Are suicide rates continuing to rise?
And, even if they are, does that necessarily tell us much of moral importance? I mean: we're getting quite good at curing illnesses that would have killed us a little while ago; and yet we're still mortal, and everyone still dies. This means that, by dint of mere statistics, the rate of suicide is likely to rise, simply because people haven't been killed by cholera before they get the chance.
As to the being tired of life bit: isn't it a bit strange to think that life is worth having simply for its own sake? Why isn't it possible for someone to decide that they've done everything they wanted? (Have a look at Bernard Williams' "The Makropoulos Case" - he claims there that dying is a bad thing for the one who dies, but that not dying is really no better.)
Suppose someone does say that they no longer derive any satisfaction from life, or consider it a burden. On what grounds would you be able to say that they'd made a mistake? And if you can't say that, why not take them at their word?
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:00,
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They are, if you look at the graphs,
historically that could be down to the effects you suggest but not in recent times.
Is it strange that, as Kant put it, "a man is an end in himself"? No, it's not. But here we reach the crux of the matter, where all arguments kind of grind to a halt. Because all of this really is the ultimate logical conclusion of western value-based morality, rights-based ethics and individualism, all of which I have suspected of being dubious for quite some time. From my point of view this conclusion of things is irony both Socratic as well as dramatic. But there is little more I can say, other than simply to restate that I don't believe that the purpose of life is to get what you want.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:10,
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That's not really what Kant claimed.
His claim is more along the lines that the humanity in a person is an end in itself. By "humanity", he has in mind something like the capacity for practical reason. It's certainly not a claim about individual humans as biologically understood. (On Joss Walker's reading of Kant (here), it might not even be about individuals at all...)
Sorry: as well as assisted dying, Kantian moral philosophy is another of my pet subjects. I've even published a paper linking the two, but I'm not going to spam any more of my stuff.
As for the historical alterations - and, again, I'd want to see the graphs in question - that might be explicable. If suicide was thought of as shameful (as it frequently was), and the family of a suicide stood to be disinherited (as was frequently the case), then there'd be a very good reason to cover up suicide and call it something else.
I genuinely don't understand what you mean by the rest of your post, though.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:21,
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I'm thinking of the last few decades,
I can't find any good data right now but I've definitely read that suicide rates are rising, as well as the diagnosis of depression and prescription of anti-depressants. But it seems like you're trying to worm out of it even before seeing the data...
What I mean is, the whole secular utilitarian ethos, taken to its logical conclusion, is that suicide should be available on demand to anyone who wants it, life itself becomes nothing more than a commodity of no intrinsic value*. You even preempted me on that last point. This is at odds with other theories of goodness and the purpose of life, notably religion so nobody should be surprised that the Church is opposed to this sort of thing. Rights-based ethics is evidenced in statements about people's "right to die", that's a right I never heard of a few years ago, we always used to talk about the right to life to criticise the death penalty &c, where does the "right to die" come from? Well it comes from the ideas of individualism and dignity (ugh!) in which the sole purpose of government is to facilitate people getting what they want. Or as you put it "satisfaction". In the modern mindset, we all have the right to satisfaction, in accordance with our individual values.
edit: very expensive book btw
* i.e. only the means to something else, such as pleasure or happiness
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:40,
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I'm not trying to worm out of anything.
You made a claim about suicide rates, for which you've offered no evidence. All I've done is suggest that things might be more complicated than the bare statistics would suggest, even if - on the face of it - numbers have risen.
"Religion" is much too vague a concept to introduce here - it's not as if all religions are of a voice, or even that all adherents to any particular one agree. (I know of at least one clergyman who's a member of Dignity in Dying, for example, and there're plenty more who're sympathetic without being members.)
But suppose there is a "religious" viewpoint: so what? I've never been at all convinced that religious ethics has anything much to say: strip away the apologetics, and it becomes regular moral philosophy done more or less well. (Usually less well, in my experience.)
And while I agree that there's a lot to unpick in appeals to a "right to die", I think that you're rather simplistic about things. Not the least of the reason is that a serious rights claim is not necessarily a utilitarian claim: inasmuch as utilitarianism is a consequentialist line of thought, and rights theory properly so-called is non-consequentialist, it's more likely that there'll be a tension between rights claims and utilitarianism. Admittedly, they often amount to the same in practice - but this doesn't mean that they're compatible.
It's a horribly expensive book - academic volumes invariably are. I'm trying to wangle a free copy, but no joy so far.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:56,
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It's still premature to analyse statistics you haven't even got yet...
alas I can only find graphs for a few specific countries: Japan, Australia and India; and Scotland which shows the opposite.
I mention religion, in fact I wrote "Christianity" first but then I thought Islam and Judaism don't approve of it either. The point is that other ethical systems come to different conclusions, and religion was a much bigger social force in this country historically, now it's on the wane society is going a different way. (Individual clergy, however, sometimes don't even believe in God, but there you go.) I don't think the secular world has some special claim on being right about this.
True enough, rights claims are essentially moral absolutism, but it rather seems more a case of rule utilitarianism since this new right cropped up, it seems like rule utilitarianism based on Peter Singer's Preference Utilitarianism. The primary idea is that of the satisfaction of the will, the rights come along to facilitate that, or to post-justify it more likely. Call this an oversimplification if you will. I rather call it a distillation. Obviously social forces are in reality far more complex than that.
But to make a point, personally I don't believe that the satisfaction of the will is of primary importance, and that we have not just rights but duties.
I'm glad to discuss this with you anyway because you seem like someone who knows what they are talking about.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:18,
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