What you're doing isn't reasoning though, it's just dogma. — Darkneos

That sounds like a typical mindless utterance from someone who can't reason. Tell us what you know about reasoning and dogma in logical manner. And explain clearly why my reasoning is not reasoning but dogma in understandable way, rather than just spitting out some emotional meaningless utterance.

Platonism, mostly. The case against suicide is that one simply doesn't do it out of whatever reasoning, the case for it is any case that goes for suicide. People arrive at the same conclusions for very different reasons all the time.

That sounds like a typical mindless utterance from someone who can't reason. Tell us what you know about reasoning and dogma in logical manner. And explain clearly why my reasoning is not reasoning but dogma in understandable way, rather than just spitting out some emotional meaningless utterance. — Corvus

Well judging by your replies and exchanges so far there would be no point in doing so, which ironically proves my point.

Well judging by your replies and exchanges so far there would be no point in doing so, which ironically proves my point. — Darkneos

If you cannot demonstrate, explain and prove your own statements on others in logical and understandable manner, when asked, then your statements wouldn't be accepted as significant philosophical remarks or comments, but will be regarded as just your emotional blurt out on others.

To be perfectly honest, no one in the forum would like to read statements in that nature, when they are trying to discuss serious philosophical topics. It is just waste of your time and others' time.

If you cannot demonstrate, explain and prove your own statements on others in logical and understandable manner, when asked, then your statements wouldn't be accepted as significant philosophical remarks or comments, but will be regarded as just your emotional blurt out on others.

To be perfectly honest, no one in the forum would like to read statements in that nature, when they are trying to discuss serious philosophical topics. It is just waste of your time and others' time. — Corvus

Like I said, there would be no point with you as has been shown when others attempted with you, so you don't really get to demand that of others.

I find it ironic to try to draw on some social pressure for your point when social consensus so far on this thread is that you're wrong. You cannot even see the contradiction in your use of biological.

I'm just taking your replies as seriously as they deserve to be (not at all if that wasn't clear).

Biological means living and life. Adding it to body, and describing a dead body as biological body is incorrect, confused and unintelligible.

The other odd part is that even those who claim to kill themselves out of some expectation to right a wrong still don't solve anything. The people who claim it does often are lying to themselves, because they still regret the loss of someone taking their life. — Darkneos

Take, for example, the practice of sati in Hinduism.

This is suicide. Are the other people happy that the newly widowed woman killed herself? Apparently so. Do they regret she did it? Apparently not. It was the social norm, it still is to some extent, even if officially illegal.

I guess I'm just not familiar with the scenario you're describing. Whereby person A commits suicide because person B "expects" person A should do so. Specifically because B reaps a benefit from the event.

Please enlighten me about this situation. I'd think such cases would be all over the media. Perhaps I missed them. — LuckyR

*sigh*
Your tone is duly noted.


You keep saying that sometimes, "killing oneself is the answer to the problem". Would you apply that to the suicides of teenagers who kill themselves after being bullied? Or to situations where a person kills themselves after being mobbed at work or losing their job?

I don't have the stomach right now to wade through the exchanges on social media where after their victim committed suicide, the bullies said "Good riddance" and such. But these things happen. Some people do feel satisfaction when someone kills themselves.


Of course, there is something to be said about the political correctness usually inherent in discussing suicide and everything related to it ...

This is suicide. Are the other people happy that the newly widowed woman killed herself? Apparently so. Do they regret she did it? Apparently not. It was the social norm, it still is to some extent, even if officially illegal. — baker

That's on the surface for social appearances. It's sorta like people asking how you are and you're supposed to say "good".

Biological means living and life. Adding it to body, and describing a dead body as biological body is incorrect, confused and unintelligible. — Corvus

Incorrect, death is biological as it's the cessation of biological phenomenon. Maybe you're just stupid.

You keep saying that sometimes, "killing oneself is the answer to the problem". Would you apply that to the suicides of teenagers who kill themselves after being bullied? Or to situations where a person kills themselves after being mobbed at work or losing their job?

Firstly, I apologize about the way my tone struck you. I can see (after a re-read) that A) you're using "benefit" differently than I was expecting and therefore B) in that context my question would sound flippant.

To clarify and be more complete, I absolutely agree that suicide is NOT the answer for, say, 99+% of cases (of which you, correctly named several). I was in discussion previously where the assertion was made that suicide is NEVER the answer to the problem. Whereby I cited (admittedly rare) situations where it could be. But these would be exceptions and statistically insignificant.

If it matters, I read the comment of "benefit" to mean financial benefit like a grandson, seeking an inheritance, convincing grandma to kill herself.

Incorrect, death is biological as it's the cessation of biological phenomenon. Maybe you're just stupid. — Darkneos

We were talking about the body which is dead. Calling the dead body biological is real stupid. Anyway you don't even know what the point of talking was, so what does it tell you?

This statement comes as a shock to me, and I hope I am misunderstanding it:

there is no such thing as a right action. — Darkneos

Because when I read in your original post,

I’ve struggled to find a good argument against suicide that doesn’t involve either nonsense or special pleading to life or hindsight bias.

The way I see it if there is no greater reason to meaning to life then there isn’t really a reason to keep going. Not reason to really struggle and fight for a place in the world. No reason to really pursue anything. One can just end their life and be done with the pursuit and struggle. — Darkneos

(emphasis added), I thought you were (implicitly) asking for an ethical argument. But if there is no right action, no distinction between right and wrong, there can be no ethical reasons, no (sound) ethical argument.

If no ethical reasons, what kind of reasons are left that one could give? It seems to me that the only other possible response would be to appeal to the emotions and motivations of the person contemplating suicide. Am I missing something?

Those kinds of reasons are highly variable: what appeals to one person will not appeal to another. And a person who is deeply depressed has minimal motivation to do anything, except maybe to die. So the whole "argument" would decline into subjectivity, and that would not be philosophy, which aims at objective truth.

What was this kind of question doing in a philosophical forum? Was the first sentence of the first response possibly the only one that should have been made?

This discussion doesn’t belong here. — T Clark

(although T Clark could not have known that from the O.P.)

If you ask for an argument against suicide, but then you don't want to hear ethical arguments, isn't it like saying "prove that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles", but please don't use the axioms of geometry?

(emphasis added), I thought you were (implicitly) asking for an ethical argument. But if there is no right action, no distinction between right and wrong, there can be no ethical reasons, no (sound) ethical argument.

If no ethical reasons, what kind of reasons are left that one could give? It seems to me that the only other possible response would be to appeal to the emotions and motivations of the person contemplating suicide. Am I missing something? — Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

you're kinda not paying attention to the conversation if that is what you thought I meant. I meant there is no objectively right or wrong in the world, not that such things don't exist subjectively. The person I said that to thought otherwise.

Some people do feel satisfaction when someone kills themselves. — baker

Butting in, but I think this misses a trick: children who say these sorts of things (and, indeed adults, but explication will make the distinction pointless..) are trying to support an internal emotional state, not accurately assess the world for benefit.

If you told someone to kill themselves in earnest (from their perspective) and they do it, it is going to be pretty traumatic to then admit that you caused someone's death vicariously. Particularly a child.

It is self-preservation to rationalize the prior behaviour into something which make sense of your emotional state - defiant, self-absorbed and unflinching in the face of real gravitas. Active ignorance, I think.

Not that your scenario never happens, though. There are psychopaths.