On my runs, I often find lost phones, credit cards, wallets, IDs and other items. A few years ago, I came across a wallet fat with cash and credit cards. As always, I sought out the owner and returned it. Being a philosopher, I’m interested in the ethics of this.
While using found credit cards would be a bad idea and a crime, found cash is different. After all, cash is cash and there is nothing to link cash to a specific person. As money is useful, a person who finds a wallet stuffed with cash would have a practical reason to keep it. One exception would be if the reward for returning it exceeded the value of the cash—but the finder would have no idea if this was the case. So, from a purely practical standpoint, keeping cash would be a smart choice. A person could even return the credit cards and other items in the wallet, plausibly claiming that it was otherwise empty when found. However, a smart choice need not be the right choice.
One argument in favor of returning found items can be built on the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. More formally, this is moral reasoning involving the method of reversing the situation. Since I would want my lost property returned, I should treat others the same. Unless I can justify treating others differently by finding relevant differences that would warrant the difference. Alternatively, it could also be justified on utilitarian grounds. For example, someone who is poor might contend that it would not be wrong to keep money she found in a rich person’s wallet because the money would do her more good than it would for the rich person: such a small loss would not affect him, such a gain would benefit her significantly.
Since I am now not poor and find relative small sums of money (hundreds of dollars at most), I have had the luxury of not being tempted. However, even when I was a poor graduate student, I still returned whatever I found. Even when I honestly believed that I would put the money to better use than the original owner. This is due to ethics rather than some sort of devotion to America’s horrific class system.
One of the reasons is my belief that I do have obligations to help others, especially when the cost to me is low relative to the aid rendered. In the case of finding someone’s wallet or phone, I know that the loss would be a significant inconvenience for most people. In the case of a wallet, a person will need to replace a driver’s license, credit cards, insurance cards and worry about identity theft. It is easy for me to return the wallet—either by dropping it off with police or contacting the person after finding them via Facebook or some other means. That said, the challenge is justifying my view that I am so obligated. However, I would contend that in such cases, the burden of proof lies on the selfish rather than the altruistic.
Another reason is that I believe I should not steal. While keeping something you find differs from the morality of active theft (this could be seen as being like the distinction between killing and letting die), it does seem to be a form of theft. After all, I would be acquiring what does not belong to me by choosing not to return it. Naturally, if I have no means of returning it to the rightful owner (such as finding a quarter), then keeping it would probably not be theft. But it could be contended that keeping lost property is not theft (even when it could be returned easily), perhaps on the ancient principle of finders keepers, losers weepers. It could also be contended that theft is acceptable, which would be challenging. However, the burden of proof would seem to rest on those who claim that theft is acceptable or that keeping lost property when returning it would be quite possible is not theft. Naturally, there can be some specific exceptions.
I also return what I find for two selfish reasons. The first is that I want to build the sort of world I want to live in—and in that world people return what is lost. While my acting the way I want the world to be is a tiny thing, it is more than nothing. Second, I feel a psychological compulsion to return things I find—so I must do it for peace of mind.
‘ didn’t even deny it when others said they had seen him’. I meant ‘me’.
”…I sought out the owner and returned it. Being a philosopher…”.
You can truly call yourself a philosopher. Not just that, but one of the best. Uncompromising philosophers such as Epictetus would ask the rest to take their hats off.
Instead, I did the exact opposite as you, a reprehensible thing that still haunts me to this day.
Almost thirty years ago I entered a bookshop during a break. I was handing out leaflets for a computer fair, all day. Yes, I was poor. As I entered the bookshop, I immediately noticed a wallet on the floor. I picked it up and found cash, credit cards, and identity documents.
Like a complete idiot, I kept the cash and threw all the rest away in the bin. I even told my coworkers about all this, as if it were something completely normal!
Later I reflected on what I did. The owner of the property I basically stole, must have been a student who sat on the floor of the bookshop while perusing some books, and the wallet either slipped away from her pocket or she temporarily placed it on the floor to do something else and then she forgot to pick it up again.
What an idiot I have been! Not only I kept her cash, I threw her identity documents in the bin! If she was a foreign student, her identity documents must have been even more important to her than for others.
