Moral philosophy experts please help! Please find a hole in this argument.

[Alldeles Ensam]

Fundamental presumptions:

1) Everything that seems [valuable/meaningful/important] only has [value/meaning/importance] because of it's appearance in my conscious mind. Even empathy for the suffering of others is yet another appearance in consciousness.

2) There is no evidence to suggest that anything like a conscious mind remains after the death of the brain.

Meat-and-potatoes of my position: If someone commits suicide, there is great suffering. However, none of that suffering appears in the mind which took its own life, since that mind no longer exists. After all, when one removes one's own consciousness, one removes with it the subject who could care about the ugly aftermath of the removal event. Therefore, each individual who is honest with himself about the two fundamental presumptions listed above should be indifferent to the idea of a painless guaranteed suicide.

Please find a legitimate hole in this argument. If anyone sees a hole, an error, an oversight, a miscalculation, please share.

 

[Callousgirl]

Have you studied Existentialism during your college years?

When for a short brief time I was selling markers and monuments you or your family members purchase to be at the cemetery. The owner of the company that was a second generation family member selling the products told me something very important. Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living. After I left the company, I have been thinking about that question with the higher level of knowledge and wisdom I have built up over the years. With the rational living, they have to justify the death of a family member. We all most die, and the death must have a justified rational outcome to be declared a good death. A family member told me as a teenager, there is no value being a alcoholic as anyone can drink themselves to death. So, there is no value to die as a suicide because anyone can take their own life. Performing any actions that anyone can do, you cannot say your justified performing the actions because there is justified and unjustified.

There has been other eras and other cultures when they had accepted suicide. But that type of culture only justified suicide with the belief the person was correcting shame.

 

[Auri]

Well, the suffering you're causing to others by killing yourself, aka your empathy towards them, you feel it while conscious, before suicide. That is reason enough not to feel indifferent. Plus, regarding statement (2), there is also no evidence that suggests the conscious mind disappears after death, and some people do have different beliefs about that, which don't make them indifferent while conscious either. Also, most people are afraid there is nothing after death and their first desire is to have a better life, not to kill themselves.

 

[JDot]

When one dies, the brain quits working and their mind ceases. But that person's death has an effect on their loved one's. Another thing to keep in mind is all of the things in life that person misses out on by terminating their life early. Think about this. A person has their whole life to kill themselves. Why shouldn't they wait and see what lies ahead?

 

[dandelion s]

2) There is no evidence to suggest that anything like a conscious mind remains after the death of the brain.

i think there is also no evidence to suggest that anything like a conscious mind does not remain after death of the brain. for myself, i believe that the conscious mind is a compilation of spirits - spirits being a fundamental part of existence and aside from dwelling in the substance of “reality” are eternal things that need that reality in order to be present. but not being present and not having structured thought as we know it does not result in nonexistence. note: a lack of evidence does not confirm nonexistence.

Hey i see you just joined SF. welcome. i’m glad to see you here. and btw, i have a lot of nonconventional spiritual thoughts which i’m happy to share if you are ever interested. spirits to me are not what is commonly thought of when thinking of spirits.

 

[1964dodge]

just a reminder this is a pro-life site so we don't think anything is worth dying by suicide. and almost all suicides or attempted suicides are to get rid of some pain not to actually die. and the pain you spread to family/friends is horrific and never goes away. and as far as going on a soul if you will we don't know. you can just wink into nothingness be reincarnated, piss god off by throwing your life away or many other possibilities. I don't know what comes after death for sure, do you? is it worth the risk? do you really want to miss out on all the good things coming in your life? I think you should stick around for a while...mike....

 

[Kikuhiko]

Well I personally don't believe in life after death or souls or whatever, to be fair I'm not the kind of person that believes in anything magical or mystical despite having a lot of interest in that topic, especially on the topic of a god or gods that if I'm honest it's a concept I despise, however this has led me to a very different conclusion than it has led you, perhaps because I'm a bit of a moralist and I won't deny that growing up I wanted to be a cop to protect people & for that purpose only since I don't find the idea of Justice to be a particularly useful concept, same reason why I flirted with the idea of vigilantism even if by sheer luck I managed to avoid actually executing that "Criminal" act.

In any case my lack of belief on the supernatural has led me to the conclusion that since we only live once and only exist temporarily, even though we cease to exist and time will completely forget us we need to do something to not only make our lives pleasant but also the lives of those around us, that is why I'm a strong believer in treating other people with kindness and empathy though I'll admit often times to my own detriment since I do seem to have an unhealthy obsession with martyrdom, due to this obsession I have found suicide to be an unacceptable act for me personally since I am aware of the suffering that it would cause to those close to me and I'm aware that it would be an extraordinarily selfish act, even if I want to be dead, if I did it that would turn me into a huge hypocrite and would make all my bullshit idealistic philosophy be worth nothing, I know it's hard to live sometimes but I really despise selfish behaviour and I really hate hypocrisy, hence why I like the idea of martyrdom since it would allow me to die while giving off the appearance that I did it for something bigger allowing me to not seem like a hypocrite even though I know I want the situation to happen so I ca die which ironically makes me the hypocrite that I hate so much.

