Lecture 25: Suicide, part II: Deciding under uncertainty

What this lecture covers

This lecture completes Kagan's treatment of the rationality of suicide before opening the question of its morality. He works through more life-quality graphs, including a real bioethics case, to show that whether suicide is rational depends on exactly when the choice is being made, not just on whether a person's life eventually becomes worse than nothing. He then tackles the objection that decisions under uncertainty, and decisions made under emotional distress, can never be trusted enough to make suicide rational. Finally he turns briefly to morality and dismantles two common quick arguments against suicide: that it violates God's will, and that it betrays a debt of gratitude for the gift of life.

After watching, you should be able to explain why timing changes whether suicide is rational even when a life dips below "worth living," describe Kagan's door-and-torture thought experiment and what it shows about deciding under uncertainty, and state why he rejects both the God's-will argument and the gratitude argument against suicide.

Key ideas

• Act structure of a life: graphing quality of life over time can reveal a "three-act" pattern (good, then bad, then good again), where whether suicide is rational partway through act two depends on whether act three is good and large enough to outweigh act two.
• Timing matters: a decision that would have been rational earlier in a bad period may no longer be rational once that period is already over and a recovery has begun, since the past can't be undone.
• Real case: a burn victim who, while suffering, judged he was better off dead, later recovered and considered his life worth living again, yet still maintained that his earlier wish to die during the worst of the suffering had been reasonable.
• Gambling under uncertainty: since we never have certainty about the future, deciding about suicide always means weighing probabilities, similar to any other high-stakes decision made under uncertainty.
• The two-doors thought experiment: choosing between near-certain prolonged torture with a tiny chance of a wonderful outcome, versus certain painless unconsciousness, shows that it can be rational to give up a small chance of recovery to avoid an overwhelmingly likely bad outcome.
• Clouded judgment objection: the claim that people facing suicide-level suffering can never think clearly enough to trust their own judgment, and therefore should never act on it.
• Response via analogy: a person deciding about risky but promising surgery is also deciding under pain and stress, yet we don't say their judgment can never be trusted; the same reasoning applies to suicide, urging caution and repeated reflection rather than automatic distrust.
• God's will argument rejected: without a specific "instruction manual" from God, appeals to God's will cut both ways (saving a life could equally be called against or in line with God's will), so the argument gives no real guidance.
• Gratitude argument rejected: a gift only generates a debt of gratitude if it remains a genuine gift; a good giver (rather than a "bully") would not insist you keep a gift, such as continued life, once it has "spoiled" into suffering.

Walkthrough

Is suicide itself rational? A time-value analysis (0:00)

Kagan recaps the previous lecture's graphs of a life's quality over time and extends the analysis with a three-act structure: a good period, followed by a bad period below the "worth living" line, followed by a recovery. He shows that whether suicide makes sense partway through the bad period depends on whether the coming recovery (act three) is substantial enough to outweigh the bad period (act two). If it is, suicide doesn't make sense even during the worst of the suffering; if it isn't, it might.

To continue or end life given the uncertainty of death (12:58)

Kagan stresses that timing is crucial: a decision that would have made sense earlier in a bad period no longer makes sense once that period is already past and recovery has begun, since nothing can undo history. He illustrates this with a real bioethics case of a badly burned patient who, during his agonizing recovery, wished to die and asked to be killed, was refused, and eventually did recover — and who later maintained that his earlier wish had been reasonable even though his current life was worth living. Kagan then turns to the deeper problem that we never have certainty about the future, meaning any decision about suicide is a gamble, and introduces a thought experiment with two "doors" — one an overwhelmingly likely path to prolonged torture with a tiny chance of a wonderful outcome, the other a certain but neutral outcome (dreamless sleep, later extended to death) — to argue that choosing to avoid the overwhelmingly likely bad outcome, even at the cost of forgoing a small chance of a good one, can be the rational choice.

Rationalizing suicide in cases of illness (25:30)

Kagan applies the doors thought experiment to a realistic case: an elderly patient with a progressive illness told by doctors there is little chance of recovery, facing either great pain and incapacity if they continue, or a foreclosed but pain-free outcome if they choose suicide. He argues this shows that, when thinking clearly, suicide can be a rational choice in certain circumstances. He then confronts the objection that people in such extreme suffering can never think clearly enough to trust their own judgment, and responds using an analogy: a patient deciding whether to undergo risky but likely successful surgery is also under great emotional and physical stress, yet we don't conclude their judgment can never be trusted. He concludes that extreme distress should prompt caution, repeated reflection, and consultation with others, not blanket distrust of one's own judgment, and states that the rationality of suicide, under the right circumstances, is secured, while emphasizing that rationality doesn't settle morality.

Introduction to the morality of suicide: is life a gift? (36:40)

Turning briefly to morality, Kagan examines two "quick and dirty" arguments against suicide before promising a more systematic treatment next time. The first, that suicide violates God's will, he rejects by noting that without an explicit "instruction manual" from God, the same logic could equally condemn saving someone's life, since we cannot tell from the bare fact of creation which acts align with divine will; appealing to a specific text (like the Bible) raises further unresolved questions about which of its commands we actually treat as binding. The second, that we owe a debt of gratitude for the gift of life and so must not reject it, he rejects by arguing that gratitude is only owed for a genuine, ongoing gift; using the analogy of being forced to eat a "spoiled pie," he argues a good giver would not insist you keep a gift once it has turned bad, so a debt of gratitude cannot ground a moral obligation to keep living through severe suffering.

Before you watch

• This lecture continues directly from the previous one on the rationality of suicide and reuses its life-quality graph method, so watching that lecture first is important.
• Kagan's earlier arguments about container theories of well-being and the deprivation account of death's badness are assumed background.
• No new outside reading is introduced, though familiarity with basic theistic arguments helps follow the God's-will discussion.

Check your understanding

1. Why can a decision to commit suicide be rational at one point in a "bad" period of life but not at a later point, even though the underlying facts about the future haven't changed?
2. What does the burn-victim case illustrate about the relationship between a past judgment ("I'd be better off dead") and a later recovery?
3. Explain the two-doors thought experiment. What does it show about whether it's ever rational to give up a small chance of a good outcome to avoid an overwhelmingly likely bad one?
4. How does Kagan respond to the argument that people facing suicide-level suffering can never trust their own judgment?
5. Why does Kagan think the "debt of gratitude" argument fails to show that suicide is always immoral?