I'm not convinced there's anything rational in suicide by definition. Every organ, vessel, and part of your body, especially your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for as long as possible. If it makes you feel the need to end your life, by definition it is not working.
A lot of bad things can happen to you in a lifetime, but death is the worst, without a doubt. To feel the need to inflict it upon yourself is therefore not rational at all, even if it is premeditated. What seems like one irrational spur of the moment decision is really one that in most cases had been considered well before. No one ends their own life before thinking about it beforehand.
Death is a very long way from being the worst thing that can happen. That's why a lot of torture methods are about keeping you alive as long as possible, or doing something horrible and forcing you to live with it. Not to mention illness robbing you of you mind and body, or personal loss making life unbearable.
I personally think of suicide not as a decision to die but rather a decision not to live. No one wants to die but it is very conceivable that one could be in a situation that no longer is worth the effort to sustain. Side note, I do not feel this way now but when younger I certainly felt like being alive wasn't worth the trouble and had to go through a process of convincing myself it was.
That's an interesting assumption. So only acts that are in "harmony" with what your body desires are rational, and all other acts are, by your definition, irrational? So when I'm under water, swimming up to the surface, and my body is telling me to take a breath right now, that would be rational? And suppressing the urge until I reach the surface is irrational?
I'm not convinced there's anything rational in suicide by definition. Every organ, vessel, and part of your body, especially your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for as long as possible.
I would say it's dedicated to keeping you alive long enough to raise children and help your children raise children. Which may be the same thing in practice, but more in line with how evolution works.
An argument from organ function only operates if you believe the process of evolution that created those organs and their "goals" are what defines human meaning.
I personally believe humans derive their own meaning in life. Temporary chemical imbalances and runaway feedback loops of emotional harm can certainly lead to impairment of rational judgement concerning suicide, but that doesn't mean that if you accept the premise that humans derive their own value that there can be rational avenues to suicide.
For situations like accute depression and anxiety (of which I'm intimitely familiar) are situations where I would argue ones judgement is impaired when it comes to suicide, and I don't doubt that said impairment is extrapolable to many other situations.
>A lot of bad things can happen to you in a lifetime, but death is the worst, without a doubt.
I think that comes down to whether you believe that
A) Someone can experience a negative qualia
B) Someone can rationaly predict that said living situation is now a permenant state of affairs with a high enough degree of certainty
C) That death is a negative (negative only insofar as it can effect others) to neutral qualia that is still higher than and therefore preferable to an expected permenant negative qualia.
I'm not of the opinion that this is something that can typically be done independently, as humans are vulnerable to a host of conditions that can impair our ability to make judgement B, and I sure as hell hope that anyone wanting to make that decision trusts the people they ask to help them make it.
The protoypical example people tend to use is alzheimers victims, who are frequently (but not always) permenantly and irrecoverably (for now hopefully) distressed.
> Every organ, vessel, and part of your body, especially your brain, is dedicated to keeping you alive for as long as possible.
On the contrary, I think every part of my body is dedicated to making sure my DNA propagates. But, being conscious, my cognition can overrule the evolutionary imperative. All the more easily if I've reproduced.
And death is not necessarily the worst thing that could happen to me. Search "locked in" illness. Or Alzheimer's. There are many illness states to which I'd find death preferable.
A lot of bad things can happen to you in a lifetime, but death is the worst, without a doubt. To feel the need to inflict it upon yourself is therefore not rational at all, even if it is premeditated. What seems like one irrational spur of the moment decision is really one that in most cases had been considered well before. No one ends their own life before thinking about it beforehand.