| Under the logical conditons you have posited, all deaths are suicides (I'm not going to strain my mind to figure out the sole exception), although if you think that is a profound realization, you have a hideous conception of the purpose of philosophy.
For starters, that definition, while one possible meaning for the term 'suicide', draws upon no standard which somehow makes it superior to any other. I could say 'suicide' is a description of the entity we conventionally called a 'donkey', not a depiction of a particular process of dying, and I would have the same justification for my assertion as you have for yours ... I want that to be the object referenced by the term 'suicide'. However, what we want a term to represent and what it conventionally refers to in contemporary discussion are two entirely different things.
A moral being is an entity for whom the disadvantage of others is an issue.
– K.H.Y. |