There seems to be no more reason to heed the retrospective ideas, advice, and wisdom of a dying person than of that same person when he is not dying. If he is the sort of person who gave good advice previously, then what he says should be heeded; if he is the sort of person who did not give give good advice previously, then his advice shoud not be heeded. There is no reason to believe that dying makes anyone wiser than they were before.

It is clear that pain is not the only bad thing (harm) that can happen to people. For one thing, they can be killed. They can also be disabled or deprived of freedom or pleasure. Being deprived of pleasure is not the same as being caused pain. Obviously, one can be killed in one's sleep and so never know it happened or even that it was going to happen. Generally people know when they are disabled, but people can lose a leg without knowing it right away, if they have been in an accident. If it is a mental disability, that can happen to someone without his knowing, and it may be that he never knows. People can also be deprived of freedom or pleasure with knowing, although usually they will find out about it. With regard to suffering pain, it seems as if people can be in pain without being conscious of it, at least for some period of time. If you mean by "to suffer," to "suffer a harm" and not merely to "suffer pain," then it is clearly possible to suffer without knowing it. And even if you mean by "to...

If you mean by "hedonistic by nature" that human beings always act so as to secure the most pleasure for themselves, then your next remarks shows that you correctly do not think this is true. However, you seem to equate being hedonistic with doing what is in one's self-interest, and this is not true either. It is not always in one's self-interest to do what gives one the most pleasure. You also seem to take reason to be used solely to further one's self-interest, as if it were irrational to sacrifice one's own self-interest in order to save someone else from harm, but it is clearly rational to act in order to prevent a serious harm to someone else, even if it is not in your own self-interest. However, the main point of your question seems to involve the supposed conflict between reason and the passions. It is true that sometimes our emotions lead us to do something that will cause us harm when there is no compensating benefit for anyone. But, in general, our emotions do not cause us to act...