It’s perfectly possible to study the empirical question of how to influence how altruistic people are, without making any sort of argument for why people should be altruistic. This empirical question seems to be what peter_hurford is writing about.
Maybe I got a little confused with the conditional words of the English language. What I meant was: logically, before one can answer the questions “Why don’t people help each other more?”, one should be able to answer the question “Why do people help each other?”, that is, what is it that makes people help each other in the first place.
Once you have an answer to that, you can proceed to asking why don’t people help each other more than they are doing it now.
The starting point of your subject is the question: “Why should people help others?”
Once you have answered this, we can move on with the discussion.
It’s perfectly possible to study the empirical question of how to influence how altruistic people are, without making any sort of argument for why people should be altruistic. This empirical question seems to be what peter_hurford is writing about.
Yes. But the post’s title is unfortunate:
Can be read to imply the author is surprised by people helping others less than expected.
“Because that’s how we got here, and that’s how we got all the awesome stuff we have … and induction.”
Maybe I got a little confused with the conditional words of the English language. What I meant was: logically, before one can answer the questions “Why don’t people help each other more?”, one should be able to answer the question “Why do people help each other?”, that is, what is it that makes people help each other in the first place.
Once you have an answer to that, you can proceed to asking why don’t people help each other more than they are doing it now.