daughter takes advantage of mother's motive, incurs opportunity cost of using it in another way, and should compensate; why common sense is that mother need not deliver it

田晨彤 评论 What We Owe to Each Other 3

2019-12-29 12:07:02

• suppose, a motive exists in any conduct, including donation. The donee's acceptance is an interest for a donor. he elicits the donee's admission that accepting this gift is desirable. acceptance thus has representative value. meanwhile, it has symbolic value as a speech act. it amounts to saying that “this gift presents net value to me”. the receiver, of course, should be honest.
• If a donee never wants the gift, but lies that he wants it, this is a failure to warn the donor that his motive is going to fail.
  • this motive can be evil. It can be sapping one's happiness by paralyzing her with materialism, or eroding her virtue. the donee knows that None will be achieved if the donee never thinks that the gift is valueless, spiritual or material or whatever. donee should notify in that case.
  • otherwise, this lie lengthens the donor's illusion, and causes an opportunity cost: any other way of using the object brings more benefits. This varies from zero, to its market price, or the price of the gratitude of another potential donee who cannot buy it from the market.
  • yet, if a donee can not and does not know donor's motive, pre-communication information-seeking cost, and communication cost, are unrecoverable.
  • anyway, a donor should deliver, but delivery invokes her claim to the opportunity cost, so, the final solution is that she need not deliver it.

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