Better Never To Have Been: An Interview With Anti-Natalist David Benatar; With Cranky Comments About A Really Stupid Argument
You'd think things couldn't get more eye-rolley than a discussion between a vegan and an anti-natalist... But, just really as a side note here...they can...
I'm thinking of a comment I saw somewhere on Daily Nous (but am too lazy to look up) (also: I'd have to read the Daily Nous...) in which...well, let's start with the fact that Benatar had been accused of being a racist on very flimsy grounds. Then in the discussion...because it was the Daily Nous...he ended up being accused of being a misogynist as well. Someone objected to this, whereupon someone else made perhaps the very worst argument I've ever seen offered in philosophy. Went like this: Benatar thinks we shouldn't have kids. But in many places women's status is linked to their ability to reproduction. So if Benatar's arguments were accepted, the perceived value of women might decrease (in those areas). Therefore Benatar is a misogynist.
Yeah I'm not making that up.
I'm not entirely sure who made that argument...so I won't name names. I'm fairly sure...and the person had a reputation among saner folk for not being the sharpest tool in the ol' shed... Something I probably don't have to point out, come to think of it. Appallingly, the comment was, as I recall, allowed to pass without objection. So...yeah. There are some reasons to worry about the PC-ification of professional philosophy.
I'm thinking of a comment I saw somewhere on Daily Nous (but am too lazy to look up) (also: I'd have to read the Daily Nous...) in which...well, let's start with the fact that Benatar had been accused of being a racist on very flimsy grounds. Then in the discussion...because it was the Daily Nous...he ended up being accused of being a misogynist as well. Someone objected to this, whereupon someone else made perhaps the very worst argument I've ever seen offered in philosophy. Went like this: Benatar thinks we shouldn't have kids. But in many places women's status is linked to their ability to reproduction. So if Benatar's arguments were accepted, the perceived value of women might decrease (in those areas). Therefore Benatar is a misogynist.
Yeah I'm not making that up.
I'm not entirely sure who made that argument...so I won't name names. I'm fairly sure...and the person had a reputation among saner folk for not being the sharpest tool in the ol' shed... Something I probably don't have to point out, come to think of it. Appallingly, the comment was, as I recall, allowed to pass without objection. So...yeah. There are some reasons to worry about the PC-ification of professional philosophy.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:40 AM
3 Comments:
It is pretty amazing that someone can spend his life studying philosophy and come away with this. His position is something like:
1) Pain is bad.
2) Pleasure is good.
3) The absence of pleasure is not bad.
So... Pleasure is some sort of...like...pseudo-good...since its absence isn't a big deal? Not the usual idea of "good"...
So he tries to defend his idea there by saying that the absence of a benefit is only bad if someone is deprived of it...
So...like...instead of "good"...pleasure is really more like "neutral", since "bad" is usually something that should not be, and "good" is something that should be...but pleasure carries no such weight...so it's just "not bad"...not "good"?
So by making pain bad and pleasure just "meh", he concludes life is somewhere between bad and "meh" and therefore everyone should prefer not to exist at all.
...
This guy's life must suck total ass or something.
Oh, also, if people are glad they're alive, that's probably just 'cause they're so brain-damage-equivalent retarded that they don't even realize how retarded they are, and you can't take total retards seriously.
And like, even if your brain-damage-equivalent retardation results in a life is a total 100,000,000% euphorithon, the bad still outweighs the good 'cause...you're like...just not thinking about how bad the bad stuff is, or something.
So yeah, I know I said all that junk about the value of life being reduced to pleasure and pain, and I accept that obviously someone could be a full-metal-tardbag and somehow come to the delusional belief that unicorns are blowing him like all day long every day, but I totally, emphatically reject that thing I said at the start about everything being reduced to pleasure and pain if you're only coming rainbows because you're a brain-damage-equivalent smacktard.
Yeah.
That's what I think.
I'm a philosopher.
Lovin' me some of that knowledge.
And look, if you even try to argue with me that coming rainbows 24/7 beats the dogshit out of never coming even a single color once ever, well I'm just going to list all the shitty things about life and recant that whole bit I said about how I agreed people could go full-metal retard and talk about how pain is always totally way worse than pleasure, 'cause pleasure is always totally short-lived and pain is always totally huge and horrible and forever.
And look, that shit's just facts.
And also: I'm totally not depressed. I'm just the sane one. Go buy my book.
Also, just because everything about life is guaranteed to be worse than anything about death, full-metal-retard unicorgies notwithstanding (since that's like totally not real, so nvm; only horrible pain is real), that doesn't mean you should kill yourself! Woah, there! That's like, WHY life sucks! 'Cause you're gonna die! And end your horrible pain!
...
Look, buy my book or shut up.
Hmm..
Probably should've sat on those for a while. Not quite as funny this morning as they seemed last night..
Oh well, live and learn.
Or maybe I shouldn't.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home