Mr.Fantasy

lol, yes i will from now on

Dr. Retard

Mr. Fantasy:

If I get you right, you're just saying that, when humans act to bring about some situation (when they act as agents), they do this because they like this situation, they have a personal interest or affection in this situation. If you work to get money, it's because you like having money. If you help others, it's because you like helping others. This, I think, is just constitutive of being an agent. An agent acts due to some personal beliefs, affections, desires, interests, whatever, that attach to some situation, which then becomes the agent's goal.

I don't see this as selfishness (I would guess selfishness is when someone's goals are all or mostly self-regarding). And I don't see this as a threat to ethics. This fact gives us no reason to be selfish or to stop being generous. It gives us no reason to deny that certain things are good or bad. As far as I can see, anyway.

keyser_soze

Without reading all the posts, I wanted to reply and then see how my view fares against others. First, anyone that does not care for the well being of others, without being forced to by external forces....Is a sociopath. At least borderline. Most of us have an inherent sense of right and wrong(even if it is such a precise point of "women and children first". Since it does not mesh with christianity's rules in most cases(I saw one poster where only two of the commandments applied to moral fiber) we know that this system is instilled in us prior to religious indoctrination. That and the fact that many cultures who do not subscribe to the christian indoctrination, and aren't even aware of it's existance, are perfectly healthy and normal groups...leads one to believe that morality does not come from a book. Since I don't believe in any god, I'm quite sure that the commandment to hold no other gods before him isn't divinely inspired directly into our brains.

As an aside, having spent the majority of my work life dealing with psychology, I have noticed a trend where a large group of people seem to have some small defect where they MUST have an external source of governance just to survive. Almost to a fault, these people end up grabbing onto religions. Some few of them become obsessed with public figures, or what have you...but most become zealots. In this way they are allowed to give over control and responsibility for their lives to "another". I have also found that when these individuals are medicated properly, they become very amiable and "apparently normal" citizens, able to function like everyone else. And I also note that they tend to lessen their dependance on religion, even to the extent that a majority will abandon it. I have had people after 6 months of being medicated, their lives back on track and all the tumult gone from their lives, come to me and say " I honestly don't know what I was thinking". This is not something I would instigate, I think that religious people should be left to their beliefs, since experience has taught me that with at least a certain number of them, without this control, they would be truly dangerous. If ted bundy had gotten a religious fanaticism early on, do you think he would have murdered all of those people? I say leave religion to those who must have that crutch, it could save your life.

Alonzo Fyfe

Your criticism has merit.

There is good reason to hold that when a person acts, he does so in order to fulfill his own desires. After all, only his brain is connected to his muscles in the right way to cause movement, thus only the desires encoded in his brain can cause this intentional action.

But this is not "selfishness".

Consider the two examples of desires.

(a) "I desire that I get a promotion."

(b) "I desire that no child be abused."

The former is a self-regarding desire. It is categorized as such because the self plays an ineliminable role in the OBJECT of the desire.

The latter is an other-regarding desire. In this desire, the self is not identified even indirectly as an object of the desire.

There are mixed desires. "I desire that my child remain safe" is a mixed desire -- both other-regarding and self-regarding.

For both desires, "I" am the SUBJECT of both desires. But that is not what distinguishes selfish from altruistic. That distinction is based on the object of the desire. So, what must be shown in order to prove selfishness is that the self is the OBJECT of all desires.

An easy thought experiment that shows the error of the thesis that all desires are self-regarding.

Assume that you are faced with the following choice.

Option 1: Your child/loved one/ relative will be made to suffer the most horrendous torture, but you will be made to believe that the relative is living a healthy and happy life in near inviolable safety.

Option 2: Your child/loved one/ relative will be allowed to live a healthy and happy life in near inviolable safety, but you will be made to believe that the relative is undergoing the most horrendous torture.

"Selfishness" theory says that no person would ever choose Option 1 -- because they have nothing to gain from it, not the pleasure of knowing that their relative is safe, not the satisfaction of having done a good deed, nothing.

