My brief e-mail discussion with Yale professor Shelly Kagan concerning suicide

[elzoog]

I decided to e-mail Shelly Kagan about his lecture on suicide which you guys can watch here:

 

 

Here is how the e-mail exchange went:

 

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Hello, after viewing your lecture on suicide on YouTube, I have the following question.

 

Suppose I take a libertarian view of self ownership, that you own your self, or your own life? So therefore, you can treat your self like you do any other possession. Suppose I decide I don't like my laptop computer any more and I decide to throw it away. Nobody is going to force me to keep my laptop, or fix it right? Nobody is going to tell me that deciding that my laptop is shit, is an irrational decision. Everybody is pretty much going to say that if I think my laptop is bad, that's my decision to make.

 

Likewise, in the case of your own life, you own it. If you decide it's bad and you want to end it, why do other people have the right to, not only tell you that you aren't allowed to end it, but will label you as "crazy" and have the police come and force you to not end it?

 

Also, if people are allowed to make life decisions for you in terms of whether you can decide to end your life or not, why can't they make other life decisions as well? For example, why can't they decide BY FORCE, that you aren't allowed to become a Yale philosophy professor and that instead, you have to become a Java programmer, whether you want to be a Java programmer or not? Or that you are not allowed to marry Mary (if Mary isn't your wife or significant other, replace her with whoever is your SO) but instead, you must marry Shirly Greene, who lives in Delphos Ohio? That in fact, you MUST marry Shirly Greene even if you are gay?

__________________________

 

His reply:

 

__________________________

Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for writing, let me try to say a few things quickly, though they are of course complicated matters.

 

First, we need to distinguish between the question of whether a given person, P, has an obligation to do something, X, and the question of whether others may permissibly FORCE P to do X. I might well be morally required to call my mother on her birthday, yet it might well be the case that others simply may not permissibly force me to do so.

 

Despite the logical distinction, it COULD be true, as a matter of substantive moral theory, that whenever P is required to do X, others are permitted to force P to do it (others are always permitted to play moral police, as it were), and whenever P is NOT required to do X, others are FORBIDDEN to force P to do it (others are only permitted to enforce moral obligations). I can't take the space here to explore this issue, but the example of the call to Mom suggests to me that at the very least, it just isn't true that if P has an obligation, others may permissibly enforce it. And that means, we can't infer, from the fact that others may not permissibly force you to do something, that you don't have an obligation to do it.

 

And so, even if I were to agree with you that others may not permissibly STOP you from committing suicide, we couldn't infer anything about whether or not you are permitted to kill yourself. Maybe you are wrong to do so, but others are also wrong to stop you.

 

So let us simply ask: is it true that you are morally permitted to do whatever you want to with your life (provided you don't harm others, let's suppose)? Well, you say, that IS true, because your life is your property, and one is free to do whatever one wants with one's property (provided...)

 

But I am afraid I don't think either half of this argument is obvious. On the one hand I don't think it is straightforward that one's life is one's own property, and on the other hand I don't think it is straightforward that one may do whatever one wants with one's own property.

 

Of course, you say, you didn't ask whether this view is right, you just said, SUPPOSE we take the libertarian view as given here.

 

Well yes, IF one takes that view as given, then the ultra liberal view about suicide you describe is likely to follow. But I must say this starting view strikes me as rather implausible. If I pass a child starving, and I simply decide to throw away my sandwich --which I certainly don't want for myself-- rather than give it to the starving child, that seems to me to be a completely morally unacceptable act.

 

But to pursue this question further would be to require a lengthy discussion of rights more generally, property, and more. And that isn't something that can be done in a brief email.

 

Yours,

 

Shelly Kagan

_____________________

 

My reply:

 

______________________

"Well yes, IF one takes that view as given, then the ultra liberal view about suicide you describe is likely to follow. But I must say this starting view strikes me as rather implausible. If I pass a child starving, and I simply decide to throw away my sandwich --which I certainly don't want for myself-- rather than give it to the starving child, that seems to me to be a completely morally unacceptable act."

