I didn’t mean to do that, I was attempting to edit my post because somehow I have part of it in a code box.
oh lol
As far as cells are concerned, not only are they not conscious, but short of there being a fundamental problem with the cell it just does the only thing it can in a eukaryote, which is cooperate with the other cells. The fact that there is no other choice in the matter prohibits the action from being self-serving, altruistic or selfish, the words ‘selfish’ and ‘altruistic’ imply that some other action could be taken.
oh jeeze pav, i thought i was arguing with you, i just realized i confused you with xun. we completely agree 
So, as cells are not conscious we can call them poor as to oppsed to the rich who are conscious. Is this a rationale for one group to dominate another? First, we discussed the social relationship of a dominate and subordinate group (the rich shall dominate the poor). Now we have a biological discussion between conscious life and unconscious life. All value seems to rest on the rich and conscious and the poor and unconscious are not valued. Social Darwinism plain and simple
Anything that has evolved through natural selection is selfish, Homo sapiens included. ‘Selfish,’ in the sense that genes act only for themselves, their only interest being their own replication. Come what may, they copy themselves and ‘want’ to be passed on to the next generation. ‘Selfish’, or ‘want’ ought not to be understood as some grand purpose, aim or intention (which are all only mental constructions) but only as chemical instructions that can be copied. In this relentless journey of the gene, altruism too is but another technique of the gene, another facet that is played out to ensure its continuity.
To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Altruism is selfishness in disguise and often altruism within a group goes with selfishness between groups.
I guess that you could call them poor, you can call them anything you want, but I don’t know why you would. Due to the fact that they are not conscious, they do not realize that there is any fundamental difference between themselves and beings that are conscious because such a realization would require than an organism be conscious.
We don’t dominate cells by the way, cells are responsible for our make-up. As human beings, we are largely just a collection of cells that ideally behave in harmony with one another, so it’s not really a dominant vs. subordinate affair.
As far as whether or not cells are valued, I certainly value my cells because without them, I wouldn’t exist. I don’t think mental consciousness is the end all and be all of what is valued or unvalued. I’m drinking a 20oz. Dr. Pepper, it is not conscious but I value it, specifically $1.25 is the value that I placed on it…or at least the value that I agreed to.
We should distribute some of our income to those poor unicellular lifeforms. You know, they could really use some cash, and an apartment.
It is my personal opinion that your definition of, “Selfishness,” is simply too broad. Selfishness is to act only in accordance with one’s own self-interest irrespective of whether or not another individual, or social group is benefitted. I believe that if the goal is continuity, then your first paragraph surely points to self-interest, which can entail acts that are seemingly altruistic. Selfishness cannot entail acts that are made primarily for the purpose of benefitting another person, or group, so long as the actor could have personally benefitted in a greater way (than with the seemingly altruistic act) by doing something else.
Anyway, you speak of aim, purpose and intention being mental constructions, so are selfishness, self-interest and altruism. We have words that describe specific actions or general categories of action that we have constructed, without those words, then you would just have the action existing separately from any terminology.
To your second paragraph, I agree up to the point where you say that Altruism is selfishness in disguise. My suggestion in the OP was that any Altruistic act is also a self-serving act in at least a secondary way, but not that every seemingly Altruistic act is patently selfish. It’s very difficult to equate the inherent assertion that every action that is apparently designed and taken to benefit another (or the group) is actually designed to benefit the actor who is (in reality) unconcerned with whether or not the group is benefitted.
Is it true that to do the best for oneself, one must occasionally do what is best for others? Sure, but that does nothing to mitigate the fact that doing what is best for others is self-serving as opposed to selfish. Or, even if it is selfish in some cases, it’s not selfish in every case.
The point is a conscious will is not responsible for the orientation of the temporal proccess; a proccess which we are not separate and apart from. The fact that all life is interconected and operates only in relation to eachother makes selfishness seem unintelligent to a rational conscious being. We are constantly trying to manipulate cells and gain power over them in a science for manipulation. We stive to be “masters and possesers of nature” . And of coarse advance that to the manipulation of people.
