Right to die

[Ragna]

I don't know if this topic is much debated but I found an interesting video of something I had never seen before.

I personally think suicide, under its extreme circumstances, is not reprehensible, because the right to live entails the right to die. Euthanasia is illegal in many places and I always thought about it as something private and hidden, but I've recently discovered that in Switzerland there's a legal organization called Dignitas (dignity) who practices assisted suicide on patients who request it. Here's the last part of a 5-part documentary (for those interested it begins here):

[youtube][/youtube]

Question for debate:

1. Do you find what Dignitas does right or wrong? Why (not)?

2. Is what the patient, Craig Ewert, did reprehensible from your point of view? Why (not)?

[AquinasD]

It is also the nature of living things to die.

Not exactly, no. Life tends towards organization and sustenance, not disorder and corruption. To say that a living thing is "towards death" as it is also "towards life" is simply a self-contradiction, producing a meaningless absurdity.

You could try and argue that things are "towards death," but you'll find that it would require the vamping of a completely different metaphysic and explanatory system. As it is, we still explain living systems in reference to their nature, which is to live. In reflection, then, dying is not something a creature does, but something that happens to it, like a broken leg.

To say that we ought not commit suicide because living things don't normally do so sounds like "we ought not build airplanes because humans weren't meant to fly" - the naturalistic fallacy.

I wasn't making any democratic argument, and my metaphysic doesn't rely on "we empirically observe most people doing this, therefore that is their nature." I would also maintain that lying and stealing are disorders (though not mental in this case, but moral), yet most people do these things.

My other objection to your definition is that if we were to define things the way you define them - in the Aristotelian 'nature of a thing' definition - then there would be a ton of things that would all of a sudden become "mental disorders" that do no harm to anyone, such as eccentricity or homosexuality.

As I find that things a lot of people do should not necessarily be described as the nature of humans, nor do things that few people do lead to it being contrary to the nature of humans. Though, yes, I would conclude that homosexuality is opposed to the human nature, though I don't know that it should be described as a mental disorder.

We define these things the way we do because they are most useful to us, not because they follow some 'natural law'.

If there is a natural law, then it would follow that defining and understanding things in accordance with this natural law would be useful. (Don't take this as my case for utilizing essentialism in explanation, though.)

I don't think this is the case either. It depends on whether or not their affliction is terminal or not. People suffering from terminal mental illnesses are capable of suffering just as much as anyone else, so why should we force them to endure the torture of their illness and live the rest of their lives devoid of any happiness or hope?

Happiness and hope are products of one's will. And I'm not advocating the refusal of palliative care.

[Slopeshoulder]

It is also the nature of living things to die.

Not exactly, no. Life tends towards organization and sustenance, not disorder and corruption. To say that a living thing is "towards death" as it is also "towards life" is simply a self-contradiction, producing a meaningless absurdity.

You could try and argue that things are "towards death," but you'll find that it would require the vamping of a completely different metaphysic and explanatory system. As it is, we still explain living systems in reference to their nature, which is to live. In reflection, then, dying is not something a creature does, but something that happens to it, like a broken leg.

oh boy.
real world...stuff dies.
set aside aristotle for a minute and this becomes clear. death trumps logic.

[AquinasD]

oh boy.
real world...stuff dies.
set aside aristotle for a minute and this becomes clear. death trumps logic.

So a broken leg is natural as a fit leg is natural, then?

[ThatGirlAgain]

oh boy.
real world...stuff dies.
set aside aristotle for a minute and this becomes clear. death trumps logic.

So a broken leg is natural as a fit leg is natural, then?

Both are perfectly natural consequences of natural law. Natural does not necessarily equate with good. Something is good if it is, or leads to, what we want. Something is natural if it happens. The Black Death was completely natural. But, from the human point of view, it was not good. However if Y. pestis were capable of such a concept, it would likely have considered the Black Death very good.

[AquinasD]

Both are perfectly natural consequences of natural law.

Ah, but that is a completely different sense of "nature" than I am speaking of. I am not speaking merely of "what happens in the world" but "what the nature of objects initiate them towards." This is an Aristotelean nature, not a mechanistic and denuded nature that you are thinking of. "Nature" as I am speaking of it is synonymous with "final cause."