 

Ok, but it might not be legitimate to force you to give the sandwich to the child, as you mentioned earlier. Of course, others are free to see you act that way and think "Man, that guy's a jerk." and decide not to associate with you further.

 

However, I see a problem with this view as it relates to suicide. I could for example, give a sandwich I don't want to a starving child. I can't however, effectively give my life to someone else. I suppose I could go to a hospital and tell them to kill me painlessly so that they could harvest my organs thereby saving several people. If I were to tell the hospital to transplant my organs right after I die so that several other people could live, would you consider this a morally appropriate way to commit suicide?

 

Also, what if after years, a person discusses the issue of suicide with many people, and even goes to psychological therapy and even after decades of thought, decides he still wants to commit suicide? Does he then have the right to do so and if not, why not?

________________________

 

 

What do you guys think?

[Wuzzums]

Well he's fogging the issue. You provided the hypothesis that one's life is one's property at the beginning of your e-mail and he accepted this premise:

"Of course, you say, you didn't ask whether this view is right, you just said, SUPPOSE we take the libertarian view as given here.

Well yes, IF one takes that view as given, then the ultra liberal view about suicide you describe is likely to follow."

 

That's how long his response should have been. The rest is just him explaining how other should force others to make moral acts but he doesn't define what is a moral act.

Like the sandwich bit.

give an unwanted sandwich to a starving child = moral

not give an unwanted sandwich to a starving child = immoral

So what happens if I want the sandwich for myself? What happens then? Why would me wanting or not wanting something change the morality of an action? And why do I have a sandwich which I do not want in the first place?

 

Let's assume that whether I want or want not the sandwich doesn't change the morality of the action. Therefore:

give a wanted sandwich to a starving child = moral

not give a wanted sandwich to a starving child = immoral

What follows is a moral rule that says that we should feed a starving person whether we want to or not. This implies that being "starving" allows one to have different moral rules act upon them in contrast to everyone else.

 

And now the question follows: What happens when a starving child with a sandwich comes across another starving child without a sandwich? (In between "sharing is caring" and all of that).

[Gotzendammerung]

We may ask, as a primary critical point : Is committing suicide - productive in any way whatsoever ?

 

Objectively, we're forbidden to only one thing : legitimize unproductive behaviours (since "unproductive" = meaningless, purposelessness) 

 

I remember unexpectedly the the way that the german philosopher Schopenhauer was addressing this situation : according to his view, - one may be eager to commit suicide since, in his specific case, to "live" is became harder or less desired than to be dead. The tricky thing, here, is that the argument, framed in that way - consider the actual situation of the desperate person as a "dead-end", or should I say, to avoid every misconception : as a "Deus ex machina", like if his pain was definitely unredeemable. This convoluted conclusion suffer from the morally and judgmental paralyzed condition of the individual ; he seems to be no more able to thinks objectively, which means : to conceive his situation as a process, mindfully optimizable. This kind of "self-bankrupcy" is to be related to the procrastination illness, - where real intentions embodying the actual behaviour are concealed to oneself. Once the point have been reach where self-sabotage is no more useful as a strategy to avoid pain - the pressurized organism is hysterically looking for new ways to express or "somatize" its discomfort.

 

To kill yourself, - when the degenerative process going on haven't been influenced by the aesthetic "allure" that suicide can represent in our deeply-troubled culture, - means only : all the available resources being exhausted, suicide (to be dead) is now perceptively equal to shitty life itself. For the one who have followed me until this point - you understand that my premise is not based on moral, but rather on biology. And of course, it seems to me that the "morality of suicide" can be also analyse from an psycho-evolutionary standpoint : our intimate spontaneous intuition that suicide is a "bad thing" may be conditioned by the environmental scarcity, which means that we need the participation of everyone in order to stay alive.

 

The only substantive analyse to be conceded to a straightforward and pure moral vision of the problem is that, if we accept that as an sovereign individual you own yourself (which means only, as Noesis will put - that you control (still partially) your actions) - suicide can effectively appears as an act anti-property, a contradictory move, - in which you're destroying the means you refer yourself to motivate the action. But - what precede is only pure circular, or, should I say, auto-reflexive material which doesn't even recognize the active-objective bio-environmental patterns acting through this. So, of course - if it suits you, you can absolutely use it as an argument to comfort yourself in your "morally repulsive" perception of suicide, - but you've no rights to assume that its exhausts all the possibilities, all the factors contain in the problem, objectively speaking.

