• I love Chom-choms
    65
    Suppose at this very moment, God visited you and asked you whether you would choose to not exist? What would you choose?
    This is a rather easy question to which you would probably answer 'no' unless you a very depressed.
    So answer this, if after you have lived your entire live, you have felt everything, all the sorrow, despair, joy, pains and pleasures of your life. If God now gave you the opportunity to never have been born in the first place, what would you choose?
    I think that even this is easy to answer as if you have felt everything then even if I was never to be born, I would still have lived once. So it doesn't really matter.


    Now answer this: If before being born, God told you everything that would happen in your life but from a third person perspective. Like if Dumbledore told Harry that he would kill Voldemort and everything leading up to it. Harry would know that Cedric Diggory dies in book 4 but he wouldn't have felt it. He wouldn't know Cedric personally but what Dumbledore observed their relationship to be like.
    So, would you choose to born if told everything that will happen, from a third person perspective. You wouldn't understand how you feel but know what you feel. Do you think that then you would choose to be born?
    Most of you will a probably answer that it is impossible to decide I believe so too, first of all, how can you make decision if you have never lived. The " before being born" seems like an impossible scenario. That's because it is an impossible scenario.
    Your decisions are based on you beliefs which are formed through your experiences. So before experiencing anything, the decision you make will have to based on pure rationality which we the living cannot process. Therefore it is objectively impossible to decide the "right" or "wrong" of your experiences.
    I think that the basis of the thought," I would rather not be born" is that my life is not worth it, i.e., the pain outweighs the pleasures. I also don't believe it reincarnation, which let's assume to does not happen. If I can say that it is objectively impossible to judge your life's worth and since I believe that you only live once therefore all arguments against suicide seem a bit wrong to me. I think that one should only commit suicide if their life is bad and I just made it clear(I think) that your life is not bad, you just say that it is. So if the reasoning behind suicide is wrong then no matter how much you suffer, it would be wrong to choose to die.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    What's your point?

    Why not skip the God/Harry Potter stuff, which adds nothing, and just ask: If you had a choice never to have lived at all, knowing what you now know about your life events, what would you choose?

    What are you hoping this question would reveal?

    If before being born, God told you everything that would happen in your life but from a third person perspective.I love Chom-choms

    Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to. Unless you are putting forth an argument regarding some kind of eternal, pre-birth soul - in which case you have, I think, a rather different philosophical question requiring further elaboration.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    The usual deal for anitnatalism is that it's all about the alleged, true/false? you decide, inordinate amount of suffering that comes with living.

    Having foreknowledge of one's life kinda takes the fun out of living - you would know in advance what would happen to you and it would be like reruns of a TV show. :meh: Still, that wouldn't make me not want to live - reruns do well for a reason I suppose. However, if there's an excessive amount of meaningless suffering involved, I'll go the antinatalist way and opt out.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    It is an argument against suicide. Hear me out, please.

    What's your point?

    Why not skip the God/Harry Potter stuff, which adds nothing, and just ask: If you had a choice never to have lived at all, knowing what you now know about your life events, what would you choose?

    What are you hoping this question would reveal?
    Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to. Unless you are putting forth an argument regarding some kind of eternal, pre-birth soul - in which case you have, I think, a rather different philosophical question requiring further elaboration.
    Tom Storm


    That is my point, it is impossible to make a purely rational decision. If in the third scenario you say that you would rather not be born then then that would mean that what happened in your life is objectively wrong, the judgement of which is independent of your personal feeling but since our decisions are based on our beliefs, which are based on our life experiences therefore it is impossible to judge a life to be objectively good or bad.

    The reason that this is an argument against suicide is that I think that the basis of the thought," I would rather not be born" is that my life is not worth it, the pain outweighs the pleasures. I also don't believe it reincarnation, which let's assume to does not happen. If I can say that it is objectively impossible to judge your life's worth and since I believe that you only live once therefore all arguments against suicide seem a bit wrong to me. I think that one should only commit suicide if their life is bad and the above argument makes it clear that your life may or may not be bad, So suicide is wrong, no matter how much you suffer.
  • Hermeticus
    181
    Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to.Tom Storm

    This. Cognitive abilities develop over a lifetime. How can I make a decision if my basis for decision making hasn't been established yet?


