Epiphany: ..emotion..action and its basis.....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Ok! This is my first post so ladies and gentlemen please bear with me.

Through the wonderful expierence of having an epiphany…well I believe it was more a collection of ideas and expierences combining into one idea but thats not the point…I have came upon the idea/theory that I will state as well as I can in the statement below…

As human beings we make decisions everyday, choices and actions that have consequences, some of which are forseen while others are not. In anycase these actions or choices usually follow a thought process that involves mutliple things such as emotion, self presevation, hunger and any other you can list off…but I will stop talking and just put forth the idea/theory. These actions/choices are all due “selfish” thoughts consciouse or otherwise. This means that everything we do…stealing some cookies off the plate when mom says NO…watching TV…tieing our shoe…kissing someone…even the “unselfish” emotion love is truly selfish…

I beleive it is possible to explain any situation with this theory and I will wait for someone to stump me with one that cannot. I do not in reality truly beleive this theory to be completely true but I believe if one is to truly think about it they can see the validity in the argument…

Please respond with anything you have…

2

Excellent first post.

I started a thread with materially the same subject that went seven pages and just died down a week ago, so hopefully this thread will get a good deal of play, but then again it might not because many have already hashed this subject out to a great extent.

In any case, I believe that many good thoughts were shared on the thread linked below, the only difference being was my thread was more focused on the non-existence of, “True,” Altruism, and that every action was at least Self-Interested in a secondary way. Of course, selfishness pretty much would indicate that Self-Interest is the Primary (or some would argue, only) Motivator for an action, and it would be difficult to compel me to adopt that extreme a stance, but if you so desire, read the other thread and let’s see what you got on the theory that every action is primarily selfish.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=173090&start=0

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I agree. But don’t try convincing everyone: some just don’t get it.

4

Welcome!

As Pav said, there is a thread still warm on this topic.

My feeling is that the reasoning to think all acts are selfish is because we must want to do them. But that only says that we do what we want to do, and that’s just a description of the type of relation of people to acts called “wanting”.

“Selfish” implies that an action costs or hinders other people. It’s not selfish to have ice-cream for pudding if that’s what you want, but it’s selfish to eat it all up without offering it around. Other people might have wanted some. Clearly, not all actions are selfish in anything like the ordinary usage of the word.

Helping others at material cost to yourself, however it may soothe your psyche, is not selfish. If you neglect your family in order to help others, because you have a pathological urge to do so or it would serve your political campaign well, could be described as such - but there again, you have personal gain at the expense of others.

5

The basis of an action can be genetic. This can be due to a random mutation and therefore be wholly irrational. For instance, a genetic mutation might cause a songbird to sing in a slightly lower pitch. If the females of its species find that attractive, it will probably be selected; but this does not mean the songbird does it because the females find it attractive.

Likewise, a genetic mutation may cause actually altruistic behaviour. The opposite sex may find this attractive. The mutated gene will then probably be selected. The behaviour thus furthers the ‘selfish aims’ of the gene that causes it. That does not make it selfish behaviour, however.

[size=95]In describing genes as being “selfish”, the author [Richard Dawkins] does not intend (as he states unequivocally in the work [The Selfish Gene]) to imply that they are driven by any motives or will — merely that their effects can be accurately described as if they were. The contention is that the genes that get passed on are the ones whose consequences serve their own implicit interests (to continue being replicated), not necessarily those of the organism, much less any larger level.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene][/size]

6

I think that selfishness is a meme implanted in the society due to ideas based on division and separatism, which is basically derived from western European dualism and mechanism. Rugged individualism and the colonial mentality are also symptoms sprung from Cartesian dualism and mechanism. Thus, now that humans are so divided from each other, and have internalized the lies based on keeping us divided from each other and from nature so that we can justify killing, controlling, conquering, abusing, and exploiting others and the planet without compunction or inhibiition, we live in huge fear and distress over attaining our personal needs and security. Feeling as though we have to do this by ourselves on our own puts us in situations and mindsets where the reptile brain is activated, fight or flight, and that has its effects all right, biological, chemical, societal, and ecological. When we are forced to live this way, we become selfish and self-centered. It’s me for mine, not ours for us.

However, I am convinced that this idea that humans are basically selfish is totally false. Selfishness clearly stems from that huge fear and distress based on certain societal assumptions that are actually anti-human and very destructive to everyone and everything. If reality is basically holistic, then humans at root are meant to live together in balance and harmony, and the altruistic “ours for us” mentality is our true and healthy inherent nature. I don’t think this can be proven wrong based on the way our society works today, since it is so dysfunctional and destructive. Dysfunction and destruction are not natural byproducts of our inherent humanity; they are the results of inhumanity, of humans who have been forced or compelled into conforming to conditions which are not natural or healthy. Many many people are deeply disturbed, depressed, and dissatisfied with their lives. Why do you think we are called Psychotrope Nation (aka Prozac Nation)? Why are we stuck in endless wars and occupations that harm and kill so many, including our own? Why do we listen to insanity and vote against our own best interests, unable to think well about what a good, fair, and just society looks like? It’s because we have bought into the lies we have been fed from childhood and haven’t grown up enough to ask our own questions and find our own answers.

The great psychologist Sam Keen said that the sign of maturity is the ability to ask one’s own questions, to go on an individual quest that involves what it means to live in a world where so much killing and destruction is taking place. None of us live in a small tribe any more, separate from the rest of the world. Everything we do affects others everywhere; and everything that happens in the world affects us. We are all part of a holistic nexus in crisis, and until we give up the old, tired notions of separateness and selfishness, the destruction, chaos, dysfunction, and unhappiness will continue.

