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David Hume wrote an interesting essay against the criminality of suicide:
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/suicide.htm
The whole thing is an interesting read, but there were two arguments that struck me in particular. The first being that if ending your life is an encroachment on the right of your creator, isn't saving your life also culpable for the same reason? The second is that if your life does not belong to you (a common argument against terminating it), then why is risking your life for glory considered heroism rather than criminal? Here are the relevant quotes in case I'm distorting the text:
Were the disposal of human life so much reserved as the peculiar province of the Almighty, that it were an encroachment on his right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. If I turn aside a stone which is falling upon my head, I disturb the course of nature, and I invade the peculiar province of the Almighty, by lengthening out my life beyond the period which by the general laws of matter and motion he had assigned it.
If my life be not my own, it were criminal for me to put it in danger, as {14} well as to dispose of it; nor could one man deserve the appellation of hero, whom glory or friendship transports into the greatest dangers, and another merit the reproach of wretch or misereant who puts a period to his life, from the same or like motives.
These are arguments against the religious condemnation of suicide, but perhaps more relevant now is the charge that suicide is selfish and harmful to society. Hume reasons that to retire from society you only cease to do it benefit, not actively harm it. But even further, if we assume that we have perpetual obligation to actively benefit society, it still cannot be expected that someone should undertake great harm to themselves for a trivial benefit to society. And if you fail to benefit society at all, and even keep others from being their most useful to it, then suicide is not only blameless but even praiseworthy. Here is the section I'm trying to paraphrase:
A MAN who retires from life does no harm to society: He only ceases to do good; which, if it is an injury, is of the lowest kind. -- All our obligations to do good to society seem to imply something reciprocal. I receive the benefits of society, and therefore ought to promote its interests; but when I withdraw myself altogether from society, can I be bound any longer? But allowing that our obligations to do good were perpetual, they have certainly some bounds; I am not obliged to do a small good to society at the expence of a {19} great harm to myself; why then should I prolong a miserable existence, because of some frivolous advantage which the public may perhaps receive from me? If upon account of age and infirmities, I may lawfully resign any office, and employ my time altogether in fencing against these calamities, and alleviating, as much as possible, the miseries of my future life: why may I not cut short these miseries at once by an action which is no more prejudicial to society? -- But suppose that it is no longer in my power to promote the interest of society, suppose that I am a burden to it, suppose that my life hinders some person from being much more useful to society. In such cases, my resignation of life must not only be innocent, but laudable. And most people who lie under any temptation to abandon existence, are in some such situation; those who have health, or power, or authority, have commonly better reason to be in humour with the world. ([editor's note] 4) {20}
He ends with some good common sense that I often see lacking in discussions on suicide: that death is scary to us all, and that it takes a great impetus to actively seek it out. Even if no reason for unhappiness is apparent, the person must have felt "an incurable depravity or gloominess of temper as must poison all enjoyment, [that renders] him equally miserable as if he had been loaded with the most grievous misfortunes." I think most people acknowledge this, and disagree only with the "incurable" part. That the "cure" has been found by psychiatry... well, I think that's a real stretch, but I won't digress if people aren't interested in taking up that line. I'll end with the concluding idea that needs no summary:
If suicide be supposed a crime, 'tis only cowardice can impel us to it. If it be no crime, both prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence, when it becomes a burthen. 'Tis the only way that we can then be useful to society, by setting an example, which if imitated, would preserve to every one his chance for happiness in life, {22} and would effectually free him from all danger of misery.5{23}
 
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Hyrule19162 Posts
Generally, suicide and heroic death are seen as different because suicide is typically done to end suffering (real or not, physical and/or mental), whereas a heroic death usually involves saving other lives, and tends to work out as "1 vs many".
The utilitarian argument that ending sadness net benefits the individual and causes no harm to society is countered by the idea that the individual is permanently removing the chance of increasing net happiness later (the future is unknown and whatnot), which is considered a harmful act. However, this is countered by the same logic that suicide will end a definite harm.
