I do not think there is anything immoral at all about any kind of suicide. If someone wants to die, for any reason, that is up to them. Its immoral to force someone to stay alive if they do not want to just to satisfy your own sensibilities. Its not your life. We all live under the boot of somebody or something, we so seldom get to make real choices, for fucksake can we just let them have that choice at least?!
Assisted suicide is a no brainer, all that needs to be considered is how to prevent people from ising it to justify actual murder. If we can confirm the person does in fact want to die, let them. Its the only moral choice.

Yet there are many pro life organization who are completely against it, under any circumstances. Even for the terminally Ill who want to die. Of course it has to be strictly regulated.

I don't think it's immoral, but I think it's a bad idea. It shouldn't be easy. I think palliative care makes it unnecessary in a lot of cases. I think there's a good chance of hurting those left behind. There is also definitely a risk of disposing of people who are considered inconvenient.

I don't think it should be legalized, but it would make sense as a matter of enforcement policy to make it a low priority prosecution. If it really is justified, let the criminal justice system decide. There's a risk with that, but, as I said, it shouldn't be easy.

Maybe it could decrease unecessary tragic suicides of older people?

The question of the OP is, "Is assisted suicide immoral?" And in the two substantive replies we get two in-my-opinions in the form of "I don't think." Nice to know people have opinions. I have some myself. But the last time I looked - even just now - this is called The Philosophy Forum. Not "The Opinion Forum."

And of course there's serendipity in starting the expression of an opinion with, "I do not think." But I think the two above know perfectly well there is a difference between opinion and reasonable attempts to reason, which on this site passes for a respectable attempt to be philosophical.

Immanuel Kant had something to say about suicide. He was agin it on moral grounds. Not easy territory. But if anyone is going to give a reasonable answer to the question of the morality of assisted suicide, they shall have to navigate Kantian morality, or their view is little more than an "I do not think" opinion.

So I challenge the two above, with between them more than 4,000 posts although not evenly divided, to do better than give a knee-jerk, "I do not think" response, and to reason it out. (I'm thinking about it - not an easy subject. It calls for at first at least some definitions.)

So I challenge the two above, with between them more than 4,000 posts although not evenly divided, to do better than give a knee-jerk, "I do not think" response, and to reason it out. (I'm thinking about it - not an easy subject. It calls for at first at least some definitions.) — tim wood

My post was responsive to the OP, which asked for an opinion. It was respectful. Philosophy is all about opinions. All about what people think. Sounds like you are suggesting we substitute Kant's opinion for our own. I have never found his philosophy helpful.

Was the OP appropriately philosophical? I think it was. I challenge you to focus on your own posts and not try to enforce your personal opinions, what you think, on others. It's not welcome.

Philosophy is about opinions and can be subjective, otherwise we would come to the same conclusion.

Maybe it could decrease unecessary tragic suicides of older people? — Baskol1

Why is a suicide by older people "tragic" and helping somebody (eg., older person) to die NOT a tragedy?

There are not a lot of statistics on the matter, but apparently people who have the option of commencing a painless death (say, someone with terminal cancer) -- not just the theoretical option, but the actual barbiturates -- they usually don't use them.

I think that what people fear in dying from terminal illness is the run-away chaos of disease: severe pain, loss of bodily control (incontinence, etc.) nausea, paralysis... lots of very unpleasant stuff.

Hospice can greatly reduce the chaos and discomfort of dying.

Because suicide like train suicide not only hurts the suicidal Person.

True enough. Suicide is rarely a strictly private event.

And making suicide harder only decrease it marginally.

My post was responsive to the OP, which asked for an opinion. — T Clark

I am respectful of your posts, T Clark, but in this case I had to call you out. I quote from the OP, "

Are there good arguments...? — Baskol1

.

I am responding to your challenge - I'm thinking about it - as noted above, not an easy topic.

Is assisted suicide for adult people who wish to die, immoral? Are there good arguments against assisted dying? Or should people have the right to die a relatively painless death if they wish to do so? Why should you keep living if life becomes unbearable and does not get better? Why do some people perceive assisted suicide as immoral? What would assisted suicide make immoral if the person really wants it? — Baskol1

Morality is either properly reductionist, i.e. axiomatic, or else, invariably subject to infinite regress. As Aristotle wrote, "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Therefore, morality always requires the explicit appointment of Kantian categorical imperatives.

In other words, any objective answer entirely depends on the axiomatic foundation for morality that you retain.

At the same time, atheism does not propose a documented, axiomatic foundation for any question in morality, and is therefore always a baseless exercise in infinite regress. Hence, on mere epistemic grounds, I cannot take atheist answers seriously.