    Even if we were to disregard the problem of "me before birth", I don't think I could make a sensible decision based on information alone. As a being that exists I have learned that "feeling" an experience is essential to understanding it.

    In my youth, I was a sad little kid. Often existence would appear as a bother.
    A bit older and a bit wiser, having had a brush with death, my whole paradigm changed.
    The suffering from yesterday became a lesson of joy today.
    Most of all, what I experienced during transition was emotional. Philosophical thought only came after the feeling was chewed through.

    If I were to only "know" but not "feel" my life, I doubt I could rationally tell whether the good outweighs the bad or vice versa.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Oh that is an interesting perspective but as I said your decision is only possible because you have lived your life which before living you would not have.

    Having foreknowledge of one's life kinda takes the fun out of living - you would know in advance what would happen to you and it would be like reruns of a TV show.TheMadFool
    That's not what would happen. You would choose to exist but then you wouldn't remember about it. Otherwise, it would apply that something lingers after death with gets reincarnated and that is the basis of your beliefs. That would be an interesting, your soul is your moral compass but not not the point I am trying to make.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Thanks, I realized that I was not clear with what I meant this discussion to be about. I am sorry but I was just too excited. this is the first discussion that I started. I wanted it to sound cool :wink:
    I hope it is clear now.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Oh that is an interesting perspective but as I said your decision is only possible because you have lived your life which before living you would not have.I love Chom-choms

    What's the point then if my choice won't make a difference? Is this God just trying to get some cheap thrills at our expense?

    You would choose to exist but then you wouldn't remember about itI love Chom-choms

    Again, in addition to the amnesia that would make the whole exercise pointless, if there's just too much pain involved, count me out.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Suicide is not wrong. Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life? The answer to both questions is an emphatic "yes" I believe.

    I'm sure you've heard of spies with cyanide capsules dangling around their necks...just in case...interrogators get "creative".
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Oh that is an interesting perspective but as I said your decision is only possible because you have lived your life which before living you would not have.
    — I love Chom-choms

    What's the point then if my choice won't make a difference? Is this God just trying to get some cheap thrills at our expense?
    TheMadFool
    No, what is meant was that the thought process by which you decided that the re-runs could be fun was molded by your life experiences which before being born would not have formed. That is what I meant.
    Also if you think that God might be having fun at our expenses then that is alright but, again, you can only think that because you have experienced living.
    You would choose to exist but then you wouldn't remember about it
    — I love Chom-choms

    Again, in addition to the amnesia that would make the whole exercise pointless, if there's just too much pain involved, count me out.
    TheMadFool

    But, with amnesia, it would mean that after every run of your life, your soul remains, which then decides to have another run at life but I want the decision made to be purely rational so that is a big no.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    You're beginning to sound like an evil genius, crafting all sorts of psychological conundrums to torture people to [mental] death and worse, resuscitate them so that you could do it to them all over again. :chin:
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Suicide is not wrong. Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life? The answer to both questions is an emphatic "yes" I believe.TheMadFool

    Yes, but that is your opinion, I am sure there is some psycho out there who would have the urge to torture that guy more. You may believe that your opinion is better but whatever the reason for you opinion may be, there is someone who would disagree with, I think, a very plausible reason that it is just more fun to see that guy suffer than to save him.
    By saying this, I mean to say that the empathy which compels you to save or kill him is not present in everyone. You are in the majority of those who are sympathetic to the tortured person but being in the majority does not make you right.