 

As stupid people often criticize my own exuberant phyiosophic-style, saying : "It's just intellectual masturbation !", - here, I almost feel to claim that the logical critic of suicide is just hand-made auto-satisficing crap which mock the fact that suicide cannot be in any way some kind of "paradox" ; in fact, there are a lot of virtuous suicidal attempts, on which I can return and debate if my actual post is "granted" by the moderators !

 

(cliffhanger)

 

(using psychology to bypass the unbearable intellectual prudery going on everywhere)

[cynicist]

Suppose I take a libertarian view of self ownership, that you own your self, or your own life? So therefore, you can treat your self like you do any other possession. Suppose I decide I don't like my laptop computer any more and I decide to throw it away. Nobody is going to force me to keep my laptop, or fix it right? Nobody is going to tell me that deciding that my laptop is shit, is an irrational decision. Everybody is pretty much going to say that if I think my laptop is bad, that's my decision to make.Likewise, in the case of your own life, you own it. If you decide it's bad and you want to end it, why do other people have the right to, not only tell you that you aren't allowed to end it, but will label you as "crazy" and have the police come and force you to not end it?

 

I wonder what your views are on it. I think it's an interesting and complicated issue for sure. Personally, I accept the idea of my body as my property and that I can do whatever I wish with it, however, I'm conflicted when it comes to suicide. Killing yourself is the ending of all decision making, which can make sense to me in cases of extreme physical pain where there are no good alternatives, but when it comes to psychological pain I'm not as certain.

 

I had suicidal feelings during my teenage years but I'm very happy that I did not pursue that, because the pain I experienced has lessened significantly since then. I obviously think it's irrational to kill yourself in those circumstances because your feelings can change. And we can't make the argument that killing yourself is rational in general or we wouldn't be here. So my conclusion is that it's heavily dependent on the specifics of the situation. 

 

Preventing a suicide through force on the basis that an individual is in an irrational state where they can't make that decision can be made into a self-defense argument I think. People are just afraid that you can label anyone as incapable and justify any use of force that way but I don't think that's the case because we're talking about suicide in particular. 

 

I wanted to talk about the e-mail in particular but lost interest when I read that Shelly doesn't consider one's life/body to be owned by them. At that point you can justify anything. 

[elzoog]

I wonder what your views are on it. I think it's an interesting and complicated issue for sure. Personally, I accept the idea of my body as my property and that I can do whatever I wish with it, however, I'm conflicted when it comes to suicide. Killing yourself is the ending of all decision making, which can make sense to me in cases of extreme physical pain where there are no good alternatives, but when it comes to psychological pain I'm not as certain.

My views on it are that you ultimately own your own body and therefore, your own life, so you can dispose of it if you don't like it anymore.Although ending your life would also end your ability to make decisions, by telling you that you are NOT ALLOWED to commit suicide, isn't that ALSO, limiting your ability to make decisions?I think however, that the best way to deal with suicide is to be above board with it. For example, "I don't know if they like me at my job or not so I don't know if they will fire me. If they fire me, I might not be able to find another job, and therefore won't be able to support myself. Then I will be homeless, or a ward of the state, and my options and life will be over. Should I kill myself now before all this shit happens?" In other words, describe your situation and ask someone if suicide is rational at this point. Then the following can happen.1) "Your situation doesn't warrant suicide. Have you tried YYY?" where YYY is some suggestion the person might not have considered.2) "You are not thinking rationally. You need to do YYY to relieve the stress and clear your head so you can think better about it."3) "Yeah, your situation really sucks. Suicide is a good idea for you dude. Let's see if we can do this in such a way that you can go out peacefully and maybe even life the rest of the few days you have left as happy as you can be."I think that 3 is KEY to a society that treats suicide better. That way, there's no stigma about suicide that it's "crazy" and everyone can think about the person in situation 3 that, at least he isn't in pain anymore. Not only that, but we did our best to make his life good instead of making him suffer out of some misplaced notion that his life is "sacred".

