A logical approach to suicide

[Hype]

Thank you for that information, pretty neat.

However, I think point 2 is somewhat strange, since common sense comes into play. Common sense says life has some sort of intrinsic value, when it actually doesn't. The value of life, of one's own existence, of one's experiences, of life's beauty and all of that are pure human inventions.

What I mean to say that even though most likely 95% of suicidal thinking is brought by lack of reasoning, there are cases in which the decision is weighed against some other options, logic (real logic, not I diez because i sadz boo hoo logic) comes into play, and ending one's life genuinely seems like the best course of action. Thus, there would be cases in which suicidal thinking is in fact reasonable.

Note that I distinguished between 'suicidal thinking' and thoughts which involve suicide. I said that thoughts that involve suicide can be rational, but suicidal thinking (i.e., suicidal ideation) is clinical, and never rational. What you said ends up just agreeing with what I said, but you don't distinguish suicidal ideation (as a process of thinking which is, itself, suicidal) from a calmly reasoned argument that concludes that suicide is what one ought to do.

It's only arguable that the latter can actually be done, and that is why, by the way, that voluntary euthanasia requires competence.

[Larry B.]

Thank you for that information, pretty neat.

However, I think point 2 is somewhat strange, since common sense comes into play. Common sense says life has some sort of intrinsic value, when it actually doesn't. The value of life, of one's own existence, of one's experiences, of life's beauty and all of that are pure human inventions.

What I mean to say that even though most likely 95% of suicidal thinking is brought by lack of reasoning, there are cases in which the decision is weighed against some other options, logic (real logic, not I diez because i sadz boo hoo logic) comes into play, and ending one's life genuinely seems like the best course of action. Thus, there would be cases in which suicidal thinking is in fact reasonable.

Note that I distinguished between 'suicidal thinking' and thoughts which involve suicide. I said that thoughts that involve suicide can be rational, but suicidal thinking (i.e., suicidal ideation) is clinical, and never rational. What you said ends up just agreeing with what I said, but you don't distinguish suicidal ideation (as a process of thinking which is, itself, suicidal) from a calmly reasoned argument that concludes that suicide is what one ought to do.

It's only arguable that the latter can actually be done, and that is why, by the way, that voluntary euthanasia requires competence.

[dali]

I used to be almost suicidal.

IMO it's depression based.

[clickie]

Most of you never had to deal with the kind of pressure thats put upon a young kid with that much potential.

Fortunately i was able to balance out the pros and cons and eventually live the life alot of people dream of.

[dali]

Most of you never had to deal with the kind of pressure thats put upon a young kid with that much potential.

Fortunately i was able to balance out the pros and cons and eventually live the life alot of people dream of.

you forgot <sarcasm> </sarcasm>

[SR]

Reason is not the virtue of the artist.

[Hype]

Reason is not the virtue of the artist.

Reason in the absence of feeling, indeed. 'Sterile art' is a contradiction in terms. But 'reason', conceived not as a procedural step-wise deductive process, but as a higher form of understanding (intuition), in the presence of, and in concert with, joy, produces the greatest art.

[SR]

Reason is not the virtue of the artist.

Reason in the absence of feeling, indeed. 'Sterile art' is a contradiction in terms. But 'reason', conceived not as a procedural step-wise deductive process, but as a higher form of understanding (intuition), in the presence of, and in concert with, joy, produces the greatest art.

I don't believe one can feel and think equally, or proportionally. Just as there is no zenith of reason available to us, feeling is somewhat limitless and unatainable in it's dimention and depth.....it is the foundation for art.......one can lament about injustice (as I think art does well) yet understand the the concept of injustice.....and yet, no universally understood rational person can fix injustice, nor understand it completely.

Art comments, philosophers try to understand

[Hype]

Reason is not the virtue of the artist.

Reason in the absence of feeling, indeed. 'Sterile art' is a contradiction in terms. But 'reason', conceived not as a procedural step-wise deductive process, but as a higher form of understanding (intuition), in the presence of, and in concert with, joy, produces the greatest art.

I don't believe one can feel and think equally, or proportionally. Just as there is no zenith of reason available to us, feeling is somewhat limitless and unatainable in it's dimention and depth.....it is the foundation for art.......one can lament about injustice (as I think art does well) yet understand the the concept of injustice.....and yet, no universally understood rational person can fix injustice, nor understand it completely.

