Lecture 24: Suicide, part I: The rationality of suicide

What this lecture covers

This lecture opens the course's final topic, suicide, and restricts itself to the question of rationality rather than morality. Kagan asks under what circumstances, if any, it could be true that someone would be better off dead, and separately, whether it could ever be rational to trust your own judgment that you're in such a situation. He addresses a philosophical objection claiming the judgment "you'd be better off dead" is incoherent, then uses graphs of a life's quality over time to work out when, given various constraints on timing, ending one's life earlier would actually be the rational choice.

After watching, you should be able to explain the distinction between rationality and morality as applied to suicide, state and respond to the "two-state requirement" objection, describe how container theories of well-being bear on whether a life could be worse than nonexistence, and use Kagan's life-quality graphs to reason about when suicide would or wouldn't be rational under different constraints.

Key ideas

• Rationality vs. morality: Kagan treats these as separate questions that can come apart (illustrated by tax cheating and college choice), and the lecture focuses only on rationality.
• Two questions about suicide: whether it could ever be true that you'd be better off dead, and separately whether it could ever be rational to trust that you're in such a case.
• The two-state requirement objection: the claim that "you'd be better off dead" is meaningless because death isn't a state you can be in, so there's no second state to compare to your current one.
• Kagan's response: the two-state requirement also implies you can't say someone benefits from having their life saved, which is absurd; so the requirement should be rejected, and "better off dead" just means the continued life would be worse than its absence.
• Container theories revisited: neutral container theories (life's value is just its contents), modest valuable container theories (life has some intrinsic value that can still be outweighed), and fantastic container theories (life's intrinsic value can never be outweighed) yield different verdicts on whether suicide could ever be rational.
• Life-quality graphs: plotting a life's quality over time against a zero line (equivalent to nonexistence) lets you ask whether, and when, a life dips below that line.
• Timing and control: whether suicide is rational at a given moment depends not just on whether life will eventually turn negative, but on how much control you have over exactly when you can end it.
• Common error: temporary dips in life quality (such as a breakup or academic setback) are often mistaken for permanent decline, which Kagan identifies as a likely cause of some teen suicides even though the underlying life stays above the "worth living" line.

Walkthrough

Introduction to suicide: rationality vs. morality (0:00)

Kagan introduces suicide as the course's final topic, connecting it to the earlier discussion of variability in death and our ability to control when we die. He notes that cultural attitudes toward suicide (as either crazy or immoral) make clear thinking difficult, and proposes separating questions of rationality from questions of morality, illustrating the distinction with examples like cheating on taxes (potentially rational but not moral) and choosing a lesser college (potentially not rationally required but not immoral either).

When is it rational to commit suicide? Problems with the two-state requirement (5:14)

Kagan splits the rationality question into two parts: could it ever be true you'd be better off dead, and could it ever be rational to trust that judgment. He then addresses a logical objection, the "two-state requirement," which holds that judgments of being better or worse off require comparing two states, but death isn't a state at all, so "better off dead" is incoherent. Kagan rejects this by showing it implies the equally absurd conclusion that saving someone's life could never benefit them, using the example of pushing someone out of the way of a truck. He concludes the two-state requirement should be abandoned: "better off dead" simply compares two possible lives, not two states of a person.

Is life worth having in the first place? An exploration of intrinsic value (17:11)

Having established that the judgment can be coherent, Kagan turns to whether it could ever be true, which depends on your theory of well-being. Under hedonism, a life with more pain than pleasure has a negative balance and could be worse than nonexistence. He revisits neutral container theories, modest valuable container theories, and fantastic container theories from earlier in the course, explaining that fantastic container theories imply suicide could never be rational, since life's intrinsic value always outweighs any bad contents, while more moderate views allow that some lives, especially in cases of extreme terminal illness or in infants born with severe, untreatable suffering, could be worse than nonexistence.

Medical complications: rationale for euthanasia (28:51)

Kagan works through the case of a terminally ill patient whose future holds increasing pain and decreasing capacity for anything valuable, arguing that in such cases it can be correct to say the person would be better off dead. He notes this raises the related but distinct question of euthanasia, when it might be rational or moral to ask someone else to end your life, but sets that aside to keep focusing specifically on suicide.

Suicide on a positive-negative life curve (37:35)

Kagan introduces graphs plotting a life's quality over time against a zero line representing nonexistence, and works through several scenarios: a life that declines but never crosses below zero (suicide never makes sense); a life that will eventually cross below zero with full control over timing (suicide makes sense only at the exact crossing point, not earlier); and cases with limited control, where an earlier disease might remove the ability to act later, making earlier suicide rational to avoid a longer negative final stretch, or, conversely, where killing yourself early would mean losing a long, valuable life to avoid a bad ending that doesn't outweigh it. He also examines temporary downturns that recover before death, showing that a life dipping below its previous quality but staying above the zero line does not make suicide rational. He connects this to real risk, warning that people (notably teenagers, for whom suicide is a leading cause of death) often mistake a temporary decline, such as a breakup or an academic setback, for a permanent one, losing sight of good things still to come.

Before you watch

• This lecture depends on earlier discussions of container theories of well-being (neutral, modest valuable, and fantastic) and the deprivation account of death's badness.
• The prior lecture's discussion of strategies for living given mortality provides useful context for why Kagan now turns to the possibility of ending life deliberately.
• No new outside reading is required, but familiarity with hedonism as a theory of well-being, covered earlier in the course, helps follow the example used here.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Kagan treat the rationality of suicide and the morality of suicide as separate questions, and what examples does he use to show they can come apart?
2. Explain the two-state requirement objection to the judgment "you'd be better off dead," and Kagan's response to it using the example of saving someone's life.
3. How do neutral, modest valuable, and fantastic container theories differ in what they imply about whether suicide could ever be rational?
4. Using Kagan's life-quality graphs, explain why having full control over the timing of your death changes the answer to when suicide would be rational, compared to having only limited control.
5. Why does Kagan think many teen suicides involve a mistaken judgment about the shape of the life-quality curve?