Here is the OP’s definition of altruism:
Normally, the slime mold in question lives as a single-celled organism. Free, wandering about, self-interested and all that good stuff. But during times of scarcity, the amoebae join together to form a multicellular “slug”. The slug consists of a “head” and a “stalk”. All the cells in the “stalk” portion die while those at the “head” are moved to a new location where they can happily restart the whole process.
Those amoebae forming the “stalk” are performing an action that can only be described as “outside the self” if we want to define the “self” as a single, unique organism and it is a self-sacrificing action.
As for Brevel getting it, we are not discussing prescriptive action in this thread but rather discussion potentiality. A human female can kill her mate after coitus just as surely as the Black Widow or Preying Mantis do kill their mates. Likewise, amoebae can perform altruistic acts and without resorting to some sort of anthropocentric fallacy, there is no reason why a human being ought also be able to perform an altruistic act. What we are concerned with here is the capacity for action.
Right, there is no reason why a human can perform an altruistic act. That’s what I was saying
In the event that that’s not what you mean, then assigning human values like “altruism” to non-human entities who don’t view life in such terms - nay, who don’t view life at all - is a fallacy. That’s anthropomorphizing.
See point II of my argument. The pathetic fallacy can no longer be considered valid when applied to other closely related organisms.
I don’t even really understand this definition. An action performed by me but made only for someone outside of myself – yet the action was decided upon with the intent to perform it myself. That seems misleading to me as any action conceived of and performed by a person can be argued to be inherently selfish somehow, regardless of who/what that action is for. The self-sacrifice part is where I get stuck…
Not altruistic in the same context that an amoeba might be considered as such. However, like I said, I think the self-sacrificing action is what makes your assertions questionable (to me, at least).
For example, say you have a man and his child - both atheists. They are at gunpoint and one has to die, so the dad chooses to die (as one might expect). The sacrifice here is the father’s life for the well-being of his child, that much is clear. However, where is the selfishness that would prevent this act from being considered altruistic? He wants his kid to live, naturally, but he does not believe that he will reap any benefit from the act. He is not serving himself insofar as any personal pleasure he might get from saving his kid would be immediately destroyed along with him. His interest is for his child to live, but not for him to experience any sort of benefit from it (let’s assume the child is a girl to avoid the obvious argument that he may be interested in preserving his bloodline).
closely related RELATIVE TO WHAT? i don’t agree that they’re “closely related” so it’s futile to keep claiming that.
i addressed this already:
This, to me, is a shallow and unsuitable explanation that reeks of Objectivism. The man’s interest is no longer of the self if he does not expect to be a ‘self’ by the time his action is taken. If self-interest truly were the primary interest, your contention must be that we can deny our instinctual drives, or ‘will’, in interest of some rational decision. However, you also claim that self-interest is instinctual. So, one might conclude that we can deny our inherent self-interest in the interest of something else.
By the OP’s definition, the man is performing an action for something outside himself and his action is self-sacrificing. That action also becomes solely for someone outside of himself once he is dead (since we can’t really consider his self-interest at that point). The very notion of valuing something/someone more than oneself is an indication that altruism is possible. The choice to die is the point at which self-interest ceases to be priority. How can we not consider such a choice to be an utter denial of self-interest? You said yourself he valued the life of his child more than his own – that does not constitute interest in/of/about the self, but interest in another. His priorities are a matter of self-interest, but that which he values over himself becomes a matter of interest in itself.
Doing something for someone else in the interest of how you will benefit is an action of self-interest. Doing something for someone without reaping any benefit for the ‘self’ is an action of invested interest.
And the something he valued (or that interested him) more was not himself, therefore it is not self-interested. This isn’t anything more than sophistry.
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This is exactly what I’m getting at, though obviously not quite so eloquently.
If you are referring to Humpty’s hypothetical argument between an idealist and realist, I agree. In fact, that is one of the first things that occurred to me when I read it–
There should be a considerable amount of dialogue beyond this point to justify the position, in my opinion. The man is “preserving something he valued more of something he valued less”; the intentionally misleading part is the ambiguous use of “something” here.
Preserving your values through something else of value is self-interest, whereas preserving something else of value over, or in spite of, your own value is just an interest.