This topic has gone on for ages on these forums. The basic argument is:
Ever so called selfless act is selfish in a way, because you are rewarded by a good feeling, therefore there is no selfless act.
I can fully apreciate the logic in this, but I wonder are we going about this the wrong way?
Clearly there is a difference in some of our actions, but I think its more to do with other parties we help rather than wether or not we help ourselves.
Thoughts?
You’re spot on, of course, and the only difference to bear in mind is the obvious one that “selfish” = good for oneself at every level, and “selfless” = bad for oneself at some levels (eg, physical) but good at others.
No, that is not always true. What of blind altruism? Are we talking only of humans here? Can you extend this to other creatures? Ants? Does the “feel good” argument still apply there?
You are making an assumption in believing that one will be rewarded with a “good feeling”. Parallel to simple altruism, people may do “good deeds” [an action consciously done by one member of a population for the benefit of others] because it has been established that their role in society must do as such. There are many cases where this is true. I believe you can find the fallacy, then, for yourself.
There are genuinely selfless acts. In fact people commit them all the time. This is due to the fact that people do not properly understand what is in their interest. Doing something because one feels like it, does not necessarily constitute selfishness, because it may or may not fall in line with what is in that persons self-interest. People do these things all the time. I’m not talking about giving money to charity, or helping the homeless. I mean a situation where a person has a goal, and then intentionally undermines it. An example is a man who wishes to married, yet consistently cheats on his wife. In one way or the other he is acting against his self-interest, whether he actually wants to be married, or actually wants to sleep around, the one makes the other impossible.
chimmeySweep,
Your view does have the advantage of being simple and so convinceing to many people, it is however incorrect. A circumstance in the outside world might be said to be a tigger but the individual must be moved from within before he takes any action in the world, any action that is willed has a personal modivation which is fulfilled or attempted to be fulfilled by said action----that is why it is quite impossiable to commit a purely atruistic act. All action has a personal intent and that is served first, in the form of action.
Okay, so what you’re basically proposing is that if we do something for ourselves for the sake of ourselves, we are selfish. If we so something for others for the sake of ourselves, we are altruistic.
The motive for the latter case seems to be hope for compensation, even in a love relationship.
Do I have you correctly?
The problem is with the words themselves, they are the result of immaturity of a persons ego, if you look at Socrates, he sums it up in one phrase…
A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. – Socrates
What he is getting at here is INSTINCT, emotions and instincts are connected.
Most people who think they are THINKING, are actually INSTINCTING (coined a new term) basically SITTING ON and justifying their FEELING with rhetoric and not in a deconstruction of the visual mechanics of events.
When Ayn rand is speaking of being hard nosed individualist, she’s speaking of hostility towards every member of a group that a person perceives is weaker then them in some sense.
She’s still thinking WITHIN the animal ego, socrates knew he was on a journey of existing outside his animal ego as much as nature would allow. And plato never quite made it, but he was getting at with the philosopher kings…
“Reason should rule”, not the men themselves, but the TRUE information should guide decisions for the well being of everyone.
I don’t know if Socrates said that or not, but it seems to me that the human person itself is a value to the intellect, for whom we as humans appropriately should be emotional. Thus there is a link between the values of the intellect and the wording of Rhinoboy’s original post.
Socrates DID say it. The human person is not sacred, I hold someone who killed their child through neglect of lower value, then those that don’t.
It is irrational to not discriminate, it’s the same reason why we don’t pay welfare people or people who are disabled 100,000 a year, you have to discriminate because of other factors.
Emotions are just FEELINGS along your nervous system, when you lightly scratch yourself with a nail, thats an emotion – a signal of agitation.
The problem is what agitates one persons mind or body, does not do so for the next, there are some things we all share in common, but there are others we do not.
There are children in this world who cannot feel physical pain (a sensory emotion)
For instance I’ll quote an article from CNN:
Title: Life full of danger for little girl who can’t feel pain
By Keith Oppenheim
CNN Original Link – cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditio … oppenheim/
So our mind and sensory systems can be deceiving, therefore they must be tempered by understanding by what the mechanics of how things work from how we treat others, to how society is organized.
Communism failed not because the idea itself is impossible to implement, but because of population quality control issues (i.e. ability replacement, and ego-identity replacement).
The Soviet union became as powerful as it did as long as there were “true believers”, when the “believers” died out and the state became infected with incompetent human replacements and it fell. Not to mention all the political pressure on the Soviets from nations who had interest in its disintegration.
I see two main problems with your post:
First, the confusion of emotional pain with physical pain. I’m sure this child you reference feels emotional pain.
Second, the relation between reason and emotion. Emotions follow reason to some extent, and as an effect of the will, they should be felt. And if they follow right reason and a good will, it seems they are just.
I don’t know why you say a human life is not sacred if you believe in the value of a neglected child.
