Lack of sincerity

[Susan Freiman]

Quick, before we're hissed off stage for being off topic:  Let me point 
you to discussions about survival value of altruistic behavior - 
self-interest includes preserving others of my species.  If I fall on 
the grenade, I will finally get my parents' love.  I joined the Army and 
put myself in danger because I want to die but am afraid to commit 
suicide.  I am heavily in debt, my home is being foreclosed on, my wife 
and infant child are about to be thrown into the street, but I know if I 
am a war hero even posthumously, my family will be safe.  I'm the one 
guilty of mailing anthrax. 

I don't think existence of a self-referential motive is all that 
demonstrable or all that false.  Not once one recognizes that my motive 
may not be your motive, or even rational.

Susan

RJLipkin at aol.com wrote:
>     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/*/*/
> 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: 
> <http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/>/*
>
>     */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.
>     <http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/>/*
>
>
>
>
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