    You're beginning to sound like an evil genius, crafting all sorts of psychological conundrums to torture people to [mental] death and worse, resuscitate them again so that you could do it all over again. :chin:TheMadFool

    Please elaborate. I pride myself at being more of a voyeur that just likes to watch people react to funny scenarios than a sadist. It just so happens that most interesting peoples tend to have sad backstories and the funniest scenarios tend to involve suffering. Watching a person get tortured is dull to me but if that person has a red button in front of him while being tortured then "Ooh boy, what will he do?"
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Yes, but that is your opinion, I am sure there is some psycho out there who would have the urge to torture that guy more. You may believe that your opinion is better but whatever the reason for you opinion may be, there is someone who would disagree with, I think, a very plausible reason that it is just more fun to see that guy suffer than to save him.
    By saying this, I mean to say that the empathy which compels you to save or kill him is not present in everyone. You are in the majority of those who are sympathetic to the tortured person but being in the majority does not make you right.
    I love Chom-choms

    My argument is not based on votes. If you fail to see the logic of putting an end to suffering by any means possible, sorry, I can't help you.

    By the way you used the word "psycho", not me.

    Also, I'm not in a state to discuss the matter further with you. Cheers!

    Please elaborate. I pride myself at being more of a voyeur that just likes to watch people react to funny scenarios than a sadist.I love Chom-choms

    Good luck with that.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    My argument is not based on votes. If you fail to see the logic of putting an end to suffering by any means possible, sorry, I can't help you.TheMadFool
    I knew you would say something like that. Well, then please tell me your logic for saving a suffering man's life.
    Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life?TheMadFool

    I would, if I won't be judged for it afterwards and I don't have any duty to save the person in question, just walk away like nothing happened.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I have known a few people who have committed suicide and try not to be judgemental in seeing what they did as 'wrong'. However, I do see suicide as being one of the worst possible ways to die and would like to find better solutions than to kill myself, if found my life to be completely unbearable.

    One of the aspects of it seems to be that it is an act which often occurs in a moment of rash panic. Also, often people who do make a suicide fail and end up disabled or with long lasting health problems. One of the worst scenarios is that of people taking overdoses of Paracetamol and making some kind of recovery, often glad to be alive, only to discover they are likely to die through liver failure.

    Part of the ethics of suicide do involve the question of the right to make such a choice and this is extremely complex. Mental health services often step in to forcibly stop people killing themselves through keeping them in hospital under Section, and by putting them on suicide watch observations, if people are perceived as a risk. Of course, the real issue is of being able to measure risk accurately, because the person who is really planning suicide may keep the ideas as a secret.

    Aside from any religious aspects of the question is the effects of a suicide on others, and if I was at the point of thinking of suicide that would weigh heavily on my choice. The emotional consequences for family and friends can be devastating and there is even some evidence that people have been bereaved through a suicide being more likely to commit suicide themselves. However, it is likely that the person who commits suicide is in such a difficult place emotionally that they are not able to stop and think clearly. Also, there may be a difference between the person who has fleeting suicidal thoughts and the person who has recurrent or almost permanent suicidal ideation. I believe that there may be better ways forward for managing suicidal unhappiness, but I would not go as far as to say that suicide is absolutely wrong in all circumstances.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    I have known a few people who have committed suicide and try not to be judgemental in seeing what they did as 'wrong'. However, I do see suicide as being one of the worst possible ways to die and would like to find better solutions than to kill myself, if found my life to be completely unbearable.

    One of the aspects of it seems to be that it is an act which often occurs in a moment of rash panic. Also, often people who do make a suicide fail and end up disabled or with long lasting health problems. One of the worst scenarios is that of people taking overdoses of Paracetamol and making some kind of recovery, often glad to be alive, only to discover they are likely to die through liver failure
    Jack Cummins

