Thomas: Chapter 6

This chapter deals with how morality/altruism between strangers works and though it does not give much in the way of argument as to why it does and should work, I think that Thomas has some very interesting insights throughout.

To begin, Thomas starts out with the uncontroversial claim that a person who is treated well by another person will tend to like that person more. In other words those who are consistently nice to us gain our affections. (This is the same reasoning that was behind why children love their parents.) This is important because not only does it make us favorably disposed toward those people who are nice to us it also gives us certain counterfactual beliefs about these people. For example, if Smith always helps me out whenever I am indeed then I will likely form the belief that if I end up being in need Smith will help me out. The idea here is quite simple and it is that as I become more favorably disposed to those who are kind to me I will also become more likely to do kind things for them, which will in turn increase their feelings towards me and so on.

What is more is that we all (at least in most societies, though not all) have a basic level of trust for one another. Even though we tend not to think about it, no one runs around believing that the strangers he passes on the street desire to kill him. If we thought for a moment that people desired to kill us or do us harm it would be psychologically impossible for us to live decent lives. We would always be terrified that someone would try to do us in. This is still the case even if we imagine that murders were always caught by the authorities and harshly punished. It is the thought that people desire to harm us and would if they could only get away with it that would make this state of affairs psychologically unbearable. The sort of life that we lead depends in large part on our tendency to at least on a very basic level trust one another. A further example. It is quite common for one person to ask a complete stranger what time it is or when the next bus will arrive. Yet when we ask such things there is not even the slightest suspicion that the person might lie to us (at least in ordinary circumstances). Even if it turns out that the wrong information was given our tendency is to think that the person was ignorant of the facts or just foolish and not that he was being malicious. Again this displays that basic level of trust that we have for one another and also the fact that in general people do not desire to harm one another (so long as their interests are not at state, then we have a different story).

Now Thomas points out that this level of trust need not exist, as it likely does not in some countries that have experienced extreme hardships (i.e. famine, disease, civil war, etc.). Moreover, just as kind actions from another tend to improve our opinion of them, mean acts from another tend to diminish our opinion of them. Thus, the circumstances play a very important role whether these morality-friendly conditions exist. (This idea reminds me of Aristotle's points about certain conditions need to be met in a persons environment before it is even possible for that person to attempt to achieve eudaimonia.)

Despite the fact that it need not be the case that we live is a society where these conditions are met, it seems to be the case that (at least most of the time) these conditions are met in our society. Thus, if we get a good start in life and are shown kindness by those around us it becomes more and more likely that we will acquire beliefs about the people around us that they will try to help us if we are in need. This then, coupled with the fact that people in general to not desire to harm other people, can form the basis for our basic level of trust of those around us who we may not know well as well as strangers. Again, this is not meant to give us any answer to Gyges type problems but is rather meant to be seen as an explanation of why things are the way they are morally speaking. Thomas wants to say why people have moral sentiments and desires not why they should.