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From: mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Mr. Sykora isn't civil?  Mr. Reagan isn't honest?
Message-ID: <1340152@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 10:56:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: acf4.1340152
Posted: Wed Jun  5 10:56:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Jun-85 01:10:38 EDT
References: <617@digi-g.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 72

>/* orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) /  9:47 am  Jun  4, 1985 */

>If somebody is lying wounded on the sidewalk are you obligated to help?

No.  I'm not obligated.  I may choose to help out of compassion, though.
Or I may not.  For example, if it is someone I despise, I may not
help him/her.

WHY should I feel obligated?  What have I to gain from assuming such
obligations?

>If an orphan is running around naked with a belly bloated from hunger
>are you obligated to help?

There are, I suspect, a huge number of orphans in such predicaments?
How many am I obliged to help?  How much help?  Why?

>If you bring a helpless infant into this world are you obligated to
>feed and care for it?

My need for self-respect ensures that should I father a child, I will
not do it (voluntarily) unless I am prepared to care for the child.

>Yes, we are all obligated as human beings to help each other out.
>The reason is very simple - when I help someone else out sometime
>when I am in the same position someone else will help me out.

In my experience, this is true only for people with whom I associate
continually.  As for strangers, I suspect that if you help one, in the
majority of cases they will help you, given the opportunity.  However,
being that this person is a stranger, it is not likely that they will
help you because it is not likely that they will ever see you again.
To suppose that stranger X will help you because you once helped
stranger Y is an assumption that needs some justification.  The only
possible justification for such a belief, it seems to me, is that
if you make a habit of helping people, your personality will develop
(change) in such a way as to make people more likely to want to help
you.  While this sounds somewhat plausible, it's hardly obvious to me,
and would be extremely difficult to test empirically.  Any thoughts on
this?

The most interesting thing about your contention above is that you
first say that people are obligated to help others.  Then you claim
to justify it by attempting to show that it is in one's self interest
to help others.  Am I obliged to do everything that is in my self
interest?  It appears that you have confused a moral question with a
practical one.

If you want to show that helping others is in one's self interest,
you need to give evidence that this is true.

If you want to justify the contention that people
are morally obligated to help others, you will first have to justify
the concept of morality, and then you will have to show why the
obligation to help others is a moral obligation.  GOOD LUCK!

>In fact, we all would not be alive at all if our parents did not
>feed and care for us when we were helpless infants.

Yes, of course.  But I don't consider my relationship with my parents
to be comparable (as regards the question of helping other people)
to my relationship with other human beings in general.

>Children will die
>without food, moreover they will also die without love and affection.
>Helping each other is quintessentially human.
>             tim sevener  whuxl!orb

As I understand it, the definition of humanity is a biological one,
not a political, moral, etc. one.

					Mike Sykora