There Could be a Situation Where the Only Rational Option/Choice is to Commit Suicide.

I applaud my opponent for the intricate scenario which he has concocted for this debate. Alas though I foresee this debate taking a turn towards focusing more on the unstated and presupposed standard which he supports, rather than any specific expounded in his scenario.By "unstated and presupposed standard" I refer to Pro's equivocation of "rational choice" with whatever increases the overall pleasure experienced by the subject. Pro's scenario only states that the subject would experience more pleasure by killing himself, not that it is necessarily the most rational choice for him to take. This equivocation is what is presupposed. Throughout this debate my counter will be to dispute this equality, arguing that rational choice is not necessarily equal to a pleasure calculus.===Justification of the Pleasure Principle===As stated before, Pro has presupposed the pleasure principle (more formally described as the ethical principle that it is best to act in such a way that brings more pleasure to the subject than less) which is the foundational building block of the ethical system known now as utilitarianism[1]. But does Pro ever justify this presupposed standard? Unfortunately, no he has not. And until Pro does this you must default to the Con since Pro has failed to uphold his burden of proof. But now I will seek to show a coherent and more plausible alternative for the constitution of "rational choice".===Consistency and Universality===Immanuel Kant proposed, in his work, an ethical principle known as the categorical imperative. In its first formulation (which I will try to stick to considering that the second formulation deals more with interpersonal interaction and the third formulation is largely irrelevant in this context), Kant claims that one must “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”[2] In the context of this debate I will argue that killing one's self contradicts this basic maxim.Kant said it best when he covered the application of the CI to suicide. He writes:"A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels sick of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether taking his own life would not be contrary to his duty to himself. Now he asks whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. But his maxim is this: from self-love I make as my principle to shorten my life when its continued duration threatens more evil than it promises satisfaction. There only remains the question as to whether this principle of self-love can become a universal law of nature. One sees at once that a contradiction in a system of nature whose law would destroy life by means of the very same feeling that acts so as to stimulate the furtherance of life, and hence there could be no existence as a system of nature. Therefore, such a maxim cannot possibly hold as a universal law of nature and is, consequently, wholly opposed to the supreme principle of all duty."The categorical imperative prohibits suicide, in all circumstances, not because pleasure would be increased in doing so. For we have no reason to think that pleasure is the end all of rational choice. Rather, it is prohibited because to kill one's self means to act on an inconsistent or irrational will. Meaning the maxim is not universalizable since committing suicide purposely ends the existence of the will. But without the will there cannot be any rational choice since the will is precisely the mechanism by which we express that choice. Pro is thus contradicting himself in claiming that the will is acting most rationally in ending its existence.===Conclusion===My case against Con's arguments have been two-fold. On the one hand, I've shown that Pro fails to justify the metric by which he judges which actions are "rational" and which are not. He has simply presumed a pleasure calculus for the purpose of this debate without going into why he thinks we should accept it. Second, I've provided a more precise, justified, and plausible alternative to his conception of a rational will and shown why, under that metric, suicide under any circumstance cannot be considered a "rational choice". Pro is tasked therefore with not only justifying his own standard of "rational" measurement, but with refuting my own.===Sources===[1] http://www.uri.edu...[2] http://plato.stanford.edu... (Sec. 5)