Because I care about other people. I expect that social conditioning, especially from my parents, has led me to care about other people, although internal exercises in empathy also seem to have played a role. But it doesn’t matter where that comes from (any more than it matters where my selfish impulses come from); what matters is that I consider other people to have the same moral worth as I have.
Looking over this conversation, I think that I haven’t been very clear. Your comments, especially this one, seem to take as an assumption that all rational people (or maybe, in context, only rational criminals, or even rational Death Eaters) value what happens to their future selves and nothing else. (Maybe I’m reading them wrong.) Some people do, but most people (even most criminals, even most Death Eaters) don’t; they care about other people (although most people aren’t altruists either).
I think that this is some of what TheOtherDave was getting at here. And it is certainly the reason why I myself don’t commit petty thefts all the time, and why I feel bad when I do commit petty theft: because I care about other people too. Almost all of the people that I know are in a similar position, so I’m surprised that you would find it interesting that we don’t commit crimes, even when we can get away with them (completely, not just legally). That’s the point of my original response to you.
(Actually, I do commit some crimes that I get away with, and without regret, because criminal law and I don’t agree about morality. That’s also important in the original context, but I didn’t address it since I don’t actually want the penal system to be effective in deterring such crimes.)
(Also, I’m not really an altruist either, but I still feel that I should be: I’m a meta-altruist, perhaps, but I’m still figuring out what that means and how I can be an altruist in practice. I probably shouldn’t have brought up altruism; it’s enough that I care about the people in my immediate vicinity, since they’re the people that I have the opportunity to get away with crimes against.)
Because I care about other people. I expect that social conditioning, especially from my parents, has led me to care about other people, although internal exercises in empathy also seem to have played a role. But it doesn’t matter where that comes from (any more than it matters where my selfish impulses come from); what matters is that I consider other people to have the same moral worth as I have.
Looking over this conversation, I think that I haven’t been very clear. Your comments, especially this one, seem to take as an assumption that all rational people (or maybe, in context, only rational criminals, or even rational Death Eaters) value what happens to their future selves and nothing else. (Maybe I’m reading them wrong.) Some people do, but most people (even most criminals, even most Death Eaters) don’t; they care about other people (although most people aren’t altruists either).
I think that this is some of what TheOtherDave was getting at here. And it is certainly the reason why I myself don’t commit petty thefts all the time, and why I feel bad when I do commit petty theft: because I care about other people too. Almost all of the people that I know are in a similar position, so I’m surprised that you would find it interesting that we don’t commit crimes, even when we can get away with them (completely, not just legally). That’s the point of my original response to you.
(Actually, I do commit some crimes that I get away with, and without regret, because criminal law and I don’t agree about morality. That’s also important in the original context, but I didn’t address it since I don’t actually want the penal system to be effective in deterring such crimes.)
(Also, I’m not really an altruist either, but I still feel that I should be: I’m a meta-altruist, perhaps, but I’m still figuring out what that means and how I can be an altruist in practice. I probably shouldn’t have brought up altruism; it’s enough that I care about the people in my immediate vicinity, since they’re the people that I have the opportunity to get away with crimes against.)