And it is my sense of nature that makes the differentiation between a "fit leg" and a "broken leg." This is how I mean to differentiate between "life" and "death."

[ThatGirlAgain]

Both are perfectly natural consequences of natural law.

Ah, but that is a completely different sense of "nature" than I am speaking of. I am not speaking merely of "what happens in the world" but "what the nature of objects initiate them towards." This is an Aristotelian nature, not a mechanistic and denuded nature that you are thinking of. "Nature" as I am speaking of it is synonymous with "final cause."

And it is my sense of nature that makes the differentiation between a "fit leg" and a "broken leg." This is how I mean to differentiate between "life" and "death."

You are assuming that there is a Final Cause to things. What is the Final Cause of Y. pestis? What was it made for?

[jamesmorlock]

Not exactly, no. Life tends towards organization and sustenance, not disorder and corruption. To say that a living thing is "towards death" as it is also "towards life" is simply a self-contradiction, producing a meaningless absurdity.

Life can only be temporary, since most things - as per thermodynamics - tend towards disorganization unless it's energy is increased or is being perpetuated by something.

That said, there is no distinction between living and nonliving things except in the abstract, anyway. With your definition, we might as well call "life" anything that has it's energy being increased via thermodynamics. A pot of boiling water would be "life".

My brain stops sending / receiving chemicals and accessing memory, and that's what we call "death", in the abstract. There's nothing particularly interesting about appealing to the "nature of a thing" since the "nature of a thing" is simply defined as whatever a thing does.

I wasn't making any democratic argument, and my metaphysic doesn't rely on "we empirically observe most people doing this, therefore that is their nature."

If there is a natural law, then it would follow that defining and understanding things in accordance with this natural law would be useful.

Fine, but you'd still have the is-ought problem throwing a monkey wrench in your argument. You can define things all day, but you eventually have to make an argument about what we ought to do. If you don't, then all we've got is a bunch of useless definitions. The thread is called "the right to die", after all, so I expected you to make an argument about whether people have a right to die or not.

Happiness and hope are products of one's will. And I'm not advocating the refusal of palliative care.

Not when a mental condition is interfering with the usual process by which we are happy. People can't always just "think happy thoughts" and then magically be happy when their endocrine system is being flooded with the bad stuff.

Hope is not always possible either. Take for example, the burn victim. Guy has 90% burns from head to toe, and he knows that the rest of his life is going to be filled with lying still most of the day, getting painful skin grafts, and screaming in agony all the way - for many, many years. Sounds like nothing but pure torture. Yeah, I'd want to end it too.

[jamesmorlock]

Also, something else you forgot to mention was when you said:

1. There exist conditions in which people are unable to make requests that can be respected

What requests cannot be respected? How do you determine which requests can be respected, since the insane may make requests that anyone else could make, and a sane person could request the right to die?

[AquinasD]

You are assuming that there is a Final Cause to things. What is the Final Cause of Y. pestis? What was it made for?

That is not what 'final cause' means. Final cause means something more like "what a thing tends towards." For example, gases in a system tend towards equal distribution; that is the final cause of gases. Final cause does not imply agency or artefactual meaning (however, agency and artefactual meaning are other examples of final cause).

[AquinasD]

Life can only be temporary, since most things - as per thermodynamics - tend towards disorganization unless it's energy is increased or is being perpetuated by something.

And this at most shows that life is not entropic. It works against entropy.

That said, there is no distinction between living and nonliving things except in the abstract, anyway. With your definition, we might as well call "life" anything that has it's energy being increased via thermodynamics. A pot of boiling water would be "life".

Not at all. Life possesses the property of being an individual being which is the cause of its own order. Compare how a mercury thermometer merely reacts to extrinsic conditions mechanically, while a plant reacts to extrinsic conditions through a distributed system of homeostatic responses.

Further, life has the potential to service things which dead things cannot; for example, consciousness. If you die, your consciousness ceases. Yet your consciousness is a real, not abstract, difference. Therefore, your life is also a real difference.

Fine, but you'd still have the is-ought problem throwing a monkey wrench in your argument. You can define things all day, but you eventually have to make an argument about what we ought to do. If you don't, then all we've got is a bunch of useless definitions. The thread is called "the right to die", after all, so I expected you to make an argument about whether people have a right to die or not.

The nature of a thing and the good of a thing are the same.