u/North75912

The pessimistic tradition has a recurring motif: the exit. Schopenhauer's negation of the will. Mainlander's will-to-death. Von Hartmann's collective self-extinction. Each of these thinkers, in his own way, reached for the same solution - a final cessation, a passage into non-being. Suffering is the problem; non-being is the answer.

I want to suggest that this answer is less a conclusion than a habit. And like many habits of thought, it deserves critical scrutiny.

The concept of non-being is not derived from experience. We have never encountered nothing. No one has. Every moment of consciousness, by definition, is a moment of something. What we call "nothing" is always a concept generated by a mind that is already something - an abstraction built by subtracting everything from the current moment and imagining what remains. The problem is that nothing remains. And yet we treat this act of subtraction as if it refers to a real state that could, in principle, obtain.

This is exactly the kind of move that critical theory should examine: a concept that presents itself as a description of reality, but is in fact a reification of a cognitive operation.

Pessimism smuggles in a metaphysical comfort. The idea that suffering can be escaped through non-being relies on the assumption that non-being is a genuine possibility. But what if it isn't? What if "nothing" is not a state that can obtain, but merely the limit of our imagination - a thought we can think, but which corresponds to nothing real?

Modern physics, for what it's worth, is not helpful here. The quantum vacuum is not empty. Absolute emptiness appears to be physically incoherent. This isn't a proof, but it's a suggestive alignment: our most rigorous description of reality finds no room for the concept that pessimism has treated as its ultimate fallback.

Why this matters for pessimism. If non-being is not a real possibility, then the central promise of the pessimistic tradition, the idea that suffering can be ended, is called into question. Not because the suffering isn't real. It is. But because the exit may be a fiction, a conceptual escape hatch built into a system that has no actual exit.

This leaves us in an uncomfortable position. The pessimists of the past at least had the consolation of an ending. If we take non-being off the table, we are left with suffering that has no guaranteed terminus. Death becomes not a liberation, but a temporary interruption in a chain of experiences that, given the structure of reality, may have no final stop.

What I'm proposing. I'm not arguing that this is definitely the case. I'm arguing that critical thought should examine non-being with the same suspicion it brings to other unexamined concepts — progress, the self, the subject. What interests does this concept serve? What comfort does it provide? And what happens to our thinking if we refuse to grant it?

I explore this line of thought in my book Perpetual Sorrow, which is available for free at fracture-of-being.com. I'd be interested to hear whether this community finds the deconstruction of non-being a productive direction.

Most objections to epiphenomenalism rely on intuition.

Pain feels causally efficacious. Desire feels causally efficacious. The experience of deciding feels causally efficacious. So the idea that consciousness merely accompanies physical processes rather than driving them seems absurd.

But I think the feeling of free will creates a serious problem for this objection.

Many people in this community already accept some version of the argument that libertarian free will is incoherent:
-determinism makes choices inevitable,
-indeterminism introduces randomness rather than authorship,
-and Strawsonian-style arguments undermine ultimate responsibility.

And yet, even after accepting this intellectually, we continue to experience ourselves as freely choosing agents.

This feeling remains phenomenologically vivid even when we no longer believe it reflects the actual causal structure of decision-making.

And that, I think, is philosophically significant.

The experience of authorship may be our clearest example of a quale that feels causally central while failing to correspond to the underlying causal architecture of behavior.

If that is right, then the standard objection to epiphenomenalism loses much of its force.

Because we already seem capable of accepting at least one major conscious experience, the feeling of being the ultimate author of our actions, as phenomenologically real yet causally misleading.

And if that is so, then the idea that pain “does nothing” becomes far less counterintuitive. Avoidance behavior can be fully explained in terms of physical processes, while suffering merely accompanies those processes as a subjective aspect of what is happening - just as the feeling of free choice accompanies decision-making without being its cause.

In other words: the illusion of free will may function as a kind of Trojan horse for epiphenomenalism.

Once we accept that conscious experience can feel deeply real and behaviorally central while failing to reflect the true causal architecture of cognition, it becomes harder to dismiss epiphenomenalism as simply “too counterintuitive.”

I develop these ideas further in my book Perpetual Sorrow, which is available for free in the Book section of fracture-of-being.com.

