Is it only the immediate benefits that are weighed when an action is decided or acted upon? As I said earlier, what may seem like the right thing at the time could acctually lead to something worse because of unseen infinite variables. The man you save could end up being a serial killer that kills you and your family.

Might be a helpful read!

Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness that Counts: Scientific American

MJA,

What if it was a baby?

I would try to help any or All in need, for All is truly One.
I do have some bruises in life, but I'm not a martyr as of yet; nor do I wish or intend to be. Are you?
But then perhaps we All are martyrs is our own way, giving up our lives for living, the natural process of aging, perhaps that is what true living is.
We give up our own lives to live.
I like that thought, do you?
=
MJA

Boagie - thanks for the article!

You recieved thanks for the thanks...

My point was that many times people will react out of sheer concern for the victim without thinking of their own safety.

Many times the fact that it may be a helpless victim triggers some sort of hero mechanism that casts aside all logic and common sense and before they know it they have already done what was necessary to save the victim.

This has happened to me many times. Once was for my hunting dog. In hindsight of course I realized how stupid it was, but at the time common sense was not on the menu.

There is a third possibility. Assuming the man had time to think about the second choice, suppose he spent the rest of his life regretting the decision he made. He put himself ,his life ahead of the man who was drowning. Yeah. I think his ethics stand in opposition to altruism. It would be a mans first impulse to help. That seems natural to me. To consider all of the possible consequences, that would seem unnatural to me.

Maybe this Mills guy is trying to infer that we stumble, bumble and fumble around trying to do the right thing and we just do not know how. He may be right to a certain extent. But, at least we try. Seems to me that the trying is what counts. Ya spend time considering all the possibilities, nothing is accomplished. I'll pass on reading his ideas on the matter.

The thing is that Mill, in Utilitarianism, states over and over again how his moral ethic is altruistic. He thought Utilitarianism was in no way opposed to altruism, but rather a brilliant statement of altruism. He goes so far as to say that God and Jesus are utilitarians.

"When you have done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me". I'd have to disagree with the man.