Thanks for the information on communism. Sounded like a non-sequitur, though.
Why were athiests not able to take the societal place of the religious?
That’s where you’re wrong. Because “emotional” is a constructed word, it was invented before scientific times so is totally suspect. It’s a word without any real definable meaning.
Our scientific definition is:
b : to perceive by a physical sensation coming from discrete end organs (as of the skin or muscles)
It’s a poor word to use since what “emotions” are since they are SENSATIONS, and if sensations, then they are signals. Otherwise we end up with absurdity and contradiction.
I asked her: “If you fall and got hurt, what does that feel like?”
"It feels like you want to cry but you can’t.
I don’t know whence you get your “scientific definition”, but that’s not what is meant by emotion.
The word “feeling” is used for both cases, however, but not “emotion”.
I don’t quite get what you’re saying. If you’re citing instinctive or other unthinking behaviours as counterexamples, then you’re wide of the mark, because morality (IMO) can only be assigned, or not assigned, to acts that follow deliberation.
Her ‘feelings’ when deconstructed objectively exist in a physical states, if we shut down oxygen or blood flow to her hand she would lose “feeling” and sensation in her hand.
You’re using vague and vulgar language, you need to see past the words themselves - and ask if the words are the problem and obscuring what is ‘behind’ the word itself - the actual reality. You’re mind is unable to dig deeper into that statement because you’re approaching it from LANGUAGE not from OBSERVATION. Try to imagine what is going on inside her head and body when she says that…
It’s the same way Christians for instance use “language” to invent the concept of an immaterial soul, without being able to define “immaterial” and “soul”, it sounds like we have a definition but we don’t, what is immaterial? that’s an empty statement because no one has any sensation of what immateriality is like.
When she says ‘she feels like crying but she can’t’ she’s saying she’s getting signals as if she should cry, but is not producing a tearful response.
Now most people hate me in arguments because I cut through their poor and low resolution thinking. Some words are ARBITRARY and devoid of any real meaning, they are “empty” statements (they are not precise enough or do not hold any truth value, they were not correctly defined from the outset).
And this is your whole problem right here you’re trying to use words that are not properly defined to explain anything (i.e. what actually is true in the world) versus in an arbitrary fashion. I can say a pink soopernoogin exists, but if I don’t define supernoogin, it is an empty word with no actual truth content.
Language does a lot to obscure our thinking patterns, always visualize first, and then use words to describe what you see. Feeling is sensing and you can’t sense shit unless you have a network of nerves to do the sensing. I’m not going to argue about this with you because its quite obvious you don’t have the requisite education in neurology and information sciences.
That article I provided on a girl who can feel touch, but not the sensation of “hotness” or “coldness” is all we need to show that emotions are signals.
ChimneySweep,
The evalutation as to whether something is moral or immoral generally comes after the fact–it is an evaluation. The foundation of morality is in identitfy with, in identifing yourself with the self in others. Any action comes out of the psychology of the individual, and just as one can only understand out of what they themselves are, so the modivation is individual. That which is willed is put in motion to carry out an intent, to fulfill that intent through action then satisfies the will, in this sense it is said to be self-serving because the action first serves the individual will. Although this does hold fast, we all appreciate that some actions though self- serving in this sense, are excercised to the greater benifit of others, thus it is said to be an act of compassion.
The passage I’ve emboldened says it all. Compassion is the basis of morality (as Schopenhauer said): we feel other people’s pain, so we are still acting in aid of ourselves when we’re being selfless.
Again, I think that Mencius was pretty spot on when he talked about what makes a person what he is. He argued that we have two “bodies” the great body and the small body. The small body is that mass of flesh that we often identify as ourselves, you know, our hands, our feet, our eyes, our tongue, ect. The great body is the interrelated social self, what we ultimately really are.
Selfish acts are serves the small body whereas selfless acts are those serving the great body. The divide exists there because of linguistic constraints, largely because the context where the terms “selfless” and “selfish” come from demands an isolated, independently acting “self” which can only be described as the “small body”. So, that which is no in the service in the small body (here aligned with the “self” due to a historical mistake) is dubbed “selfless”.
"The passage I’ve emboldened says it all. Compassion is the basis of morality (as Schopenhauer said): we feel other people’s pain, so we are still acting in aid of ourselves when we’re being selfless.
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ChimneySweep,
Yes ChimneySweep, that is it in a nutshell!
I wonder how she knows she is supposed to cry if she has never felt pain. It seems there is a response prior to the physical one.
I may not know neuroscience, but I know my Plato. There is an idea in the mind prior to definition. You can show me a pink soopernoogin or describe a pink sooppernoogin and I will understand what you mean. But it is hard to define things like animal species anyway – especially soopernoogins.
That’s beautiful! And beauty is a criterion for truth.