Hi everyone,

This text is a fragment from my book Perpetual Sorrow. It's fairly dense and, in places, technical, but I decided to post it here without simplification because this is the form in which it sets up a rarely discussed framework for epiphenomenalism.

There are no final answers here. This is more of an invitation to think together: can epiphenomenalism be rehabilitated? If you approach it from a naturalistic standpoint, as far as that's possible in the philosophy of consciousness, epiphenomenalism still seems to me one of the strongest theories on the table. Possibly the most misunderstood.

The book is available as a free download at fracture-of-being.com*. It contains extensive commentary on the theses laid out here, as well as a continuation that includes thought experiments and a more detailed exploration of the model's implications.

If you make it to the end, I'd be genuinely interested to hear where you agree and where you don't.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

1. The Starting Point: The Irrefutability of Reality

Any inquiry into consciousness must begin with the acknowledgment of an obvious fact that is not open to doubt: consciousness exists. Pain is real. The subjective experience of what it is like to be is not an illusion, but a primary given—the only reality whose truth we cannot doubt.

2. Method: Naturalism and Causal Closure

If consciousness is real, how does it fit into the world described by physics? We adopt the naturalistic paradigm: the world is one and governed by physical laws. A key consequence of this paradigm is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world: every physical event has a sufficient physical cause. In the chain of causes and effects that leads, for example, to the withdrawal of a hand from fire, there is no room for immaterial “intervention.”

If we assume that qualia possess causal power—for example, that the experience of pain influences subsequent behavior—then the following model emerges: activation of nociceptive[1] neurons → emergence of a pain quale → modification of neural networks (synaptic plasticity, behavioral change). Yet this scheme runs into a fundamental problem. According to the principle of causal closure, every physical event, including a change in behavior, must have a sufficient physical cause. If qualia are fully determined by prior neural activity, then they cannot make any additional causal contribution without violating closure. This creates a logical paradox, since qualia turn out to be both the effect and the cause of neural processes.

Thus, the principle of causal closure inevitably leads us to epiphenomenalism[2]. If consciousness is real but cannot be an independent physical cause, then only one conclusion is logically possible: consciousness is an epiphenomenon—a real but causally inert byproduct of the brain’s physical processes. Pain does not “make” the hand withdraw; it merely accompanies the physical process in the brain that is the true cause of that action.

 

3. The Evolutionary Puzzle of Classical Epiphenomenalism

Yet classical epiphenomenalism encounters what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle. If consciousness is merely useless “noise” accompanying neural activity, then its existence becomes an evolutionary puzzle. Why does this epiphenomenon display such remarkable “fine-tuning” to the demands of survival? Why is the experience of pain agonizing and intrusive, perfectly motivating the avoidance of threat, while pleasure from food is pleasant, stimulating its pursuit? If the connection between a useful physical algorithm and a useless experience is accidental, then such an ideal correlation looks like an improbable, almost miraculous coincidence.

Attempts to save the theory lead to dead ends: either one must posit an extraordinary coincidence, or one slips into a hidden dualism in which experience is still granted a causal role. The strength of epiphenomenalism—its logical rigor—turns into its weakness: it cannot explain the most striking fact about consciousness[3].

 

4. From Chance to Law: The Direction of Inquiry

A way out of this deadlock requires a radical rethinking. What if the connection between brain and consciousness is not a historical accident, but the manifestation of a fundamental law of nature—as fundamental as the laws of gravity or thermodynamics?

To justify the possibility of such a law, let us ask where consciousness should be sought in the physical world. We can construct the following logical chain, grounded in the inevitability of evolution under the second law of thermodynamics:

§  Complex chemistry is a marker of a highly organized, stable structure.

§  Such a structure can exist only if it sustains energy-intensive homeostasis and actively resists entropy[4].

§  In a world of scarce resources, maintaining such complexity is possible only through a process analogous to natural selection—the selection of the most energy-efficient configurations and algorithms.

§  This evolutionary process gives rise to increasingly complex physical patterns ({F}) optimized for survival (for example, an ultrafast damage-avoidance algorithm, {F_pain}).

