Lack of sincerity

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

If your point  is that self-referential motives are often the basis for 
altruistic  behavior, I agree. If you insist, by contrast, that self-referential 
motives  must be the basis of altruistic behavior then you will  hypothesize a 
self-referential motive for any example I suggest, and that  insistence is 
circular. Put another way, If you define all altruistic behavior  as necessarily 
involving self-referential motives, then you've made your case by  definition. 
That, I suggest, is not really making your case at  all. Socrates acted in 
drinking the hemlock because  he was honor bound not to admit guilt.  To say he 
was concerned  about his place in history may have been true, but it also may 
not have been  true.  To insist that it or some of self-referential reason 
motivated his  apparently selfless conduct is question begging in the extreme. 

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 11:59:13 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
susan.freiman.law.65 at aya.yale.edu writes:

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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