Thanks JP. I did give another reason. I said:

“By analogy, we may want to avoid the term slightly derogatory term ‘cop’ and use ‘police’ in some contexts. The other term can have connotations we want to avoid. The same applies to ‘suicide’. The term ‘suicide’ can connote an ill-thought through decision made by somebody who is internally coerced and is therefore not making a truly voluntary decision. Since the decisions under a VAD regime -- assuming adequacy of safeguards – will be voluntary and well-considered, we can justifiably claim that we ought not to call these cases instances of suicide.”

It is funny you should mention the Alice in Wonderland passage. It is well known to me. This is why I said "within limits". It is not as though I am saying that we could redefine "suicide” as a species of Amazonian termite!

Rather, the claim is partly that we ought to avoid terms that have a certain degree of baggage that does not apply to the situation we are dealing with, and partly because these people are already dying – already being "killed" by their underlying condition, which makes it meaningful, for reasons I have stated, to claim that these people are seeking to make the process of dying better and avoid the suffering it may otherwise cause, rather than “committing suicide”.

As noted above in my other post, since the term "suicide" can connote a decision made in the heat of the moment or connote an ill-conceived decision made at a time when the person is coerced by their condition and so not doing what they would do if they were not in its grip (so it is not a truly voluntary act), it would not be appropriate to use this term of the regime we are discussing. For example, VAD is supposed to be entirely voluntary.

It is always important when using language to avoid certain unwanted connotations. These connotations are not captured in dictionary definitions which are often extremely blunt. As lawyers, we have to be acutely aware of this when drafting contracts or legislation, lest in settling a dispute a court decides a term means something different to what the parties or drafter intended. Also, as any lawyer will tell you, the dictionary definition will do no work when terms are given definitions in statutes (and ‘VAD’ is defined in statures). These terms often depart form the dictionary definition, so appealing to the dictionary definition will be irrelevant in that context. But the statutorily defined terms are none the worse for that.

There is also another important point about how the use of terms can change. In Australia, the term “assisted dying” is gaining currency in government literature and statutes. In time, this could well have an impact on how other terms such as “suicide” are defined in the dictionary. But the new recommended usage needs to catch on first, which does take time. This is why your appeal to the dictionary definition does not answer those of us who are recommending a different use. Once we have made this recommendation, it begs the question against us to cite the definition whose use we are recommending should be altered. But it doesn’t work the converse way. We are not begging the question against those who appeal to the dictionary definition. The onus is on those who object to our recommendation to give reasons independent of the dictionary definition about why the recommendation should not be adopted. I believe I have given adequate reasons for this recommendation; you obviously don't. But I haven't found your objections convincing.

Can I ask you something JP? Do you ever have a morsel of doubt about your own position? You described voluntary assisted dying in your last post as "reprehensible". Does this mean that you are also a pacifist who objects to any type of "killing" in self-defence or in war? On what basis would ending someone's life in any circumstance always be reprehensible? Do you extend this claim to withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment? And do you extend it to cases where, at least according to some people, there is no intention to bring about death – the palliative pain relief cases foreseeing that death may be hastened, or the withdrawal cases where the intention is to be free from burdensome treatment with death a foreseen side-effect?

When I used to occupy a position more like yours and had severe doubts about assisted dying, the only reason I could think of for why it would be wrong is that we couldn't guarantee that we would always be ending life for the right reasons, which in my view is an empirical matter. But some people claim, implausibly in my view, that no matter how desperate someone is to end their lives when already dying, not matter how great their suffering is, doing so is an implicit value judgment that their lives are not worth living. Is this your view? I am not going to be able to enter into a debate about these issues on here, but I am just asking out of interest. So if you respond and clarify your position, I won’t start a new thread of argument about them.

All the best JP; as usual you've made some great comments.
Andrew

Yes, you’re right Andrew, I still do not regard your reasons as convincing.

Regarding your first reason above, how could anyone know that someone seeking VAD was not just as “internally coerced” (and therefore on your terms not acting truly voluntarily) as any other person who seeks to commit suicide? How is “internal coercion” any different to someone saying “I really want to do this”?

