So the feeling entails an action or non-action about your life in the future. It matters in what you do next or don't do. It involves considerations of alternatives and possibilities for your life. It's not just a feeling at all.

Sense any self-examination there? I do.

Feelings lead to actions for sure, with or without deliberate reflexive self-examination. It's not clear to me what point you're attempting to make.

Sure they do.

He seems to want you to concede that the feeling necessarily coincides with an examination from the mere fact that the feeling can coincide with an examination. But that doesn't follow, and suggests willful ingnorance of the fact that the feeling can be prior or subsequent to the examination. Hence, there can be periods in which a life is unexamined, yet, judging by the feeling, are worth living.

One cannot really be said to be mistaken if one feels their life is worth living, or not worth living, consistently. — John

I don't agree with this. I think that there might be exceptions. Isn't it possible that one could consistently devalue or overvalue their life in that regard? Imagine someone who is consistently reckless, and endangers their life, because they feel that it's not worth living. Couldn't they be mistaken? What if they just don't realise the true worth of their life? Or what about a saintly figure, too humble to recognise the worth of his life? Or what about some vile, wretched, despicable, egoistic creature who is conceited enough to believe, based on certain consistent feelings, that his life is worth living, despite his pitiful existence, and the pain and misery that he unjustly inflicts on others through his reprehensible acts? Perhaps his life is in a sense worthless or of very little worth and the world would be better off without him?

I don't agree with this. I think that there might be exceptions. Isn't it possible that one could consistently devalue or overvalue their life in that regard? Imagine someone who is consistently reckless, and endangers their life, because they feel that it's not worth living. Couldn't they be mistaken? What if they just don't realise the true worth of their life? Or what about a saintly figure, too humble to recognise the worth of his life? Or what about some vile, wretched, despicable, egoistic creature who is conceited enough to believe, based on certain consistent feelings, that his life is worth living, despite his pitiful existence, and the pain and misery that he unjustly inflicts on others through his reprehensible acts? Perhaps his life is worthless, and the world would be better off without him? — Sapientia

I have been arguing for the value of an individual life, whether it is worth living, being based on the feeling that the individual has of whether their life is worth living. What I meant in the sentence you are responding to is that the feeling may change; sometimes I may feel life is worth living, sometimes not. If I more often, more consistently, overall feel that life is worth living, but during a period of feeling that it was not worth living, in consequence of that feeling recklessly endangered my life or even committed suicide, then that could be seen as a mistake; a failure to realize that my feeling might change or that it was likely to change given that in the past I had more consistently felt positive about my life than negative. If I have never felt my life is worth living, on the other hand, it is hard to see how I could be mistaken about that feeling, unless that feeling were based on unrealistic expectations, but it might require self examination to realize that. On the other hand self-examination might not be possible for me. The relationship between thought and feeling, and the ways they together make me feel about my life, are complex indeed; whether examined or not.

A saint might devalue his life from a secular point of view, but value it all the more from what she understands to be a spiritual point of view. And I would even argue that all that can go on in either an examined or an unexamined life.

I agree that the lives of some who obviously feel their life is worth living could be judged to be worthless, and it could even be judged that they do not deserve their life, but the question is 'judged by who and on what basis?'. Anyway I see that question about moral or ethical judgement of the worth others' lives to be a separate issue.

No easy or straightforward answers here: but I still remain convinced that it makes more sense to think that the value of any life is not necessarily dependent on whether or not the individual examines it.

Yes, I agree with what you say here, but he also seems to have agreed with me in his last response.

Yes, I agree with what you say here, but he also seems to have agreed with me in his last response. — John

Yes, it does seem so, although his comment is ambiguous. It's not clear what he's referring to: whether the full first sentence or just up to the comma. I think that this is due to laziness or lack of care. Either way, I doubt that he means to agree that the feeling we've been discussing can be "just a feeling" without "any self-examination".

Yes, I agree, I don't generally find Landru to be one who is genuinely interested in discussion with anyone that is coming from a different set of premises than he is. But to be fair it is not easy for any of us to discuss with such people, and when it is attempted it usually seems to degenerate into an egregious polemic.

I actually think Landru sees this forum and others like it as a place where memes do battle with one another (as he has explicitly acknowledged in the narrower context of the 'Gun debate' thread), so necessarily polemic; it is a kind of modern version of Zoroastrianism; a continuance of the perennial battle playing out between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. No doubt he will correct me if I have misunderstood him.