Art comments, philosophers try to understand

I just had in mind the kind of understanding necessary to reproduce what the person feels and what the mind sees. Da Vinci, e.g., had an almost superhuman intuitive faculty that understood the connection between the images he produced and the things they were images of...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17907305

During his lifetime, Leonardo made thousands of pages of notes and drawings on the human body.

He wanted to understand how the body was composed and how it worked. But at his death in 1519, his great treatise on the body was incomplete and his scientific papers were unpublished.

Based on what survives, clinical anatomists believe that Leonardo's anatomical work was hundreds of years ahead of its time, and in some respects it can still help us understand the body today.

Abstract artists may be expressing the same intuitive faculty in an anti-realist mode, but I don't believe there's a real difference. (Dali's early realist paintings are exceptional...another example, they belie a skill that no mere painter could ever hope to have.)

True, there are degrees of expression and understanding that can co-mingle to produce great art in different ways, but man, when both come together at the highest level, they're untouchable.

[zdilla]

im not trying to hi-jack this thread, but when i painted this i was at the height of an agitated mania state. my body hurt so much from lack of sleep and heightened awareness and i was actually frightened the end was near. thank god im not there right now.

[SR]

Point taken.

[Pure Method]

re: Catherine Malabou - I believe she would agree with your view that who we are, how we think, etc. is all in (large) part determined by external circumstances, influences etc. - your preexisting universe. It's a good read, she's the last student of Derrida, but is very much aware and supportive of modern science and is not so much a charlatan as you refer to ol' Jackie boy.

[Hype]

re: Catherine Malabou - I believe she would agree with your view that who we are, how we think, etc. is all in (large) part determined by external circumstances, influences etc. - your preexisting universe. It's a good read, she's the last student of Derrida, but is very much aware and supportive of modern science and is not so much a charlatan as you refer to ol' Jackie boy.

Well the fact that she seems to like Spinoza helps, since that's what I work on. But I do it from an analytic perspective.

[Everybody's Friend]

im not trying to hi-jack this thread, but when i painted this i was at the height of an agitated mania state. my body hurt so much from lack of sleep and heightened awareness and i was actually frightened the end was near. thank god im not there right now.

I actually think this is quite striking.

Is it of someone real?

[Hype]

im not trying to hi-jack this thread, but when i painted this i was at the height of an agitated mania state. my body hurt so much from lack of sleep and heightened awareness and i was actually frightened the end was near. thank god im not there right now.

I actually think this is quite striking.

Is it of someone real?

And is her face that melted?

[zdilla]

guys, i painted this from the model.

[chaos]

A Canadian court's ruling: "[T]he provisions of the Criminal Code preventing physician assistance in dying violate disabled people’s right not only to equality, but also to life, liberty, and security. She thus opened the door for physician assistance in dying for any grievously and irremediably ill competent adult, under conditions not very different from those that apply in other jurisdictions where physician assistance in dying is legal."

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... g-in-court

Dying in Court
Jul. 16, 2012
Peter Singer

UTRECHT – Gloria Taylor, a Canadian, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Over a period of a few years, her muscles will weaken until she can no longer walk, use her hands, chew, swallow, speak, and ultimately, breathe. Then she will die. Taylor does not want to go through all of that. She wants to die at a time of her own choosing.

Suicide is not a crime in Canada, so, as Taylor put it: “I simply cannot understand why the law holds that the able-bodied who are terminally ill are allowed to shoot themselves when they have had enough because they are able to hold a gun steady, but because my illness affects my ability to move and control my body, I cannot be allowed compassionate help to allow me to commit an equivalent act using lethal medication.”

Taylor sees the law as offering her a cruel choice: either end her life when she still finds it enjoyable, but is capable of killing herself, or give up the right that others have to end their lives when they choose. She went to court, arguing that the provisions of the Criminal Code that prevent her from receiving assistance in dying are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which gives Canadians rights to life, liberty, personal security, and equality.

The court hearing was remarkable for the thoroughness with which Justice Lynn Smith examined the ethical questions before her. She received expert opinions from leading figures on both sides of the issue, not only Canadians, but also authorities in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The range of expertise included general medicine, palliative care, neurology, disability studies, gerontology, psychiatry, psychology, law, philosophy, and bioethics.

