sense to me apropos of children; they seem to be about fulfilling some personal want. Is the woman who has 3 kids from 3 different dads being selfless? I've never heard anyone say they want to have kids to go onto work menial jobs and pay taxes; frankly that's my every day and I don't have much interest in inflicting it on some poor, unsuspecting child.
For society to continue existing, which let’s say is axiomatically desirable, on average each person must reproduce themselves. Those kids, moreover, must be raised and socialized into the rules of the society, which requires labor. By having kids, therefore, you’re performing a function that enables society to keep existing. It’s a contribution to society in kind, similar to how taxes are a contribution to society i…
If a society structures itself in such a way that no one wants (or is able) to continue it, then it will die and others may arise in its place.
For myself I don't believe I have the wherewithal for it regardless of my view on the matter of selfishness.
>The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized societies. Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor buffered by institutional support, we hypothesize that parental status differences in happiness are smaller in countries providing more resources and support to families. Our analyses of the European Social Surveys (ESS) and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) reveal considerable variation in the parenthood gap in happiness across countries, with the U.S. showing the largest disadvantage of parenthood. [0]
A machine can type, so this is not a logically valid argument. You've also presented no argument for why it is impossible to define. If free will is possible, there should be no reason you can't define what it is.
If there is no free will, it’s tautologically impossible to define anything, therefore there is no reason to make an argument for free will, because in doing so I would be using free will.
This argument is not logically valid. Nothing changes with respect to the possibility of defining something if there is no free will - defining something is merely mapping an identifier to a representation of meaning. A purely mechanical device can define things just fine. Free will is demonstrably not necessary to define things.
If there is no free will, it’s tautologically impossible to define anything, therefore there is no reason to make an argument for free will, because in doing so I would be using free will.
This argument is not logically valid. Nothing changes with respect to the possibility of defining something if there is no free will - defining something is merely mapping an identifier to a representation of meaning. A purely mechanical device can define things just fine. Free will is demonstrably not necessary to define things.
It is logically valid, because it’s like asking a candle flame to flicker in a certain pattern to prove it can control how it flickers to other candle flames.
If we have no free will we are just like candle flames; any argument that says we are more than candle flames is not valid when you assume we are candle flames.
For society to continue existing, which let’s say is axiomatically desirable, on average each person must reproduce themselves. Those kids, moreover, must be raised and socialized into the rules of the society, which requires labor. By having kids, therefore, you’re performing a function that enables society to keep existing. It’s a contribution to society in kind, similar to how taxes are a contribution to society i…
If a society structures itself in such a way that no one wants (or is able) to continue it, then it will die and others may arise in its place. For myself I don't believe I have the wherewithal for it regardless of my view on the matter of selfishness. >The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower level…
I agree with your first point. Societies that socialize people to prioritize individual “happiness” over fulfilling social obligations will die out and better societies will take their place.
If a society structures itself in such a way that no one wants (or is able) to continue it, then it will die and others may arise in its place. For myself I don't believe I have the wherewithal for it regardless of my view on the matter of selfishness. >The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower level…
I agree with your first point. Societies that socialize people to prioritize individual “happiness” over fulfilling social obligations will die out and better societies will take their place.
I don't think it's about happiness (scare quotes or otherwise), I think it's about avoiding ruin. In a society where you have to run as fast as you can to keep up, children will slow you down and you might end up consumed by the predators that surround you. That's why the line from the abstract "Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor buffered by institutional support" rings so true to me.
The response to the above tends to be something like, it's not so bad, kids don't really need that much anyway. Which always leaves me with the question - how much money do you make? Could it be expressed as "several times the median US household income"?