I have often asked myself how I could be capable of this, getting into a ‘time machine’ and going back through the years, questioning myself, my enviromnent. Sure, I must say, the environment I grew up in was packed with bad examples. All my peers were rough, rude kids. Many of them are now in jail. One of them ended up working for the mafia, he’s currently serving 20 years in jail!
Another ended up on a similar path, he started to conduct rackets armed with a machine gun. I am not kidding. This kid, I personally witnessed being savagely beaten up by his crazy brother one day when we returned to my friend’s home. The reason? He had secretly read Proust’s ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.
What a crazy place! I left when I was 19 and never returned!
Going back to myself, I was weak minded and easily manipulated by others. I had no self esteem and ended up being bullied. None of these other kids were like that, I was the oddball there. I soon started to avoid all them and preferred to be alone. In some instances of bullying, I did something about it, but often I did not. In one instance, the owner of a videogame arcade slapped me unjustly (he had accused me of something I had not done, and took me as a scapegoat because I was actually the most well behaved kid there) and I returned two days later and damaged his property. I was even seen, and I didn’t even deny it when others said they had seen him. I merely shrugged.
The man never messed with me again, once by chance I passed by his home and as soon as he saw me, he turned around as if he were fiddling with the keys.
Moral of the story, Professor: I was becoming as bad as these other kids, it’s good I left. But, I guess the disease had already somewhat infected me, demonstrated by that example of dishonesty.
So either I had been bad, or I ended up being better than others in a very bad environment, but the latter seems a convenient rationalization, so I go with the former judgement.
I even spoke to a psychologist about this stuff. I wanted to know if I was a psycho or something. He said: ‘Well, if you tell me you did these things only once, and you were a child, you have nothing to worry about. But if you tell me you kept doing them, that’s a whole other matter.’.
As far as I know, I only did these things once, but I wasn’t a child anymore. In my defense, I remember being a lone kid and wandering in bookshops hoping to find a book that could teach me useful things, which I had never found until many years later with Plato and the Socratic dialogues. These and other philosophical writings about ethics to me are the only one thing I can say to have really taught me useful things and educated me into being a better version of myself, one who questions what’s right and what’s wrong, and what the consequences are.
”… I feel a psychological compulsion to return things I find—so I must do it for peace of mind….”.
Whereas I am at the opposite spectrum: my bad action haunts me and makes me cringe about myself. Isn’t that why Socrates said that people who commit bad deeds, do bad things to themselves?
But to say that your peace of mind is a ‘selfish’ reason for being honest, I think that’s a stretch. I thought too about peace of mind for a while, and whether it’s ‘selfish’, here’s my conclusion: if I have a right to defend my property and my person, I also have a right to defend my own peace of mind, and everyone has that right. Of course, this right is untenable if maintaining it means doing harm to others.
Perhaps, my attempts at being generous today is because I feel rotten for having done something bad before. But so what. Better being someone healed of an infection and sporting ugly scars, than having the disease continue to fester.
Hats off, Professor. I wish I had been more like you. You do honour to philosophy. Your actions may not seem too special to you, but I think they are. After all, is when we are unseen by others that we reveal our true nature to ourselves.
”when others said they had seen him”. I meant ‘me’.
”After all, is when we are unseen by others that we reveal our true nature to ourselves.”. That’s one instance when this can be observed. The other one is how we behave when we are with someone or something that is weaker than us.
One thing that comforts me about mistakes, Professor, is a great story that I have read in one of my Eastern philosophy books, written by samurais and Buddhist monks who lived in the 1600’s or so (can never remember the names as they are compilations of writings from many authors). I am sure that you too, as a martial artist, will appreciate this story:
”When I was a young samurai, I had this idea of keeping a diary where I would daily list all my mistakes. Some time passed, and soon I was not able to keep up with my diary anymore.
And so I threw away my diary, because I understood that it’s impossible to live this lowly life in this lowly world, and not make mistakes. ”.
( the author could not keep up with the diary anymore because he was making so many mistakes; not because he didn’t have time for his diary, etc.)