In the case of an individual causing active harm to society, he is partisan and cannot be allowed to judge his own level of harm against another, and therefore cannot seek to solve the issue alone. The individual would need a non-partisan judge to examine the harm of living vs the harm of suicide, and then enforce the decision, which is more akin to a death sentence or pardon, and thus not suicide.
In general, utilitarian philosophies are silly and circular and each argument is basically a counter to itself and should be ignored.
That aside, suicide is a crime (nowadays) so police have the legal right to forcibly enter a private premises to prevent a crime in progress, and so that treatment (psychiatric) can be applied against their will as "punishment" (normally, people need to consent to receiving medical treatment).
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I don't care for "harm/benefit" analysis either, especially when people attempt to make it quantitative. The thought of needing a judge to determine your utility and pass judgement sounds like something out of a nightmare dystopia. Yet that is such a small step away from seizing a suicidal person as a criminal, and punishing them with the euphemism of medical treatment.
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Hyrule19162 Posts
It's not, really, if you subscribe to a utilitarian ethos. You go to a judge and say "does my continued life cause more net harm than my immediate death" and then the judge says yes or no and then everyone is happy. Which is one of the reasons I find utilitarian views silly.
And we already force suicidal people into treatment, so does that make us a dystopian society?
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I'd consider his last point to be the most important one, since it turns his defense of suicide into something very modern and rational, far removed from any flippant interpretations of suicide as something that should be generally permissive (not implying that this is your interpretation @OP).
Consider that the structure of his argument for suicide was to show that only something could be criminal if it transgressed "our duty either to God, our neighbour, or ourselves." He then argues that suicide does not transgress our duty to either one of those and thus is not criminal. But in his argument that suicide does not transgress our duty towards ourselves, he makes the very important point that this could only be the case if life for said person had become "worse even than annihilation". So, from the converse, it means that suicide is a transgression of our duty towards ourselves if life is not worse than death at the moment of suicide.
Now, how do we judge whether our life is so terribly and unrecoverably awful that it is better off to be dead? This unfortunately hits Hume's weakest spot in the essay, since his overall point was to argue against "superstition", and so his argument against the religious condemnation of suicide takes up almost the entirety of the essay, while the other two arguments from the social and personal perspectives take up barely any space at all. This is ok, since we can pick up where Hume left off and think about what things he'd have to establish for his final argument to work:
1. For one, he'd have to argue that it was possible for life to be actually worse than death and he'd have to show when exactly that would be the case. To do that, he'd have to give us an ethical theory with an account of the good life and then draw from that the conclusion that certain forms of life are so bad as to not be worth living (this would also assume that he'd reject the Christian notion of life as having infinite inherent value, which, considering his anti-religious stance, is a given). I take his use of "incurable" at the end to be rhetorical flourish and mean something like "very bad" (check the context), but even if we interpret it as actually meaning "perpetually terrible", it's still too vague and would need to be worked out in more detail.
2. He'd have to give an argument as to whether or not it was ever rational for us to trust our own judgement about being in a situation that was truly worse than death. After all, pain, strong emotions and all those things that usually lead us to contemplate suicide do very much tend to be things that significantly cloud our judgements, so he'd have to take that into account. He'd probably argue for the possibility of rational assessment even in the face of strong pain or emotions and claim that if we have good enough reasons and make an informed and well thought out decision, then suicide would be still permissible (i.e. not a transgression), which I'd agree with.
But besides that, his argument that suicide (under certain conditions again!) is not a transgression of our duty towards society is also open to deontological objections, but since deontology was developed after Hume's time and his (again) main purpose was to argue against the religious condemnation of suicide, this is understandable and excusable. I can go into more detail on that one some other time (but without dismissing significant branches of moral philosophy as silly, circular or "a counter to itself" that should be ignored - oh the hubris.)
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Both suicide and living have the same outcome so there aren't any long term benefits from living. Not for an individual at least.
So in a way suffering for society does make sense. On the other hand, whatever meaningful goals humanity is aiming for, we aren't doing it very effectively and a group of healthy individuals could easily replace the sick one in achieving those goals.
