Rationally Speaking #108 - Suicide

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2014

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide," wrote Albert Camus. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia discuss the ethics of suicide through the lens of several major philosophies. They also explore the social science of suicide: how does one person's suicide affect the community?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.
0:35.6	Welcome to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.6	I'm your host, Massimo Pilucci, and with me as always is my co-host, Julia Galev.
0:45.0	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:47.7	Well, Massimo, this episode's going to come out substantially after the holidays have ended. Christmas will be over, New Year's will be
0:57.9	over, and we will all start settling into the sort of dreary stretch of several months,
1:04.0	yet we have no festive holidays to cheer us up. And so we figured this was the perfect time to lift
1:09.2	everyone's spirits with an episode about suicide.
1:12.3	Ouch. Okay. So we'll talk about the philosophy and the science of suicide during this episode. And I guess I'll kick things off by just saying that I had read a little bit of philosophical treatises on suicide. and I returned to some of them again while preparing for this episode.
1:31.3	And I have to say, I'm pretty shocked at how many, in my view, terrible arguments there are from philosophers against suicide.
1:41.1	Like suicide, for example, Hobbs felt that suicide violated natural law and was therefore
1:47.8	immoral. He wasn't alone. Kant felt that suicide was, if you commit suicide, you're sinking
1:54.4	lower than the beasts. And if someone survives a suicide attempt, they've discarded their
1:59.3	humanity and we can just treat them as an animal.
2:03.0	Other philosophers have said that it's immoral because you're shirking your duty to society.
2:08.7	I find these arguments appalling and the idea that anyone would prevent me from exercising my right to suicide is pretty scary. Wait a minute. What are you
2:18.7	a libertarian? What are you a libertarian or something? On this issue a little bit. I know what you
2:25.1	mean. And it's kind of interesting, however, that I'm going to actually try to defend somewhat or at
2:29.4	least explain some of those arguments. Um, I think we need to be more charitable.
2:36.3	Well, we'll talk about the details in a minute,
2:37.9	but we need to be more charitable because, first of us,
	...

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