A very common idea is doing good for goodness's sake. I really don't think this exists. We can only experience our situation, not others'. Being altruistic because it makes you feel better is selfish. Being altruistic because you believe a higher being will reward you for it is also selfish. Really the only other motive for doing self-defined good is because of social values.
I have a question. One that I have personal experience in. What is the selfish intent when you carry out an action that you know will hurt you and help someone else. You know that you're going to get hurt, and this gives you no comfort, but you do it anyway. Is that selfish? Because to me I see no self interest in the situation.
I would say that doing an action like that would satisfy you in a certain way. It would feel good and appeal to your values. Unless you were forced to do it why else would you make a sacrifice?
But that is not selfishness, selfishness is having an excessive concern with oneself, acting only in self-interest. You would make the sacrifice so that others may live, so that they do not have to endure the pain you are inflicting on yourself.
Unless you were forced to do it why else would you make a sacrifice?
I would rather suffer than have those I care about be hurt. Much of what I do for my friends and family doesn't have a benefit for me, I do it simply to help. If helping despite the negative concequences to one's self is selfish then the idea of selfishness is flawed.
I would rather suffer than have those I care about be hurt I do it simply to help
Such sentences are all, in their own right, some proof of what I'm trying to bring forth.
To me it sounds like you are trying to intermingle selfishness and self-preservation
Not nearly as much as I intermingle selfishness and morality, the fact is; I'm just trying to point out that there's always at least a little egois in every action we made, even if admirable deads come out of these actions.
and I can kind of see where you are coming at
See, I'm not that crazy; I just can't talk about topic like these while making the morl side come up too.
I has a question... what about people that have been lobotomized? supposedly they feel no emotions... therefore they would not get a sense of happiness out of doing any action. i've never been lobotomized myself nor have i studied people who have been. maybe someone else's research would unearth some other results
I probably should of used a better word than selfish. Selfish sounds like a negative thing
My friend you seem like quite the Psychological Egoist. Try 'Have the sole purpose of self interest' All the while it may seem like a great thing to explore everything, but somethings are best left unexplored, less you find them to be true. because its impossible to stomach what a human really is and what we do and why without being a total sociopath. for your sake i hope you prove me wrong and never come to terms with that. and i hope that all of you prove xBHWKxUSAx wrong. but for some reason i cant...
The OP is exactly right. However, I would differ in the choice of words - Selfish.
Selfishness implies a pathological lack of perceived value of other's happiness.
Instead, people only further their own happiness - no one else's. There is nothing inherently "selfish"; rather, it is tautological. Really, the definition of happiness is "what people want."
To say that you do something that goes against OPs definition of selfishness, you would be saying that you did something that you knew beforehand was a bad choice - that it would make you sad, but you did it anyway. Is this not irrational?
i disagree, unlike Atam smith people dission are often based on others and providing them happiness, even through the base for the want for others to be happy is for themself the object of the action is a other person, therefore it is not selfish since selfishness is having to do with only yourself and therefore exsist only in the Id not in the ego or super ego (both grew from the Id and are a great refence to this topic)
@foxlink - this is OFTEN true, but because they derive happiness, or think beforehand they will derive happiness from ANY action that they do, then your example is only a weak correlation, whereas the providing-happiness example is a strong correlation.
I would not agree with the person who started this forum. I will agree that selfishness is the key to corruption. It's impossible to say all actions done are selfish. Ghandi, Mother Teresa, etc
Seriously? You went there didn't you... oh dear. Well, I'll just keep it simple, if there ever was an antichrist, someone wicked, corrupt, and a detriment to humanity I would have Mother Teresa in the top 5, easy. She did naught but promote poverty, suffering, and ignorance as the most desirable things in life.
She didn't travel to ease the suffering, she traveled to ensure that it continued, to promote it and ensure it lasted as long as possible. She believed that the most undesirable conditions of life were the most desirable so that one could be rewarded in heaven. Not to mention the spreading of misinformation of disease communicability among the impoverished, or the rejection of women's suffrage and equal rights, which time and again have been synonymous with weakened economic stability and production as well as the reduction in educational standards and an increase in political corruption.
In the end we are selfish creatures, and even our most altruistic behaviors serve us as much, if not moreso, than those we are seeming to help. Altruism is beneficial to securing our place in society, keeping us valued members of our communities, and perhaps even functions as a display of dominance. Richard Dawkins described it best, I think, in saying that altruism is akin to saying "look at how much stronger than you I am, I can afford to give to you" or something to that effect.
If we look at other social animals, and especially what we class as the 'higher' social animals, particularly the simians, we see behavior much like our own, especially in terms of altruism and caring for members of the societal group. We observe time and again that these seemingly altruistic behaviors are of a great benefit to the one performing them, which would seem to negate the idea of altruism as that which is negative to the performer and beneficial to the receptor. It seems, actually, that altruism is actually beneficial to both, and thus not truly a sacrifice at all.