§  If there exists a fundamental law linking physics and phenomenology, then the presence of such complex, selected patterns {F} necessarily entails the presence of corresponding nontrivial qualia (Ψ).

Consciousness, then, is not a ghost. It is a possible—and under certain conditions inevitable—structural epiphenomenon of increasing complexity. The mystery lies not in what it is “for,” but in the specific rule by which a physical configuration {F} is translated into a phenomenological state Ψ. The deadlock of classical epiphenomenalism points not to its falsity, but to the need to identify such a law.

 

5. A Conceptual Analogy

The history of science offers examples in which a deadlocked problem was resolved not by new data, but by a shift in the conceptual framework itself. The clearest example is Albert Einstein’s revolution in our understanding of gravity.

Before Einstein: Gravity was understood as a mysterious force of attraction acting at a distance between two masses. Mass and force were conceived as separate entities.

After Einstein: General relativity replaced this model with the field equation:

G_μν = 8πG/c⁴ T_μν

where T_μν is the stress-energy tensor[5] (matter), and G_μν is the Einstein tensor (the geometry of spacetime).

Einstein showed that gravity is a manifestation of the geometry of spacetime, which is inseparably and necessarily linked to the distribution of matter-energy.

The key conclusion for our problem is this: a strict causal analysis of this equation reveals an intriguing aspect. The entire causal “content” of the world is contained in the distribution and dynamics of matter-energy (T). Geometry (G) can be derived from T by means of this equation. In this sense, G is an epiphenomenon of T—it adds no new, independent causality. And yet G is not an accidental side effect, but a fundamental, necessary, and enormously informative aspect of matter itself[6]. By knowing the geometry (the curvature of spacetime), we can predict the motion of bodies (geodesics) with perfect precision, because that geometry is itself a perfect reflection of the causal structure already contained in matter.

 

6. The Ψ-F Law: Consciousness as the Inner Geometry of the Brain

By analogy, we propose the following conceptual step: what if consciousness stands to neural processes as the geometry of spacetime stands to matter[7]?

This leads us to postulate a fundamental law of correspondence, which we will call the Ψ-F law:

Ψ = Φ({F_i})

Where:

{F_i} is the full set of physical parameters of a system (for example, the brain) at a given moment: the architecture of its connections, the spatiotemporal dynamics of excitation, its energetic profile, and the degree of informational integration. This is the objective content of the process, analogous to the tensor T (matter-energy).

Ψ is the phenomenological state, the subjective experience (qualia). It is the inner form of existence of a given physical state—the way it is given from within to the system itself. This is analogous to the tensor G (geometry).

Φ is the correspondence function, a fundamental law of nature that unambiguously maps each complex physical pattern {F} onto a specific phenomenological state Ψ.

This model may be called asymmetric dual-aspect monism:

§  Monism: There is one reality.

§  Dual-aspectness: This reality has two irreducible modes of givenness: the physical ({F}) and the phenomenological (Ψ).

§  Asymmetry: Causal and evolutionary priority belongs to the physical aspect. Ψ is an epiphenomenon in the causal sense, but a fundamental property in the ontological sense.

It should be emphasized that the Ψ-F law is not a ready-made solution, but a framework for posing the problem. We do not know the form of the function Φ; its discovery would constitute a genuine scientific revolution. At this stage, the law serves only to help us think coherently and non-contradictorily about the relation between the physical and the phenomenal.

 

7. A New Formulation of the “Evolutionary Puzzle”

The Ψ-F law radically changes the very formulation of the problem of the “fine-tuning” of consciousness. The question is no longer, “Why are useless qualia needed?” but rather:

Why do efficient physical survival algorithms ({F}), selected by evolution, generate through the universal law Φ precisely these qualia (Ψ) rather than others?

The answer lies in the principle of causal proportionality, which must be built into any coherent law Φ. This principle states: the intensity of the phenomenological consequence (Ψ) must be proportionate to the intensity (in energetic and causal-complexity terms) of its physical cause ({F}).

