Because

  How to Analyze and Evaluate Ordinary Reasoning

  Advanced reconstruction with principles

 G. Randolph Mayes

 Department of Philosophy

 Sacramento State University

Instructions:  Here are some examples that involve multiple rationales.  Reconstruct them in the advanced reasoning format identifying all principles.

1.  People think my brother Ira is so much better a person than me because he does so much for charity, whereas I do diddly squat. But  he’s really no different than anybody else in my opinion.  He’s just doing what makes him happy, which is what everyone else does.  He does charitable work because he likes it. So I think it’s dumb that people admire him so much more than me.  Like my mom, for instance.  She’s is always saying:  Igor, why can’t you be more like Ira?  I’m really friggin' sick of it.

2.   Lots of people think capitalism is all about the greedy pursuit of profit, but really capitalism is mostly about trusting each other.  If you think about it, it takes a lot of trust to give someone you don’t even know your hard-earned money in exchange for something you want.   For example, here in the U.S. you can buy a new DVD player just about anywhere and know that it’s either going to work or you’re going to get your money back.  We’re just used to this, of course, but it’s really a very unusual and fragile state of affairs.  Lots of countries simply do not have the kind of trust between citizens that makes this sort of confident exchange of goods possible.  And that’s why these countries stay poor.  I’m not talking about little third world countries either.  I’m talking about places like Russia, where commercial corruption is just rampant.  And I'm talking about the U.S., too.  Right now our economy is going into the dumper because banks won't lend money teach other.  They've lost trust.  So think about that the next time you decide to rip someone off.

3.  When you think about it, it’s easy to become puzzled about why people ever cooperate.  After all, from a purely self-interested perspective it always makes sense to just free-load off the work of others.  For example (in case you didn’t know it) paying your income taxes in the country is pretty much voluntary.  Sure, if you get caught not paying you can go to jail, but the chances of getting caught, especially if you do it only now and then, are practically nil.  And since your own taxes, even if you’re a millionaire, don’t amount to a drop in the bucket, you’ll still receive all the benefits of taxation (military, police, firemen, social security, public schools, etc.) even though you’re not paying it.  Economists have actually spent a lot of time trying to explain this, but probably the best explanation is that people don’t operate in a purely self-interested way.  The reason people pay their taxes is that they think it’s their duty to pay their taxes.  That’s all there is to it.