tronvillain

No. We agree with the orthodox account of how decisions are made, but point out the existence of a deeper level of explanation.

Let us look at one of your example:
I agree that is probably how he would react.

No. It is not hard to see why Bob would be upset under my view. His real aim was to save lives, but it was his real aim because it provided with him with pleasure and satisfaction. He is distressed when he discovers he has not achieved his aim because is thus deprived of that pleasure and satisfaction.

I agree. His aim was to help others, but it was his aim because of the pleasure and satisfaction he derived from it. In other words, without the pleasure and satisfaction, it would not have been his aim.

Well, that wasn't so difficult. Perhaps the problem is simply a semantic one, despite your denial of the possibility earlier.

Now, for another example:

No. It is not an implication of my theory that someone would be insane to choose the first option. I myself would choose the first option, though if the second option was that I get a hundred dollars for every child who could have been saved by a hundred dollars in option one that dies, I might choose option two. Anyway, people will tend to choose option one over option two because the pleasure and satisfaction it gives them right now to know that they will be saving lives in the future despite not knowing it greatly outweighs their anticipation of the pleasure and satisfaction they would derive from unexpectedly recieving one hundred dollars.

Well, ultimately there is nothing to desire but mental experiences, but your point is taken. People really do things other than pleasurable mental experiences for themselves and are motivated by such desires, but they desire those things because they provide pleasurable mental experiences. In other words, our accounts of how decisions are made are both correct, but mine goes deeper than yours.

The AntiChris

bd-from-kg

Thanks for the response.

I really don't have anything to add to tronvillain's reply and, like you, I'm aware that we're in danger of monopolising this thread (apologies to Jamie_L), so this seems a convenient point at which to agree to disagree.

Chris

99Percent

bd-from-kg: Empathy works because you feel for others. There is no such thing as a purely altruistic act in rational terms. Bob was obviously doing his job because it gave him great satisfaction to know he was doing the right thing. His reward is the feeling of satisfaction. There is nothing mysterious about it.

Of course if Bob's actions where rational there should be some tangible reward instead of just the feeling of satisfaction he is getting, like maybe money or some other objective trade. This would indeed stop the hoax from actually working as nobody in his rational right mind is going to give away money just to make this hoax.

When the hoax is revealed, Bob experiences distraught because he realizes what he did was not productive in any way.

You still can help rationally others without any immediate gain because you value the lives of others of which you might gain from their human ability to reason later on. But of course this must be seen first hand, not just because you think you are helping. Many people don't want to be helped at all, and sometimes they rather just be left alone.

Dr. Retard

When I think of a purely altruistic act, I think of an act done purely from a feel for others. So I don't understand the contrast you're drawing. So: what do you mean by a "purely altruistic act"?

Dr. Retard

A reason to be skeptical of the claim that all intentional actions are motivated by pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding: why do mothers care for their children? Not, what are they after (clearly, the welfare of their children), but what motivates them to be after that goal? Probably, brute biological impulses, as opposed to anything mediated by pleasure or pain.

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

OK, let’s look at your latest arguments.

The only sense that I can make of the statement that someone aims to accomplish A because it will have the further effect B is that he values A only as a means to obtaining B. In other words, he regards A only as an instrumental good, whereas B (or some effect still further down the causal chain) is the intrinsic good he is aiming at; i.e., the thing he values in itself, or for its own sake.

Now if Bob had regarded saving lives as an instrumental good, which he valued only as a means to achieving pleasure and satisfaction, he would not be upset in the least to learn that he had not achieved it, provided that he obtained the pleasure and satisfaction which was the intrinsic good that he was ultimately after anyway.

This can be illustrated with any number of mundane examples, but here’s a more fanciful one that may come in handy later. Suppose that Jim wants to ride on a roller coaster to experience the thrills and chills of this kind of ride. And suppose that he does seemingly get to ride on a roller coaster, and finds it exciting and exhilarating as expected. Now suppose that later he learns that he didn’t really ride on a roller coaster at all; it was an elaborate simulation (far better than anything possible today). Will he be disappointed and upset? Of course not! Why should he be? His aim was to experience the excitement and exhilaration of a roller coaster ride, and he really did experience them. He got what he was after. For him, riding on a roller coaster was just a means to the end of experiencing these emotions. This experience was the thing that he wanted for its own sake; how he got it is ultimately of no importance to him. Thus, since it doesn’t matter to him in the least, he won’t be upset to learn that it was really a simulation rather than an actual roller coaster ride.

Bob’s case is quite different. If his desire to help the people he was communicating with was just a means to the end of experiencing the pleasure and satisfaction that came from doing so, rather than an end in itself, it would be impossible to explain why he would be upset at finding that he didn’t actually achieve the means even though he achieved the end. If this had been his ultimate aim – if the pleasure and satisfaction, rather than benefit to the people he thought he was helping, had been the thing he ultimately desired – he would have had no more reason to be upset to learn that he hadn’t really saved any lives than Jim was when he learned that he hadn’t really ridden on a roller coaster. But he was upset (just as you and I would be), so this could not have been what he ultimately desired. In other words, the reason that he was (as he thought) saving lives was not that it was a means to the end of experiencing some mental state(s); it was his ultimate end – the thing that he desired for its own sake.

