Altruism and egoism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

Altruistic ideologies? Like what, Buddhism? As an “altruist” (which I’m not) I see things in terms of a co-operation/competition dichotomy not an “altruism/egoism” one. The idea that leftist and co-operative ideals are “altruistic” is objectivist rhetoric cannot withstand proper scrutiny.

Who the hell says egoism is human nature? :unamused:. I dont know alot about anthropology but to the best of my knowledge about up to 5000 years ago everyone lived in communities that co-operated. Even today in South America there are still some that violate human nature (:roll:) and do this. I’m sure that you’re ancestors did this.

There are plently of anthropologists and linguists who believe that human beings are naturally co-operative, what convinces you otherwise? I see plently of animals that co-operate with each other, why should human beings be any different?

22

Of course you need to be productive to be alive, but being alive doesn’t mean
being happy. I’ve seen so many people who have everything they want and who are also unhappy and dissatisfied with life.
I think it’s important to set your own priorities and to find out what you want to achieve in life and what can make you happy. A materialist would say that money can do everything, but I disagree, because I think a personal freedom is more important.
“Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.”
Socrates, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
About three years ago I had a text about him in my latinum lesson. And the more you need/have, the more unhappy you will be (was his teaching). It was a man living on a beach and needed only sunlight to be happy! I admire that one!

23

There are two ways of being content: increase your ability to satisfy your desires, or decrease the desires you have. (Or, of course, some combination of the two) Both can be difficult, but perhaps the second is more difficult than the first.
But if everyone pursued the second (is that a desire in itself?) improvement for everyone would disappear.
People may be satisfied with what they have. But maybe they shouldn’t be.

24

Selmer, although some degree of productivity is obviously needed for happiness, I never disputed that. What I asked was would you automatically become more happy from increasing productivity? Assuming I worked in a factory and was trained to operate new, more efficient equipment and given a slight pay rise, would it be the pay that made me happier or the things I bought with it? If it was a 10% pay rise would I become 10% (no more no less) happier? I don’t think you can reduce happiness to something dependent only on productivity, tere is obviously a threshold below which people are discontent with their surroudings but just having lots of consumer goods does not lead to happiness. How have suicide rates changed since the 60s?

25

Well, my opinion is that you can’t get too cynical and still be happy. For one, when one monkey grooms the other monkey’s hair, he may be doing it out of selfishness, i.e. just so they other monkey will groom his hair, but you can also look at it as a give and take, you scratch my hair, I will scratch yours. Anyway, why should I look after people’s needs if they are not in return going to look after mine. You are setting yourself up to be a real sad sack if you always tell people, “oh… no…I don’t deserve to be groomed” and if your a monkey that cannot groom easily with out the help of another and you don’t let anybody do it for you, you are going to be an awfully dirty monkey and no one will want to go by you.

Also, you can’t take this consumerism stuff too far, sometimes its fun to go in Target and spend some cash.

Finally, I don’t see happiness as the pinnacle of life, it itself can be viewed from a certain angle to be a form of selfishness.

26

That’s exactly the conlusion I came to a few days ago. We all want to be happy, but the point is the way we achieve our happiness. If you want to be happy, you think in first line only of yourself and of wanting to feel good neglecting the world outside. It’s just an odd thought of mine which occured to me several times. Isn’t it egoistic to want to be happy???

27

Of course it is. I said I wasn’t against egoism, just that the usual method of application of egoism was counterproductive.

28

Depends…does the mother value the child’s existence? Does she value the pride she gets when the child grows up able to face the world on his own? Does she value the joy she gets from a smile when her child is happy?

How is he not acting to promote his own self-interest?

29

I see here a creeping invasion of the old argument of the idea that everyone acts selfishly. There are those who argue that Mother Theresa was acting as selfishly as a common thief. One gets their (selfish) joy out of helping people, the other out of robbing them. This, I believe, is just a misunderstanding of the meaning of selfishness. I argued so in the post 3rd from the bottom in this thread:

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=138821

Both the father and the mother are acting altrustically in the common definition of the term, if you are talking about the wider definition, I cannot hope to win, but as I said in the other thread, I do not believe that to be the meaning of selfish.

Having thought further about this today I also have to take issue with the idea that man’s base impulse is to be selfish. There are plenty of examples throughtout history of utterly selfless acts, countless of them being performed under great duress (just look at virtually any war for an example). Most humans have a common bond of empathy between them, they hurt when they see something happening to another human that they would not want to happen to them. The people who no longer have that bond of empathy tend to be the ones who have had to supress it all their lives, the stereotypical American Psycho Stockbroker, the politician, etc. etc. In order to persue their ambition they have lost something essentially human along the way. Aryn Rand is just plain wrong if she tries to assert differently, a child past the age of 4 can sympathise with another persons pain and will often try and will automatically react in an empathetic manner if confronted with that situation. This is exactly the same age when they develop the ability to realise that other people experience different emotions and desires than they do. It’s a bit odd that such an empathy would develop at immediatly the same time as the possibility for its development occured unless it were human nature, otherwise it would have to be taught to the child over time AFTER it had developed the ability, not at the same time as it develops it.

Seeing the whole world as selfish is, in my view, a rather depressing way to view the world. Believing that a stranger can make an ultimate good samaritan sacrifice (without the religious connetations) is one of the wonderful things about being human.

30

Why do you think they cooperated–because it worked to their own advantage or because it would kill them?

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Of course man will cooperate when it works to his own advantage–but the primary reason he does so is because it works to his own advantage.

