Leaving the law to one side (I don't know which jurisdiction you live in or could reach), I think there is nothing morally wrong with your bringing your life to an end under these circumstances. You will want to make this decision with sound medical information about your prospects and you will want to make sure that your loved ones understand -- even if, perhaps, they cannot approve. You may also want to think beyond your own life. For example, is there anything morally important that you might yet want to accomplish -- perhaps something that can free or protect others from as great a burden as you are bearing yourself. If your cancer is tobacco-related (some cases are), for instance, you might help warn young people against this danger. Or you may simply devote your remaining energies to a good cause you believe in. Such an active commitment may be quite as meaningful as the joys and pleasures no longer accessible to you. As a final thought, it may be worthwhile to communicate with others who...

Yes, it could. Two philosophers who have written in this vein are Seana Shiffrin and David Benatar. You can find at quick introduction to this debate (along with additional literature) at http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com.au/2008/08/is-coming-into-existence-agent-neutral.html .

While I think you are right to observe that business owners are generally not allowed to discriminate against persons on the basis of their unchosen characteristics, it does not follow that they are allowed to discriminate on the basis of chosen characteristics. Religion, sexual orientation and political commitments are paradigm examples: they are chosen at least in their outward manifestations, but as a society we have decided not to rank people on the basis of such choices and to impose this non-discrimination upon businesses. This makes sense insofar as such choices are ones that the person is deeply identified with. They are part of a person's identity and, by refusing to serve a person on the basis of such a choice, or by requiring a person not to express such a choice as a condition of admittance, one is rejecting and disrespecting the whole person -- just as one is rejecting and disrespecting the whole person when one refuses to serve her on the basis of her gender or skin color. The same...

Your question: "Is it moral?", can be asked about the conduct and the person. As you describe the case, the conduct is moral (i.e., morally above reproach), but the person arguably is not because he has no concern for the rights, needs and interests of other people. What does it matter, you ask, if the results are the same? Just think about living with someone who genuinely cares about you versus with someone who behaves the same way out of fear that, if she is not nice to you, she will be punished by losing out on the benefits of your mother's fortune. Or think about a whole world in which any consideration people show one another is motivated solely by a selfish concern over rewards and punishments. The value of human civilization cannot lie exclusively in right conduct -- robots could be programmed to produce that more reliably than human beings -- it must lie, in large part at least, in the nobility of human motivations.

Here a few classics that shaped the debate when it was at its peak... J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams: Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge UP 1973). Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (eds.): Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge 1982), esp. Rawls's essay. Ronald Dworkin: “What is Equality? Part II: Equality of Resources” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 10/4 (1981), 283-345 (also in Ronald Dworkin: Sovereign Virtue (Harvard 2000)). http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28198123%2910%3A4%3C283%3AWIEP2E%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 G.A. Cohen: “Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities” in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds.): The Quality of Life (Oxford 1993). Amartya Sen: “Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs , 12/2 (1983), 113-32. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915%28198321%2912%3A2...

Manufacturing adds value by configuring materials in certain ways; and this value can be lost even if the object's mass is preserved. Thus, destruction of the bicycle cancels the value of manufacturing it, even if the metal and other materials survive the destruction. Conversely, a service can continue producing value for a very long time: a medical treatment administered today can add decades to a person's life, and good education can convey knowledge, wisdom or a skill which can be useful for the student's lifetime and beyond (if she passes it on to others). So the reasons you consider do not show that manufacturing something is always more valuable than performing a service.

Well, with the symmetrical argument you could conclude the opposite: If causing happiness is good and if life is in part happiness, then procreating is good. Both conclusions seem inadequately supported. It matters how much suffering and how much happiness one's offspring is likely to face. And there are other valuable and disvaluable things besides happiness and suffering: knowledge, culture, art, science, sports and love may all be good things a future person will experience -- good even if they are unaccompanied by happiness. And there are also contributions this future person will make to the lives of others -- good and bad contributions. So the question whether it's bad to procreate requires a more complex weighing up of considerations than is suggested by your argument.

In "The Fixation of Belief," American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce distinguishes various methods people use to fix their beliefs. Two of these are related to the phenomena you describe: the "method of tenacity" (where people hang on to beliefs even against piles of evidence) and the "method of authority" (where people form and revise their beliefs on the basis of the beliefs that certain others hold or express). You can read this essay at www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html

Utilitarianism makes the sum-total of happiness or average happiness the final end of human activity, what we should maximize. Nearby competitors may disagree about the aggregation part, holding, for example, that we should maximize not the average happiness but rather the lowest level of happiness, or that we should equalize happiness. Or they may disagree with the happiness part (may hold, for instance, that love or knowledge have an importance that is not reducible to their contribution to happiness). All such "consequentialist" views can be applied to human agents (to the question of how they ought to conduct themselves) and also to human societies (to the question of how these should be structured and governed). So utilitarianism is one of many consequentialist views. There are also non-consequentialist views. In regard to human agents, there are views that guide them not toward making the world better but rather toward making oneself the best one can be (virtue ethics) or toward doing...

Good point. But the word "need" is also used in the sense of "strong craving". And strong cravings can be selfish both in regard to what is craved and in regard to how the craving originated. For example, someone starts going to expensive designer shops and comes to need the attention and flattery of the sales people there. Similarly, gamblers may need the next thrill, drug addicts the next fix, and so on. In such cases the word "need" does not imply a desire that is natural and important.