#1279 Patrick Hassan: An Open Conversation About Suicide with a Philosopher

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm here with a return guest, Dr. Patrick Hassan. He's senior lecturer at the School of English Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, and today we're going to talk about, I mean, basically the philosophy of suicide. We've already had that sort of discussion on the show, but today we're going to have a more open discussion about the topic of suicide. So Doctor Hassan, welcome back to the show. It's a huge pleasure to everyone.

00:34 Patrick Hassan: Thank you for having me once again, yeah, it's a pleasure.

00:37 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, I mean, I decided on a few topics here, but of course we don't have to just uh stay, uh, I, I mean to just uh restrict ourselves to the topics I chose. So, uh, but I would like to start by asking you this, do you think that the suicide should Always be medicalized because I mean particularly in our more modern Western societies, countries who I mean we tend very much to do that for example whenever someone just expresses a wish to die or to commit suicide. Um, I mean, there's even suicide prevention lines that even other people can contact or they can contact the police or some, uh, or the medical system in some form of way, in some way to basically to prevent that person to go ahead with it, and they usually receive a medical diagnosis, a psychiatric. Diagnosis or something like that. Sometimes they are even, uh, uh, even met, uh I mean they, they are even hospitalized in a compulsory way. I mean, they don't have any choice whether to, to be hospitalized or not. So, uh, uh, but, uh, I mean, since you come, um, to, uh, uh, since you look at it from a philosophical perspective, I mean, how do you approach this question?

02:11 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, it's, it's a good question and an important one for the reasons that you just gave, um, and you know, as we talked about last time, I mean, since the, the explosion of the empirical sciences in the sort of late 19th century, increasingly become a trend, right, to sort of medicalize and understand this phenomenon through a, um, medical, medical lens. And, um, I think at first, at first, uh, glance, it, it's got to be said that of course. Um, YOU know, suicide is very often caused by or significantly, um, influenced by. Things which the medical sciences are interested in, so things like depression, for example, is the, is the, probably the, the biggest one, right, that it would be crazy to deny that um, you know. Pretensions to suicide or disposition to suicide are are never affected by things like depression, uh and so that's, that's probably good to get on the table just at the outset. Having said that, I think the answer to your question should, you know, should we exclusively think of suicide in this medicalised lens that is increasingly becoming common. I think the answer to that has to be no, um, when we consider the philosophical dimensions of the concept, um, so I think it. If we, if we think about suicide ideation just by definition, um, as something that is. It's something that ought to be treated rather than understood. Um, I think that sets us off on the wrong foot and primarily I think for, for three reasons. So first of all. One problem with that I think and that's that can have quite dangerous consequences is that it, it merely just begs the question, right, it takes suicide to be exclusively shaped by irrational forces, um, you know, purely biologically determined or, or in fact socially determined. So, you know, again, as we talked about before, there is a vast body of literature which, which has this view that suicide is a kind of symptom of various kinds of um social. Social ills or like ways in which our society has gone wrong, if you couple that with a sort of exclusively biological determinism, you, you get this understanding of suicide is really just exclusively, yeah, a problem to be fixed, like an ill, that's it's symptomatic of some kind of irrational psychological or sociological force, and I think that begs the question precisely because it. If we take suicide to be of that nature by definition, um, it automatically ejects any kind of agency that the, the suicidal person would possess, like it automatically says, OK, well the reasons which they might articulate to themselves, which. Might seem quite plausible and of course might be, you know, available to revision. Those things just get off the table immediately and so the, the people in question are just considered at the whim of these various irrational forces and pressures. And I think that that's a dangerous assumption to make at the outset precisely because, yeah, it, it dissolves any possibility of agents in the first place. So that's my first sort of concern. Yeah,

05:33 Ricardo Lopes: let me just comment on that. I mean, I also think that it is a mistake for people, uh, psychiatrists specifically, but, uh, the medical system more broadly to assume that because someone suffers, for example, from depression, that they, uh, that because of that they no longer. Have sort of access to the necessary cognitive mechanisms or cognitive abilities to make a rational decision. I mean, I, I, I think that is that specifically is something that a psychiatrist or any other, uh, I mean. Any other doctor who has proper training should assume, I mean they should have to prove that in fact, in the, in the case of that specific individual, they are no longer or they are suffering from such. Um, I, I mean they are suffering from depression to such a degree that they are no longer in possession of their cognitive faculties to be able to make an autonomous decision, you know.

06:58 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, no, I think that's right, I think that, um, a couple of things that, you know, depression is not this one sort of catch-all concept that always surfaces the same way in the same degree, that, that's got to be said for sure. Um, AND also then there's a further question that's tethered to that about whether or the extent to which autonomous decisions can be made within that, that kind of experience or that kind of condition. Um, AND I think that, um, you know, both of those are such important questions that even if we grant that medicine has some role to play, and I think that's a reasonable view that medicine can contribute to this, this debate and understanding of what this phenomenon is. Um, THAT just reveals already at the outset that there's a lot more complexity here than, than is perhaps made out with the sort of actual, well, suicide merely is by definition something that you should go to a psychiatrist for, like to, to fix you in some way I think is a fairly dangerous assumption, especially given. You know, thousands of years in, in almost every cultural tradition where people have thought about this philosophically, which I'm sure we'll come on to, but um, yeah, it, I, I, my first concern is along those lines that it sort of just begs the question that, um, you know, agency is not really relevant or autonomous choice is not really relevant to this uh domain when I think it, it really is.

08:22 Ricardo Lopes: And, and also I think that in that particular case if people just assume that whenever someone is suicidal or has some form of suicidal ideation, they must be, I don't know, in a way out of their minds that in a way they are not fully. They do not have full control over their decision making. I mean, I guess that what that reveals is not necessarily people having a proper medical or scientific approach to the question, but Having a moral bias because they are basically injecting the question with even though they might not admit it that I mean killing oneself or committing suicide is just morally wrong always and we have to prevent that at all costs, you know,