 

7.1. From Correspondence to Content: The Hypothesis of an Energetic Basis of Valence

The Ψ-F law postulates a fundamental correspondence: for every complex physical pattern {F}, there exists a strictly determinate phenomenological state Ψ. Complete knowledge of the function Φ would mean complete knowledge of Ψ—including its qualitative character, intensity, and valence. Yet without knowing the precise form of Φ, we cannot predict these qualities for an arbitrary and unknown pattern {F}. We can only analyze known {F}–Ψ pairs retrospectively and formulate hypotheses about which physical parameters within {F} may be critically important in shaping particular aspects of experience.

One such plausible hypothesis is the connection between the valence of experience and the system’s overall energetic state. Observing known forms of consciousness, one may suppose that in evolved biological systems the law Φ is structured in such a way that the sign of valence (positive or negative) is determined to a considerable extent[8] by the dynamics of total energy expenditure[9].

Let us consider two poles that illustrate this logic:

§  Pain (Ψ_pain): This arises with the pattern {F_pain}—an emergency, highly energy-intensive mobilization of the system in response to a threat to its integrity. Such a pattern creates the overall energetic tension required to eliminate the threat. According to our hypothesis, the phenomenological projection of this forced creation of tension is precisely the painful, negative experience. It signals a systemic crisis requiring urgent expenditure.

§  Orgasm (Ψ_orgasm): Its physical correlate, {F_orgasm}, is not a simple spike in expenditure, but a pattern of large-scale, coordinated discharge of long-standing systemic tension (sexual drive). At the moment of orgasm, what occurs is not a spike in total expenditure, but its catastrophic reduction after a period of accumulation. Phenomenologically, this is experienced as intense relief, release, and resolution—that is, as a positive state which, according to our hypothesis, is the projection of the removal of overall systemic tension rather than its creation.

But what about pure, unmotivated joy—at an unexpected gift, a beautiful sunset, or a stroke of luck? In such cases, there is no prior tension to be discharged.

We propose to understand such states as the phenomenological projection of a sudden increase in the system’s overall energy efficiency.

The brain is a prediction machine, constantly expending energy to construct models of the world and eliminate discrepancies between prediction and reality (cognitive dissonance). A sudden positive stimulus—social affirmation, aesthetic harmony—is an event that:

§  corresponds with exceptional precision to deep, evolutionarily advantageous patterns;

§  instantly resolves a multitude of micro-predictions, reducing uncertainty and the energetic cost of sustaining it.

At such a moment, the pattern {F_joy} is not a spike in expenditure, but a spike in optimization. It is a mass reconfiguration of neural ensembles toward greater order, coherence, and predictability. According to the Ψ-F law, the phenomenological projection of such a pattern of super-efficiency is a positive state (Ψ_joy). It is an inner signal of a sudden coincidence with an optimal, energy-saving configuration.

Valence, then, is not an arbitrary label in our model. It is derivable from the logic of the system’s overall energetic state, as reflected by the law Φ:

§  Negative valence (suffering) = the projection of the forced creation of overall tension in order to eliminate a threat.

§  Positive valence (pleasure, joy) = the projection of the release of existing tension or the attainment of a state of increased efficiency and predictability.

It is important to note that this account of positive valence in terms of “optimization” and “reduced expenditure” is a plausible but speculative interpretation. Its purpose is to show that within the framework of the Ψ-F law, one can reason coherently about valence without attributing causal power to consciousness. The final explanation, however, belongs to future inquiry into the form of the function Φ.

 

8. Confirmations and Implications of the Model

The Ψ-F law is not merely a speculative construct. It finds direct confirmation in well-known neurobiological phenomena and makes it possible to draw clear boundaries between this model and other philosophical positions.

 

8.1. The Innateness of Qualia: Ready-Made Experience, Not an Acquired Instrument

Newborn mammals display the full range of reactions associated with pain or aversion from the very first day of life, long before any learning has taken place. Neuroimaging shows activation in the same brain regions as in adults. This is a decisive argument against theories that assign consciousness the acquired, causally useful role of a “motivator.” If pain were something that teaches, it would emerge gradually. But it is given immediately—just as the Ψ-F law would require. A ready-made physical circuit ({F_pain}), selected by evolution, generates from the moment of its first activation, through the law Φ, a ready-made painful experience (Ψ_pain). Consciousness is not a tool, but an immanent property of the functioning of certain physical patterns.