Many of these experts were cross-examined in court. Along with Taylor’s right to die, decades of debate about assistance in dying came under scrutiny.

Last month, Smith issued her judgment. The case, Carter v. Canada, could serve as a textbook on the facts, law, and ethics of assistance in dying.

For example, there has been much debate about the difference between the accepted practice of withholding life support or some other treatment, knowing that the patient is likely to die without it, and the contested practice of actively helping a patient to die. Smith’s ruling finds that “a bright-line ethical distinction is elusive,” and that the view that there is no such ethical distinction is “persuasive.” She considers, and accepts, an argument advanced by Wayne Sumner, a distinguished Canadian philosopher: if the patient’s circumstances are such that suicide would be ethically permissible were the patient able to do it, then it is also ethically permissible for the physician to provide the means for the patient to do it.

Smith also had to assess whether there are public-policy considerations that count against the legalization of physician assistance in dying. Her decision focuses mainly on the risk that vulnerable people – for example, the aged or those with disabilities – will be pressured into accepting assistance in dying when they do not really want it.

There are conflicting views about whether legalization of voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, and of physician assistance in dying in Oregon, has led to an increase in the number of vulnerable people being killed or assisted in dying withouttheirfull, informed consent. For many years, Herbert Hendin, a psychiatrist and suicide expert, has asserted that the safeguards incorporated in these laws fail to protect the vulnerable. He gave evidence at the trial.

So, too, on the other side, did Hans van Delden, a Dutch nursing home physician and bioethicist who for the past 20 years has been involved in all of the major empirical studies of end-of-life decisions in his country. Peggy Battin, the most prominent American bioethicist working on assisted dying and euthanasia, also took the stand.

In this dispute, Smith comes down firmly on the side of van Delden and Battin, finding that “the empirical evidence gathered in the two jurisdictions does not support the hypothesis that physician-assisted death has imposed a particular risk to socially vulnerable populations.” Instead, she says, “The evidence does support Dr. van Delden’s position that it is possible for a state to design a system that both permits some individuals to access physician-assisted death and socially protects vulnerable individuals and groups.” (The most recent Dutch report, released after Smith handed down her judgment, confirms that there has been no dramatic increase in euthanasia cases in the Netherlands.)

Smith then declared, after considering the applicable law, that the provisions of the Criminal Code preventing physician assistance in dying violate disabled people’s right not only to equality, but also to life, liberty, and security. She thus opened the door for physician assistance in dying for any grievously and irremediably ill competent adult, under conditions not very different from those that apply in other jurisdictions where physician assistance in dying is legal.

The decision will almost certainly be appealed, and the final outcome seems likely to depend on the appellate judges’ interpretations of Canadian law. But Smith’s verdict on the ethics of assistance in dying – and of the facts regarding jurisdictions, like the Netherlands and Oregon, that have it – seems likely to stand for a long time to come.

[Hype]

One of the profs here is a student of Singer's, and is a Canada Research Chair in Bioethics. He was the head of the Royal Society Panel on End of Life Care. I took a class with him.

Personally, I have trouble with the amount of political hoop-jumping in this area... it's all public-policy craziness.

[dimasok]

There is too much pro-natalist thinking going on here. As an antinatalist, I say there is no worth in life at all and I can imagine all the rational arguments the boy used in his suicide journal.

The fact that everyone tries to convince others to live is just pathetic since life is inherently futile, death is eternal and birth inopportune and depression is a completely rational choice for someone who is tired of all this.

[Hype]

There is too much pro-natalist thinking going on here. As an antinatalist, I say there is no worth in life at all and I can imagine all the rational arguments the boy used in his suicide journal.

The fact that everyone tries to convince others to live is just pathetic since life is inherently futile, death is eternal and birth inopportune and depression is a completely rational choice for someone who is tired of all this.

That's an odd first post. You must've been reading David Benatar.

Your second sentence is odd, since it doesn't follow from antinatalism that depression and (by association?) suicidal ideation is rational for someone who is tired of life. Even Benatar (author of "Better Never to have Been") thinks that once you have life, there are (or at least, can be) reasons to continue getting on with it, and that there is value in doing so. It's a non-sequitur to suppose that the view that it would be better if no one were ever born (that is what antinatalism is) supports the view that suicide (or depression) is rational.