09:18 Patrick Hassan: absolutely, yes, you know, there is this danger of With this kind of disposition to the medicalization of suicide, I think without, without a doubt, at least some strands of that already smuggle in moral baggage and moral prejudice, um, that it's impossible, like it, of course, the sciences tend to frame themselves as neutral on normative questions, right? But I mean that just isn't really the case, right, there's normativity built for all these concepts like health, for example, is, is viewed with these kinds of connotations, um. And I think that you're right, um, the history of using the term suicide, right, that carries with it not just emotional connotations, but negative moral connotations as well. That, that's very evident when you look at the way people describe, uh, the deaths of sort of villains like Hitler versus people we tend to admire like Socrates or others. The word suicide itself carries with it these negative moral connotations, and I do think that these are often smuggled in. To this medicalised approach and it's definitely something to be wary of as well, that it's not as neutral as it, it sort of presents itself as being for sure. Um And and just to follow up on that as well, I mean, a connected problem is that There is perhaps a pretension also to think that suicide is a bit more, the motivations for it are a bit more simplistic than the reality actually is. So in the reality, there's a very wide range of reasons and motivations which, which make suicide, um. Uh, PERCEIVED to be an attractive option, um, across history and across culture, and it's not, I think again one of the mistakes is just tethering it to a concept like depression or to, um, exhaustion or weakness of some capacity. Uh, WHEN in fact there's, there's a whole range of, of reasons why people have articulated, um, suicide to be something maybe not just permissible, but maybe admirable, maybe even morally required in some, in some circumstances. And I think that sort of diverse range of motivations and reasons can also be overlooked in a strict sort of medicalizing view which just sees suicide as a kind of pathological, um. Phenomenon, that's another danger, um. And perhaps one last thing which might be relevant on that as well is that just on that pushing the normative point rather than just kind of a more conceptual understanding of the concept. You know, there is a tradition of thinking a bit more critically about why the medicalization of suicide has become so prevalent. So one thesis is just that, you know, we became very, very confident in the ability, the explanatory power of the empirical sciences, and since that we've just tried to apply this in many other domains just for the purpose of better understanding. But I suppose one other kind of way of understanding why we've headed in this direction is slightly more sinister and suspicious, and you can find it in in sort of postmodern thinkers, especially Michel Foucault, but not exclusively. Thinking that The medicalization and criminalization that often goes with these kinds of practices of suicide. That looks very close to a potential sort of coercive mechanism of the state to find, you know. What would otherwise be morally permissible expressions of freedom or of protest or something like this to be reined in and controlled. Um, SO that's another way of, of postulating or thinking about why we've headed in that direction in the first place is that perhaps this is at least suspiciously close to an attempt at like state regulation of freedoms or expressions and and a lot of people of various traditions have have been taken in by that and thought this. Something to be said along those normative lines as well as this kind of descriptive conceptual problem of of whether suicide just is a solely medical phenomenon.

13:29 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and I mean, I think that, and I want to ask you about this specifically because here in Portugal, for example, in late 2023, a new law came to be where I mean people who suffer from certain psychiatric conditions and for example people who even express suicidal ideation, it can be forced. Fully hospitalized. I mean, they are not given a choice. They are just taken to the hospital, hospitalized, and they are forced to stay there for where, uh, how long, uh, I mean, the psychiatrist who's in charge of them decides. I mean, they, they, they can't just say, OK, so I, I want to leave now. Can I leave? And I mean they are not allowed to, to, to leave the, the psychiatric ward or some or some. Other place in the hospital. Uh, AND I mean, I, it's interesting because sometimes that kind of behavior or that kind of approach to, uh, suicide and even psychiatric conditions more broadly, uh, uh, uh, of course, uh, uh, we, uh, I'm, I'm referring here to psychiatric conditions more broadly. I, I'm not implying that suicide necessarily is the result of psychiatric condition, but just to make the point. I mean, it's interesting because actually it can lead to contradictory results because supposedly people pass those laws because they want to save people or help them with their mental suffering or something like that, but actually I've heard a few people saying that since that law got passed, They go to the doctor and they lie about their mental condition because they are terribly afraid of being hospitalized and once they are hospitalized, they have no say in where. They will get dismissed from the hospital and when they will be able to get back to their regular lives, you know, so I mean, I guess that when it comes to even the idea of helping or saving people in some way, I mean, forcing people through that process can, can have the opposite kind of result that we want, I think.

16:06 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, so I mean that's that's a really nice example because it, it raises a number of questions there. So, so first, um, you might, the moral of that story might be something like, we ought to be more suspicious of, um, state legislation which is couched in terms of compassion. Like we want to save, we want to help, um, but in fact there there might be something else going on there that we need to be attentive to and this is like a broader example of how. Yes, perhaps we ought to be more suspicious than we are of how moral rhetoric can actually conceal some kind of other, um, intention, and I, I guess that's precisely what Foucault's point was in these points, and, and he gets that of course from Nietzsche. Um, SO that's one thing. And then another interesting thing about that is that, of course, one of the key concepts in this discussion of the philosophy of suicide, um, a lot of that discussion centers on the concept of autonomy or freedom. Um, AND sometimes that has been justified as a sort of, um. Uh, uh, OR harnessed rather in service of justifications for the permissibility of suicide or, or, or sort of, um, yeah, physician assisted. Uh, DEATH, um. On the grounds that look, you know, it's an autonomous if it's an autonomous choice, if we have good reason to believe that it's a free autonomous choice, um, then it might be the case that people have a right to this kind of, um, this kind of thing. Uh, BUT then it gets quite complicated, right, because the, the, the worry that seems to be on the table is one of paternalism, like we don't really want the state being in the driving seat and deciding when or where. Um, PEOPLE have to be hospitalized or when on the other side of the, of the debate, when people, um, might have to be, you know, whether euthanasia is uh plausible, like who decides whether that's actually the case. So the paternalism worry is, is centering around this and it it really comes down to this idea about whether. Um, YOU know, autonomy is a chief value. When is autonomy, um, sort of. Um, MANIFESTED or realized in the context of suicide, uh, and again, going back to what we were saying earlier, the one of the problems with the, the medicalization view is that it seems at the outset to undermine the possibility of autonomous decision here.