 

8.2. Neuroplasticity: Consciousness Follows Physical Dynamics, Not Anatomical Labels

A direct confirmation of the model is provided by the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. When, as a result of injury or prolonged training, neurons in the visual cortex begin, for example, to process auditory or tactile signals, the subjective experience associated with their activity changes radically. Sound or touch begins to be experienced where previously a visual image arose. This key fact demonstrates that consciousness (Ψ) is tied not to a rigid anatomical “label” (for example, “area V1 is only for vision”), but to the current functional pattern ({F})—that is, to the concrete spatiotemporal configuration of neural impulses, their synchrony, the strength of their connections, and their energetic profile.

 

The fundamental conclusion is this: the same neuron, or even an entire cortical region, can participate in generating qualitatively different experiences depending on the pattern ({F}) within which it is activated. A neuron that yesterday contributed to the perception of the color red may today, after being rewired and activated within a different rhythmic ensemble, become part of a pattern whose subjective correlate is the sensation of a musical note or even tactile pressure. The physical reconfiguration of connections and the change in dynamics—that is, the change in {F}—are causally primary. The subjective change in experience (Ψ), by contrast, occurs not as an arbitrary transformation, but as a strictly epiphenomenal consequence, under the law Φ, of the system’s new physical state.

 

8.3. The Pharmacological Shutdown of Consciousness with Neural Activity Preserved

One of the strongest arguments in favor of epiphenomenalism is the effect of general anesthesia. Modern anesthetics (for example, propofol) are capable of completely and reversibly shutting off consciousness, while many basic neural functions—respiratory rhythm, certain reflexes, even complex electrical activity in particular regions—remain intact. This demonstrates that a merely “working” brain is not sufficient for subjective experience to exist. What is required is a specific, highly organized pattern of global information integration ({F_consciousness}), which anesthetics selectively disrupt without destroying the neural substrate itself.

 

8.4. What Our Model Is Not

Not panpsychism. We do not claim that consciousness is inherent in all matter. Consciousness is a property of configuration ({F}), not of elements. The pattern of a simple stone ({F_stone}) is too primitive for the law Φ to generate from it any nontrivial Ψ. Our model explains why complex chemistry and homeostasis are indicators of potential consciousness, but it does not attribute consciousness to every atom.

Not symmetrical dual-aspect monism. We reject the idea of an equal and reciprocal relation between the two aspects. Evolution operates exclusively at the physical level, selecting {F}. The phenomenological aspect (Ψ) follows these changes epiphenomenally. This asymmetry saves the model from hidden dualism and accords with the causal hegemony of the physical world.

[1] The nociceptive system is the sensory system responsible for detecting, transmitting, and processing signals about potentially damaging stimuli, which are experienced as pain.

[2] The principle of causal closure is compatible with at least two models: (1) epiphenomenalism, in which consciousness is a causally inert product of physical processes; and (2) symmetric dual-aspect monism, in which the physical and the phenomenal are equally fundamental aspects of one and the same reality. We reject the second model because it erases the causal asymmetry that is critical for our analysis: evolution selects physical algorithms, not holistic “physical-phenomenal” events. Thus symmetric dual-aspect monism either adds no explanatory value or else runs into difficulties in reconciling itself with physics. Epiphenomenalism, by contrast, directly preserves this asymmetry without introducing unnecessary assumptions. Here, moreover, epiphenomenalism is understood as a thesis about the causal role of qualia and does not exclude different ontological interpretations (including asymmetric forms of dual-aspect monism), provided that they preserve the causal closure of the physical. If phenomenal properties do not affect behavior, they do not participate in selection and explain nothing—in that case such a model is, in essence, no different from epiphenomenalism. If, on the other hand, one supposes that they do affect behavior, the question immediately arises how this is possible without violating the causal closure of the physical world.

[3] Yet for all the apparent “fine-tuning” of the fit between experienced qualia and the functional system, that fit may be illusory. Any stable unpleasant sensation associated with threat could, in principle, be experienced otherwise: pain as an intense bitterness, an unpleasant smell as a sharp sound, an itch as a mild pressure—while still producing the same organismic responses. It seems to us that the correlation between subjective experience and nociceptive signals is “ideal,” but we have no external comparison class: we simply cannot know what that relation might have looked like otherwise.