The fact that we are mortal makes individualistic thinking meaningless, in my opinion. Because an individual can have no real gain at the expense of others it is also a good moral basis.
In the end it doesn't matter if you outlaw suicide, for obvious reasons.
e. Now if someone was to argue humanity has a goal, that would be interesting.
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On April 08 2014 05:46 tofucake wrote:
And we already force suicidal people into treatment, so does that make us a dystopian society?
There are shades of dystopia in ours and probably all societies. I think the medicalization of punishment is unique to us, though I could be wrong. Before, punishment was justified by being "good for the soul"; now it is for the supposed "health" of the punished and society. Maybe it's always been just for the pleasure of punishing.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2014 05:46 GERMasta wrote:
I'd consider his last point to be the most important one, since it turns his defense of suicide into something very modern and rational, far removed from any flippant interpretations of suicide as something that should be generally permissive (not implying that this is your interpretation @OP).
Consider that the structure of his argument for suicide was to show that only something could be criminal if it transgressed "our duty either to God, our neighbour, or ourselves." He then argues that suicide does not transgress our duty to either one of those and thus is not criminal. But in his argument that suicide does not transgress our duty towards ourselves, he makes the very important point that this could only be the case if life for said person had become "worse even than annihilation". So, from the converse, it means that suicide is a transgression of our duty towards ourselves if life is not worse than death at the moment of suicide.
Now, how do we judge whether our life is so terribly and unrecoverably awful that it is better off to be dead? This unfortunately hits Hume's weakest spot in the essay, since his overall point was to argue against "superstition", and so his argument against the religious condemnation of suicide takes up almost the entirety of the essay, while the other two arguments from the social and personal perspectives take up barely any space at all. This is ok, since we can pick up where Hume left off and think about what things he'd have to establish for his final argument to work:
1. For one, he'd have to argue that it was possible for life to be actually worse than death and he'd have to show when exactly that would be the case. To do that, he'd have to give us an ethical theory with an account of the good life and then draw from that the conclusion that certain forms of life are so bad as to not be worth living (this would also assume that he'd reject the Christian notion of life as having infinite inherent value, which, considering his anti-religious stance, is a given). I take his use of "incurable" at the end to be rhetorical flourish and mean something like "very bad" (check the context), but even if we interpret it as actually meaning "perpetually terrible", it's still too vague and would need to be worked out in more detail.
2. He'd have to give an argument as to whether or not it was ever rational for us to trust our own judgement about being in a situation that was truly worse than death. After all, pain, strong emotions and all those things that usually lead us to contemplate suicide do very much tend to be things that significantly cloud our judgements, so he'd have to take that into account. He'd probably argue for the possibility of rational assessment even in the face of strong pain or emotions and claim that if we have good enough reasons and make an informed and well thought out decision, then suicide would be still permissible (i.e. not a transgression), which I'd agree with.
But besides that, his argument that suicide (under certain conditions again!) is not a transgression of our duty towards society is also open to deontological objections, but since deontology was developed after Hume's time and his (again) main purpose was to argue against the religious condemnation of suicide, this is understandable and excusable. I can go into more detail on that one some other time (but without dismissing significant branches of moral philosophy as silly, circular or "a counter to itself" that should be ignored - oh the hubris.)
Interesting post, thanks... it raises points that didn't occur to me. In order to argue that life is worse than death, you'd not only have to make an account of the good life, but you'd also have to weigh it against what lies after death, which we cannot do. No matter how much we frame and measure our life, who can say what it is in comparison to the afterlife or oblivion? Therefore I don't know whether it even has meaning to say "a life preferable to death". And this is given that we can even reckon up our life correctly, as you said in 2.
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I don't see how you could logically argue that suicide should be illegal.
First, nobody ever asked you whether you wanted to be born. You had no say in your existence, you simply happened due to circumstances out of your control. You can presuppose that a creator made you exist, but even then, I don't see why being created by a higher being makes you somehow obligated to continue living UNLESS that higher being has a way of punishing you after death (i.e. Christianity, some other religions); however, even that in itself says nothing about morals.
