Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

No, one is a bad action and the other is a desperate action. Who are you to say that the sadness and regret of the "survivors" outweighs the suffering of the suicidal person? Who are you to declare yourself the decider of whose suffering is more important?

I don't think ethics is a balance between the self and others. If that were so, then any act would be justified if I cared more about my own feelings than those of others. Maybe a pedophile has an over-arching, burning desire raging in him, and he sees some child's suffering as "a few minutes of discomfort." Would you accept his act? Who are you to say his suffering, relative to the suffering of the child, doesn't matter?

Ok fine, suicide is just as immoral as asking a person not to commit suicide. Knowing that your asking them to stay alive will bring them great amounts of suffering.

I didn't ask anyone to stay alive. I'm not talking about whether responses to suicide are ethical-- only the act itself.

Why do you think you have any business deciding who suffers more and/or who does or does not deserve to have their suffering considered when a decision is made?

You keep asking "who are you," but that's a red herring. I didn't invent ethics-- I am, however, aware that it's a social institution. Without people to interact with, ethics would have very little (if any) meaning, since you would have no capacity to do any social harm or good with your actions.

Why don't we stop with the irrational, emotion-driven arguments on both sides of the fence, and start going through the pros and cons here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_suicide

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How many people end their own lives because, in large part, they feel that nobody else cares about them being alive? If you make the assessment based upon the honestly-held conviction (whether or not it is actually true) that your death would go unnoticed or unlamented (or worse, would be cheered), your perspective of the ethics of suicide is going to be entirely different from that which you're suggesting.

That's why I've said already that in a deterministic view, a person is not sensibly called "unethical," but rather the act is unethical.

There are many reasons why someone might be suicidal, but I'd say either chronic or strong bipolar depression is the most common cause. We're talking about people whose brain chemistry distorts their world view, and this causes them to lean toward an act that a normally-functioning person wouldn't consider.

It may be that such a person has no real agency-- if the psychological pain is strong enough for any person, then suicide is probably inevitable. HOWEVER, since the psychological pain skews the weight of value away from the wellbeing of others, and since ethics is very much defined by weighing the importance of others, then the act is STILL unethical.