[4] Entropy is a fundamental physical quantity—a measure of disorder, chaos, or uncertainty in a system.

[5] A tensor is a mathematical tool used to describe complex physical quantities that change when the frame of reference changes (for example, under rotation).

[6] In a strict causal analysis of general relativity, the geometry of spacetime, described by the Einstein tensor G, is a necessary descriptive epiphenomenon of the distribution of mass-energy T. All the dynamics are contained in T; G is a perfect representation of the causal structure already encoded in T. This does not contradict quantum-field approaches (such as graviton-based models of gravity), in which gravity is described as an exchange of virtual particles. Even in such a model, the very act of “exchange” and the curvature of spacetime remain epiphenomenal, informative ways of describing an interaction rooted in fundamental fields and their quanta.

[7] This comparison is purely structural and methodological in character and implies no analogy whatsoever in scale, significance, or intellectual level between the hypothesis proposed here and Einstein’s theory.

[8] The observed correlation suggests that one of the key parameters within {F} affecting valence in Φ may be the dynamics of total energy expenditure.

[9] It is important to emphasize that, when we speak of “total energy expenditure” or an “energetic state,” we do not mean any hidden purpose or evaluation “from the point of view of the system.” We are speaking about a purely physical parameter—the degree to which the system is displaced from equilibrium, the total amount of work it must perform to maintain its integrity. In this sense, high “costs” are simply a measure of the intensity of internal processes associated with resisting entropic pressure. The stronger and more prolonged this deviation (the greater the “thermal motion” and dissipation within the system), the more negative, according to our hypothesis, the corresponding experience becomes. Conversely, a sharp reduction of this deviation (a return to equilibrium, the release of tension) is projected as a positive state. Thus, in our model, valence is not a semantic evaluation, but the phenomenological reflection of the system’s purely physical dynamics in its struggle for stability.

None of us chose to be born.

This isn't a metaphor. It's a biological fact. No one asked us whether we wanted to exist. No one handed us a contract. No one even explained the rules.

And yet we act as though life is a gift that needs no receipt.

This perspective emerged while I was working on a book called Perpetual Sorrow. I was trying to carry out a naturalistic analysis of suffering, consciousness, and determinism. One of the conclusions I reached is that if birth is forced entry into existence, the only ethical counterbalance is an unconditional right to leave.

This is not about promoting suicide. It's about refusing to turn existence into something you're not allowed to opt out of.

The problem of consent

In every other area of life, imposing a serious burden on someone without their consent counts as a violation. Medical procedures require informed consent. Contracts require signatures. Even taking part in a psychology experiment requires a briefing and a consent form.

But the most serious imposition of all — bringing a new conscious being into the world — requires no consent at all.

Antinatalist philosophers from Benatar to Cabrera have already made versions of this argument. Benatar's asymmetry, for instance, shows that coming into existence always involves harm in a way that never existing does not. But what often gets overlooked is the legal and ethical vacuum this leaves behind.

If we can't get consent from the unborn, what can we offer them instead?

The Declaration: a practical proposal

I propose a document — a "Declaration of the Right to Die" — signed by parents when a child is born.

It would become part of that person's legal identity. It would oblige the state to guarantee access to a painless, reliable, and dignified means of euthanasia — no bureaucratic obstacles, no coercion, no moral judgment.

This is not a punishment for parents. Under determinism, parents are not "guilty" of bringing a child into the world. They are links in a causal chain stretching back millions of years. Guilt is an illusion.

But harm is not an illusion. The harm of having existence forced on you is real.

The Declaration is not a tool of punishment. It's a tool for limiting harm. It turns birth from an absolute trap into a conditional contract: you exist for as long as you want, and you can always leave.

Objections

"This would encourage suicide."

No. It would legalise a right that already exists but is currently exercised through violent, often traumatic means. People who are determined to end their lives do so whether it's legal or not. The question is whether they do it with dignity and without pain, or alone and in desperation.

"Parents would pressure their children."

The Declaration would explicitly forbid pressure. The decision stays with the individual. When they reach adulthood they can consciously and independently confirm their wish — or not. What matters is that the option is always there, without needing anyone's permission.

"Life might get better. Why not wait?"