These are arguments against the religious condemnation of suicide, but perhaps more relevant now is the charge that suicide is selfish and harmful to society.
Similar to what I already said, nobody asked you whether you wanted to be part of society. On top of that, you have no obligation to society to continue partaking in it. For example, consider a young child that through the ages of 8 to 18 received private education funded by parents. Does that child need to pay back the parents? No, because the child had no way to refuse or deny what it was given at that age. What we owe society is similar: arguing that the resources invested in us require us to stick around so that we can make a return is silly, because we were simply given those resources; there was never a contract detailing what we owe to society that any of us agreed to.
If you don't believe in an afterlife it's all irrelevant anyway, because killing yourself simply ends everything and removes your mind from existence.
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I do agree that suicide is selfish. Personally i would never commit suicide or forgive anyone close to me committing suicide. But that's just personal opinion. I overall agree with chocolate.
I would even say the feelings against suicide are fairly natural, seeing how a suicide would have a great impact on smaller civilisations in prehistoric times. Of course, that's just speculation, but looking at it from that perspective, it wouldnt surprise me there would be a natural inclination against it.
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In order to argue that life is worse than death, you'd not only have to make an account of the good life, but you'd also have to weigh it against what lies after death, which we cannot do. No matter how much we frame and measure our life, who can say what it is in comparison to the afterlife or oblivion? Therefore I don't know whether it even has meaning to say "a life preferable to death". And this is given that we can even reckon up our life correctly, as you said in 2. Very good! You correctly spotted a possible objection: When we usually decide on a course of action x and use the reason that "we would be better off doing x", then we tend to make a comparison between the state we are in right now and the state we would be after having done x. If I'm better off losing weight because the state I am in right now is worse than the state I would be if I were to lose weight, then I have a reason to lose weight. But, as your objection goes, if there is no afterlife, then death is the end of existence, and states presuppose existence, so being dead is not a state that we could compare to the state before our death, so we can never make a rational decision based on such a comparison.
The problem is that requiring those two states that would allow for comparison to make a rational decision as to whether suicide is warranted leads to some strange consequences: Imagine the most happy person in the world, someone who has all the goods in life, and imagine you saving his life in a near death situation: But if the two states requirement is true, then you cannot say that by having saved his life, you have benefitted him at all, since that would presuppose that it was good for him to continue living his happy life, which we cannot say given that death is not a state we can compare his good life to. So we can't say that saving this guy's life is doing him a favour at all. Does this not seem a bit strange?
I think this is because the two state requirement is fine for normal, everyday situations (like losing weight), but breaks down when it comes to questions of life and death. After all, we don't have to say that if the happy person were to die at time x, then he'd be in somesort of inferior state called death, but we rather say that the life he lives at x is a great life, and since it's great, to lose that life would be bad, and since losing it would be bad, saving this life would benefit this person. And that's all there really is to saying "you'd be better off dead": Instead of describing a strange state of death, we just compare two potential lives.
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On April 08 2014 05:46 GERMasta wrote:
I'd consider his last point to be the most important one, since it turns his defense of suicide into something very modern and rational, far removed from any flippant interpretations of suicide as something that should be generally permissive (not implying that this is your interpretation @OP).
Consider that the structure of his argument for suicide was to show that only something could be criminal if it transgressed "our duty either to God, our neighbour, or ourselves." He then argues that suicide does not transgress our duty to either one of those and thus is not criminal. But in his argument that suicide does not transgress our duty towards ourselves, he makes the very important point that this could only be the case if life for said person had become "worse even than annihilation". So, from the converse, it means that suicide is a transgression of our duty towards ourselves if life is not worse than death at the moment of suicide.