    That is why I think that the best way to discuss the "right" and "wrong" of an action is from the third person perspective. If you have stakes in a situation then you are bound to be biased. This thought was the beginning of this thought experiment which then led me to conclude that suicide is wrong in all circumstances.
    However, it is likely that the person who commits suicide is in such a difficult place emotionally that they are not able to stop and think clearly. Also, there may be a difference between the person who has fleeting suicidal thoughts and the person who has recurrent or almost permanent suicidal ideation. I believe that there may be better ways forward for managing suicidal unhappiness, but I would not go as far as to say that suicide is absolutely wrong in all circumstances.Jack Cummins

    From this, your reason for suicide being right sometimes seems to be one relating to sympathy for that person but I think that sympathy is a bias because not everyone will feel sympathy for that person. So please, dig deeper for a reason against my claim.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I was not really saying that I see suicide as actually 'right', but saying that I would not make judgements or see it as absolutely wrong. I am against definitive ways of seeing acts. I am not sure that I even see any moral acts as absolutes, with murder and rape being the closest possible exceptions. I think that it is all about weighing up the effects of actions, and intentions are important too in considering the nature of morality.

    Also, you speak of third person perspective as being more important than the subjective. I believe that both aspects are worth thinking about. The third person analysis is a useful way of looking at the objective aspects. However, I think that looking at the individual person who is on the precipice of suicide is not necessarily about sympathy, but about empathy, in trying to understand the suffering of the person at the moment when they chose to take their own life. I don't believe that it is an easy choice because it is not really that easy to kill oneself. I know someone who took 100 Aspirin tablets and slept for 2 days, and woke up. On the other hand, some people who don't really wish to kill themselves do die accidentally, even though the act may have been a cry for help.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Also, you speak of third person perspective as being more important than the subjective. I believe that both aspects are worth thinking about. The third person analysis is a useful way of looking at the objective aspects. However, I think that looking at the individual person who is on the precipice of suicide is not necessarily about sympathy, but about empathy, in trying to understand the suffering of the person at the moment when they chose to take their own life.Jack Cummins

    Oh I see what you mean. I won't say you are wrong but I think that it just doesn't sit well me. I mean like you said, a person with suicidal tendencies is in a difficult place emotionally and can't think properly. He is just suffering too much to care about what will come afterwards, if he is saved then so what? He doesn't want to suffer now. It's too painful. It's too much to handle for him. Salvation won't cure him. He has suffered too much. If salvation won't cure him then he should just stop feeling. If he doesn't feel, doesn't think, doesn't want then surely he won't suffer this much.

    I imagine this is what goes through a suicidal person's head. I am not sure though, but if it is then I can understand why he would want to die and I think that I might even help him die. However, I have thought about it many times but always, and I mean always, after a few days later, after my feeling of this matter have died down. When I look back at it, I question then decision and my conclusion is that it was wrong. I shouldn't have killed him neither should I have just watched him die. Maybe if I helped him then even if he had lost all hope, he would feel happy again.
    My point is that, the empathy on which your argument is based, I have felt it and wanted to do something but that feeling disappears and I question the answer I found. So I find empathy to be an unreliable judge of morality and opt for a rational judge.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k

    Suppose at this very moment, God visited you ...I love Chom-choms
    Can you answer the question without bringing in God or any other external source, but by applying only reasoning? Why? Because the existence of God is not really established and/or universally acceptable.

    In other words, is there a rationality and sound ethical principles that supports your statement? That is, principles that are based on pure logic and not on some abstract idea of "good" or "bad".
    That would be much more "fruitful" from a philosophical viewpoint, don't you think?

    For example, if you define ethical behavior as one that "promotes survival and well-beingness" (both physical and non-physical) or "doing major good for the most", can this support your statement?
    I believe yes. These principles, by definition, reject an action such as suicide, don't they?
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    Suppose at this very moment, God visited you ...
    — I love Chom-choms
    Can you answer the question without bringing in God or any other external source, but by applying only reasoning? Why? Because the existence of God is not really established and/or universally acceptable.
    Alkis Piskas

    Fair point, then consider it like this: If before being born, your were to learn, by some unknown mean, everything that was going to happen in your life, would you still chooses to be born?