18:37 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, NO, that, that actually is a very great point, and we have the same sort of issue here in Portugal because back in 2023 we also passed the law to grant people access to um. To euthanasia or to medically assisted suicide, but the thing is, first of all, that law hasn't been regulated yet, so it's the same as as not having access to euthanasia at all. But I mean, because we also passed that law that I just described earlier, I mean they, they are. Assuming that whenever anyone expresses a wish to die, they must, they must suffer from a psychiatric condition and they must be prevented from doing that. So I mean one law, if, if the medical, the assisted suicide law got regulated and people would have access to it, I mean, Then in what cases would they be able to get access to it, because I mean if they express a wish to die, then they must suffer from a psychiatric condition, and if they suffer from a psychiatric condition, they are not in possession of their full capacity to make decisions, so. You know, it's, it's, it's like it's a conundrum. I mean then we should assume that no one would ever have access to medically assisted suicide because if they express a wish to die, then they are immediately labeled as, I don't know, depressed, depressed or something like that. Yeah,

20:18 Patrick Hassan: exactly, and I think that's partly explaining ironically. Stigmas associated with suicide, so part one of the pretensions of the sort of scientific community and the and the sort of medical profession has to be, In many cases to destigmatize certain concepts, like to understand them better, they're not spooky, they're not, you know, these uh necessarily immoral or, or sort of metaphysical, metaphysically charged things, but rather we can understand them by the processes that we understand everything else and so to demystify is to somehow, Sort of destigmatize in in many cases, that doesn't always work out, but I think this is a case uh and the example you gave is very, very vividly demonstrating that is that. You might say that that kind of approach has had the opposite effect in sort of re-stigmatizing, uh, suicide in a different way. So, you know, prior to the 18th century, uh, or 19th century rather, uh, suicide might have been stigmatized as this kind of moral evil, a sin, a sort of, sort of unrepentable sin. You might say, OK, well we grew out of that and we started using these medical concepts, but we've almost re-stigmatized it by saying that the mere fact that you might have a suicidal ideation implies that you, you just couldn't possibly be thinking rationally, that you couldn't possibly be a healthy functioning normal individual. Um, AND so it reintroduces the stigma in a, in a sort of different language or or sort of different framework. So I do think that's a danger we need to be. Um, ATTENTIVE to

21:56 Ricardo Lopes: and also I, I mean, I think that if we just look back into the history of psychiatry, it's pretty evident that it has been very much influenced by the social cultural context where it operates because I mean just a few decades ago, homosexuality. It was considered a mental disease. TRANS people just until very recently were considered also, or I mean a transgenderism or whatever you want to call it, was considered also a form of mental disease, and I mean we, we tend to go through these sort of A cultural evolution in the way that psychiatry seems, it doesn't seem it is actually not impermeable to a culture to the social cultural context and to cultural influences at all, but it seems that psychiatrists. Also, because, you know, they are inculturated and so many times they don't even notice that they're doing that, but they're not willing to admit that some of what they do is actually furthering stigmatization and prejudice and so on.

23:15 Patrick Hassan: Yes, no, I, I, I wouldn't disagree with that. I think that um This probably happens to sort of greater or lesser degrees and, and perhaps it's exacerbated in certain elements of medical professions more than others, but I think it's a reasonable and and fairly modest view to have that our, you know, medical practices and perhaps other scientific practices. You know, it, it's, it's quite hard to completely divorce them from the socio-cultural circumstances from which they develop and emerge. I mean that's not too controversial view, I think, to hold that that these kinds of professions are, you know, in some ways shaped or, um, influenced by the, the very context from which they're, they're, they're practicing within. I think that's a reasonable view, yeah.

24:02 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So do you think that suicide can be justifiable, and I mean what just what would justifiable mean for a philosopher in this particular context? I mean, would it mean something like being a rational decision or would it be something else?

24:28 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, yeah, good question, um, and I think that uh yeah, justifiable. You know, we're talking in uh primarily sort of normative terms, so there's this sort of deontic distinction we should probably make because I think philosophers are gonna want to say a few different things or or ask a few different things. So you might say, OK, what do we mean by justifiable? Do we just mean that there are reasons to find this practice permissible, right? So it's something that doesn't invoke blame, um. Do you mean that it's, it's it's suicide could be justifiable insofar as it not only is permissible but maybe is admirable, that's something we should sort of look at with praise, at least in some, some context. And then perhaps even, even more strongly, could suicide be justifiable in the sense that not only is it permissible and perhaps sometimes admirable, but maybe even sometimes obligatory that you're morally required. To commit suicide under certain certain um conditions and while that is perhaps a less popular view, it has been defended and it has been part of various cultural institutions for for a number of years. So justifiable here leaves, I think, um, these claims open. It's connection to rationality is an interesting question too, because that will depend on whether so if you think it's justifiable, the reason it will be justifiable will be augmented by this question about rationality. So it could just be, look, um. Suicide can be justifiable, let's just say permissible for the purposes of this example. Whether it's, it's come to you on the basis of rationality or not, right, if you have a right, let's say, to end your life, and uh many people in like the libertarian tradition uh have argued for something like this, one version of that view. Uh, WILL hold that. Uh, THAT right, uh, holds whether you come to, to have this kind of, um, desire or this kind of disposition for rational reasons or not, right? That's just aside from whether you possess the right in the first place. So. I guess my first response to the question is just that it things are a little bit more complicated there, there's a, there's a vast web of how to figure out what justifiable means and uh you know, what the arguments might be in terms of it's in in favor of it. So, I guess a nice place to start there would be to say something like, look, even philosophers thousands of years ago who were very on the whole, anti-suicide, they thought this was a sort of morally revolting or repugnant kind of activity. So Even philosophers like that with Plato might be one of those, right, in the laws he talked about how this is impermissible, um, and, and sort of inexcusable, but even he makes exceptions, right? He does think there are conditions in which suicide might be. Permissible or or at the very least just excusable, right? So he talks about cases where, you know, and perhaps anticipating some of the stuff uh in the psychological literature where one's mind is so corrupted, um. That your moral character can't be saved as a result. This might be a condition where suicide is permissible, um, when one has participated in some kind of horribly unjust system or or or law uh that could cause great harm, this might be another case. Um, HE even considers cases of extreme personal misfortune where where just kind of circumstances are so horrible, the suffering is so overwhelming, uh, that that might be a permissible case. So even though he was generally very anti-suicide, there might be cases in which he would find that permissible. But I think generally, there's gonna be 3 things to consider, like is, is suicide or can suicide ever be justifiable? Most philosophers have centered on three kinds of considerations. So, so one consideration would be, does suicide violate any duty that I might have to other people, and that can be specific to others like family members, um, dependents of various kinds, like if you're a parent, um, do you have to consider your obligations to your children before you would take this on board. Um, SO obligations to others, do you have an obligation to yourself, right? So in the Kantian tradition. Kant generally thought that suicide was not only just, uh, you know, a, a moral wrong, but one of the worst things we can do, um. And part of the reason, the justification for that was thinking that we have duties to ourselves as rational autonomous beings. We possess a certain kind of dignity and instrumentalizing that in via suicide, he thought um was was um impermissible. So we might have duties to ourselves. And then you have a, there's a history of sort of religious arguments as well which say, OK, suicide might be wrong because it violates a duty to God, like maybe God has or the gods have sort of dominion over our lives, uh, and God or the or the gods really only they have the power to decide whether we can check in or out of of life, um. Those arguments aren't particularly popular anymore and due to greater secularization, philosophers, uh, within religious traditions might still defend versions of them, but they tend not to be the ones, uh, typically discussed anymore. Um, BUT those are generally some considerations for why suicide might be off the table. And so if you don't find any of those convincing. This opens up possibilities for thinking that this could be, this could be justifiable, like if at the very least, if there's no norms or duties that we'd have to refrain from this, it looks more and more like this, you know, we, we, we don't really have good reasons to prohibit this across the board. Yeah, um, so yeah, I can say a little bit more about, um, approaches to that if you, if you'd like.

