A frequent concern in the right to die debate is whether or not people who choose death are mentally competent enough to make that choice, perhaps they are mentally ill, irrational.
What if the patient only wants to die because he believes he’s trapped in hell, awaiting to be raped by a demon? Then that person is delusional they’d say, and we should get rid of that delusion before we euthanize that person.
Chances are, even if that person had a rational, clear-headed moment and reflectively said:
- ”Ok, I know that hell and demons aren’t real, but to be honest, I still don’t like living like this and having to deal with psychosis, I still want to be euthanized to no longer have to struggle. Yes, I won’t experience any happy future either, but that’s irrelevant, because I know that once I’m dead I’ll no longer feel the need to have a happy future either. See it as similar to an addiction, if you’re not addicted to heroin, not getting any new heroin isn’t a problem. If I experience no discomfort that is caused by my life, I don’t need to be comforted, I want to permanently end all discomfort by terminating my life and that’s it.”
The strongest proponents of the anti-right to die crowd would still deny that person the right to die because they think that any person that wants to die is irrational.
And what do they base this idea on you may ask, this idea that everyone who wants to die is irrational? Well, based on the fact that they want to die. If you want to die, you’re irrational, and you’re irrational, because you want to die.
It’s circular logic entirely basically.
Circular reasoning is also known as circular questioning or circular hypothesis. It can be easy to spot because both sides of the argument are essentially making the same point. For example:
Everyone loves Rebecca, because she is so popular.
You must obey the law, because it’s illegal to break the law.
Harold’s new book is well written, because Harold is a wonderful writer.
America is the best place to live, because it’s better than any other country.
Violent video games cause teens to be violent, because violent teens play violent video games.
All of these statements cause the listener to ask, “But how can you be so sure?” They offer no valid evidence besides the assertion that A proves B.
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/circular-reasoning-fallacy-examples.html
So here is a challenging question I have for these people in particular, just a thought experiment that might even happen in real life in some cases:
- What if someone is too incompetent to be granted a right to life, not the right to die?
They wouldn’t let a person who has an acute psychotic episode make the decision to die, not even when they are no longer having the episode but simply say ”ok, but I don’t want to deal with psychosis and have to take medication forever, just let me die” – so what if someone actually only wants to continue living because they are psychotic and delusional?
Let’s say an old person with both brain and some other problem – dementia and terminal cancer. They have been indoctrinated by religion their entire life, so they have an intense fear of going to afterlife hell for all eternity at any moment if they make the wrong choice in God’s eyes.
They tell you they don’t want to be euthanized, but that’s only because they believe that if they get euthanized, they’ll get raped by a demon in hell, not here on earth like the delusional person that they wouldn’t let make the decision to die based on their delusion.
Let’s make this even worse, we could provide them palliative care and make their dying process less painful, but they say no, no medication against the pain, I believe medication is unnatural man-made garbage, there is no pain medication in mother nature, in the jungle either. You ever seen wild boar taking painkillers when it gets eaten by parasites?
But you see this person lived in a house, in a civilization, had a tv, a shower, telephone, etc, all things that don’t occur in mother nature, in the jungle either, so this is completely contradictory.
So this person will subject themselves to an extremely agonizing dying process by cancer, so this kind of brings up the question:
- Shouldn’t you euthanize this person painlessly in their sleep when you get the chance?
Yes, they have given reasons why they don’t want euthanasia, but you see that these reasons are completely incoherent. They give no evidence for the existence of heaven and hell, and neither is the ”I only do natural things” narrative being applied by them with logical consistency.
They have just as much evidence for their ”I’m going to hell” narrative as the schizophrenic who believes a demon is standing next to him has evidence for there being a demon standing next to him, waiting to eat him alive at any moment.
They wouldn’t let that schizophrenic person die because they are considered delusional, so why would they not euthanize this old, indoctrinated person who actually sincerely wishes to escape the pain they will experience, but only abstains from doing so because they are suffering from a delusion that they will go to hell for it, for which exists just as much evidence as for one individual demon standing next to you?
Possible answers and my responses:
1 – We should do what reduces suffering the most, so euthanize.
This is the most rational, reasonable answer I think. I would argue that there is much more reason to be concerned with people who want to die choosing to continue living based on false beliefs, rather than people choosing to die based on false beliefs.
I could in theory argue I’m doing anyone a favor by painlessly euthanizing them. I terminated the possibility of any future pain for them, and that I terminated the possibility for all future pleasure, relief of pain as well is irrelevant, because they are dead, so they no longer long for any pleasure, for any relief either.
If you’re not addicted to heroin, heroin has no value and power over your life. Get it? If you’re not in discomfort, you won’t chase comfort. Non-existers experience no comfort, but they also experience no discomfort as a result of not having comfort – only the utterly disadvantaged existers are experiencing discomfort as a result of not having comfort.
But it’s hard for people to comprehend that they really didn’t exist in an unborn purgatory prior to being born, aching to be released, they think ”a happy future” is an absolute necessity to avoid suffering. Little do these delusional people know that experiencing a happy future is only a necessity as long as you’re actually alive and conscious.
There’s much more reason to be concerned with people going through more pain than they would actually be willing to take if they simply got rid of their delusion that future happiness is somehow a necessity (to avoid suffering) for dead people. At least if a person chooses to die as a result of delusional beliefs, they’re not going to experience any painful regrets afterwards, but the person who chooses to continue living for a delusional belief is tormented.
2 – We should give them the freedom to choose whatever, so it’s wrong to euthanize them.
The libertarian approach, I would argue that if we care about any action that is not called ”avoiding suffering”, we only care about that action because it is conducive to avoiding suffering in some way, shape or form, so we actually only care about avoiding suffering, not that other action, so utilitarianism is more rational than libertarianism.
Let’s say I lock an eggplant in a cage. Does the eggplant protest? Does it try to escape? No. And why? Because the eggplant is not conscious, it cannot experience pain and suffering.
Being able to suffer is what makes us strive for literally everything we strive for, a conscious human or other animal would try to escape the cage, because being locked in a cage causes suffering, so it’s bound to chase the concept of freedom, i.e more place to walk on.
But if no conscious life existed, there could be as much place to walk on as possible, and it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone. Avoiding suffering is the only goal that exists, anything else is either conducive or not conducive.
But if someone takes this position and we just grant it has some merit, then they also ought accept people that make the decision to get euthanized.
3 – I’m a pro-life fascist, if life is chosen as a result of delusion, it’s fine.
Irrational for aforementioned reasons. If it’s wrong to euthanize a delusional person who wants to die because they have a false belief that a demon is going to torture them otherwise, you also ought to care about actually euthanizing someone when they only abstain from doing it because they have a false belief that they’ll be tortured by a demon after death.
If you only proclaim to care about life existing, that is likely based on a delusion again, going against the fundamental motivations of a sentient organism, i.e you believe that human or other animal life must exist in the universe to prevent harm, when in reality there would be absolutely no harm left if sentient life did not exist anymore, no one there to miss it.
Life is and of itself is not an absolute necessity to avoiding pain. We care about life because we care about the joyful experiences we may have in it, and we care about having joyful experiences in life because if we didn’t achieve them we would feel bad. So by trying to achieve life to achieve joy you are trying to avoid suffering.
In this case, more suffering is caused by the person not being euthanized, so it’s better to euthanize them, but pro-lifers just lack the metacognitive insight into their own motivations to see this, so they would support torturing such a person for the greater ”good” of more life existing in the universe, when in reality life itself has no value whatsoever, and they only think it’s important because they subconsciously associate life with certain happy experiences they had, that many people they are denying the right to die simply are not having.
Counterintuitive conclusions 