Now, how do we judge whether our life is so terribly and unrecoverably awful that it is better off to be dead? This unfortunately hits Hume's weakest spot in the essay, since his overall point was to argue against "superstition", and so his argument against the religious condemnation of suicide takes up almost the entirety of the essay, while the other two arguments from the social and personal perspectives take up barely any space at all. This is ok, since we can pick up where Hume left off and think about what things he'd have to establish for his final argument to work:
1. For one, he'd have to argue that it was possible for life to be actually worse than death and he'd have to show when exactly that would be the case. To do that, he'd have to give us an ethical theory with an account of the good life and then draw from that the conclusion that certain forms of life are so bad as to not be worth living (this would also assume that he'd reject the Christian notion of life as having infinite inherent value, which, considering his anti-religious stance, is a given). I take his use of "incurable" at the end to be rhetorical flourish and mean something like "very bad" (check the context), but even if we interpret it as actually meaning "perpetually terrible", it's still too vague and would need to be worked out in more detail.
No, he wouldn't have to show anything - if it were true, the argument would cut both ways: for anyone to choose to go on living, they would first have to argue that it's possible for life to actually be worse than death. Neither position can be proved, and neither position can be assumed. The way it really works is that people make half-informed decisions based on invalid induction and gut feeling, every moment of their lives, because that's the best any of us have to work with.
2. He'd have to give an argument as to whether or not it was ever rational for us to trust our own judgement about being in a situation that was truly worse than death. After all, pain, strong emotions and all those things that usually lead us to contemplate suicide do very much tend to be things that significantly cloud our judgements, so he'd have to take that into account. He'd probably argue for the possibility of rational assessment even in the face of strong pain or emotions and claim that if we have good enough reasons and make an informed and well thought out decision, then suicide would be still permissible (i.e. not a transgression), which I'd agree with.
But besides that, his argument that suicide (under certain conditions again!) is not a transgression of our duty towards society is also open to deontological objections, but since deontology was developed after Hume's time and his (again) main purpose was to argue against the religious condemnation of suicide, this is understandable and excusable. I can go into more detail on that one some other time (but without dismissing significant branches of moral philosophy as silly, circular or "a counter to itself" that should be ignored - oh the hubris.)
And yet again, the argument cuts both ways. Maybe fear of death clouds our judgement and scares us into living lives of anguish. Until you have ruled out this possibility, then not making every possible effort at every moment to bring your life to end is impermissible.
Deontology is a mess of moral absolutism and divine command, with nothing to add to Hume's excellent treatment of ethics.
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On April 08 2014 03:09 Mothra wrote:
I think most people acknowledge this, and disagree only with the "incurable" part. That the "cure" has been found by psychiatry... well, I think that's a real stretch, but I won't digress if people aren't interested in taking up that line. I'll end with the concluding idea that needs no summary:
I think you are misreading the quote. Hume says that the condition is felt to be incurable, not that it is, necessarily. There are of course various cures, which sometimes work, sometimes don't.
I don't think it's really a stretch, as a large minority of people consider suicide at one point in their lives. I've seen numbers like 25% considered suicide during high-school, although how seriously, I don't remember. Most don't go through with it and many end up leading lives that they find satisfying. These people can be considered to have been 'cured' one way or another.
IMO that is the best argument against suicide: there are many people who feel hopeless, believing that their condition can't improve and yet it does eventually. It's not even a question of making a sacrifice for their future selves. If they thought there was a chance that things would get better they would fight on.
Now to be fair, there are many reasons for suicide. There's socially condoned forms of suicide for honor or whatever else. There is suicide to end unbearable physical suffering. Technically, it's possible that someone might end their lives due to deep philosophical reasons, though I suspect most of the time there's a different underlying reason. What I'm saying mostly applies to suicide due to various affective conditions, mostly major depression.
So there's an issue of distorted perception. The question is what role does social stigma play in guiding people towards the decision they would take if their perception was unimpaired. I don't know. On the one hand it does increase the suicidal person's suffering in the short term. This is a bad thing in itself and in many cases represents an increased risk of suicide. However it does feel like some amount of stigma might be beneficial to give friends and family time for the necessary intervention.
At the very least it should be acknowledged that suicide affects more than one person. That, and our biologically induced fear of life should be enough to make people stop and think and search for alternatives, before committing themselves to something permanent.
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The whole thing is an interesting read, but there were two arguments that struck me in particular. The first being that if ending your life is an encroachment on the right of your creator, isn't saving your life also culpable for the same reason?
There's nothing to discuss here because there's no creator...