30:25 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, let me focus specifically on the duty to others because I find that one very interesting to talk about. I mean, because Uh, what, uh, I mean, to what extent should that duty go? Because let's imagine that for example, someone is suffering a lot mentally or physically or both. I mean, uh. Of course I think people should at least always consider others when they make that kind of decision. I mean, particularly if they have close others. I mean, if they don't have any family or friends, I guess that the decision is easier in a way, but If you have a duty to other people like family members, friends, and so on to not make them suffer with your death or to not, to not leave them alone in the world or something like that, I mean, whatever kind of duty you are considering, I mean, but, but to what extent should we, should you consider that because at a certain point it becomes a bit. I, I, I, I, I mean a bit even macabre in the, in the way that, OK, so. If other people, if let's say other people, if you express a will to die or a wish to die and other people try to, for example, coerce you into not going through with it because they will suffer and so on, I mean, but are you really or should you really be morally obliged? If you're just suffering all the time and you are mostly sure that you will continue suffering for the rest of your life, I mean, should you be morally obliged to stay alive for the sake of other people just to prevent their suffering, because in that sense, in that case, I mean, it would be other people forcing you to suffer for their sake, you know, so I mean it, it can get really complicated, right, and it's not as straightforward as just saying, oh, you should, you obviously shouldn't. Uh, COMMIT suicide because other people will suffer. I mean, it's more complicated than that, right?

33:02 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, absolutely, yes, and I think that, um, this has been noted in the literature that arguments of this kind will only go so far because they are justified extrinsically, they're justified on the relation that you have to particular persons or a community at large, and of course there's lots of ways you can relate to a community and to persons. Um, SO this is always going to be somewhat, these arguments are gonna be somewhat shaped, uh, by whatever particular relations obtained that we're talking about, and that of course affects the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of these arguments just for the reasons that you said. So look, there's lots of ways in which. You know, one's decision to commit suicide can have negative effects on others, right? No one's going to deny that. Like it can produce economic hardship, it can produce specific and perhaps unique forms of grief that are very hard to bear for the people that are left behind. Um, VARIOUS ways in which that can cause suffering. But notice that that can also go the other way, right? So you can say that, you know, if you're in such a, a period of, of, of suffering and sort of horrific pain. Um, SEEING that, right, can cause suffering for the people close to you. Um, AND there's also a, a very large literature dedicated to this problem. And of course this is again a sort of cultural institution in in many parts of the world where Suicide has not been condemned on this basis, but actually has been seen to be something admirable or required on the ground that the person in question feels like a burden, right, to the rest of the community or to their loved ones because. In other words, A reciprocity relation is not obtaining anymore, so that you can't put into the society or the social group, um, proportionally to what you're taking out of it anymore. And so outside of academic philosophy, you find, you know, some communities who have practices such as, uh, you know, very elderly and sick members of society will commit suicide or be assisted in suicide, um, for the benefit of their community. Um, AND there's a lot of philosophical literature exploring precisely that kind of relation, uh, along those lines that, you know, thinking about suicide, the morality of suicide in terms of the relation of the person in question to either particular others or to the community or society at large. Um, CAN actually produce, um, various kinds of moral judgments and and outcomes on this, that it's not just that. It's not as straightforward as you say that committing suicide is, is wrong because it always causes harm or suffering to a community. That's just not the case. And in fact, act utilitarians, for example, so people who think that the morally right action in at any time is one which maximizes aggregate utility impartially. They can harness arguments of this kind, right? They can say that actually you're morally required to commit suicide. Why? Because, uh, doing so would actually macro uh maximize aggregate utility for the community or the or the, the social group. And there's been variations of that too, so you don't have to be a utilitarian to make that argument, but that's just an example of how contingent these, um. Arguments from a duty to others can really be talking about the morality of suicide.

36:31 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean, I guess that we all know examples or, I mean, if people don't know or don't have examples of that directly in their lives, uh, we can very easily imagine or at least if your thinking is not in a way blocked by social taboos or something like that, you, we can very easily imagine situations where it's pretty obvious that even It's even better for the person herself to just die because they're suffering is suffering horribly, and even many times when, for example, loved ones are in the hospital and they finally die, even the family members admit that it was better for that to happen. I mean, because their life was no longer. WORTH living. So, and, but I mean, of course, sometimes people don't say that openly because it's still a social taboo to say something like that, but sometimes even family members and other loved ones admit it openly that that person dying was better for them as well.