In the wikipedia page, you can find the various religious views on euthanasia. On the whole, across theologies, outright termination of human life is not allowed, but reducing suffering certainly is. Furthermore, there is no obligation to give or accept life-extending medical treatment.

Let's figure out where we are before starting on a voyage of debate - or inquiry. Because if we don't have some sense of where we have started from, how shall we know where we've got? The question of the OP is, "Is assisted suicide immoral?"

Let's set aside entirely, at least for the moment, whether suicide itself is immoral. We may be forced back to it, but perhaps for the moment we can let it slip by. Let's also set aside the idea of physician assisted suicide - if we can.

"Assisted" suicide cannot be killing someone - anyone - for any reason. Were it that, there would be other and more accurate terms for it, and in default it would be in itself a crime. (There are people on this site who will insist that it is not immoral to commit a crime; I assume this discussion will not fall into that playpen.)

"Assisted," then, must be confined to some aspect or quality of the apparatus the suicide uses to end his or her own life.

Definition (for purposes of discussion, to provide a starting point; if a given definition turns out to be defective, it can refined or corrected): it is immoral to commit a crime. This is not to say how immoral or to introduce either a calculus or scale of immorality, just that if the question is, "is it," then if a crime is part of it, then it is.

It must be (I argue) that the assistance must be of a form not itself criminal, as would be providing a gun or controlled substances or a death machine, or abetting the act itself. Let's assume for this argument this is all possible.

In consideration of what we have so far, we arrive at a scenario where the would-be suicide finds suicide assistance, perhaps in the Yellow Pages. He calls and arranges for the assistant to come and do his thing, pays the fee, and the assistant having left, uses the device to kill himself.

Is it immoral for the assistant to assist? By definition he's committed no crime - his actions are designed to break no law (by assumption this is possible, both as to law and to device, either of which assumption may in fact be wrong).

Kant's categorical imperative is usually expressed in three forms (but definitely not this language): 1) what you deem good and right for you you must deem good and right for everyone; 2) your actions should be for people and not just merely to make use of them; and 3) act such that the rule of your action could be a rule in a kingdom of ends, e.g., heaven.

That is, nothing against the humanity of any person, including yourself. So in Kantian terms we appear to be forced to consider the morality of suicide itself.

What Kant has to say about suicide itself is clear, but not simple. In his Lectures on Ethics probably the most accessible sentence is this: "We may treat our body as we like, provided out motives are those of self-preservation. If, for instance, his foot is a hindrance to life, a man may have it amputated. To preserve his person he has the right of disposal over his body. But in taking his life he does not preserve his person; he disposes of his person and not of its attendant circumstances; he robs himself of his person. This is contrary to the highest duty we have towards ourselves, for it annuls the condition of all other duties; it goes beyond the limits of the use of free will, for this use is possible only through the existence of the subject" (148). HOWEVER: the life in question is to be lived honorably, and so as not to bring disgrace on humanity. "The moral life is at an end if it is no longer in keeping with the dignity of humanity.... The moment I can no longer live in honor but become unworthy of life..., I can no longer live at all.... The preservation of life is, therefore, not the highest duty" (156).

We x-ray this and discern that the life in question for Kant is not the animal life, which is over soon enough anyway, but the life of honor, dignity, duty, and humanity.

On this, to our own surprise, we can find argument in Kant both for suicide and the conjecturally possible assistance. Except he would call it a sacrifice of life, to preserve its higher qualities.

That leaves law, and law is primarily concerned with our animal lives, with respect to suicide.

I conclude, then, again to my own surprise, that suicide - as the sacrifice of one's own life to in a sense preserve it - and a fortiori, assisted suicide, are not in themselves immoral (subject to considerations of honor, duty, humanity, dignity, & etc.). If by act of legislation legal constraints are removed, then it follows that, done right, for the right, it is not immoral.

Morality cannot be discussed with just anyone, if you believe morality is subjective then there is no point in discussing it with those who believe it is objective and vice versa. If it is objective then it's either right or it's wrong and then you need common ground in your moral axioms and sources to determine how they should be applied to the topic. Without common ground, a discussion is pointless.

Alternatively, if you believe morality is discovered then whether it feels right or wrong intuitively is key, asking the right questions to bring the truest answers out of yourself and others.

If it's subjective then a discussion may be worthwhile but we're likely to get stuck disagreeing on our premises which aren't necessarily based on anything overly convincing.

Assisted suicide has circumstances so varied that one context gives an entirely different image to another. There's room for saying some situations it's okay and others it's not okay.