7

we don’t willfully do anything that isn’t intended to further our own aims - but there’s nothing which says those aims can’t be altruistic - our aims may include helping others . . .

perhaps one way to rephrase the question might be: is there any truly selfLESS act?

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Selfishness is understood when one must satisfy his own basic needs. Once these are met, the question then arises, ‘is this all there is to life?’ What else is there? All the boring repetitive things that one does. This is where interacting and sharing can take place. Selfishness begins to loosen its hold on the self as its center of purpose and the concern for others can begin. But it doesn’t have to. And because you choose to withhold something from another, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish. It depends on what the other wants to get out of what you supposedly have. Maybe, what you have is singular to you and you can’t give it. Or, even if you could, it might hinder the other person from his own singularity which may be what he is trying to discover.

9

You say, more a collection of ideas, etc, combining, … but as opposed to what?
Anyway, carry on.

Hang on again. You say, decisions, actions, etc, usually follow a thought process - as opposed to what?

On the other hand, they might not be. Who’s to say eh? who’s to say. mm.

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Exactly, check out the thread I linked above!

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Now I think about it…no act is selfless works a lot better…selfish probably was not the correct word to use actually

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I don’t think that anyone here realises - that, all you have said is that you had a few thoughts and now you think that everyone is selfish. You might as well have said that everything is shellfish. Or everything is fine, not fine, damned, not damned.

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The thread doesn’t pertain specifically to selfishness, it has to do with a lack of true Altruism. I basically posit that every act is at least self-interest in a Secondary way, but could still be primarily unselfish.

14

But what about the examples I gave. Random mutations may give rise to altruistic behaviour that is not in the interest of the organism as a whole.

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I don’t know, my thread (and I assumed this thread) was pretty much devoted to sentient beings making conscious decisions. In fact, this thread specficially mentioned, “Human beings,” which I took to mean an entire human being, as opposed to just a gene or set of genes.

Personally, I think consciousness to this extent requires some deliberation with respect to decision-making, as you said, the songbird might not be singing because it causes the female of the species to select it. In that regard, I think when we decide whether an action is to be categorized as Selfish, Self-Serving, or Altruistic, a few important aspects of the categorization are:

1.) That the action be deliberate.

2.) That the action be decided upon due to a cause that is consciously realized.

3.) That alternative actions be available to the entity committing the action.

If not all of those three things are fulfilled, then I would consider it idiosyncratic to even categorize the action using such terms. As was arrived upon in the previous thread, the categorization is only for the sake of categorization, and the action is still going to be the action and committed for the same actual reasons, (selfishness and altruism being descriptive adjectives and not actual reasons) regardless of how you categorize the action.

For example, Altruism is not a reason for an action. Nobody commits an action to be Altruistic, or if you want to argue that an entity does commit an action to be Altruistic/Selfish, then there are reasons that are going to be underlying that. In other words, Altruism and Selfishness are adjectives to describe an action and not primary causes for an action.

16

But here you’re stuck in your closed set anti-metaphysical, non-holistic assumptions. If those assumptions were valid, then behavior based only on self-interest would have the best results for that organism. But the actual results of real-life behavior based on those assumptions are just the opposite, very harmful and deadly. And even if there were a short-term reward, it would still not be in that organism’s interest if that reward were gained at the expense of others and/or by sociopathically wreaking destruction and harm on the social nexus and the ecosystem. That is why I often say that it looks very much as though humans are proving to be the must successful failure ever as a species, for everything we do that appears to look good in creating wealth and power actually means that we are bringing on our own demise sooner rather than later. There is only so much stress and destruction a society and a planet can take before the balances and forces of nature that were in place to sustain us collapse. The process of collapse has already begun. Whether it is too late to prevent the horrors that await humanity as this process continues is the only important question worth answering these days, and I fear that there is not much reason to be optimistic in that regard.

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Genes do not make decisions; they just influence them.

What does that mean? Does that presuppose free will?

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It could depending on who is doing the arguing, but it doesn’t have to. In this case, deliberate simply means intentional and marked by consideration.

19

Could still be genetically determined.

20

I won’t deny that it could be, but for me to suggest that it is, the Empirical scientific proof would have to be damn good. The reason that I say that is that if you were to make some kind of selfish/altruism scale and put a set of parents (with similar tendencies) on it, then I have seen children of those parents who exhibit (not truly completely opposite) but opposing tendencies, so opposite but not polar opposite because I don’t think you’d have pure Altruism or Selfishness due to Environmental factors anyway.

The point that I’m making is, then you could toss out the argument that both of the parents were clearly carrying a recessive gene (that they passed on) for the opposite. The only thing that fucks that up is that you would have to have two recessive genes to exhibit the less likely (probably on the closer to being purely selfish) side behavior. However, you can end up with two parents that are mostly selfish that produce offspring with an interest Primarily in others, and that’s also very likely due to enivronmental factors, the person could resent that fact of childhood and want to compensate by being excessively unselfish.

The problem is, if you want to take environmental factors out of it, then you have only one possible combination (two recessive genes) which can’t possibly result in a dominant trait. Therefore, you’d either have to accept that Environment plays a role as well (which just as well renders the genetic combination meaningless in some cases) or the theory falls flat on its face. As far as Empirical experience is concerned, I’ve found that children of excessively giving parents are more often than not selfish, and I have witnessed (not on many but on more than one) occasions where the child of parents who seem to be on the selfish end being a person mostly concerned for others.

I don’t know what you make of it. I’m not even sure my position here makes sense because I’m reaching back to some stuff that I haven’t touched since tenth grade, but to me (based on my admittedly limited understanding) it’s not genetic.