    This is basically the same scenario, I made God the one telling you because I just thought that people would roll with it. It was a problem for you so you can see it like this. I am not trying to argue about the existence of God.


    In other words, is there a rationality and sound ethical principles that supports your statement? That is, principles that are based on pure logic and not on some abstract idea of "good" or "bad".
    That would be much more "fruitful" from a philosophical viewpoint, don't you think?

    For example, if you define ethical behavior as one that "promotes survival and well-beingness" (both physical and non-physical) or "doing major good for the most", can this support your statement?
    I believe yes. These principles, by definition, reject an action such as suicide, don't they?
    Alkis Piskas

    I said earlier that a suicide is right only if your situation is objectively wrong. I assume that you mean to say that you don't completely agree with this statement. So I'll elaborate.
    A person commits suicide because he/she believes that his life is so bad that it is not worth living with the hope that someday you will be saved, which I understand as, the pleasures that one might experience are not worth all the pain that you would suffer to reach those pleasures. However, this statement is weak because the pleasures that you might experience are dwarfed by the pain you suffer now, like how you become pessimistic after losing many games. You are pessimistic but if you win the next few games then your outlook would change.
    My point is that, no matter what we decide as right or wrong, it would not be objectively "right" or "wrong" because that "right" or "wrong" will change depending on the circumstances in our lives and how we feel. Therefore, a suicidal person's judgement of his life's worth is wrong because it is influenced by the circumstances on his life and his depressed outlook on life. At this point, it doesn't matter what is right because I have shown you that, at the very least, suicide is wrong.
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    If God now gave you the opportunity to never have been born in the first place, what would you choose?I love Chom-choms

    Regret is cheating. It's a way of not taking responsibility for your life and the things you've done and not done. That being said, I've sometimes thought that things would have been better if I died when I was 12. Problem with that - my children would never have been born. The universe is better with them in it.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    think that one should only commit suicide if their life is bad and I just made it clear(I think) that your life is not bad, you just say that it is. So if the reasoning behind suicide is wrong then no matter how much you suffer, it would be wrong to choose to die.I love Chom-choms

    There is no rule book to life. I think suicide should be an unstigmatized personal choice. There are many reasons why suicide might be preferable to life - pain, illness, war, old age.... However, people who want to kill themselves are often making the decision based on a situational crisis and with some support through the mess they may find equanimity and joy again. I was trained in suicide intervention counselling and have met many suicidal people. Most of them did not go through with it.

    But the question, whether you choose not to live if you knew what your life was going to be like, is quite different. It's really about whether you believe it is worth having the life experience. I'm on the fence about this. Never having been born does not sound all that bad. But it's a ridiculous hypothetical no one can ever enact, so it's a fairly pointless speculative exercise.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Why 'coerce' someone to live (or demonize a person) who compulsively needs to cease living?
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    Yep. I suspect Christian thinking influences these sorts of positions.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    There is so much of this that is good and I don’t want to paraphrase a paraphrase. I simply want to draw attention to a very earnest examination of the question.

    “There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” (MS, 3). One might object that suicide is neither a “problem” nor a “question,” but an act. A proper, philosophical question might rather be: “Under what conditions is suicide warranted?” And a philosophical answer might explore the question, “What does it mean to ask whether life is worth living?” as William James did in The Will to Believe. For the Camus of The Myth of Sisyphus, however, “Should I kill myself?” is the essential philosophical question. For him, it seems clear that the primary result of philosophy is action, not comprehension. His concern about “the most urgent of questions” is less a theoretical one than it is the life-and-death problem of whether and how to live.

    Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in a variety of ways. As we have seen, both the presence and absence of life (i.e., death) give rise to the condition: it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and it is absurd to hope for some form of continued existence after death given that the latter results in our extinction. But Camus also thinks it absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world, for he sees the attempt to gain rational knowledge as futile. Here Camus pits himself against science and philosophy, dismissing the claims of all forms of rational analysis: “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh” (MS, 21).

