Lack of sincerity

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

Susan writes:
 
        "There will  always be self-interest behind any decision.  Even 
altruistic 
choices  involve a belief that the action will send one to heaven, or the  
gratification of knowing one is better than others."
 
        If this means  every decision to act entails that one wants to act, 
then it is true,  but not terribly interesting.  If it means that every 
decision to act has a  self-referential motive behind it--going to heaven, 
maintaining one's good  reputation, and so forth--then it is demonstrably false.  
Spontaneously  falling upon a grenade to save one's comrades, cannot without 
circularity always  be explained by appealing to self-referential motives.  Some 
actions are  performed just because they are right even in some cases when the 
agent is  brought to ruin by acting. Supererogatory conduct, for instance, need 
not invoke  self-referential motives to explain why the agent acted as she did. 
And if one  insists that self-referential motives must be operative, one is 
simply begging  the question at issue, namely, must self-referential motives 
always play a part  in explaining conduct?

Bobby

Robert  Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware

Ratio Juris
,  Contributor: _  http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/_ 
(http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/) 
Essentially Contested  America, Editor-In-Chief 
_http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/_ (http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/)  
 

 
In a message dated 8/2/2008 2:22:56 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
susan.freiman.law.65 at aya.yale.edu writes:

There  will always be self-interest behind any decision.  Even altruistic  
choices involve a belief that the action will send one to heaven, or the  
gratification of knowing one is better than  others.






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