You say:

But this is manifestly false. He is not deprived of that pleasure and satisfaction. Even if achieving pleasure and satisfaction had been what he ultimately desired, he surely wasn’t interested merely in having it at the moment he died. His aim (in that case) would have been to have such feelings throughout his life. And he did have them – save only for the final minute of his life, which can hardly weigh very heavily compared to the decades in which he did experience these feelings.

Later you say:

Although I tend to agree that (to us humans at any rate) nothing really seems to be ultimately desirable (i.e., intrinsically desirable, or desirable for its own sake) but mental experiences, I see no reason why the only thing that any person could find ultimately desirable are his own mental experience, and I see no empirical evidence that, as a matter of fact, all that anyone actually does ultimately desire are his own mental experiences. If you have any argument or evidence to offer showing that either of these things is true (i.e., that every person must, as a matter of logical necessity, ultimately desire only his own mental experiences, or that as a matter of fact, every person does ultimately desire only his own mental experiences) I’d be glad to consider them. Until then, I can only consider either claim to be an unsupported (and extremely implausible) assertion.

But the most interesting and revealing statement in your last post comes a bit earlier. I’ll rephrase it a bit to make it more general (thereby laying bare its logical underpinnings):

Now this is actually quite a different claim than the ones we have been considering. Up to now we have been looking at the idea that we choose to do X rather than Y because we desire the “emotional payoff” of doing X to the “emotional payoff” of doing Y. But according to this claim, we choose to do X rather than Y because choosing X pleases us more then choosing Y; the effects of doing X or Y are irrelevant on this account except insofar as they might affect the pleasure we experience in choosing to do one or the other.

The first thing to note here is that my example where Bob chooses to save a life every time he spends $100 (but without knowing it) over getting $100 himself pretty much forces you to this position if you want to continue to maintain that the “real” reason for choosing X over Y must necessarily be some difference that it would make in the agent’s own mental state. For in this case all such differences that occur after the choice clearly favor taking the $100. So any relevant differences in mental state must occur before or at the time the choice is made.

The second point to note is that this position (unlike the original one) really abandons any claim that the agent chooses X over Y because there is something in it for him. In fact, it is saying nothing more than that the agent chooses X over X because he prefers doing X to doing Y. After all, in the final analysis, what does it mean to say that you prefer doing X to doing Y but that it pleases you to do X rather than Y, or what does it mean to say that it pleases you to do X rather than Y but that you prefer doing X to doing Y?

In fact, there’s no way to answer the question of whether you prefer doing X to doing Y because it pleases you more to do X than to do Y, or whether it pleases you more to do X than to do Y because you prefer doing X to doing Y. That’s because these are two ways of saying the same thing.

At this point we’ve arrived at essentially the argument that I discussed earlier:

(1) Every act has a motive.
(2) A motive implies an interest by the agent in the outcome.
(3) An interest by the agent in the outcome implies that the action is self-interested.
(4) A self-interested action is by definition not altruistic.

As I said then, I have no problem with this argument, since it’s tautological. But the definitions of “self-interested” and “altruistic” that it depends on have nothing to do with what I mean by these terms, and little to do with what most people mean by them.

To illustrate, suppose that Mary Smith, a teacher, gives up her life to save the lives of the children in her charge. (To avoid complications I stipulate that the situation was such that, if she had chosen to live, neither she nor anyone else would have known afterwards that she had sacrificed the children’s lives to save her own, so there would have been no question of feeling guilt or remorse, or being blamed for her decision.) What you seem to be saying at this point is that she must have done so because she preferred the future state of affairs in which the children were alive and she was dead to the one where they were dead and she was alive. And of course this must be true; who can doubt it? But the conclusion that her action was therefore not “truly” altruistic is ridiculous; to prefer the good of others to one’s own is the very definition of altruism.

In short, if your argument that there is no such thing as “true” altruism is that all actions have motives, and that the motive for any act is necessarily a motive that the agent has, and that all acts therefore further some end (i.e., interest) of the agent, and that all acts are therefore “self-interested”, I grant that your argument is completely valid. In the same way, one can construct a valid argument to the effect that all squares are “really” circles, simply by defining “square” and “circle” appropriately.

Now perhaps we can finally get to the original question. Early on in this thread you said:

Let’s clear away the red herrings and stipulate that murdering Jones will benefit Smith, taking all effects into account. It appears (for reasons I explained earlier) that when you say that Smith “should” murder Jones under these conditions, you really mean that it would be rational to do so and irrational not to. Now, do you have any argument for this claim? If so, let’s hear it.

Let me be more specific. Suppose that Smith contemplates the state of affairs in which Jones is dead and compares it to the state of affairs in which Jones is alive and decides that he prefers the latter, not because he, Smith is better off in any way in it (in fact, we’ve already stipulated that he’s worse off), but because Jones is better off in it. Is his preference for the state of affairs in which Jones is still alive irrational? If so, why? (Remember, we have stipulated that all in all Smith himself is better off with Jones dead, so don’t cheat by saying that he will be unhappy or sorry that Jones is dead. He might be, but if so, by stipulation there are other factors that more than compensate for this.)

