Antinatalism, Abortion and Existence (A discussion between Karim Akerma and Julio Cabrera)

In the last two years I have been participating in debates about abortion within Antinatalism. This insertion of the problem of abortion within a larger movement gave this debate its own peculiar characteristics: how could someone who opposes birth also oppose abortion?The vast majority of antinatalists are pro-abortion, and the reasoning seems easy and direct: if we are against giving birth to people by placing them manipulatively in a world full of suffering, it is obvious that we must agree to abort a being that will be manipulated and thrown into suffering.However, this inference is not as easy as it seems. I think we can be antinatalist...

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NEW TEXTS POSTED

Two new texts were posted in the Negative Ethics section (1) “BETTER THE ASYMMETRYNEVER TO HAVE BEEN” (2) “A.A.A (ANALYTIC ACADEMIC ANTINATALISM)...

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JULIO CABRERA: FROM PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH TO ENGLISH

In 1989, I published a short book in Portuguese, “Project of Negative Ethics”, in whose first chapter I presented the ethical problem of the immorality of procreation. (An English translation of this chapter is available in: misantropiaemelancolia.wordpress.com). This shows that the first antinatalist ideas, in a modern sense, had already appeared in south-America in the late 1980s. It was true that I did not use the term "antinatalism" and that my presentation was not entirely argumentative. However in 1996 I published in Barcelona the "Critique of Affirmative Morality" in Spanish, including many of my ideas about value of life, procreation and suicide in a more argumentative way. (An English version of this book, not a very good one, is available in: https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/17430)....

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MARIO BUNGE'S IRRATIONALITY

MARIO BUNGE’S IRRATIONALITY (A logical approach) Julio Cabrera (Retired professor at the University of Brasilia, Brazil).  Those who study logic know that there are two ways to reject an argument: (1) Find some defect in the passage from premises to conclusion; (2) Reject the premises. However valid the reasoning is, we are not obliged to accept the starting points from which, by reasoning well, the conclusions are correctly drawn. This is elementary logic.  Philosophers in general are largely unaware of their starting points, of the fact that when they think they always do so from somewhere. Or rather, they are unaware that the results obtained, even correct and coherent, are dependent on assumptions, premises and starting points that can always be rationally rejected...

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AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THE BOOK, "CRITIQUE OF AFFIRMATIVE MORALITY.

AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THE BOOK, "CRITIQUE OF AFFIRMATIVE MORALITY. A reflection on Birth, Death and the value of Life", by JULIO CABRERA, IS AVAILABLE HERE:  http://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/17430. THIS IS A TRANSLATION FROM THE NEW SPANISH REPRINTED EDITION PUBLISHED IN BARCELONA RECENTLY IN 2014, ENTIRELY REVISED AND WITH A NEW CHAPTER ON "DAVID BENATAR AND THE LIMITS OF EMPIRICAL PESSIMISM"...

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