| Jay520 said: Arguments consist of validating & invalidating premises, so my point is relevant. If there are people that do not believe life is the most wonderful thing, then that's proof that life is not objectively the most wonderful thing. Because people have different ideas of what's the most wonderful thing, life is subjectively (not objectively) the most wonderful thing, making your premise flawed, thus making your conclusion flawed as well. I don't think that's a good analogy. Your basis for appreciating school is the fact that they could have a worse alternative - living in a third world country. They aren't in a third world country and they should be appreciative of that. That makes sense, however, this doesn't apply to life. Your basis for appreciating life is the fact that they could have a worse alternative- death. This does not make sense because the people that don't appreciate life WANT death. So why should they be appreciative of lacking something that they desire? |
No, arguments don't. Well, not normally, anyway. I base my reasoning upon my premises and then you try to invalidate the reasoning, not the premise itself. Because, you see, life being a wonderful thing is obviously a subjective idea so we're obviously going to end up with different conclusions depending on whether you believe life to be wonderful or not. I'm arguing that, under the assumption that life is objectively wonderful, you should appreciate it. If you disagree with my first assumption, then there's really no need for any discussion.
I'm surprised you're not getting my analogy. If we go by your logic, then the schoolkids who don't like school and prefer the alternative - not going to school - needn't appreciate what they're getting. It's not that they should be appreciative of not being in a third world country, (honestly, I shouldn't have mentioned that since it seems to be distracting from my actual point) it's that they should be appreciative of getting the opportunity to go to school. Sure, they WANT to not go to school just like some people WANT death, but society as a whole knows that it is much better for them to go to school and that they should be appreciative that they get this opportunity.
Actually, my analogy seems to be working in another way that I didn't notice; while schoolkids think that school is horrible and don't want to go to it, they only think this because they don't realize how horrible their lives will be if they don't go to school. They simply don't understand the extent of the horror of the alternative. In a similar way, people who want to die are simply ignorant of how much better living is than dying, which is why they make this "wrong" decision of wanting to die.
Oh, and it looks like we're getting awfully close to the whole euthanasia/suicide topic. I wonder if that was intended.
“These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” – Groucho Marx
