Is there any rational reason for anyone to do something for another at a loss to him(her)self?
should there be a reason?
should we care?
future benifits?
none
you dont just feel selfish, you also feel protective towards your family, and your species.
These all have a common root; the survival instinct isnt just making sure you prosper, but that your genes do, and your species does (even so far as life in general).
Similarly, you feel protective towards your friends to make sure your ideals prosper.
Of course, there is an element that you may well be paid back when you need it, but this isnt the origin of this motivation.
ii) Asking questions.
Clearly questions are a large part of philosophy and we welcome thought-provoking questions and genuine calls for opinions and perspective on philosophical issues. However, being part of a community means a bit of give and take. Share your ideas on the topics you bring up and don’t just blindly post questions because you feel you should or you think it’ll make you look clever. A consistent career of one-liner questions will not be looked upon kindly.
ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=139918
(I’m trying to get promoted to mod…)
What doe you mean by the word “loss”.
SIATD, the day you get promoted to mod I’ll eat your hat.
I was only kidding…
Let’s assume here that rational people are wholly motivated by self interest (I’ll come back to that later). Even with this condition placed upon the world, you would still see acts of seemingly selfless morality put forth. The reasons are as follows:
First of all, people like playing hero and benefactor. It’s a nice feeling to do a good deed, their thanking you and others admiration make a person feel likea good person, and everyone likes that. Reason 1 is therefore pursuit of of unique, strong, and often safe and easy pleasure.
Second, our rational person would realize that by helping person X, they are helping set a precedent. By helping person X, they are promoting a society in which everyone helps one another, which would be nice if our rational person finds themself in a situaiton where they need help. Reason number 2: safety net.
In addition, rationality is not wholly motivated by self interest. If I see a small child drowning in a shallow pool (apparantly a child can drown in just a few inches of water. So if you ever have to rid yourself of one, there’s an idea. Just, you know, in case.) you could reason to yourself that you could go save a life, and all that would happen is you would get your shoes dirty, and that your shoes being dirty is not a moral equivilance to a child dying, so you save them. There, you have just reasoned out that it’s a good idea. There are host of other paths of reasoning too, that by helping people out people are better off, and can produce and input more, so society is better.
However we are of course not robots, your empathy can be rationally used as well. Just think to yourself how bad you would feel (note the word feel, rationality and emotions are merging here) if you were in that situation. Therefore, it’s better not to be in that situation, whether it is you or someone else, and you are obligated to help them.
Too late, I’m already salivating for hat felt like Pavlov’s dogs. I hope you have a stovepipe hat, or an old bowler hat around for me to devour. I don’t like those plastic mesh baseball caps.
I’m not familiar with forum etiquette
cran365 mentioned in that people acting even solely on self interest would sometimes act in an ethical manner because they would indirectly benefit. An indirect gain is still a gain. that is what i ment by loss.
Let me rephrase the question.
It seems to me that a “morality” that is not self motivated is irrational and a morality that is self motivated isn’t moral at all.
I don’t really know to much about ethics but it seems to me if there is no logical reason to do something then why should i?
At the risk of beating this one to death i’ll take one more shot. (I’m seriously not trying to bump this or annoy anyone, I really want this answered)
G. E. Moore aurgues that good is like yellow, that it is undefinable and impossible to break down into smaller parts. Incapable of existing by itself, only as a quality of something else. You couldn’t explain to a blind man what yellow is, you have to just look.
The difference i think, between good and yellow is that yellow is a term we use to categorize how we percieve a certain physical reality. Good is an idea. Is an undefined idea still an idea? He also aurgued against subjective morality, since something can’t be wrong and right at the same time. If however, it is not a physical reality, but only an idea, how can good exist? I am so confused
Logically no there is not. If you are doing something it implies you want to do it and if you want to do it, your motivation is to fulfill that want. Is this a bad thing? No because the above bit of logic, whilst correct, ignores the consideration of the object of desire. If we cannot distinguish between selfish and selfless acts based on a persons emotions, then it is pointless to try so it would be more useful to try and make the distinction based on something else i.e. the action itself.