37:46 Patrick Hassan: Yes, absolutely, and that brings up a really crucial point as well is that I think. A view of that kind, which is, I think becoming more and more, um, yeah, socially acceptable perhaps, implicitly commits itself to, I think a quite a plausible thesis, which is that, um, It's not that life as such is valuable, that just merely being alive is good, but rather equality of life, like the type of life. So life becomes valuable in virtue of certain kinds of, you know, possessing certain kinds of goods or or being able to pursue them at least or something like that. So once you accept something like that, you can begin to formulate an argument that, you know, OK, well, once life becomes once it's sort of. Sinks below a certain threshold of quality. Um, IT becomes, you know, sort of the compassionate thing to do, to, to, to allow this to happen or to, to, you know, understand it or comprehend it. So I think that pushing against this sort of, um, I guess you'd call it a sort of sanctity of life view where just merely being alive is, is good and ought to be protected no matter what. Um, I think that's a reasonable move to make and I think that. My own view of that is it's, it's sort of paradoxically quite morbid to kind of cling to life until the very last moment despite the quality of it, um, no matter how much suffering, you know. And, and not even necessarily cashing us out in hedonic terms, in terms in terms of pain and suffering, but maybe in a sort of more normatively robust, uh, way by appealing to something like dignity. um, YOU know, you, it might not be the pain and suffering which is the relevant factor, but it could be that if, if one feels or knows objectively that they just are not living with a certain kind of dignity anymore. Um, SUICIDE can, can then I think, become more of a, uh, understandable as a justifiable practice, um. And in fact many, you know, quite a few empirical studies have shown that a lot of people who are uh in assisted dying facilities where this is legal, um, report overwhelmingly so that it's not necessarily just the, the pain and suffering, which is what they want to avoid, but it is the feeling that they've, have lost a kind of dignity or lost a kind of autonomy in the way that they live. So I, I'm kind of, I'm quite sympathetic to this idea that it, it's not really life as such which has value, but it's, it's the, the life, the quality of life that matters, not just its longevity. um, AND, you know, you can put pressure on the sanctity view by saying something like, look, we already plausibly think that there are permissible cases of taking life, right, in self-defense, for example. Um, VARIOUS kinds of, uh, contexts in which self-defense would, would lead to the death of another, but we find it permissible. And once you open that door, it becomes reasonable to ask, OK, well. What even if you think life is sacred, if you also think there are permissible cases of ending it, there's at least a conversation to be had about whether suicide might meet something in some circumstances, some of those conditions.

40:58 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, you know what, I find it quite ironic because sometimes the same people who, for example, unconditionally Express themselves against euthanasia or medically assisted suicide are the ones that, for example, when someone who was suffering a lot finally dies, they say rest in peace. So I mean it's kind of they admitting that actually probably they are in a better place now than they were before. So uh huh,

41:32 Patrick Hassan: yeah, exactly, yeah. Uh, YOU know, there's all kinds of things that can be, can be said about that, and, you know. Um, OF course, a lot of the discourse against things like, uh, a physician assisted, uh, suicide and euthanasia, a voluntary euthanasia is that it's sort of expressive, the expressive character of that prohibition is, is something cruel about that, that it sort of condemned you to live. Even if the quality of that life is just nowhere to be found. And um I think that's that that kind of angle has been pushed in in places where this is very hotly debated, such as the UK and in many US states uh at the moment. Yeah.

42:13 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, uh, YEAH, so from a philosophical perspective, uh, how do you approach assisted suicide? I mean, do you think that people should have access to it because, uh, if I understand it correctly, I mean, thinking from a philosophical perspective, uh, I mean, people, uh, the way we approach people committing suicide is not exactly the way as we should approach assisted suicide, but because Uh, the first, in the first case, it's the person herself doing it, and in the other case it involves the participation of other people and usually medical professionals,

42:57 Patrick Hassan: right? Yes, that's right, and um You know, I think there are important normative distinctions to make between these, these two concepts and, and, uh, just legally speaking as well, I mean. A lot of the Uh, when it comes to physician assisted suicide, usually there's a lot of conditions which have to be met before this becomes an option, so it's not just. Um, WELL, usually there's a sort of rationality requirement there as well that this is an existing request. There's a sort of cool off period of, of, however, you know, a month or so where people have to think about if this is really what they want because,

43:34 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, there, there was that case, that recent case in Spain with. Uh, THAT girl Noelia Castillo, where she had to wait for even after the medically assisted suicide procedure was approved, she had to wait 90 days before, uh,

43:52 Patrick Hassan: yeah, and I think, I think part of the justification for that is this worry that, um, look, suicide, as we were talking about, suicide can be impulsive, right, it can be something that. You know, on reflection, they would not want to, to, to actually do, but there's moments which are particularly intense, um, and it can be an impulsive decision. Dispositions towards it can be sporadic, uh, other times it's ambivalent, it's something you have to wrestle with, uh, and of course as we've talked about, it can be, those things can be modified or caused by things like depression some of the time, right, um, or other kind of um illnesses. So I think the worry there is that things like a cool-off period are irrelevant because they somehow help build in a condition of rationality. And if you think that rational decisions are pertinent to a genuinely autonomous decision, I think that's partly why, um, in the physician assisted suicide case, there's very often this this built-in condition, um, that it has to, these things have to obtain before we talk about that. Now notice you can contrast that with a lot of other things, like very often we find it. Uh, PERMISSIBLE to allow people to behave in certain ways which might be self-destructive or hurtful, um, which are irrational, right? But because the stakes are perhaps lower where we find it permissible to accept. But in the case of suicide or, or, you know, intentionally self-caused death, um, the stakes are very, very high, right? It's, it's the cost of a life, so the, the, the loss to that person, the loss to the family members that may exist, etc. um. So I think in those cases because the stakes are perceived to be so high, um, we're less happy to allow, um, decisions to be impulsive or irrational, even if we are in other cases where the stakes aren't so high. So that I think that's a a just a pertinent difference to the case uh of physician assisted suicide versus um. Yet, suicide more broadly. Um, Whether it's whether philosophers are going to think it's permissible, again, obviously this is controversial, but um I I think it's hard to divorce that question from the sort of broader issue of whether we do have a right to die. Um, SO again, the libertarian tradition is gonna say yes. There's different versions of that, so some are very permissive in thinking that we have a right to, to die. That doesn't imply anything about whether suicide is in fact prudent or rational, so it's quite permissive. You'll get more sort of um conservative versions of that which say, um, exercising of that right has to, to have something like rationality or or or kind of prudence uh built in. But um, yeah, I mean there's different versions of, of. How we might think of uh a right of this kind, right? So you might just think that we have a right, uh, for others not to interfere in our decision to end our lives, but that's a very sort of minimal version of that, so non-interference. Uh, PEOPLE can't interfere, we have a right not to be a sort of, um, coerced one way or another. Um, A stronger version would say something like, um, well, we have a right to die because there's no, there's, there's no violation of any duty. So if you're not convinced that we have a duty to preserve ourselves, we have a a duty to others, uh, in terms of staying alive, or that we have a sort of like a duty to God, if you don't think any of those obtain. Then we have this kind of, you know, right to die merely through process of elimination. There's just no, nothing's stopping us from doing this. We have a liberty that is not, you know, uh, for it's not foreshadowed by anything else. It's not prevented by anything else. And I suppose the strongest one, and this is where I think that the debate gets really controversial with physician assisted suicide, is that you might think that we not only do we have a right to be not interfered with in our decisions to end our lives, but actually we have a right to be assisted by others to carry out this kind of action. So it's not, if you think it's an autonomous decision, we have a free decision to end our life or or or, you know, when at the time of our choosing. Uh, WE have a right for others to help us, um, do that in a sort of responsible and safe way, um. And I'd say that that's sort of more at the extreme end of the end of the spectrum. Um, AND of course, there's, there's a lot of controversial aspects of this, like, OK, do we have this right because our body is somehow our property in the same way that like my watch is my property and I can do what I want with it. Um, THAT'S interesting because it has sort of quite a few metaphysical, um, controversies built in, like, am I separate from my body? Are we just speaking in metaphorical language there? Um, SO that, that's all very controversial. I would say probably the greatest, what I would consider to be the most. Convincing counter to reckon to to reckon with, uh, to the finding physician assisted suicide morally permissible and perhaps um something that the state should support. Mhm. Probably the best counter to that is probably something along the lines of a concern about whether such a practice would disadvantage the most vulnerable in society. Like would it in some way put pressure on vulnerable persons, say perhaps the, the elderly or like socially stigmatized groups, uh, disabled persons. Does it put pressure on them to think, oh, I am in fact a burden to society, I should be making use of this for the benefit of others.