 

[Gunslinger2020]

2) There is no evidence to suggest that anything like a conscious mind remains after the death of the brain.

The jury is still very much out on that one. Science simply doesn’t know enough.. If you ask me, it knows next to nothing.

 

[Lara_C]

1) Everything that seems [valuable/meaningful/important] only has [value/meaning/importance] because of it's appearance in my conscious mind. Even empathy for the suffering of others is yet another appearance in consciousness.

True.

2) There is no evidence to suggest that anything like a conscious mind remains after the death of the brain.

Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack- there's a whole lotta things which didn't 'appear to consciousness' until recently - like most of the universe we observe today. As for consciousness itself, which is the observer and knower of all phenomena which appear in it, how can you possibly know it doesn't continue in some other form after the death of the human brain? You are merely assuming it doesn't due to lack of evidence but actually you don't know if it does or doesn't.

We are in fact completely ignorant from our present perspective which is limited to the life we are living now. Suicide is the biggest leap in the dark anyone could ever take, and for all we know now, could also turn out to be the biggest mistake as well. There is only one way to falsify your materialist preconception, but it can never be proven. From a purely rational POV, making an irrevocable decision on the basis of complete ignorance of the 'beyond' is not advisable, -it could have worse consequences than staying here.

 

[Aurelia]

Think about this. A person has their whole life to kill themselves. Why shouldn't they wait and see what lies ahead?

This is pretty much my thinking also. Why end it now, when there could be better times ahead? One way or another, it will all end eventually. That's a certainty. So why speed up the process? Sometimes it seems worth it because we want the pain to stop and it gets to be too much, but there are other ways. There are people who are living proof that there are other ways. You just have to want to find them. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

 

[dandelion s]

This is pretty much my thinking also. Why end it now, when there could be better times ahead? One way or another, it will all end eventually. That's a certainty. So why speed up the process? Sometimes it seems worth it because we want the pain to stop and it gets to be too much, but there are other ways. There are people who are living proof that there are other ways. You just have to want to find them. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

listening to music helps

 

[Lara_C]

listening to music helps

Those throat singing vids you posted are great once you get used to them. I heard one which sounded like AUM accompanied by a didgeredoo. Affects you at a primal level, lol

 

[WolfGoddess]

The hole that I see is that "no longer existing" isn't something to be indifferent about. Based on your presumption that everything with meaning only has meaning in our own mind, then the mind - and by extension our own life - is the most important thing for us to care about and want to preserve.

I know the feeling of wanting to end the pain I was experiencing, but ending myself would have also ended anything good in my life, including the hope of overcoming that pain. As long as I was still alive there was a chance.

 

[dandelion s]

Those throat singing vids you posted are great once you get used to them. I heard one which sounded like AUM accompanied by a didgeredoo. Affects you at a primal level, lol

and guess what i was just listening to. i had some kind of spiritual calling. i don’t really know where it came from and it began maybe 3+ years ago. (or it was just then that i came to noticing that particular phase of it). i just started paying a lot of attention to siberian and mongolian music. i entertain the notion that because i might be ancestorally .1 percent of that reigon (according to my sister’s ancestral report) the spirits started calling me. i can’t think of why else i was drawn, but i really am drawn to and fascinated by that music and lots of other music i posted there and music from around the world in general. music definitely keeps me alive and is the “reason” if no other exists. i think it amazing that we lifeforms can assemble sounds and they don’t simply interest or please but inspire and seem to capture the essense of so many qualities of life and living and that in a universe of endless possibilities, these assemblies could in fact exist already elsewhere created by circumstance even with no apparent life. so that it makes my suspicions about all the whys seem correct to me and thus dying ahead of time is pointless. you move along and get “there” eventually anyway but may be more appropriately there by just living the the most you can in this lifetime. thus, life might only exist because music exists. we each may be thought of as a song.

 

[Lara_C]

i think it amazing that we lifeforms can assemble sounds and they don’t simply interest or please but inspire and seem to capture the essense of so many qualities of life and living

The evocative power of music is miraculous to me. How can an arrangement of sounds inspire such a wide range of emotions in us ?? It's magic! :rolleyes: Even more amazing is its power to evoke emotions that we don't really feel in mundane life - like awe, beauty, and even a sense of the sublime, and harmony and unity in nature. I think it has enormous potential to wake us up from the meaninglessness and futility of routine living.

we each may be thought of as a song.

Love that. Can I steal it ?

 

[dandelion s]

Love that. Can I steal it ?

hey you’ll have to pay me royalties!*yes

 

[ameliaQ]

I must first note that I am in no way an expert as the title of this thread posits, but I have a thought after reading your initial message.

You stated "1) Everything that seems [valuable/meaningful/important] only has [value/meaning/importance] because of it's appearance in my conscious mind."

While I believe I understand what you are saying, I also believe it is necessary to acknowledge the consciousness of others in order to fully acknowledge one's own consciousness. Because a consciousness does not and cannot exist independently, rather it exists as part of a collective consciousness relating to the whole of humanity, it is impossible to isolate the value/meaning/importance strictly within a single consciousness. I do not believe your statement is incorrect, only incomplete.