The suffering has already happened. Childhood trauma, chronic pain, mental illness — no one is obliged to endure years of agony on the chance of a hypothetical improvement. The right to leave isn't a rejection of hope. It's a recognition that hope is not a substitute for autonomy.

The Nuremberg precedent

After the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials established a fundamental principle: human beings cannot be subjected to experimentation without their consent. Today that's a cornerstone of medical ethics and international law.

I think we need a similar shift when it comes to birth.

Just as we recognised that "I was only following orders" is not a valid defence for atrocities, we should recognise that "I was only giving life" is not a valid defence for imposing decades of suffering on a being who never asked for any of it.

The Declaration of the Right to Die is not a radical idea. It's a basic ethical standard. It doesn't demand punitive responsibility from parents. It demands honesty.

The bigger picture

This proposal doesn't stand alone. It's part of a broader framework I explore in Perpetual Sorrow: a naturalistic look at suffering, determinism, and the architecture of sentient life.

If free will doesn't exist — and the neuroscience increasingly says it doesn't — then our legal and ethical systems need rebuilding from the ground up. The Declaration is one piece of that rebuild.

Short version

We didn't ask to be born.

That's not a complaint. It's a fact. And if we're honest about that fact, we have to be honest about what follows from it.

The right to die isn't a concession to despair. It's the only form of genuine autonomy available to beings who never chose to exist.

Perpetual Sorrow is available for free at fracture-of-being.com.

After reading the post "Are we in hell? Gradients vs. Black/White framing" I felt the need to add something — or rather, to describe my own view of the same question.

Free will does not exist — in any picture of the universe

This is the first and most important point. Free will exists neither in a deterministic nor in an indeterministic universe.

In a deterministic one, our decisions are fully conditioned by causal chains stretching back millions of years: genes, environment, prior brain states.

In an indeterministic one, quantum fluctuations add randomness, but randomness is not freedom. Unpredictability is not the same as autonomous choice.

From this follows a deeply uncomfortable conclusion: everyone who has ever been punished has been sentenced unjustly. Their guilt is an illusion. But their suffering is real. Our legal systems, built on ideas of retribution and personal responsibility, rest on a metaphysical foundation that does not exist.

Evolution gave us not truth, but comfort

It is often said that humans evolved to create a clear picture of the world. I would put it differently: we evolved — like any other organism — to survive and reproduce. Everything else is secondary.

To this end, nature equipped us not only with an animal fear of death, but with a set of comforting illusions. The idea that life has meaning. That suffering pays off. That everything will be "repaid." These thoughts have nothing to do with truth. They exist solely to prevent us from going mad from the horror of existence and to keep us fighting for life as if it were something valuable.

Pessimism is not another story for comfort. It is an attempt to see reality without these built-in filters. And what is revealed turns out to be far worse than any comforting story.

Some suffer far more than others

The intensity of subjective experience is catastrophically uneven.

For some, existence is a neutral background with rare spikes of discomfort. For others, it is a literal hell — not metaphorically, but concretely. There are people for whom every day is pain. There are illnesses where the slightest touch causes agony. There are mental states in which consciousness becomes its own executioner.

When people try to judge pessimism from the outside, they usually project their own relatively comfortable experience. They do not imagine what it is like to die of end-stage cancer, or to live with cluster headaches, or to be locked inside a fully paralysed body with full consciousness intact. Pessimism is not about mood. It is about soberly assessing the full spectrum of possible experience.

The intensity of suffering can be monstrous — and will become worse

Nature already permits levels of pain that exceed any possible pleasure by orders of magnitude. But soon synthetic forms of suffering will be added to this.

Even today, technologies exist that can radically distort time perception. One real hour can be stretched into subjective decades of uninterrupted agony. Or consciousness can be trapped in a temporal loop, where the same moment of pain repeats endlessly, with no possibility of exit, madness, or loss of consciousness.

This is not fiction. It is nearly reality. And our international conventions still prohibit only physical torture, completely ignoring chronoceptive violence.

Hidden suffering all around us

We are locked inside our own phenomenology. We have no direct access to another being's subjective experience. We use a plausibility principle: if a being is structurally similar to me, then it probably can suffer too.

