Adrian Selby

Sorry Emphryio I really didn't understand your dumb/smart comment.

To be honest, out of the two things you thought I might be saying, the former is that I think its possible to act with altruistic intent, in other words, if I give money to a beggar, my intent is to improve their welfare, not to make myself feel better. I may indeed make myself feel better, but that is not why I'm doing it. You can of course tell me you know that I'm only doing it to benefit myself or I wouldn't do it, and I can tell you I'm doing it to benefit another, and will feel the better for it. What is the prime motive, well, I think its altruistic, and if indeed I improved the other person's welfare, then I have performed an act that has benefitted another.

I think its a bit of a semantic game because ultimately, you have to show me why I'm wrong to say my intention was to benefit another over and above any good feeling I got from it.

Regarding the second point, I would agree that the concept of self interest becomes meaningless if it defines all action, in the moral and ethical sphere. It may indeed be an accurate description of behaviour, but so may pure altruism.

My point being, regarding any example you give that shows self interested behaviour, I can redefine the intentions to be altruistic, and that what you're 'really' intending or benefitting is others.

In either case, it seems impossible to prove the other wrong. I have an interpretation of my action, the conscience with which I perform it and my intention, and I am intimately aware of these, and they are altruistic. Simply because I choose to act at all shows that it must be in my self interest does not explain my intentions in this case, nor do I think it allows anyone to redefine my intention to another intention, namely, to make myself feel good, or fit with some moral precept. This isn't to say I don't have a moral precept, but acting in accordance with it is not acting out of self interest, unless one decides to define moral precepts as those things which define self interest, which doesn't seem like a workable definition.

emphryio

Echidna said:

Often I feel most of the "higher" discussions here are nothing more than semantics arguments. It gets tiresome.

Why so?
(Personally I think it may require a bit more intelligence to see things from others perspective. In that sense an act driven by empathy is more "impressive" that an act driven by direct self-benefit.)
But what is the moral difference?

BTW, concerning motive #4. For someone to give such a motive I find meaningless. I think maybe such a person simply doesn't understand what their actual motive is. Of course plenty of people would say #4. Probably their actual motive is #3? Or they are just following the "rules" of their morality and feeling pride at doing what their "rules" say is right? (In a side note, I suspect many christians don't understand their ultimate motive for being a christian. Therefore they can't see the bias in their thinking.)


To Adrian

Example: You're out in the desert starving of thirst. You see an oasis and run towards it in anticipation of water.

How could you actually be intending an altruistic action here?
Because you really just want to get back to your wife and kids to take care of them? No. You have no family. As a matter of fact, your the last living human on earth. Now how is it altruistic?

Adrian Selby

your example has no moral dimension

Adrian

Eudaimonist

Ayn Rand did not regard it as in her personal interest to have children, but she did not regard it as against human self-interest as such to have children. You must have a very different philosophical view of self-interest than Rand's to conclude such a thing.

There's nothing necessarily self-sacrificial (according to Rand's ethics) about choosing to raise a family as part of one's chosen purpose in life, and there are plenty of Objectivists who have children and love and appreciate them just like most parents.

emphryio

To Adrian
OK, could you possibly make up an example that you feel has moral dimension and appears to be an example of a person acting in their self-interest and then show how it actually is altruistic?

To Eudaimonist
Althought I see where 99percent is coming from, on second thought you're right. Sex/children is ultimately done for selfish reasons.

echidna

(Well don’t tell those more learned than me, but I tend to agree. I lack the attention span.)

Only that. Just the moral difference between prioritisation of self over others. Essentially that is what morality is often about.

I think motive #4, acting out of empathy for another person is comparable to a form of love. Not meaningless, in fact an extremely strong emotion for most people. Maybe irrational or illogical is the term you mean. I don’t think a parent needs to understand the love for their child. At the risk of sounding corny and cliched, true love is unconditional, without reasons or strings attached. Similarly I don’t really need to analyse to death why I feel pain when I see a dog hurt or a child teased.

But I do believe that this capacity transcends worldview. Whether theistic or atheistic, we can choose between “because God says so” or “because it’s right”. Either way we really don’t know why we’re doing it.

You’d probably need to take an uncomfortable thread to analyse the concept of love, but I tend to get squirmish. In short I like the idea of unconditional love / true empathy as an irrational human emotion. It has pitfalls and infinite difficulties, but at the end of the day, I vote we keep it.

Adrian Selby

HI,

My point is that any example of an act performed that affects another is done for another 'really'.


"Why do you donate money to the children’s hospital ?
1. Because I get tax breaks. "

In this example, the tax breaks allow the person to spend money privately in order to improve their home or their wardrobe knowing it will contribute to the economy plus ensure that their family continues to love them, and their friends continue to see them. This is the real motive, not because they want to look good and have nicer furniture.

echidna

Adrian, have your considered becoming a corporate defence lawyer ?

You appear to be suggesting that the Enron Directors receive humanitarian awards. I think I must have missed something fundamental.

Adrian Selby

No

I was only making an academic point about how someone that asserts that the rationale for all moral action is really self interested can be equally reinterpreted as other interested.

Adrian

echidna

Hmmm, while I think we agree that self-interested conscious actions is tautological, I don’t think it works so well the other way.

Sometimes we do act purely in our own interests and any benefit to others is purely accidental.

Often conditions such as autism are characterised by a lack of ability to form social contacts or even acknowledge social relationships.