I had suicidal feelings during my teenage years but I'm very happy that I did not pursue that, because the pain I experienced has lessened significantly since then. I obviously think it's irrational to kill yourself in those circumstances because your feelings can change. And we can't make the argument that killing yourself is rational in general or we wouldn't be here. So my conclusion is that it's heavily dependent on the specifics of the situation.

Yeah, but wouldn't it have been nice if instead of "If you are thinking about suicide you are crazy." which encourages you to be quiet about it, we say "If you are thinking of suicide, you might be crazy or you might be rational. Let's talk about it."?

Preventing a suicide through force on the basis that an individual is in an irrational state where they can't make that decision can be made into a self-defense argument I think. People are just afraid that you can label anyone as incapable and justify any use of force that way but I don't think that's the case because we're talking about suicide in particular.

Okay, let's pick an irrational reason for suicide. Let's say, I want to kill myself because bees make honey. The usual argument against me killing myself for that reason is that everybody knows that bees make honey. However, everyone else doesn't commit suicide over that so why should I? I happen to not like the band KISS. Would it be rational to argue with me by saying that "Other people like the band KISS. Therefore, you should like that band too."?The thing is, my bad feeling about the fact that bees make honey, is something I am actually experiencing whereas you can only imagine being upset about that in an abstract kind of way. So, in reality, you really can't experience how much it sucks that bees make honey as much, or in the same way, as I experience it.Maybe in the future, I could change my mind and not be so bothered by the fact that bees make honey. The problem though is, that's a MAYBE, not a certainty.So, if we really do believe in self ownership, then yes I would have to say that the person committing suicide because bees make honey has a right to do so. You have the right to try to talk him out of it, but I don't think you have the right to force him to not do it. Besides, if someone gets suicidally upset over the fact that bees make honey, what kind of a life do you honestly think that person could have anyway? 

I wanted to talk about the e-mail in particular but lost interest when I read that Shelly doesn't consider one's life/body to be owned by them. At that point you can justify anything.

Yeah, Shelly's answer was kind of weak. Makes me wonder about the actual quality of someone that becomes an Ivy league philosophy professor.

[cynicist]

Although ending your life would also end your ability to make decisions, by telling you that you are NOT ALLOWED to commit suicide, isn't that ALSO, limiting your ability to make decisions?

 

Not to the same degree.

 

Yeah, but wouldn't it have been nice if instead of "If you are thinking about suicide you are crazy." which encourages you to be quiet about it, we say "If you are thinking of suicide, you might be crazy or you might be rational. Let's talk about it."?

 

There is an important distinction I want to make here. I think suicide can seem like a logical response to a very stressful situation, but it is predicated on the faulty premise that the horrible situation you are in will never change in the future. Things feel hopeless and if they actually were, then it would make sense, but that is rarely the case. I think telling someone who is suicidal that they are crazy is just stupid though.

 

Maybe in the future, I could change my mind and not be so bothered by the fact that bees make honey. The problem though is, that's a MAYBE, not a certainty.

 

The very possibility is what makes the action irrational in my mind. (because the suicide is final when the affliction is not)

 

So, if we really do believe in self ownership, then yes I would have to say that the person committing suicide because bees make honey has a right to do so. You have the right to try to talk him out of it, but I don't think you have the right to force him to not do it. Besides, if someone gets suicidally upset over the fact that bees make honey, what kind of a life do you honestly think that person could have anyway? 

 

We won't know if they're dead. Like I said though, I'm not certain. If someone has a caring individual in their life, can they commit suicide? If they have any empathy at all I don't think so. I'm just glad I don't decide these things

[elzoog]

Cynicyst, suicide may be irrational. Also, getting addicted to cocaine or having sex with random people 5 times a day (men and women) might also be irrational.

 

Question is, to what degree should others try to talk someone out of such irrational decisions?

[MysterionMuffles]

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