If someone loses their wallet and you find it, in most jurisdictions as far as I know, you legally would have the responsibility to turn it in to the police or somehow return it to that person.
But speaking in a moral sense rather than a legal one, do you actually have that responsibility? Why or why not?
This is purely hypothetical, of course.
I reserve a fairly utilitarian view of morality.
So yes, I think. Retuning the wallet would confer a net benefit by increasing the quality of life of who dropped the wallet, or having it remain at the very least, benefiting humanity as a whole. Where as keeping the wallet would decrease the individual's quality life, increasing the suffering of the world.
>tl;dr returning the wallet is good because it makes the guy who lost it happy.
>>29828312
But what if it turns out that the guy who gets the wallet back will use the money in the wallet for an evil purpose?
In that case, returning the wallet would have created the greater evil as compared to just keeping the money.
I bring this up purely for the sake of argument, you understand.
>>29828451
the wallet didn't do shit, anon, you're doing it wrong. Go reread Kant.
>>29828516
But Kant wasn't a utilitarian, unlike >>29828312
>>29828451
If that's the case, then I suppose the moral thing to do would be to keep the wallet. But I don't think it's really possible to know such a thing. So I'd still enlist to return the wallet, as I think, generally speaking, people are inclined towards moral decisions.
You can use the golden rule - treat others as you would like to be treated.
If you lost your wallet with cash, license, and credit card in it, you would reasonably like for the finder to take measure to have it returned to you, since it would benefit you.
Some guy ahead of me left his wallet at the checkout at a small Walmart one time. As I was about to pay for my shit, I noticed it on this little platform thing, I think I just said/motioned "hold on" to the cashier and took it and jogged out the entrance/exit to catch up to him and return it before he gave me the slip. I gave it back to him, I think he was caught a little off guard by me flagging him down, he thanked me.
It's a good thing nobody thought I was trying to run off with/steal his wallet or something, I just wanted to give it back to him.
I don't know about responsibility in terms of situations like this, but I'd choose to return it if I could. This was a good instance of doing so, because I had time to get it right back to him if moved with the quickness before he left.
>>29828451
Then you should consider the odds of the person you are giving money to being evil.
Do you consider the average wallet holder to be more likely to be evil?
Also are you going to spend it for good purposes?
>>29828209
You don't have the responsibilit. The responsibility of the wallet is that of the owner's. Since he could not be responsible for it, and therefor lost it, it is within your moral right to take it.
>TLDR fuck morality do what you want
