Suicide

[GrowingSmaller]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

 

[quatona]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

As it reads there, it simply doesn´t seem to follow.

 

[Chris B]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

As written, invalid.
And as one who holds to the key assumption I can say there are a limited range of circumstances where I would consider killing myself to be a sane and reasonable act, and a few more circumstances where choosing a course of action that would certainly lead to my death* would be a perfectly ethical choice.
What the heck, I'm going to die anyway, sooner or later.
I don't see maximising the length of my personal existence as the highest possible good.




*or in a minor form, where the chance of death would be an acceptable risk.

 

[PsychoSarah]

As written, invalid.
And as one who holds to the key assumption I can say there are a limited range of circumstances where I would consider killing myself to be a sane and reasonable act, and a few more circumstances where choosing a course of action that would certainly lead to my death* would be a perfectly ethical choice.
What the heck, I'm going to die anyway, sooner or later.
I don't see maximising the length of my personal existence as the highest possible good.




*or in a minor form, where the chance of death would be an acceptable risk.

Consider this: would anyone besides yourself be harmed by your death? Perhaps you have children that rely on your income to survive, and emotional support to develop socially.

 

[Chris B]

Consider this: would anyone besides yourself be harmed by your death? Perhaps you have children that rely on your income to survive, and emotional support to develop socially.

No, I have no wife or children.
That my parents are still alive would be a definite factor of significance.

There's nothing here and now making suicide a current issue, but it is something I have weighed and considered in advance.
I suspect there's a fair chance that I will need suicide near the end of my natural life, to provide a better, cleaner ending than would be available under medical care, as laws stand.
I've seen too many people die badly. Protracted, pointless, undignified suffering...
Not for me, If I can help it.

 

[rockytopva]

"Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him. " - Socrates

 

[PsychoSarah]

No, I have no wife or children.
That my parents are still alive would be a definite factor of significance.

There's nothing here and now making suicide a current issue, but it is something I have weighed and considered in advance.
I suspect there's a fair chance that I will need suicide near the end of my natural life, to provide a better, cleaner ending than would be available under medical care, as laws stand.
I've seen too many people die badly. Protracted, pointless, undignified suffering...
Not for me, If I can help it.

I elect to die kicking and screaming, as I attempt to hold on to every last moment. I fear death. A lot.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

As written, invalid.

So a dead peron can be ethical. No, if you want to be ethical, for better or for worse, you have to be alive. Just as also if you want to paint pictures, you must be alive also.

An not saying the ethical thing muct always be to choose life, though.
Thats the ambiguity.

But bones are not capable of moral life.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

"Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him. " - Socrates

Thats more holey than the republic.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

As it reads there, it simply doesn´t seem to follow.

Well can a dead one have opinions?

 

[Chris B]

"Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him. " - Socrates

Yes. His view was predicated on human kind being the possessions of the Gods, so committing suicide was therefore the equivalent of a slave attempting to run away.

I don't hold that perspective.

 

[quatona]

Well can a dead one have opinions?

No.
1. You are starting from the premise "Only people (i.e. persons) can be ethical."
If someone is dead there is no person to talk about, to begin with
It´s the ever same error of making a statement from within a certain frame of reference (existence), and then applying it to the reference frame itself.
2. You seem to be equivocating "ethicalA" (as in able to make ethical considerations and act upon them, having an ethical opinion) and "ethical(B)" (as in opposed to "unethical").
Let´s start the same with "Only people can be unethical". Then, being dead removes a problem.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Death is not up to us, otherwise people could choose who goes to heaven or hell.

Good.

 

[Paradoxum]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

It's a word game.

The first 'ethical' means the ability to be ethical; the second word 'ethical' means to act ethically. They don't mean the same things, so there is no contradiction.