I think the answer to your question is simply that one's moral views do not always particularly value the authority of an individual to do whatever they want with themselves. Your OP seems to prioritise that and one other thing which is the reduction of suffering. That would be a dubious claim, however, I think it is pretty easy to prove that suicide causes suffering and leads to no happiness or relief, it just leads to nothingness.

I think a desire for suicide is usually driven by genetics or despair, and I don't recognise either as being good reasons for suicide. I don't support it without extreme circumstances.

I find myself at odds with how I think society should be, I myself don't really treasure the lives of strangers or think that others are special. If they are to die or not die, it can't matter to me, they aren't even known to me. However, I think that society is damned if it starts to judge that life can be anything but the most precious thing. Every person must be assumed to be essential and indisposable, it can't be based on something and the system shouldn't ever give up on us even if we give up on ourselves.

Is assisted suicide for adult people who wish to die, immoral? Are there good arguments against assisted dying? Or should people have the right to die a relatively painless death if they wish to do so? Why should you keep living if life becomes unbearable and does not get better? Why do some people perceive assisted suicide as immoral? What would assisted suicide make immoral if the person really wants it? — Baskol1

If one wishes to discover what is immoral, then one must decide what is moral. Virtues such as kindness, patience, and self-control are largely recognized as moral, thus good. Suicide is death, namely, the deliberate removal of life by oneself. (which in this perspective, assisted suicide doesn't exist. It is merely allowed killing.)
Does any "form" of suicide allow virtues to increase? Does it support the growth of love, peace, and goodwill towards others?

"the life in question is to be lived honorably, and so as not to bring disgrace on humanity. "The moral life is at an end if it is no longer in keeping with the dignity of humanity.... The moment I can no longer live inhonor but become unworthy of life..., I can no longer live at all.... The preservation of life is, therefore, not the highest duty" (Immanuel Kant) — tim wood

In "The logic of risk taking", Nassim Taleb says something very similar:

Who is “You”?

Let us return to the notion of “tribe” of Chapter x. The defects people get from studying modern thought is that they develop the illusion that each one of us is a single unit, without seeing the contradiction in their own behavior. In fact I’ve sampled ninety people in seminars and asked them: “what’s the worst thing that happen to you?” Eighty-eight people answered “my death”.

This can only be the worst case situation for a psychopath. For then, I asked those who deemed that the worst case is their own death: “Is your death plus that of your children, nephews, cousins, cat, dogs, parakeet and hamster (if you have any of the above) worse than just your death? Invariably, yes. “Is your death plus your children, nephews, cousins (…) plus all of humanity worse than just your death? Yes, of course. Then how can your death be the worst possible outcome?

In fact, we are mostly talking about around 3 days of suffering before death, and apparently it can even be shortened to 12 hours:

How long does it take to die of thirst? It very much depends on the conditions, if you are in very hot humid conditions, in the sun, dehydrated worst case scenario maybe even 12 hours. On the other hand, in ideal conditions it could be 3-5 days.

Dying of thirst is apparently not that bad:

Terminal dehydration (also known as voluntary death by dehydration or VDD) has been described as having substantial advantages over physician-assisted suicide with respect to self-determination, access, professional integrity, and social implications. Specifically, a patient has a right to refuse treatment and it would be a personal assault for someone to force water on a patient, but such is not the case if a doctor merely refuses to provide lethal medication.

One survey of hospice nurses in Oregon (where physician-assisted suicide is legal) found that nearly twice as many had cared for patients who chose voluntary refusal of food and fluids to hasten death as had cared for patients who chose physician-assisted suicide. They also rated fasting and dehydration as causing less suffering and pain and being more peaceful than physician-assisted suicide. Patients undergoing terminal dehydration can often feel no pain, as they are often given sedatives and care such as mouth rinses or sprays.

Studies have shown that for terminally ill patients who choose to die, deaths by terminal dehydration are generally peaceful, and not associated with suffering, when supplemented with adequate pain medication.

So, if I understand it right, a 12-hour long steam bath, a water spray, and a good dose of painkillers should spare other people from having to "assist" ...

It's not immoral in my view. No consensual actions are immoral. We just need to make sure that assisted suicides are occurring consensually, so there would need to be procedures to verify this, moreso than most consent, because obviously the deceased party would no longer be around to confirm whether it was consensual should there be any reason to doubt it.

I do not think life is precious at all. Now that might be controversial, but life is cheap in nature. Its not politically correct, but it is the truth. Of course, murder is still morally wrong.

Nice to know people have opinions. I have some myself. But the last time I looked - even just now - this is called The Philosophy Forum. Not "The Opinion Forum." — tim wood

There are no normative value facts. How do you not understand this yet?

