Greta wrote: ↑October 11th, 2020, 4:42 am
Jack D Ripper wrote: ↑October 10th, 2020, 11:26 pm
I am not sure how to respond to that, or whether it is worthwhile to respond. If whatever I say is not to be believed, what is the point in saying anything?
My view of nonexistence is similar to that of Epicurus. It is not a problem at all for those who do not exist. How this comes up in Epicurus is in discussing death. The dead no longer exist, and consequently they have no problems anymore. Just like 100 years before they were born, they had no problems then, too, because they did not exist.
Certainly, if I had never existed, I would not complain about it. And neither would anyone else.
When people who are clearly living and ostensibly enjoying life tell me that not existing is better than life, I see that as an emotional expression of disappointment, not a belief.
First of all, I am not sure how you have come to the conclusion that my life is good. The instinct for survival is difficult to overcome, so someone continuing to live does not constitute a proof that the person believes that their life is worth living. And it is not as if one can simply decide to die; one must take some action (or slowly die of thirst or hunger, which may be prevented by others, with them taking one to a mental ward and force feeding the person, very likely making their life even worse). Killing oneself is not as easy as some imagine it to be.
Some words from Hume on this subject, from his essay "Of Suicide":
It is observed of such as have been reduced by the calamities of life to the necessity of employing this fatal remedy, that, if the unseasonable care of their friends deprive them of [580] that species of death, which they proposed to themselves, they seldom venture upon any other, or can summon up so much resolution, a second time, as to execute their purpose. So great is our horror of death, that when it presents itself under any form, besides that to which a man has endeavoured to reconcile his imagination, it acquires new terrors, and overcomes his feeble courage. But when the menaces of superstition are joined to this natural timidity, no wonder it quite deprives men of all power over their lives; since even many pleasures and enjoyments, to which we are carried by a strong propensity, are torn from us by this inhuman tyrant. Let us here endeavour to restore men to their native liberty, by examining all the common arguments against Suicide, and shewing, that That action may be free from every imputation of guilt or blame; according to the sentiments of all the antient philosophers.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/704#Hume_0059_1245
However, in this instance, you are correct, that my life is pretty good. Not only am I in good health, I have a wife who loves me and who I love, and I have enough money that all of my needs are met, as well as reasonable desires. I also have enough leisure time that I can waste a lot of time posting at this site. And I have no reason to believe that any of that will change in the near future, though obviously it could at any moment, and, eventually, that will certainly change.
But all of this is irrelevant to what I stated. It was a judgement about all multicellular life, not merely my own. I have a better life than most people in the history of the world have had (and better than most nonhuman animals have had). The totality of suffering in the world, both in the past and present, and probably in the future as well, more than overbalances anything that has happened in my life, or could possibly happen in my life. Though I do not consider myself a utilitarian, weighing the total pain and suffering in the world against the pleasure, I do not think that life overall has been worthwhile. If I were to kill myself, that would not change the equation significantly, and, given that my life, at present, is good, it would make the overall balance worse (in my judgement). But it would not significantly change the balance of pain and pleasure in the world.
Greta wrote: ↑October 11th, 2020, 4:42 am
It's like theists. If they truly believed in eternal life, they would not work hard to avoid risks and stay alive. If people truly believed that non-existence would be better, they would have done something about it by now.
If one simply disappears into the ether at death, how much did the pain really matter?
To me, that is a bizarre question. To think that way, why don't you ask, since everything in the universe, that people or other living things do, will come to an end, then what can anything matter?
To me, it matters that people in the past suffered and died. Maybe you don't care about the millions who were killed in WWII, for example, but some of us do. The suffering was a very bad thing. Sure, the dead are no longer suffering, which means that they are all okay now, but that has nothing to do with the overall assessment.
I am reminded of a film I saw many years ago regarding medical ethics, where someone who was burned over most of his body, was being kept alive, even though the person was in agony, because they could not give him enough pain killers to stop the pain as a sufficient dose of the pain killers for that would kill him (they no longer do things that way, I am told; now, they used medically induced comas for such patients, as they do not wish to torture people if they can keep them alive without torture). He was constantly begging them to kill him, to put him out of his torment. Eventually, he healed and left the hospital. He later on met a woman and got married, and was happy with his life at that point. However, when he was asked if that meant that his previous suffering was worth it, he said, no, they should have killed me. That nothing could possibly make up for what he endured. Of course, at that point in time, he had no reason to kill himself, as his life at that point was good. But the totality of his life wasn't.
My view of the world is like that. The suffering that has preceded me, and that occurs presently, is such that it just isn't worth it.
Greta wrote: ↑October 11th, 2020, 4:42 am
I don't think it's the individual lives and deaths that "matter" (other than to ourselves and kin) but that we are part of a chain that I - yes, optimistically - think will at least attempt to conquer suffering, and have greater means to achieve that than we do now.
I think that is not how things are going. Sure, some people work for that goal of reducing suffering, but others work against it. I don't think people working to reduce suffering are "winning." Nor do I think that they could possibly have enough success, even if there were not those working against such things. I am reminded of the words of David Hume in
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:
Admitting your position, replied PHILO, which yet is extremely doubtful, you must at the same time allow, that if pain be less frequent than pleasure, it is infinitely more violent and durable. One hour of it is often able to outweigh a day, a week, a month of our common insipid enjoyments; and how many days, weeks, and months, are passed by several in the most acute torments? Pleasure, scarcely in one instance, is ever able to reach ecstasy and rapture; and in no one instance can it continue for any time at its highest pitch and altitude. The spirits evaporate, the nerves relax, the fabric is disordered, and the enjoyment quickly degenerates into fatigue and uneasiness. But pain often, good God, how often! rises to torture and agony; and the longer it continues, it becomes still more genuine agony and torture. Patience is exhausted, courage languishes, melancholy seizes us, and nothing terminates our misery but the removal of its cause, or another event, which is the sole cure of all evil, but which, from our natural folly, we regard with still greater horror and consternation.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm
The capacity for pain seems much greater than the capacity for pleasure. That is to say, it is much easier to torment someone than to give them great pleasure. And in some instances, like the burned man in the story above, while they were torturing him to keep him alive, real pleasure for him was completely out of the question. Pain can make one incapable of experiencing pleasure, as long as the pain endures. Pleasure, though, never has that quality; peeling the skin off of someone's arm is almost always sufficient to end the pleasure that a person is experiencing.
So, the idea that suffering will be conquered is extreme and unfounded optimism, excepting only the solution of death.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence." - David Hume