Moreover, would you say that a person who qualifies for VAD in other respects but who was deemed as being “internally coerced” should be denied VAD after all? Do you really think that would happen?

It all seems highly subjective to me.

You say that VAD will only be given to people who make a voluntary, well-considered decision. (I understand that a proposed VAD law in Tasmania requires just a four-day period between a request for VAD and its implementation! Yet how much time does a person need for such an irreversible, fatal decision to be regarded as “well-considered”?) How is “voluntariness” to be assessed? It is not unusual for older people presently to feel that they are a burden, even when their family assures them they are not. Should VAD become commonplace how easy it will be for such people to feel they “ought” to make use of VAD. To all appearances their decision may appear to be voluntary – “This is what I want!” while the family may know full well that they just think they should get out of the way. And then there will be the families that will covertly pressure their elderly relatives to use VAD.

You wish to redefine “suicide” by VAD according to the state of mind of the actor, while I want to retain the notion that suicide refers to the act, largely regardless of the state of mind of the actor. I think that deliberately ending one’s life should always should always be regarded as something negative (although I recognise that some people with serious mental health issues may have very diminished responsibility for such an act). But deliberately ending one’s life is never a good.

Who never has a doubt Andrew? Such people would surely be scary! (I’m assuming you have some doubts on this yourself?) No, I’m, hopefully, always genuinely seeking what is “right” and “true” and that is why I have appreciated this discussion with you. (Now, those are loaded words, right, and, true, but if we don’t think such notions are meaningful then what is this all about?)

I didn’t quite describe VAD as reprehensible – I said perhaps all killing is reprehensible. But, yes, I do think the practice of VAD warrants censure.

It seems to me that either human life is of absolute value, in terms of what is valuable in this world, or it is not. But what gives human life its value? Is it something that we simply choose to attribute? (and if circumstances are such, can we equally choose to withdraw such attribution?)

If we regard human life as just the unintentional outcome of evolved pond scum, then I find it hard to see how human life (or any life or anything else) has any intrinsic value. Further, unless there is some ultimate purpose for our existence then really what does it matter in the end what we do? Can we really do anything that is actually “right” or “wrong”, in a moral and not just a legal sense? And if our morals are just expressions of personal or group preferences then why should anyone care what others’ preferences are and not just act according to their own?

So you probably can guess where I am coming from. You can probably guess my answers to most of those questions too (I am a pacifist BTW.) If you would like to see my thoughts set out more fully you might like to see my website: www.atheismforkidsandteens.com and I also have a number of articles on OLO – you can find them under my name, Graham Preston.

Thanks for the discussion but it would be good to hear an outline of your worldview too.

Hi JP

Thanks for these replies. You raise some very deep questions there! Probably too deep to go into on a post in this forum. I've always been puzzled by the idea that we would need a God to secure the objectivity of right and wrong. It seems to me that 'God' himself is subject to what Kant called the moral law, which is supreme. Assume that 'God' exists. I can only know if 'God' is good by applying the moral law to his or her conduct. Some people reply that it is the other way round and that God is prior what is good and right -- a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma. But it's not clear what that would mean and, to my mind, it embodies the dangerous idea that some beings can be above the law.

Wittgenstein once said that even if there were a God, it wouldn't solve the riddle of life, but only add to it. He's clearly right of course. It's on the same footing as trying to postulate the existence of God to explain the existence of the universe. People forget that this doesn't work, since we then need to explain God! The same point applies to the objectivity of ethics issue.

Have you heard of Derek Parfit? Parfit's work, following on from Sidgwick and Kant, aims to defend the idea of the objectivity of ethics, and Parfit aims to answer a lot of those questions you posed. He believed that ethics is a science, like mathematics. It is different -- sui-generis -- but in that ballpark. He spent a lot of time grappling with the phenomenon of disagreement, which seemed to be an objection to this view. He wrote a three volume tome called On What Matters. Parfit, to my mind, was a genius and rivals Wittgenstein and Kant as the greatest philosophical minds of all time. I strongly recommend these three volumes to you.

It's been a great conversation JP, but this will be my last post. I will check out your website this week.

All the best
Andrew