And, yet, most people report, at least, that they would not even be remotely tempted by Option 1.

Mr.Fantasy

I do not understand that. The statement to me seems to diminish itself, i.e. you speak of the "inherent" understanding of right and wrong. Could you please define the objective right and wrong youre speaking of? and to the fact of how inherent it is: you are saying that all over the world people have the same understanding of what right and wrong are. I disagree, i believe our preception of right and wrong are the result of two possible things. [a] - We environmentally internalize the norms of our culture - and/or - [b] We incorporate certain beliefs into our gene pool and pass them on to future generations.

And to alfonz: I reluctantly am starting to believe that there could be such a thing as altruism. However, even if there is such a thing as altruism the term is completely misused in many situations.

If your point is that altruism exists, you still are not attacking the bulk of my statements. Feel free to annhilate the rest of my arguments. = P

I am slowly writing an essay about this stuff in my free time. Ill try to post it soon.

Theli

Well, ethics aren't INcredible, that's for sure...

Pyrrho

You state:

The first thing to observe is that there is a very long tradition in the history of philosophy which claims that god(s) is (are) irrelevant to ethics. This goes at least as far back as Plato, in his "Euthyphro". But I am a bit curious, why would you believe that some god issuing orders had anything to do with ethics? Is it simply because that is what various religious people have claimed? Think about it, though, how could that be a basis for morality? If it is merely that you must obey the big bully or else, that is not a system of ethics at all.

The last part ("or atleast to care about them before me") changes your sentence considerably. So you care more about yourself than other people. If that is all you are saying, then you don't seem to have a problem with the idea that you might care about other. I would be very surprised if you didn't care at least somewhat for others. You can figure this out by considering this:

Suppose you have 2 choices, neither of which affects you:

1) Someone else is tortured for 5 days.

2) Someone else is given a glass of water.

If you prefer 1, you are a sadist; if you have no preference, you have no feeling for others; and if you prefer 2, you care about others. If you imagine that you shouldn't care about others, that is another matter entirely, though I would wonder why you would believe that. If you do, you might want to take a look at the book I recommend below.

You state:

Well, this is a topic of some debate. Many ethical principles are based upon other ethical principles. For example, one might base the principle of not lying on the principle that each person has moral worth, and consequently deserves to be told the truth. The most basic or fundamental principle(s) upon which all other principles are based is called an “ultimate principle.” All principles that are not ultimate principles are called “secondary principles.” It is obvious that different societies have different secondary principles, but it is less certain whether they have different ultimate principles. All societies, for example, have some sort of prohibition on randomly killing others, so there does seem to be some sort of common ground. It is also true that many customs differ due to differences in climate, and differences in the demands of different religious groups who claim that some god commands certain things, which people imagine has something to do with ethics.

You state:

Pardon me for saying so, but you appear to be a bit confused. If, as you seem to suggest early on in your post, there is no basis for morality, then you couldn't possibly be wrong telling others that they must behave decently. This is because, without any basis for right and wrong, there would be no wrong, and so it could not be wrong for you to say or do anything you wanted to do, including telling others that they are wrong for doing what they do!

My own recommendation, if you can handle the language of the 1700's, is David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He is often misrepresented, so I advise you to base your opinion of him on his writings, not on what others have said about him. Of course, how can you be expected to read all of the writings that everyone recommends to you? Well, naturally, you should read what I recommend!

Psychic

what about the tingling sensation of satisfaction you feel when you do others a good turn?!

by the way Altrusim in evolutionary psychology has so many theories! haven't you ever considered: why do we need this inheret universal need to help others and care for others?
at the level of individual how could this genes that control alturism ever survive?
wouldn't an individual between beasty selfish tribe just fade out and die?
how did the humans ever became an altruistic animal?
ever wondered about that?

any way altrusim according to evolutionary psych is not a matter of a selfish individual or an altrustic one, it about a selfish Gene, the gene helps those carrying it.

no place to explain things here, but just to tell you that the ultimate way to understand this selfish altrustic dilemma is to understand it's evolutionary basis, only then it will make biological sense.