But this principle has not always been applied. Relatively recently, it was believed that infants could not feel pain — and they were operated on without anaesthesia. Today this sounds monstrous. But what are we failing to see right now?

We admire the beauty of an autumn forest. But beneath our feet — a silent scream. Life dying from the cold. And this scream comes not only from insects and other animals. Few people know how similar the architecture of living things is at the molecular level: plants use neurotransmitters nearly identical to those found in humans — glutamate, GABA, serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine. Fungal networks generate electrical impulses resembling neural activity. Anaesthetics work on plants the same way they work on animals.

We have no grounds to claim that all of this "feels nothing." Our confidence is nothing but anthropocentric arrogance.

Cosmic hell: the mathematical approach

If an infinite multiverse exists, realising all logically possible combinations of laws and initial conditions, then among this infinite variety there must be worlds that we can confidently call hell.

Not as metaphor. As an objective state of matter.

Moreover, even within our own universe, suffering may not be an accidental deviation but a systemic property of sufficiently complex forms of material organisation. If consciousness is a lawful structural epiphenomenon of resistance to entropy, then pain may be built into the very architecture of reality.

Death may not be an exit

This is perhaps the hardest conclusion.

The pessimists of the past — Schopenhauer, Mainländer, von Hartmann — at least believed there was a way out of this nightmare. Nirvana. Collective self-extinction. The cessation of the will. Death as final non-being.

But modern physics leaves no room for non-being. Even in "empty" cosmic space, the quantum vacuum seethes — a sea of virtual particles constantly arising and vanishing. Emptiness in the strict sense is impossible. "Nothing" turns out to be a physically incoherent concept.

If the multiverse is infinite, the probability of the recurrence of any configuration of matter — including the one that generates your subjective experience — approaches unity. You disperse into atoms today. But somewhere, sometime, a similar configuration will come together again. For you, there will be no billions of years between destruction and renewed awakening. There will be only the uninterrupted "now."

Subjective death is impossible.

The final refuge of the pessimists of the past — faith in ultimate non-being — turns out to be a fiction. Death, which we revered as a liberator, is merely a temporary interruption in an endless chain of tormenting awakenings.

Black or White

Evolution — which is essentially the maintenance of homeostasis in a complex structure against the pressure of entropy — appears to operate according to the same logic everywhere. And that logic is built on a fundamental asymmetry: suffering is primary. It is suffering, not pleasure, that plays the central role in the evolutionary mechanism. Pain is the whip that drives the organism forward. Pleasure is only the temporary relief of tension, a brief pause before the next turn of the screw.

Black can exist without white, but white cannot exist without black.

I explore each of these theses in detail in a book I recently finished. It is called Perpetual Sorrow and is available for free at fracture-of-being.com.

I welcome any questions, objections, or criticism.

Hi everyone. This is my first post here.

I’m a biologist by training, and for a long time I’ve had the feeling that discussions of suffering, consciousness, and free will keep hitting the same wall — either religious dogma, or comforting philosophical abstractions. I wanted to try a more naturalistic analysis grounded in what we know about evolution, neural processes, thermodynamics, and causality.

The result is a book I recently finished: Perpetual Sorrow. It’s my first work, published under the pseudonym Causmar.

The central claim of the book is that suffering may not be an accidental defect of life, but one of the structural properties of sentient existence itself. From there, I try to connect several themes that are often discussed separately: consciousness, epiphenomenalism, free will, pessimism, antinatalism, and the ethical implications of a world in which pain may be more fundamental than we usually want to admit.

A few of the ideas I explore:

-that suffering may be built into the architecture of life more deeply than pleasure

-that the experience of free will may be in tension with the actual processes underlying decision-making

-that philosophical pessimism, for all its radicalism, may still remain too anthropocentric

-and that if suffering is as fundamental as it seems, the ethical question becomes not how to justify existence, but what we should do in response

I’m not claiming that every individual idea here is completely new. What I tried to do was to bring a number of familiar lines of thought into one coherent system on a naturalistic foundation.

I’d be very interested in criticism, objections, or recommendations for related reading — especially from people interested in pessimism, consciousness, and free will.

The full text is available as a free PDF at fracture-of-being.com.