I help you and I benefit from helping you in some way, does that fact invalidate my act of generosity? Explain

Question

In ethics we call this Q, a question about the ego-centric predicament? There will be a follow-up Q in a few days.

My motivation was first and foremostly about helping the other person. The fact that I benefited was secondary and unavoidable. Again this Q is about the *egocentric predicament*. Look up the phrase before, not after you answer my Q.

Also, do not be thrown by the personal phraseologywhich is an intentionally provocative way of asking an ethics Q in an interesting, attention grabbing manner.( why so many can't see this as a stle of questioning is tiresome?)

stle = style

Please realize this is a philosophy which for brevity is posed in the first person, "I" . I have no desire for personalized psychological advice. I am onlyinterested in a philosophical(not casual) answers.

Answer 1

I take an infant to the hospital for vaccination.I get the satisfaction. It soothes my nerves. Does it invalidate my act?
I have helped many who turned their evil eyes on me later on. Does that invalidate or support my generosity?
If you really help someone with ulterior motive, then of course, it depletes your generosity, if you begin to take advantage of his/her position.

Answer 2

That depends on motivation.

If the main or only reason you helped was to benefit your self then there was no generosity.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 3

Well,

Let us say that it is "I" who had performed an act of generosity for a hypothetical "you" (not the "you" that is 'heeltap' on Y! Answers, but a general case study person for the simplicity of grammar in my response).

First, it would depend upon whether I prescribe to the belief that there is NO MOTIVATION that can not somehow be stripped down to one's OWN PERSONAL HAPPINESS.

If this is the case, then there is NO TRUE ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOUR.

What would indeed be happening, is that I would be made happy by helping others. This could be due to (as Freud would put it) personal inadequacies in my life that I am compensating for. It may also be that I get a chemical rush of endorphines from the empathy I feel for others that know they have had a good deed done for them (especially by me). This rush, by the way, can come from a source as removed as watching a documentary on philanthropy, or a humanitarian historical fiction movie on A&E. None of this, psychologically speaking, is important except for my motivation. The condition stated, that the benefit I received from the aforementioned help was 'unavoidable' means (just as with repentance in most of the world's religions) that intrinsically, I had a DESIRE for altruistic behavior, regardless of whether (as stated above) the behaviour was ACTUALLY altruistic.

In addition, the intrinsic nature of someone's perception of the 'validity' of another's generosity would be subjective, and would give rise to certain questions:

Do you know that I benefitted from the help given?
This would definitely influence the answer. If you never knew, then the question would only be able to be answered by me, and would be almost purely psychological in nature. It would require me to search myself for feelings related to my own personal accountability (which are much of the basis for most religious deterministic beliefs, coincidentally). It would involve my accountability to a hypothetical higher power (which my faith would either support or deny), my accountability to you (do I feel as though I have done you a wrong by accepting the benefit, regardless of its intentional or unintentional nature), my accountability to society (am I doing enough to establish myself as a viable instrument in the perpetuation of the society in which I exist, or by accepting the benefit am I perpetuating an undercurrent in said society which is inherently destructive and antisocial), and my accountability to myself (Do I feel that my motivation was altruistic, or was there another motivation that I am denying). If, in fact, no one but me knew about the benefit, any feelings felt by me on the subject would be private, and as such, would be irrelevant to anyone else unless I told them (which would invalidate the generosity in itself, inasmuch as I would have enough guilt over my non-altruistic behaviour to warrant sharing the quandary).

If, however, you DID know that I had benefitted from the generosity shown, then whether or not the generosity was invalidated would be determined solely by you, in the event that I needed justification of my acceptance of the benefit. If I am not seeking to be absolved from moral or ethical judgment in this situation, then the quandary does not matter.

Did the benefit I received outweigh the generosity that I showed to you?
This, once again would relate to my feelings regarding my own behaviour. For example, did giving you $1,000 earn me an unintentional $150,000 comission somehow? It might be difficult to determine. How do you judge whether an unintended benefit will invalidate generosity without knowing how necessary the generosity was in the first place. Let us say that my company has a philanthropy program which is connected to a public works grant by the Federal Government. If I donate $500,000 - $999,999 to benefit society, I will get a grant of $100,000 back from the government for philanthropy next year. If I donate $1,000,000+ to benefit society, I will get $250,000 back from the government. If the $1,000 I donate to you forces the amount donated by my company to cross that threshhold (and we will assume that there are not any further donations that would do this), then the donation of $1,000 will net the company $150,000. Theoretically, if the $1,000 donated was for car repairs which would prevent you from having to spend thousands more in other car repairs or in the cost of car payments, increased insurance premiums, etc... then the $1,000 would be worth FAR MORE THAN THE VALUE OF THE GIFT FOR BOTH PARTIES. Would the fact that you were not out-of-pocket for thousands more dollars than you were given be invalidated because the company who helped you was, in turn, helped even greater by someone else?

Now the question comes: If the word "benefit" is changed to "incentive" (the fact that a benefit is promised in exchange for generosity) , does the validity of the generosity change?

If so, then the other question arises: When does a need become great enough to cross the threshhold that determines whether to accept generosity, based on the source and motives of said generosity? And, subsequently, is it right to question the motives of anyone showing generosity to you, if they themselves are subject to generosity by another? (which leads in to the next question)

What did I do with the benefit received from helping you?
Did I use it to do something counterproductive to the help that I gave you? For example, let us use my hypothetical company again. By giving 1,000 lbs of food to orphans in a third world country, my company is inadvertently awarded a humanitarian award of $100,000. This money happens to offset $100,000 that my company donates to a foreign government for business permits and manufacturing rights within its borders. It just so happens that same government is taking the orphans' food. (I admit it is an exaggerated scenario, but it illustrates the point that I could end up offsetting my own generosity unwittingly.) If you, as one of the orphans, were aware of this, would you feel any less inclined to take any scant amount of food that were donated, just to starve yourself over your ethical beliefs? You may, but selfless honor and ethical values such as those are scarce when it comes to self-survival. You may feel that the generosity is invalid, but then again: If the generosity is deemed invalid, should you accept it at all, or are you invalidating your need for such generosity by accepting it when you know of its inherent egocentrism?

Who cares about the validity of the generosity?
Perhaps the most important question (and to put it another way), is: Does its validity change whether it is you, me, or the general observing public determining its validity? If it does, then the motive behind questioning its validity is , itself, in question.

This question opens up a door for philosophical debate on ethical issues ranging from personal accountability (see the first question, above) to deternining societal ethical norms, from philanthropy to media exploitation, and from political agenda to personal selflessness. Situationally, this would be able to be determined, but the nature of the question regarding simply whether or not an act (or multiple acts) of generosity is or are invalid based on the perceived nature of said generosity is not simple.

I believe there is no blanket answer that would determine, in every single case, what would be determined. And unless a person were either the giver or recipient of such a generosity IN EVERY CASE THAT HAS EVER, DOES, OR WILL EVER EXIST, then I believe it would be impossible for anyone else to make such a determination in any given case.

However, as I had stated before, this generally relates to my perception of the altruistic nature of my own behaviour. If a person intends to help someone with their behaviour, and any benefit gained is UNINTENTIONAL, then NO, the validity of their generosity would probably NOT be in question.