    These kinds of absurdity are driving Camus’s question about suicide, but his way of proceeding evokes another kind of absurdity, one less well-defined, namely, the “absurd sensibility” (MS, 2, tr. changed). This sensibility, vaguely described, seems to be “an intellectual malady” (MS, 2) rather than a philosophy. He regards thinking about it as “provisional” and insists that the mood of absurdity, so “widespread in our age” does not arise from, but lies prior to, philosophy. Camus’s diagnosis of the essential human problem rests on a series of “truisms” (MS, 18) and “obvious themes” (MS, 16). But he doesn’t argue for life’s absurdity or attempt to explain it—he is not interested in either project, nor would such projects engage his strength as a thinker. “I am interested … not so much in absurd discoveries as in their consequences” (MS, 16). Accepting absurdity as the mood of the times, he asks above all whether and how to live in the face of it. “Does the absurd dictate death” (MS, 9)? But he does not argue this question either, and rather chooses to demonstrate the attitude towards life that would deter suicide. In other words, the main concern of the book is to sketch ways of living our lives so as to make them worth living despite their being meaningless.
    — “SEP on Camus”

    Camus on Suicide

    Using slightly different language (with influence from the East), the root of suffering is desire and to be born is to desire. Cf four noble truths Life is suffering and, in a more existential sort of way, the sickness onto death. One possible answer is self-abnegation - the cessation of desire through the elimination of the self (the end of consciousness). If death is not the way out, then you must find the other door. If death is the way out, then death is the most expedient end. But even if this is so, Camus’ question remains: can we justify the continued suffering.

    In a world of radical freedom, where the extent of our moral regard is merely the self, suicide is simply one choice of many. In a world where we are responsible for others, suicide takes a different role. Even if the hypothetical is to choose to have never been, if the consequence is on others and our morality extends to others, the answer is not so straight forward. Must we be to satisfy the needs of others? Can the demands of others extend so far as to compel our very existence? We certainly know that their choices can bring us into this world, but are we obligated to abide (and indeed affirm) those choices?

    I would also point to this article on intergenerational justice as a sort of placeholder for the idea of obligations between existent beings and non-existent beings. That is, currently alive people to already dead people and people yet to be born, but in this case, might also be extended to people yet to be given the choice about whether to come into existence.

    Central questions of intergenerational justice are: first, whether present generations can be duty-bound because of considerations of justice to past and future people; second, whether other moral considerations should guide those currently alive in relating to both past and future people; and third, how to interpret the significance of past injustices in terms of what is owed to the descendants of the direct victims of the injustices. — “SEP on Intergenerational Justice”
    Intergenerational Justice
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    My argument is not based on votes. If you fail to see the logic of putting an end to suffering by any means possible, sorry, I can't help you.
    — TheMadFool
    I knew you would say something like that. Well, then please tell me your logic for saving a suffering man's life.
    Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life?
    — TheMadFool

    I would, if I won't be judged for it afterwards and I don't have any duty to save the person in question, just walk away like nothing happened.
    I love Chom-choms

    My simple argument:

    1. (Some kinds of) suffering are unbearable
    2. We don't want unbearable things (duh!)
    Ergo,
    3. We should do something to reduce/eliminate such forms of suffering
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    There is no rule book to life. I think suicide should be an unstigmatized personal choice. There are many reasons why suicide might be preferable to life - pain, illness, war, old age.... However, people who want to kill themselves are often making the decision based on a situational crisis and with some support through the mess they may find equanimity and joy again.Tom Storm

