RE: If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?
August 8, 2021 at 11:29 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2021 at 11:30 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 8, 2021 at 9:22 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Sure, but the instinct to live is just that; a biological instinct. Simply that we can be rational; a de facto attribute or characteristic of being both alive and cognitively capable; isn’t a rational argument for the continuation of life itself, or that the choice to live is somehow a more rational choice than the alternative. At least as far as I can tell. It sounds like you’re saying, “choosing life over death is the rational conclusion because if you stop living you’ll be dead.”I don't think that we can dispense with the rationality of a thing purely on account of it also being a biological instinct. It's rational to take a piss when we need to, after all.
Quote:What premise? That life is preferable to death? Or, that life is “better”All sorts of rational things are ripe for debate.
than death? I’d say both of those are ripe for debate.
Quote:Quote:Consider this, while we might easily accept any number of rational cases for life, of the relatively few rational cases for death we might accept - do we imagine the person to be thinking clearly?
I would say yes. Not in all cases of course, but yes.
This is interesting. In what case (or sort of case) where an animal like us might choose death over life would you be concerned with biological instinct as a dealbreaker - but not whatever duress, misfortune, or abject misery the subject might be considering when making that choice?
More fundamentally, if person can be thinking clearly and rationally choose death, couldn't they do the same for life?
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