The second is that if your life does not belong to you (a common argument against terminating it), then why is risking your life for glory considered heroism rather than criminal?
Because people ready to risk their lives for a good cause benefits the state, the society in general. People too weak to live and work and pay taxes, who suicide when they grow up, they are investment with no return. Obvious.
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Hong Kong9162 Posts
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On April 08 2014 04:50 tofucake wrote:
Generally, suicide and heroic death are seen as different because suicide is typically done to end suffering (real or not, physical and/or mental), whereas a heroic death usually involves saving other lives, and tends to work out as "1 vs many".
The utilitarian argument that ending sadness net benefits the individual and causes no harm to society is countered by the idea that the individual is permanently removing the chance of increasing net happiness later (the future is unknown and whatnot), which is considered a harmful act. However, this is countered by the same logic that suicide will end a definite harm.
In the case of an individual causing active harm to society, he is partisan and cannot be allowed to judge his own level of harm against another, and therefore cannot seek to solve the issue alone. The individual would need a non-partisan judge to examine the harm of living vs the harm of suicide, and then enforce the decision, which is more akin to a death sentence or pardon, and thus not suicide.
In general, utilitarian philosophies are silly and circular and each argument is basically a counter to itself and should be ignored.
That aside, suicide is a crime (nowadays) so police have the legal right to forcibly enter a private premises to prevent a crime in progress, and so that treatment (psychiatric) can be applied against their will as "punishment" (normally, people need to consent to receiving medical treatment).
Because different utilitarians view things slightly differently and come to different conclusions we ought to ignore all of them?
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Also, speaking of suicide and silly philosophy: Kant condemned suicide as well as masturbation and the donation of hair and teeth.
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Many if not most would agree that assisted suicide should be alright for elderly people with terminal illnesses who are suffering. As long as it's their choice.
The legality of suicide as stated by the OP doesn't matter because you can't charge a dead person with a crime.
On topic, discussing suicide is weird because as mentioned, it's possible you'd be admitted to a psych ward for admitting to feeling suicidal.
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I think a lot comes down to suicidal thought being (considered) a sign of poor mental health. If that is the case, laws should be in place to discourage us from making a decision when we are not at mental capacity to make such large decisions.
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Hyrule19162 Posts
On April 08 2014 13:21 Mindcrime wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2014 04:50 tofucake wrote:
Generally, suicide and heroic death are seen as different because suicide is typically done to end suffering (real or not, physical and/or mental), whereas a heroic death usually involves saving other lives, and tends to work out as "1 vs many".
The utilitarian argument that ending sadness net benefits the individual and causes no harm to society is countered by the idea that the individual is permanently removing the chance of increasing net happiness later (the future is unknown and whatnot), which is considered a harmful act. However, this is countered by the same logic that suicide will end a definite harm.
In the case of an individual causing active harm to society, he is partisan and cannot be allowed to judge his own level of harm against another, and therefore cannot seek to solve the issue alone. The individual would need a non-partisan judge to examine the harm of living vs the harm of suicide, and then enforce the decision, which is more akin to a death sentence or pardon, and thus not suicide.
In general, utilitarian philosophies are silly and circular and each argument is basically a counter to itself and should be ignored.
That aside, suicide is a crime (nowadays) so police have the legal right to forcibly enter a private premises to prevent a crime in progress, and so that treatment (psychiatric) can be applied against their will as "punishment" (normally, people need to consent to receiving medical treatment). Because different utilitarians view things slightly differently and come to different conclusions we ought to ignore all of them?
Pretty much. Main difference between views is weight of individual good vs societal good.
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On April 08 2014 10:57 Sejanus wrote:Show nested quote +
The whole thing is an interesting read, but there were two arguments that struck me in particular. The first being that if ending your life is an encroachment on the right of your creator, isn't saving your life also culpable for the same reason?
There's nothing to discuss here because there's no creator...
I'm not even religious but I think it's silly to deny an intelligence behind our universe (and beyond?) Thanks everyone for the interesting responses... they deserve replies but my brain suicided. Frankenbrain...
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