That’s obviously not the case if their biological drives are causing them to die…
By those definitions anything perceptible can be argued to promote self-interest. Even in this case, I’d still contend that self-interest is only a viable explanation for actions occurring after the establishment of a ‘self’. Meaning biological processes are only self-serving if we reduce the ‘self’ to material entities, but this is where I think self sustaining to be more accurate – biology doesn’t work toward an advantage, but necessity.
How do you figure? In one case you discover value through an action, whereas in the other you are performing an action based on predetermined values. Seems very different to me.
Die? They become part of a larger entity which holds equal interest in sustaining itself.
k, when you change what the word “self” is referring to, from “one amoeba” to the whole new group of amoebas…well, you’re no longer talking about the same thing. be consistent. which one is the “self” that is acting altruistically?
So you act first, and THEN you determine that your action is valuable?
The thought process works like this, then?:
Option A involves altruism.
I don’t find value in the action.
OO I GUESS I’LL DO IT ANYWAY, EVEN THOUGH I DON’T FIND ANY VALUE IN IT.
perform action
oh, now I find value in it.
I don’t think people make choices like that.
In that event, we pretty much agree. I argue that the definition describes a theoretical action that can not possibly occur. I disagree that every action is inherently selfish, but would modify that with the suggestion that every action is in some way self-serving.
Alleviation of guilt, for one thing. You know either the guy or his kid has to die, but can you imagine how that guy would feel going through the rest of his life knowing he chose his own life over that of his child? Imagine it, you’d have almost no chance of living any kind of meaningful life after that. Also, the individual may consider it moral to choose the life of his child over his own.
I can anticipate your response to this suggestion, but first, let me reiterate that is why I talked about satisfying secondary Motivators as well as Primary Motivators. In fact, I think that it can be taken a step further and we could suggest that it is these Secondary Motivators that generate Primary (Immediate) Motivators. In other words, it is the things that we have considered long and hard (morality) that cause us to be able to make a major (or minor) moral decision without a second’s hesitation.
Cultural values have nothing to do with genetic evolution. These relatively new replicators , like selfish genes, perpetuate themselves simply because it is advantageous to them. They plant themselves on or parasitize the brain, turning it into a vehicle for their propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.
Ideals exists if only in the form of concepts and principles with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human cultures.
You certainly don’t always choose what you want to choose, but you always choose what you want to choose out of all of the options available to you. I don’t think that’s a point of grammar, but merely an actual fact. How can an individual choose an option (when presented with a set) that he did not want to choose? Occasionally, one will reluctantly select an option that appears to be self-deprivating, but the person ultimatelydoes it because they deem it to be the best possible option available to them at that time.
Do you remember that game show where you had to pick Door Number 1 or Door Number 2? Why would people always take so long deciding what door to choose when (assuming they didn’t know what was behind the doors) the statistical liklihood of getting the grand prize was 50/50? It’s because they didn’t have a set of values or principles that they had to self-fulfill associated with the decision, they basically search their memory banks for what should be the best (or most moral, as silly as that sounds) choice when presented with the Option of choosing one of two doors and they don’t find anything there. Eeventually, they give up thinking that there even might be any advantge to picking one over the other and they just stammer a door number out.
Conscious decisions when presented with a set of known options that have largely known consequences is another matter altogether. The majority of people have themselves morally wired to the extent that they make a decision about it in very little time because the brain processes an answer based on that individual’s values, principles, morals and the brain (person) has a desire to self-satisfy all of the above by making the, “Right,” decision.
Shit! I type that three-paragraph response to your argument, and THEN I see you say that? LOL
Does he wants to see his kid die, by the way? Perhaps a secondary motivator for choosing life is because he cannot bear to see his kid die. If the kid has to watch his Father die, is it not the kid that suffers the psychological trauma whereas (assuming shooting is the prescribed manner of death) the father doesn’t suffer anything (as far as we can know) ever again?
Biological processes do not fall in any way into this equation because when you consider acts that are potentially, “Altruistic,” or, “Selfish,” an individual’s private biological function in no way involves another person, so there is no alternative decision to make but to complete the biological action.
There is no qualitative contrast between the significance of the body’s intelligent pursuit of biological functioning and the pursuit of the intelligent, goodhearted values concerning relationships with people. There are no “higher” and “lower” goals.
The psychological pursuit of personal values is not in any way superior to the biological pursuit of the overall cooperation between physical cells of the organism.
The use of the brain, a physical instrument, to attain the goal is common to both the pursuits.
Since the psychological seeker is using thought (a function of interpretation in the brain) to attain his projected goals or values, his pursuit also falls within the bounds of something material and measurable. There is nothing lofty about it. The intellectual pursuit is as self-centered as the biological one. It makes no difference whether you are concerned with your ethical principles, or the body is concerned for its functional physical status. It is still a selfish pursuit.
Self consciousness and its aspects of conscience are only an illusory extension of thought and its goals. The continuity of the knowledge that reinforces man’s experiences happens as a result of the capacity of a developed and functioning brain.
2 words. Forrest Gump. Closest thing to Jesus I ever saw.
How do you know what someone wanted in a situation? By what they chose. That’s what I mean by grammatical, they are different descriptions of the same phenomenon. I don’t think self-interest is ‘doing what you want’, because by the definitions in the OP that’s saying that it’s choosing what you choose; the thing that marks self-interest out from non-self-interest is the personal advantage. And selfishness, when that advantage comes at the cost of another.
So those lovely paragraphs won’t go to waste 
Thanks, Only_Humean. My counter to that would be that every act a person commits yields some sort of personal advantage, which is not to say that an individual would necessarily choose the most personally advantageous action, just to say that if an action was not at all advantageous (in one sense or another) a person would not choose it.
It’d be more accurate to say that if an action was not PERCEIVED by the chooser as advantageous…
For example, people who get tricked into investing into con artists. Giving the con man money isn’t ACTUALLY advantageous, but the investor in question certainly perceived that it was.
and thats why we have to be careful about self interest. sure Jesus may not of existed but the ideal image of good may have a spot for him.
His self-interest was to serve God.
There is no such thing as your own unique esoteric source of assets that you avail of to satisfy your interests. Nor is there such a thing as mine. The source is everywhere, sort of like the air we breathe. There is a thought sphere. It is not ours and not mine. It is always there. Your brain acts like an antenna, picking and choosing what signals it wants to use. That is all. You use the signals for purposes of communication.
First of all, we have to communicate with ourselves. We begin as children naming everything over and over again. Communicating with others is a little more complex and comes next. The problem, or the pathology if you will, arises when you constantly communicate with yourself, irrespective of any outside demand for thought.
You are all the time communicating with yourself: “I am happy… I am not happy… There’s something more interesting …What is the purpose of my life?..” and so on. If that incessant communication within yourself is not there, you are not there as you now know and experience yourself. When that inner monologue is no longer there, the need to communicate with others is absent. So you communicate with others only to maintain that communication you are having with yourself, your inner monologue. This kind of communication is possible only when you rely and draw upon the vast totality of thoughts passed on by man from generation to generation. Man has through the process of evolution learned to draw from this storehouse quickly, subtly, and in a more refined way. All of what forms a ‘self’ – along with its capacity to conceive of the notion of ‘self-interest’, including the ability to derive the fulfillment of self-interest – is contained in that vast totality.
Haha. Of course, being Jesus, that sort of was self-interest. 