 

[Noxot]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

if the ethical is concerned with ontology then I guess it depends on what you think life is. i don't think the ethical matters much if the ontology of the universe is ultimately death and non-existence. maybe it is better to not exist and thus more ethical... if indeed being ethical means "what is best"?

if death is the end of the person then all things are death in the bigger picture of things and so the ethics concerning suicide is a very minuscule thing to consider. thus I would say that if you want to die then you should die and if you want to live then you should live. we don't have time for silly games! we only have so much life. lets not be weighted down by legalistic ethical concerns when it comes to the inevitable all consuming ending of death that the atheist believe in. in fact if that is the ultimate then i could argue that death is better than life for it is more stable and perfect in that it ends suffering and struggle. life is vain and empty and death is the real deal. life is a joke and death is the end of the pun. so who cares about ethics if you are concerned with the ultimate truths? if to be human is ethical then the ethical is put into the sphere of the atheist ideology about what humanity is ( or whatever else is defining what humanity is). humanity is an insignificant nothing (just a tiny blip in the universe) and so why should you care about your creature-impulses to live and to replicate yourself?

it seems to me that death is greater than ethics and so those who desire ultimate truths should be more concerned with death even though you should not be concerned with ultimate truths if the ultimate truth is that you don't exist. truth seems to be ontological in nature. death being the ultimate means that truth is reduced to the sphere of utility and it ought not govern peoples lives so much. so I think that you should just kill yourself if you want to because even though it might hurt other people because you died... they don't really matter that much in the bigger picture of things. nothing really matters though you can pretend it matters and make up games like 'ethics' but they are not really that useful to the grander picture of reality. they are useful in the limited utilitarian sense and thus I would like to do whatever I want and not make up useless rules if truth is to be chiefly utilitarian in nature.

but i don't think most humans care enough to make their lives about ultimate truths. they will rather concern themselves with the things that compel and are more in the moment forcing them or the things that happen to be. I have no clue why they strive to make the world a better place with such a nihilistic outlook on life.

but really.... I think that humans tend to regard themselves as one of the ultimate truths, be they atheist or religious

so i think that humans should have the freedom to live or not to live and I think it is wrong to apply some kind of abstract law of ethics onto humans who are superior to it because they make up and define what is ethical. we should be more directly concerned with our own selves rather than to submit to some kind of law imposed upon us from without for they are just human games and why play by some persons rules that you don't like?

 

[timewerx]

Only people can be ethical. Assuming that death is the end of the person, if you desire to be ethical you must never kill yourself.

Is this valid or a fallacy (e.g. equivocation on "ethical")?

Probably three valid things I could think of "ethical suicide":

- to NOT prolong extreme suffering and
- If your death would save another (like ramming your ship to a Borg Cube to try to save Earth from being assimilated)
- You did it for the sake of Christ

The last two is actually mentioned in the Bible.

Anyway, I won't be so hard on the many people who committed suicide out of misery, desperation, hopelessness, insanity, etc.

A lot of people harshly judge them....

But try living their lives and in their mental state and I doubt many would have done any better....

 

[Locutus]

Is why we are all in this mess.

what mess?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

It's a word game.

The first 'ethical' means the ability to be ethical; the second word 'ethical' means to act ethically. They don't mean the same things, so there is no contradiction.

That is exactly what I thought. But I wanted to check.

 

[Chris B]

Death.

If we didn't have death it would be getting seriously overcrowded by now,
(instead of just overcrowded.)

And we'd have enormous numbers of the severely disabled: the human body has some features that are very much time-limited: good enough to see the next generation born and raised, but with anything much more a bonus.
The human eye has its peak performance at about 12 years of age. It's on the way down for some parameters after that.

We are born to be brief candles.

 

[Audacious]

I've been there and done that, and cannot bring myself to recommend the experience. I do think physician-assisted suicide should be legal, but only for terminal illnesses; not mental ones, and especially not ones which can be cured or otherwise treated.

If anyone's seriously considering suicide as an option (though the OP does not seem to), here is a lovely list of suicide hotlines by country. And here is a guide to coping with suicidal thoughts.