49:32 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, OK, OK, but in that specific case, because I think we have to be careful here because sometimes people use arguments like that to then come up with conspiracy theories about how this State would be killing people against their will because that's not uh what you're saying there, I mean it would still have to be the person herself making the decision,

49:57 Patrick Hassan: voluntary, that's right, yeah, but, but but that's the, that's the concern is that it, and I'm not saying this is correct, I'm not sure I buy this, but I do see it as a genuine concern is that, would a policy that allowed for, Voluntary Physician assisted suicide, right, physician assisted suicide, would that facilitate a sort of cultural feeling, which would nonetheless pressure vulnerable persons to think of themselves as, uh, burdens to society or would it, would it signal or express that they. Uh, YOU know, they don't have lives which are considered worth living or something like that, it's,

50:38 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, but, but I think, I, I mean, if I may, I, I think that that is not supported actually by the data. If you look at data from from countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and so on where people have access to medically assisted suicide, I mean, first of all, It's a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people requesting it, even, even among people who have horrible medical conditions, physical or psychological. I mean, even among them it's a tiny minority of people requesting medically assisted suicide. So and then, I mean, even when people are, are able to. For example, mention one or one or two examples of people who perhaps shouldn't have been granted access to medically assisted suicide because they found afterwards that the person only made that choice because, for example, they were homeless or something like that. I mean, it's, it's always people always refer to the same cases, so it seems like it's, it's. Like a needle in in the in in a in a haystack because that's I I mean it's it's, it's virtually no one doing that, so.

52:04 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, no, so two things about that I would say, because I'm sort of generally on board with that kind of response. Um, SO one is that look, some people frame this as a kind of, this isn't isn't quite the, the objection that I'm raising, but there's one version of it which says something like. If you open the door to this kind of practice for certain kinds of individuals, you get this slippery slope where it'll become more and more prevalent, we'll sort of allow it for more and more things, it'll cultivate a sort of a culture or phenomenology of of certain demographics feeling like they ought to partake in this even if they don't want to. Um, AND, and as you said, I mean the, the little em empirical evidence we have for this doesn't really. Overwhelmingly support that thesis, right, and of course. That's something you would need to have years and years and years to assert, you know, to study those trends to see if it actually does substantiate it. The the empirical evidence that we have at the moment doesn't necessarily, uh, substantiate that view, so that's one thing. Um, THE science, we need to, the jury's out on that. Um, BUT yeah, there's this, there's this other concern, right, that, um. These kinds of arguments, and you, you see it the same in in other sort of controversial areas of bioethics, so things like cloning and genetic engineering, this comes up too. Um, THERE'S this worry that a slippery slope of that kind or like this, this kind of expressive character can't be augmented in any other way. So if we allow this practice, there's no other way of stopping this feeling out there being cultivated among certain demographics. And I'm not sure I buy that that's true. Like, why, why couldn't we, um, sort of. Have instill a practice like this, but. COMMUNICATE it in such a way precisely to avoid those kinds of problems like that that seems to be off the table from the outset when people make these, uh, kinds of counterarguments, but I'm just, I'm not sure that that's really ultimately, um. Uh, YOU know, a plausible way of thinking about this, um, and again,

54:12 Ricardo Lopes: and I think, I think also that people tend to, when they're making a case against assisted suicide, they are really underestimating people's resilience because I mean if you look at the numbers even worldwide, of course the total number of people you can say it's a Big number. It's in the hundreds of thousands of people that commit suicide every year. But I mean compared to the total population, that's actually a very tiny number of people who actually go through with suicide. Of course you can add to it perhaps people who try to do it but they fail and perhaps, but that's harder to study people who would actually like to have access to assisted. Suicide, but they just don't. And so I mean they would actually like to die, but they, they don't have the proper means to do that. But, but still, I mean, even people who live in extremely dire conditions, the vast, vast majority of people do not commit suicide. And even if you ask them, I, I think they would say they don't want to die, so.

55:34 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, that's right. I mean we're talking about very small numbers and and minority cases and um again just to pick up on something you you you suggested there is that um you know, we have to be especially attentive to. The reasons at play here. So, you know, if someone is pushed towards suicide, um, because of like material conditions, like socioeconomic conditions, um, the, the appropriate response to that to me doesn't seem to be something like, oh well, see, you know, allowing physician assisted suicide is wrong because it pushes these people towards it. The the appropriate response seems to be. OK, great, so we need to be doing more to improve our socioeconomic conditions so people don't be put in that scenario when they feel pushed towards it. And that's what I mean when I say that I'm not sure that these slippery slope arguments really comprehensively deal with the various kinds of fail-safe mechanisms we have, or could have rather, to prevent exactly those kinds of problematic cases. Um, SO I, I do think that um. While I take that counterargument seriously, very often how it's couched, especially in the public domain when it's debated, is, is rather hasty, exactly for the reasons that you gave,

56:52 Ricardo Lopes: yeah. And I, I mean, I had this, this, this very interesting conversation last year with an Australian physician, Dr. Philip Nitschke, and uh because he's, uh, he supports medically assisted suicide, but, and the only two conditions he says should be in place for people to have access to it is that they should be adults, so they should be over 18, and they should. HAVE mental capacity he calls it mental capacity. I mean, of course that's the trickiest bit of his argument because even he himself couldn't tell me exactly what that means. But I mean, I guess that it's basically what we were discussing earlier. I mean, really checking whether the person is able to make an Autonomous choice. Of course it's hard. I understand that, but it's basically that, and I mean, he told me that when it comes to people who have access to it, he thinks that the only thing they should have access to is basically drugs that they could take home and then use them to commit suicide because for example when it comes To injecting drugs or something like that since it has to be done by a physician, he says that he wouldn't be willing to do that because it puts some of the responsibility on the physician, and the physician then is most of an actor in terms of it's, it's me, the physician who has to do it, you know, to inject. Inject the drug or something like that, and he also says that sometimes people actually wouldn't go ahead with it if it was themselves doing it, but they want other people to do it for them. And so if it's just, oh, take this drug home, if you want to take it, take it. If you don't want to take it, that's fine, it's your decision. Removes that layer of uh. The risk associated with people just not really wanting to commit suicide but actually wanting to put the burden on another person to do it for them, you know.

