It sounds like the person you are arguing with believes that experience exists before conception the same way experience would exist (if one believed, I suppose) in life after death. No need to continue the argument since you can’t have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

Basically, I believe that (the act of having been brought into) existence is the ultimate cause of all experience. That everything a person can or will ever feel, they feel because they have been brought into existence (were conceived). This person is telling me that that’s a fallacy, and that I’m confusing correlation for causation.

So basically, I guess my question is, is “conception leads to all feeling” an example of the correlation/causation fallacy?

Well. Um. Duh. If you’re never born you have 0 experiences. Does the person you’re arguing with believe there is some sort of life before and after death? If so, I’d throw in that towel.

He’s supposedly a teacher.

What does that mean?

It means he’s completely underqualified at his profession, in my opinion.

Well, since I don’t know what his argument is, I can’t really comment on your assessment.

I can’t really tell you what his argument is, either. He just keeps disputing what I take to be a self-evident fact (existence leads to all experience), and insists that that’s the correlation/causation fallacy. I honestly spent over an hour debating him about this last night.

I’m confused. It’s so self evident, I don’t know why any one would even waste time discussing it.

I am also confused by his reaction. Ask him to give an example of what he means. Does he think we are living in the Matrix? Even if such a thing were possible, by Occam’s razor we choose the simplest explanation, which is that what we perceive is what there actually is.

Here is the reason he calls your argument false:

…the act of having been brought into existence is the ultimate cause of all experience.

Yes, it is true that one cannot experience something without having brought into existence, but that existences is not the cause of the experience.

Yes, I could not experience having ridden the train today if I was no in existence, but my existence was not the cause of my experience. That was caused by other factors.

That makes sense. You could say that being human means that you will have experiences, while your friend might argue that the particular experiences you have do not follow directly from being born. In the end, it may just be an argument over semantics.

OK. After reading it 3 times, I agree with you @zenvelo. Put another way, just because you were born doesn’t mean you will experience anything. I, most likely, will not experience walking on the moon.
However, whatever experiences you do have, you were only able to experience because you were born.

@zenvelo I think you’re conflating the occurrence of the event with the experience of it.

No he isn’t.

Ok.