    My empathy for people agrees with you. I too believe that suicide is a preferable end to the pain that might come from living but I don't see it as "the right thing to do". Earlier, I said
    I imagine this is what goes through a suicidal person's head. I am not sure though, but if it is then I can understand why he would want to die and I think that I might even help him die. However, I have thought about it many times but always, and I mean always, after a few days later, after my feeling of this matter have died down. When I look back at it, I question then decision and my conclusion is that it was wrong. I shouldn't have killed him neither should I have just watched him die. Maybe if I helped him then even if he had lost all hope, he would feel happy again.
    My point is that, the empathy on which your argument is based, I have felt it and wanted to do something but that feeling disappears and I question the answer I found. So I find empathy to be an unreliable judge of morality and opt for a rational judge.
    I love Chom-choms
    So, for me, the right thing to de is based not on my feeling but on my rationale independent of emotion. I accept that I feel emotion and am compelled to pity and empathies with a tortured soul but as the judge of whether to save a life or not, if I find a reason that does not depend on feeling, which is absolute and independent of the changing moral beliefs of the people then that action is right.
    Why 'coerce' someone to live (or demonize a person) who compulsively needs to cease living?180 Proof
    ↪180 Proof Yep. I suspect Christian thinking influences these sorts of positions.Tom Storm
    You are misunderstanding. Just because I believe that suicide is always wrong doesn't, for me, mean that it should not be done. I empathize with those people who are suffering and I would not stop a person if they were trying to save a tortured person neither would I try to stop a person from committing suicide. I am not telling you to de the right thing, I am just telling you what the right thing is. You are free and welcome to do the wrong thing. If you kill yourself then I would regard that as being wrong but I would understand what compelled you to do that. I am not forcing my beliefs of morality onto you. I judge the morality of an action on basis of reason but I am human and thus my emotions will affect my decisions when I have to make them but I want to, at least, recognize that I was wrong.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Why 'coerce' someone to live (or demonize a person) who compulsively needs to cease living?180 Proof

    Correctamundo!

    There's this general attitude towards suicide that it's immoral but then the same people who hold this belief are sympathetic towards the practice of putting down animals that are in extreme pain. Something's off.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    My empathy for people agrees with you. I too believe that suicide is a preferable end to the pain that might come from living but I don't see it as "the right thing to do"I love Chom-choms

    Right! It's, as some say, the last choice. In other words, th suicider is all out of options.
  • I love Chom-choms
    65
    1. (Some kinds of) suffering are unbearable
    2. We don't want unbearable things
    Ergo,
    3. We should do something to reduce/eliminate such forms of suffering
    TheMadFool
    Ok, but why should suffering be prevented?
    Because suffering is bad, of course. We all want to avoid pain and suffering, it is the core of any action. All actions originate from this desire to avoid pain. That is absolute for us, we the living beings will avoid pain. Still, we don't live just to avoid pain, we live to feel pleasure. So, we also recognize that pain is necessary for pleasure. Winning a tournament after practicing very hard gives us pleasure, which is heightened by that pain we went through to achieve it.
    With the above analogy, suicide is like a person who tried harder than anyone else to win the tournament but he still lost. He tried harder still for the next tournament but in the end he still lost. He finally gave up and quit.
    That person who tried harder that anyone did so because he believed is the promise of greater pleasure that would come if he won, that it would all be worth it. Just like a suicidal person who believes that if he keeps on living then all his pain would end, then it would all have been worth it.
    However, even after trying so hard, he still loses twice at this point, he is convinced that maybe there is pleasure waiting for him at the end or even if there is, he won't be able to get there, so he quits. Similarly, a suicidal person is also convinced that there is nothing waiting for him at the end , even if there is, he can't handle it anymore, so he too quits, i.e., he kills himself.
    Does this change the fact that the pleasure waiting for that person after all the pain disappears. No, if he had lived, if had had tried at the next tournament, then maybe he would have won and would have felt the pleasure that he suffered for. Even by your logic, anyone who lives to avoid pain should not kill himself because that person lives for pleasure and to avoid pain( if he claims that he lives only to avoid pain, then he is hypocritical) and if he bears the pain then that sufferer is guaranteed immense pleasure that suffered for.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    :up:

    For the nonbeliever, in naturalistic terms, what makes suicide "always wrong" (i.e. categorically immoral without exception)?
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