59:20 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, no, that's definitely a relevant ethical concern because it It's very, again, it's very hard to divorce conceptions of responsibility, particularly from the physician assisted suicide case, right, so um. If if it, if something like that's true, um, I do think there's an interesting question about whether how intimately involved the the physician has to be here, um, and not just the sort of the phenomenology of, you know, taking home the drug and taking it, maybe feeling isolated, maybe feeling that this is, um, you know, something which is. Not they're not 100% certain about about taking this on, whereas the physician who recommends it, I I'm probably more sympathetic to that view that they have to be a bit more directly involved in this, um, because of that responsibility question. Um, SO, so, yeah, that would be, that, that's certainly something that philosophers would be and I think have been interested in exploring. Um, Michael Cholby, who's a sort of leading figure in the philosophy of suicide.

1:00:25 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I've interviewed him last year or two years,

1:00:28 Patrick Hassan: yeah, so, I mean he has, he has stuff on this that's, that's really interesting. So I definitely think that's relevant, yeah, um, and I think that. That's possibly connected to another kind of stigma with suicide that we haven't talked about, but. Very often I've I've seen in that particular debate. This Sort of, um, speculating about the, the character of the person who wants to undergo this kind of process, whether it, whether it's suicide generally or whether it's physician assisted suicide, that it's very often a practice that is, I, I guess in some ways smeared by, um, these speculations about what is motivating this. So is it, it is it sort of tethered to. A sort of disposition to fear or cowardice or something like this, or is it, um, yeah, deflecting of responsibility and I, I find that another quite pernicious angle in trying to critique, uh, what is otherwise, you know, a reasonable debate to have because. As we've talked about earlier, right, there's lots of different motivating factors which someone could have, um, which, which might make them consider suicide. To the extent that some of those might be noble, right, it's not always, you know, as, as the Stoics thought thousands of years ago and people have since then as well, that, you know, suicide can be undertaken for noble and admirable, um, reasons. It can be an expression of freedom, um. And you can always turn the tables and think actually like clinging to life too closely. Not only is it maybe sort of morbid in the way that I suggested earlier, but that itself might be tethered to various kinds of, um, vices, right? That itself, you could make a case that it's a sort of cowardice or something like that. And in fact, the ancient Greeks. You know, thought of things this way. I mean, even had a word for that kind of disposition of loving life too much that you'll put up with under any conditions, right? It's kind of philosuchia. Um, THERE'S a famous line of Sophocles, the great tragedian says when he says, um, I'm paraphrasing, but he says like only a coward or a fool will will cling to life in any kind of misfortune or any kind of condition or suffering, so. Um, THERE'S a question again, it comes back to this sanctity of life issue that is pertinent to precisely that physician assisted suicide, um, point. Is that whether it is mere existence that we're valuing or whether it is something like the way in which we live our lives, like does it have quality of life above a certain threshold? Is it tethered to something like living honorably or having excellence or something like that? Uh AND so I do think that those attempts to. Debunk or kind of derail the. Pretension to or the or the sort of arguments that are sort of more amenable to suicide or physician assisted suicide. Attempts to derail those by sort of attacking the characters of the people in play there, um, uh, are are pretty implausible when you start thinking about the sort of comprehensiveness of the, the reasons possibly for this practice that philosophers and non- philosophers have been thinking about in every culture for thousands of years.

1:03:46 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, SO, look, I, I'm just noticing that we're reaching our time limit. I, I mean, is, do you have enough time for one more topic, or, OK, OK, OK. So I, I wanted to ask you, I mean, this is something that we actually been touching on throughout our conversation, but I mean, from a philosophical perspective, do you think that It is a personal flaw we should consider a personal flaw or that we should even morally condemn people or someone who decides they no longer want to live or who actually went through with suicide.

1:04:29 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, it's it's a good question and it picks up on that last point is that I think the. The answer has to be, and I think that's maybe the general moral of our discussion today to draw is would just be that. Suicide physicians, this is suicide. It's, it's so. Complex and diverse insofar as the reasons people might want to decide to do these things, that there's no real comprehensive, catch it, catch it all answer to this, right, morally speaking, um, and I think the same is true here, I mean, you might say look, there are cases of suicide which do express or, Uh, are the result of, um, various vices, um, or personal flaws like maybe it could be cowardice, like the person who, I don't know, perhaps gets themselves into financial trouble or doesn't want to take the responsibility. Um, YOU know, you, you might look at that and think, well, that was the easy way out, I mean you, you, you know, we've all heard this kind of discourse and, and some philosophers have, have

1:05:32 Ricardo Lopes: made, yeah, and, and even, and even then when it comes, for example, to financial stress, I guess it depends on the situation because, because I mean, I, I was, it just came to mind that there's these uh uh uh Japanese series and. It's also a manga liar game where the mother of one of the protagonists commits suicide in Japan because she was burdened with debt, and, and, and I mean, I think that in that particular case the son wouldn't inherit her death and so she, she's just decided to go ahead with it to basically. Unburden the sort of situation that she was putting her son through by having to deal with huge amounts of debt, you know. Yeah,

1:06:29 Patrick Hassan: so I agree that even in some cases of that, it's not so clear cut, but I'm just, I'm just imagining a case where it might be plausible where someone maybe perhaps trivially decides to commit suicide too hastily and maybe that. It could be expressive of of some kind of vice. I mean, yeah, there's a host of examples, but. That's what I was getting at, I mean there's there's the, the motivating reasons for suicide are just so vast and diverse that that's just not always gonna be the case, um, and maybe not even typically the case. So whereas lots of philosophers have taken this, this kind of tact and like Plato, Kant even more so, perhaps more emphatically associates, um, suicide with personal flaws, with deficiencies, with weaknesses of various kinds. That's just that's. It's too It's too wholesale to be plausible, right, there's there's lots of cases where, I mean a famous one that Hume describes, David Hume describes is, you know, like the, the um the Roman senator. Cato, who, who commits suicide because he doesn't want to live under the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, um, the suicide to protect other people, uh, various kinds of martyrdom. I mean these, these aren't typically associated with, with, um, these flaws, and perhaps that's why they're not typically described as suicides because the term as we've discussed, has these negative connotations. But it seems to me that, you know, there could be lots of cases in which suicide, um. Expresses noble traits, express expresses virtues that we admire, um.

