Re: My Housemate

[Nick Jones <nj8@ntlworld.com>]

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(Ooh look, one of my rare BUPS contributions....)

Agreed - to say that all behaviour is selfish is not to get us very far. 
For 'selfish' to mean anything, it must be possible to contrast it with 
potential 'non-selfish' behaviour. As far as Andrew's example is 
concerned (Hi Andrew!), I'm afraid this is a very common scam.

Seems to me that your housemate's reaction may have been along these lines:

   * Helping people is good;
   * It may be that I get scammed as a result;
   * Still, maybe I won't;
   * I can't tell;
   * Either way, someone is asking me for money because they seem to be
     in need, and my duty is then to give them money.
   * If I am scammed, shame on them, but I am just going to do what I
     believe my duty to be

This seems to me to be a coherent response: I guess where we are 
unsettled by it, it is because we fear that it might encourage scamming.

I probably would not give money in these circs because I have come 
across this so many times, and feel no obligation to give in cases where 
someone intends to deceive me. If I did so, it would be in the 
expectation of never seeing my money again - so I would both help and 
distrust someone!

Strikes me that your housemate's response is pretty Kantian: do your 
duty, and let other people worry about their response to this.

best
Nick


djf500@york.ac.uk wrote:
> To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: 
> BUPS-DIS@bups.org
>
>
> I have lots of deadlines, so this will be my only contribution:
>
> Bernie suggests the apparent altruism under investigation might be 
> explained by selfishness. I'm not quite sure of his position, but if 
> in some way *everything* that we do is in some way selfish (even via 
> our dna) then i'm not sure how meaningful it is to apply this to a 
> particular case. I'm not saying that this is what Bernie is saying, 
> but perhaps care is needed to identify a non-general selfishness. Of 
> course, nothing I have said precludes saying that applying 
> general-selfishness (i.e. an everpresent motive) to a particular case 
> *is* meaningless - but it seems to be an possibility that needs 
> addressing.
>
>
>
>
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