Should we allow assisted suicide?

My Prof. assigned this as a topic for term paper. I am having a problem even to begin. Breaking down the question it seems to me misleading. Assisted suicide assumes suicide, that being immoral, leading one to have to answer no? Am I going the right direction with what I believe the Prof really wants as an answer. It is an advanced Philosophy class. Begging the question?

As of now, "assisted suicide" is the official term. The immoral connotation of the term is a different question, perhaps one you can address in the paper. I know proponents prefer "death with dignity." But it is suicide. No real fallacy here because it is outside the context of an argument. You can discuss the concept of loaded language - see my article on this at

In fact there are three areas that need to be examined in this question: Should we allow, Assisted, and finally, Suicide.The first part needs to be given a context. If the we allow is within a perilous Seal Team Six mission against overwhelming odds of survival or being captured it could become a honor pact among the team members. At that point the question takes on a whole new meaning than if we are simply positing it as a legal or social matter. So, that would need to be cleared up first.

I don't find any moral bias against suicide in the question. That seems to be your bias, or assumed belief. So we would probably need to have more information about whose morality we're talking about here. Judaism considers the mass suicide at Masada to be a sacred act. In fact, the question doesn't imply anything immoral about the act of suicide itself. The question is about the ethics of 'assisted suicide' which is a separate issue than suicide. It's possible that suicide is morally and ethically sanctioned, while assisted suicide is not only immoral, but homicide. Lest you think this is semantics, there is a legendary class taught at Harvard (See Scott Turow's L101) precisely on the myriad legalities and ethics of improbable situations. You might also look at Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia that opens with different mind-bending situations with extremely unconventional answers.

So, there are no fallacies within the question itself, but your assumption of morality may be a bias or projection on your part that's not in the question itself.

My personal answer to that question is yes, assisted suicide can be the best solution to many conditions, e.g. terminal illnesses associated with immense physical and psychological pain. As for your question, there are no logical fallacies, but I'd advise you to beware cognitive biases when doing your paper to avoid irrational content in the paper and biased research when looking for info for the paper.

I remember from my intro to ethics class the principle of doing and allowing. Committing suicide is an act done on oneself but assisted suicide is an act done by someone else with the same goal. My guess is that the question wants you to think about circumstances that makes us say that suicide might not be immoral. Or circumstances where assisted suicide is moral. If I say that suicide is wrong because taking one's life is wrong, then what makes assisted suicide any different? After all, pushing the fat man or pulling the lever sounds like not that different [1].

If we think of scenarios where assisted suicide might be permissible, or even the right thing, we might come up with examples like people with incurable diseases and under intense suffering. We can make a case that if this is permissible, then if someone is under intense suffering due to an incurable disease and has no one around, then suicide is permissible (no distinction between doing and allowing). On the other hand, if someone takes their own life because they lost in a tournament of some kind, then if we say that this is forbidden, then asking someone to assist on the suicide sounds more like murder.

In all, I think that we can be generous and say that the question, is assisted suicide wrong? is broad on purpose so that we can expand on its nuances.

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tro. . .