An answer to the original question is yes or no, depending on the moral concepts of the person being asked. It is sometimes thought necessary to put an animal down, to end suffering, yet many moralists would not extend that mercy to a human. Its not only about suicide, its also about avoiding liability, responsibility, and a sense of guilt. Its also about the value of life. In the case of the Abrahamic religions, the "soul" can only be saved while incarnate. The saved can also recant. Of course the faithful are not going to condone any kind of personal decision to end life. Ultimately, their morals are to serve God. The individuals earthly trials have a lower priority.

Whether or not you value you it is rather inconsequential but whether the government/society acts like they value it or not has extensive implications. Particularly if it's only valued conditionally by metrics like class, wealth, skills and so on. I don't think suicide is something that is often considered without levels of depression or despair which prohibit clear thinking. The impact on the family and friends of the individual has to be taken into account as well. The government should be adopting the view that every citizen is important and worth saving.

Philosophy forums like this, in my view, tend to romanticise suicide as being a choice like any other that people should be allowed to make. They rationalise the action and then replace the motivations of suicidal people with their rationalisation and feel it's therefore defensible. The reality is that suicide and suicide attempts are rarely rational, people react stupidly to despair or they live with a compulsion to kill themselves due to a psychological proclivity for depression that they inherited genetically. Alternatively, they're overwhelmed or depressed for other reasons, it's not just a sensible choice based on the facts.

Here's an interesting article on that: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/many-suicides-are-based-on-an-impulsive-decision-2014-8?r=US&IR=T

Assisted suicide only really makes sense in exceptional circumstances usually involving unbearable medical conditions. Anything besides that and we're talking about something really quite dark here. You didn't say anything about medical conditions, just if the person "really wants it" and I think that's the problem. My assumption about anyone thinking about suicide is that they're not in their right mind, they're lost right now and we should offer help - not help kill them.

Well the truth ist Humans are never completely rational. Otherwise wenn would not so so many irrational things.

It's not immoral in my view. No consensual actions are immoral. — Terrapin Station

There are no normative value facts. How do you not understand this yet? — Terrapin Station

Sure, and this is the morality of the cockroach or the weasel - but not all animals. Some animals exhibit behaviour that can be styled as moral.

But not Terrapin. Ethics and morality have been the business of humanity - human beings - for 6,000 years and counting. And the best approaches seem to be in and through reason. But as you can see above, not for Terrapin. And this is just nonsense. Except that it is also worse than nonsense. No normative value facts! I suppose by contortion we can find meaning in this, but at what cost?

Perhaps Terrapin confuses notions of right and wrong with morality - for a guess. I cannot otherwise account for his consistent hostility towards and denial of the possibility of any standard of behaviour or being. Or there is the grandest reason and excuse of all: a persistent and willful ignorance that is in fact the definition of stupidity.

Make your case without rant or cant, Terrapin: It's not immoral in my view. No consensual actions are immoral. There are no normative value facts. Here is an expression of a personal view and two claims. Any argument? You're subject to Hitchen's razor, here, and I'm stropping.

I'll even help you. You get from an ought to an is via a hypothetical syllogism. Your business, then, is to show there are no oughts.

Well slavery was morally right in the past Now its horrible. So Morals be quite Subjective.

Well slavery was morally right in the past Now its horrible. So Morals be quite Subjective. — Baskol1

Who says slavery was morally right in the past?

Morality is either properly reductionist, i.e. axiomatic, or else, invariably subject to infinite regress. As Aristotle wrote, "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Therefore, morality always requires the explicit appointment of Kantian categorical imperatives.

In other words, any objective answer entirely depends on the axiomatic foundation for morality that you retain. — alcontali

I don't agree with your analysis. It makes something which is fundamentally human and tries to make it mechanical. Morality is a matter of human values. To the extent those values are universal, I guess you could say they're "absolute." But to the extent they are cultural and personal, they are not.

Well many people said it was

Morality is a matter of human values. To the extent those values are universal, I guess you could say they're "absolute." But to the extent they are cultural and personal, they are not. — T Clark

I think this says more in 33 words than most of us could say in 20 or 30 times that many. And it gets the sense of the thing, and with a revealing clarity. So I could go on, but why when the best thing is just to re-read or even memorize, T Clarks' 33 words.

I think this says more in 33 words than most of us could say in 20 or 30 times that many. And it gets the sense of the thing, and with a revealing clarity. So I could go on, but why when the best thing is just to re-read or even memorize, T Clarks' 33 words. — tim wood

Awww, shucks... Thank you.