31

I suppose I agree with you somewhat there, but competition works to neither the gain of a society or individuals, it destoys interpersonal relationship and hence my disdain for it.

32

I think it would be a good idea to notice that selfishness and altruism are, what logicians call, contraries, but not, contradictories. Contraries can both be false (although cannot both be true). Contradictories cannot both be false nor can they both be true. For instance, an animal cannot be both a dog and a cat, but an animal may be neither a dog nor a cat, but something else. So dog and cat are contraries, but not contradictories. On the other hand, an animal cannot be both a dog and not a dog. So dog and not-dog are contradictories, not contraries.

In the same way, a person cannot be (in the same way, and in the same respect) both an altruist and selfish. But a person can be neither an altruist nor selfish.

A person may simply act in his own self-interest[i] without taking anything away from another that the other is entitled to have. If, for instance, a mother leaves two pieces of cake for her two children to eat, and if one of them takes one piece and leaves the other for the other child for whom it is meant, then that one has acted in his own self-interest, but has not been selfish. If, on the other hand, he takes both pieces of cake, the one meant for him, and the one meant for the other child, then the mother would be right to call him selfish. But she would not be right to call him selfish if he took only the piece meant for him, and left the other for the other child.

The term “selfish” is a negative moral judgement. That is why the Ayn Rand title, “The Virtue of Selfishness” is quite idiotic. It is what is sometimes called an oxymoron. What Rand means is “the virtue of self-interest.” But then, that would not have been as jazzy, and it would not have sold as many books.

But the important thing to recognize is that acting self-interestedly need not be acting selfishly. (And, of course, acting self-interestedly is not acting altruistically either.) When I am tired, and go to bed, I am acting in my self-interest, but unless another person is involved, and I am depriving him of something he is entitled to have, I am not acting selfishly.

Most of the time, we are all acting self-interestedly. Perhaps part of the time, altruistically, and part of the time, unfortunately, selfishly. But is is clearly false that all actions done in one’s own self-interest are selfish actions.

33

I don’t agree with you, I think that Rand did mean what she said by saying the “virtue of selfishness”. She was saying that it is a virtue to act in a negative manner, thus attempting to change the traditional understanding of the word virtue, which if I am correct, came from both Roman and Latin and originally meant “talent”. Why I don’t like Rand is because she is one person that mastered the talent (virtue) of lying (selfishness).

34

I have always thought that a talent was something you were born with, like a good singing voice, or an ability to play a good game of chess. A virtue is something you acquire, like honesty or generosity or compassion for others.
The opposite of a virtue is a vice. Selfishness is a vice.
As for somehow converting selfishness into a virtue by calling it one, here is a story about Abraham Lincoln that illustrates the folly of that:
Lincoln once asked one of his sons, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, then how many legs would the dog have?” Lincoln’s son, who apparently believed in word-magic replied, “Five legs,” to which Lincoln answered, “Wrong. Calling a dog’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” And calling selfishness a virtue does not make it into a virtue either. Words are not magic. They do not magically convert things into something else; and certainly, not a thing into its opposite.

Neither Rand, nor anyone else can change the meaning of words. If I wrote a book called “The Virtue of Murder” that would not change the meaning of “virtue” nor, of course, would it make murder into a good thing.

I still have a low opinion of Rand’s ability to think: never mind her views!

35

Rand is not making selfishness a virtue merely by fiat–she actually has a coherent argument for it; namely, that it is acts taken in one’s own self-interest that enable one to live and to be human, to experience joy and pleasure, to make great discoveries, and to desire to continue living.

36

If you get enough people to believe something different then you have in effect changed the meaning of it. What is meaning besides something that we can agree on. I would take it a step further and say that something that only one person understands does not truly have meaning. Only in some act of communication does an idea, phrase, saying or theory aquire meaning.

Also in reference to kennethamy, what would you say of someone that is born just and good or the opposite. Then in my opinions the conventional estimation that virtue and talent are different things is truly compromised.

37

Then why not call it “self-interest” rather than “selfishness?” Is it:

  1. Because self-interest and selfishness are different kinds of actions?
  2. As I said, because “The Virtue of Selfishness” is so jazzy?
38

Right. So when enough people believed (as they did) that the Earth was flat, the Earth was flat. And now it has suddenly changed shape?

And, are there people who are just born good or evil? Virtues have to be taught to children; like table-manners. Talents are innate, and then developed. Children are not born good, or to have good table manners, although perhaps they are born with a propensity to be good. But, children are born with a sense of pitch in music, or with a certain intelligence, or good looks.

39

Just considering some facts from history:
Galileo Galilei was the one who contradicted the teaching of Aristotel (which was about the geocentric system, the people were living in)! But the whole “world” was against him and only few of his students supported him. He was warned by the church and the pope Urban (I guess it was him), who was an inquisitor himself. And you know they forced Galilei to give up his teaching and Galilei couldn’t resist him, because the church had the whole political power and in case of not giving up they would have killed him, like they burned Giovanni Bruno! Oh yeah, did it ever occure to you that people stopped the progress this way? I thought, damn a bunch of stupid, addicted to religion bastards … who only needed to open their eyes. They have killed so many people, so many great people! The most people felt reduced as an important person,a pope had who studied sciences, supported Galileo … that’s why so many scientists moved to the other countries like Netherlands.
The inquisitor made the majority believe that the things they did, was right and the opinion of a single person was irrelevent. Pathetic!

40

Right, you proved my theory, what is the difference between the propensity to do good and being good and acting good (especially since we are really judged by our actions more than anything else). They are all the same if you ask me.