David asked:

With regard to the philosophy of risk, can I be said to be "at risk" if I place no value on my own life? In
other words is the concept of suicidal risk taking inconsistent? Linked to this are questions relating to
the concept of risk itself. For example, are risks created by the imposition of values upon elements of
reality by the intentional mind? Does it seem reasonable to suggest that if there were no values there
would be no risks, only potential events or outcomes?

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I think that it is a very poor diagnosis of suicidal risk taking to say that the risk taker places no value
on their own life. Imagine a world where intelligent creatures evolved with no sense of
self-preservation. Perhaps they grow on trees, like fruit, and when an alien dies, a new tree sprouts.
Landing on this planet, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise are shocked to discover that death
is treated with casual disinterest. For these aliens, there is no such thing as suicidal risk taking. They
recognize risks, certainly, but the risk of death is not among them.

Drag racing, or extreme rock climbing are examples of activities where the price of the thrill, for the
participant, is a high degree of risk. The risk itself may indeed be a factor in the enjoyment. However,
we can find this factor in its purer form in the game of Russian Roulette. (I am using the familiar name
here, although I have no evidence, and no reason to believe, that Russian people have a special
predilection for it.) Russian Roulette played with blank bullets would be a very boring activity. The
sole interest lies in the fact that there is a one in six chance that you are going to die.

The Russian Roulette player does not want to die. When the hammer clicks on an empty chamber,
the player enjoys the thrill of a narrow escape. Yet, interestingly, so far as I know, there is no variant
on the game, where one points the gun at one's knee. Why should that be so? Even if death is
something that one does not want, the fear of death has a unique quality that sets it apart from the
fear of other things that one does not want.

I agree, therefore, that the concept of a 'risk' only makes sense relative to a background of values, of
things we want or do not want. The philosophical question you have raised here is how death differs
from other things that we do not want. Epicurus famously argued that the fear of death is not rational,
because, 'Where death is, I am not, and where I am, death is not.' Yet surely it was not Epicurus'
intention to argue that we should not carewhether we live or die.

Geoffrey Klempner