1:08:09 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean there's even those cases like for example, that a monk, that Buddhist monk who self-immolated to, I mean, basically protest against Chinese repression and stuff like that. I mean, I, I don't think that anyone out there would say that he did something wrong.

1:08:33 Patrick Hassan: That that's right, and I think that um. You know there's various, um perhaps there are people out there who would say that that even that was wrong for for some, you know, take if they take the sanctity of life or sort of religious arguments maybe, but um, yeah, those are deeply you know controversial and and I think quite implausible, but the. That's right. There's it's not necessarily the case that suicide is going to be tied to these flaws. And like I said earlier, and there's cases in the history of philosophy and the history of cultural thought in general where in fact, uh, you might think that not ending your life, uh, is could be compatible with something like, like cowardice, right? Like it takes, there's lots of cases where it takes courage, right, to, to end your life. It's not an easy thing to do. And so I, I do think that, um. Yeah, this this idea that there's always some kind of personal flaw or vice at play, uh, isn't a particularly plausible, um, critique if it's taken to be a comprehensive attempt to sort of, uh, debunk or critique um moral justifications for suicide. I mean that just

1:09:41 Ricardo Lopes: I mean actually when it comes to that argument about supposedly people who commit suicide being cowards, I, I, I mean I could be wrong, but it seems that. Uh, I mean, fairly plausible to say that in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, it's actually the opposite. They are brave because they even have to go against their own survival instincts and it's extremely scary to go ahead with it.

1:10:11 Patrick Hassan: Exactly, there's been a number of philosophers who say, I mean this is part of Hume's argument where he says that look, if we suddenly developed a more compassionate or at least um. Sort of um liberal or permissive approach to suicide as he sort of seems to be getting at in his essay of suicide, um. He, he considers this response, he's again this kind of slippery slope like oh if this becomes permissive, like won't more people be doing this and just throwing their lives away trivially, and one of the things he says is that look, he identifies this psychological principles that we have deeply rooted impulses and instincts to cling to life, um, making it very difficult to commit suicide. Schopenhauer says the same thing, it's like the, You know, it's, it's what guards the exit gates, this like pretension to live, this kind of instinct to keep going and our fear of death is so significant that it's hard to overcome that. And so you might harness that and say actually there is at least a kind of courage that has to be um manifested or possessed in order to carry out an action like this. And once you start sort of teasing out how that works, again, I think that it, it collapses any sort of comprehensive rejection of suicide because it's somehow. Stigmatizes like oh it's the easy way out or it's like the coward's way out, and it's like, you can point to cases where that might be true, but that doesn't really do much to comprehensively reject the practice or tether it to these various kinds of vices because there's lots of counterexamples as we've been saying.

1:11:40 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah, I, I mean I would even go a step further and say, because I mean, you know, people who condemn suicide or condemn it morally. Uh, THE, and say that, oh, you know, that, that this is one of the reasons why, uh, um, I mean, going ahead with suicide is stupid or you should never do it. I mean, they point to cases of people who survived the suicide attempts and who later said, oh, the, the, the, the 2. And I, I, I mean, the second I, after I jumped off the bridge or something like that, I immediately regretted it. I mean, I'm not saying that the person is lying, of course. I mean, that's, that's perfectly plausible, but they might be mistaken. Uh, TO, to an extent, because I mean, is it really that they regretted it, or is it rather that, uh, the second they jumped off the bridge, the, the, the fear kicked in, and that's, yeah, you know, uh, that that's they might be mistaken when it. TO that.

1:12:48 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, it could be. I mean there's a question about what what philosophers sometimes call like an epistemic injustice, like in terms of sort of speaking over how people report about their experiences in the medical condition in particular this comes up, but it kind of works both ways. Like you might, you might think that um. It would be a sort of an epistemic injustice if we were to say to the To the suicidal person um that regretted it that oh you're just mistaken, like actually you were on, you, you know, you had justifiable reasons and and that's just your impulse kicking in, but that cuts the other way, right, so you might think that an epistemic injustice is going on, you know, going back to our first topic, when medical professionals say that you don't have any good reasons to consider this, like you're just. Expressing a kind of pathology, right, you, you, you're, you have suicide suicidal ideations because there's something wrong with you and that you're not being rational just by definition. That's also a kind of epistemic injustice, so that concept can be quite useful for for philosophers in this domain in particular, uh, and it, it, it sort of applies or is relevant to this question about. Um, PARTICULARLY in the physician assisted suicide case about the extent to which people feel coerced into avoiding the practice or by participating in, uh, in it. So, um, yeah, those are definitely relevant concepts to, to bring in as well for a moral evaluation of the concept.

1:14:14 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, OK, so I mean there would be other things that I would like to discuss with you. Maybe we have to schedule a 4th interview for the channel, but look, where can people find you and your work on the internet?

1:14:30 Patrick Hassan: A couple of places. So there's my department page on the Cardiff University website. If you type in Cardiff University philosophy, and you'll find the wonderful staff that we have in the department and my profile will be up there. I also have a website just Patrick Hassan.com and I update that regularly with my with my research. So um yeah, if you're you're interested in hearing more about what I do, those are two places you can check.

1:14:55 Ricardo Lopes: Great, so look, thank you so much for coming on the show again. I know that this is a very sensitive and heavy topic to discuss, but I, I hopefully we uh did it justice, so it was great to talk with you.

1:15:09 Patrick Hassan: Yeah, thanks again for inviting me and I, I really enjoyed the conversation. Like you said, it's a, it's a heavy topic in many ways, it has to be handled with care and um yeah, I think we hopefully did a good job of that and, you know, really insightful questions that I was happy to engage with, so thank you.

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