However, I don't entirely disagree with the sentiment that there can be good reasons to end one's life -- of course there can be -- great suffering is one such reason (though it is unclear just how much counts as a justification, nor is it clear whether actual suffering matters or just perceived suffering).

I don't think we should *merely* try to convince others to live... but if we see reasons why another could live a valuable life, those reasons count as reasons why that person MAY want to continue living, and there's surely nothing wrong with seeing whether people are aware of these reasons, or if they are, why they don't see them as reasons to continue on, when we do. Surely you don't think individuals always know what's best for themselves and are never wrong about what reasons they have?

[SR]

This looks fascinating....

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Sexism-Dis ... 0470674512

[farrellgirl99]

This looks fascinating....

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Sexism-Dis ... 0470674512

the description made me but id be interested to read it and see what he has to say.

[SR]

This looks fascinating....

http://www.amazon.com/Second-Sexism-Dis ... 0470674512

the description made me but id be interested to read it and see what he has to say.

why?

[dimasok]

That's an odd first post. You must've been reading David Benatar.

You were right in deducing that I read Benatar as well as Ligotti and others who wrote, blogged or vlogged about the subject (I also maintain a forum and blog myself about it).

Your second sentence is odd, since it doesn't follow from antinatalism that depression and (by association?) suicidal ideation is rational for someone who is tired of life.

It doesn't follow in all cases but in does in my case and in the case of many others. I am more of an efilist (google it :)) than an antinatalist to be honest with you (even though they're interrelated).

Even Benatar (author of "Better Never to have Been") thinks that once you have life, there are (or at least, can be) reasons to continue getting on with it, and that there is value in doing so.

Perhaps only insofar as it concerns spreading the AN message and that reproduction is the worst crime imaginable as the sole reason for all problems. All other reasons, while applicable, would merely be artificial projections of the need/desire mechanism that has no reason for existence.

It's a non-sequitur to suppose that the view that it would be better if no one were ever born (that is what antinatalism is) supports the view that suicide (or depression) is rational.

Not its not. Its very rational and one follows the other smoothly. Being an antinatalist/efilist and not remaining pessimistic and considering suicide as all rest of society considers it is the non-sequitur. While I am not saying all AN should necessarily want to die, its certainly rational and there can be no counterarguments for why an AN shouldn't do it if he reached that sort of insight about everything (apart from the usual: family, love and other mush).

However, I don't entirely disagree with the sentiment that there can be good reasons to end one's life -- of course there can be -- great suffering is one such reason (though it is unclear just how much counts as a justification, nor is it clear whether actual suffering matters or just perceived suffering).

Any reason is good enough. With all due respect, no one has any right to tell others what reasons they should have for committing suicide or what reasons are acceptable and what reasons are unacceptable - its their lives and their lives alone and they are at liberty to do whatever they want with it, including the ultimate act of suicide. Whether its due to terminal illness or prolonged depression is surely none of our business. That's why euthnasia should necessarily include everyone and not just the terminally sick. Its sickening what type of disgusting society we live in.

I don't think we should *merely* try to convince others to live... but if we see reasons why another could live a valuable life, those reasons count as reasons why that person MAY want to continue living, and there's surely nothing wrong with seeing whether people are aware of these reasons, or if they are, why they don't see them as reasons to continue on, when we do.

Sure you could try. But if they decide to refuse your "life-heroine" injections, you should then stop trying to convince them.

Surely you don't think individuals always know what's best for themselves and are never wrong about what reasons they have?

People who are antinatalists/efilists are already smart enough to understand what life is all about and are not going to be bought in by the typical mush people live for so yes these people like me are never wrong about reasons. Others very well could be (i.e. sudden loss, separation, etc) but as I replied above, you can try to convince them to live but if their problems bring them to the ultimate point of adopting AN/Efilism, then I am afraid your efforts will be in vain.

I don't want to engage in self-aggrandizement, but AN like me and others I know would never be convinced that suicide is irrational and to anyone who asks me "why shouldn't I kill myself?" I would reply "if you can muster the courage to do the act, then go ahead. Otherwise, you will have to struggle till you die and don't let others tell you it will get any better because the fundamentals are there to ensure that suffering will always be there with you in some shape or form"

[kv]

i'm curious....as a new person how did you even find this site?