IN> Supererogatory (WAS: Strip mining Dante)

[Daniel Childers]

>From: James Walker <nyungan at yahoo.com.au>
>Rather than replying to the thread on selflessness,
>it'd be far more virtuous to send a 'hello' email to
>someone you suspect of being lonely, yes? One of the
>reasons I came to the conclusion that most
>philosophers go to hell...
>

This gets into some complicated ethics. And it's kind of an
infinite regress; there's always something better you could be
doing. (Getting off your chair and joining the volunteer fire
department would be better than writing email of any sort,
yes?)

The philosophical concept of "supererogatory" applies:
actions that are morally good, but not required. For
example, it would be morally good for each of us who is
physically capable of it to join a volunteer fire department.
Most of us--quite likely all of us--never will. And we are
not sinning by failure to do so.

See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation/ for
a long discussion.

("Supererogatory" also has the meanings of "Beyond
the call of duty" and even of "unnecessary or
excessive".)

This gets complicated with IN's odd salvation/damnation
mechanisms: if your Destiny (or Fate) is wrapped up with
you joining a VFD, you *are* required to do so (or required
to not do so). But in IN, most of your good deeds--ie, every
one which is not your Destiny--are supererogatory.