[ December 04, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

bd-from-kg

99Percent:

As usual, your latest post leaves me completely baffled.

Empathy (by which I take it you mean what Jamie-L has labeled E-s as opposed to E-k&u) is feeling for others in the sense of identifying with them, wanting what they want for their sake, etc. But I have no idea what you mean by saying that it “works”. It has certain effects, just as pain, fear, etc. have certain effects. If by “working” you mean that it has the effects that it has, of course you’re right.

I take it that you mean that acting altruistically is irrational. I challenged all comers some time ago on this thread to provide an argument to this effect. I have yet to see one. On the other hand, I have provided an argument that (for the vast majority of us at least) acting altruistically is rational and acting selfishly is irrational. Would you care to deal with my argument, or at any rate provide a counter-argument of your own, or are you just going to rest on your unsupported assertion of what I consider an absurd claim?

Well, actually there is something mysterious about it if he was doing it solely because it gave him satisfaction. Namely, in that case why was he so upset, and why did he feel betrayed, when he found out that he wasn’t really helping anyone? (See my discussion of this in my reply to tronvillain.)

Are you saying that only actions that have a tangible (i.e., material, physical) reward are rational? Of so, this idea is so preposterous that it isn’t even worth discussing.

And just how do you know that? People do in fact expend valuable resources to carry off elaborate hoaxes for no apparent tangible benefit to themselves. And who are you to say that anyone who does such a thing is not in his “rational right mind” (whatever that means)? If the hoaxer finds pulling off the hoax more rewarding than anything else he might do, why isn’t it rational?

But if his reason for doing it was to obtain satisfaction; if his reward for doing it was this feeling of satisfaction, why should he care whether it was productive? He got his reward; he experienced the feeling of satisfaction that he sought. What’s his problem?

Again, why can’t it be rational to help others without any possibility of any gain to yourself ever, simply for the sake of what they will gain?

What must be seen first hand? The remote, totally abstract possibility that the “ability to reason” of the people you help might be of benefit to you in some unknown way, in the distant future? You’re not making sense here. If you need to see the benefit to those you help first hand (which is only of value to you because of the possible benefits to you someday), to be consistent you should insist on seeing these future benefits to yourself first hand too. Why insist on seeing the means to the real end first hand but be content with a vague possibility that perhaps, somehow, someday, the end itself might be accomplished?

And for that matter, why do you have to see the benefit to those you help first hand? Why isn’t it good enough to have a reasonable degree of confidence, based on your knowledge of how the world works, that the benefits will actually accrue? Or for that matter, that there is a reasonable chance that they might accrue? For example, suppose that you decide to take your friend to the airport so that he can get to Cleveland for a job interview that, if it goes well, will benefit his career substantially. Do you really have to stick around the airport to watch him get on the plane, watch the plane take off, rush to Cleveland in your own private jet, hide under the table in the room where the meeting takes place, and hear him get the job? Would it be irrational to simply go back home once you drop him off? And if he doesn’t get the job, does it follow that you acted irrationally?

tronvillain

bd-from-kg:
Ah. I think the problem may be that you are being overly cerebral. That someone aims to accomplish A because it will have the further effect B does not imply that he values A only as a means to obtaining B. Well, in a way it does, in that he would not value A if it did not accomplish B, but in a way it does not, in that he does not necessarily regard A as valuable solely because it accomplishes B.

Ah, but Bob not only derived pleasure and satisfaction from saving lives, he also derived pleasure and satisfaction from having saved lives. It is this that he would be deprived of upon discovering that he had not saved lives. Think about what "saving lives" being an "instrinsic good" implies: Bob would save lives even if it caused him pain and mistery and provided nothing else whatseover in return. I think this highly unlikely, but apparently you do not.

Yes, assuming he does not derive pleasure from having ridden the roller coaster, he will not be upset upon discovering that he did not actually ride on it. I am afraid that this presents no problem whatsoever for my view.

It is not impossible to explain. I have, in fact, explained it. You would declarea brute fact where I seek to explain at a deeper level, despite the brute fact leading to quite bizarre conclusions.

As I have previously explained, that is not manifestly false. It is impossible to deprive someone of the pleasure and satisfaction they derived from a given act, it is only possible to deprive them of the pleasure and satisfaction they derive from the memory or from having performed the act. He was interested in pleasure and satisfaction at the moment he died, for that was just another moment in his life - it is simply that what would have provided him with that was the knowledge that he had saved lives.

No. Ultimately there is nothing to desire but mental experience, because ultimately that is all there is. All anyone ever has are their own mental experiences. You cannot ever have someone else's mental experiences, and so the most you can ever truly desire about their mental experiences are you mental experiences of them.

To me, it appears to be precisely the same claim, which is perhaps the source of our disagreement.

Right. This is true for any choice, but it is not usually as apparent without the memory loss.

This position position abandons nothing, because it is the original position. This has been my position all along - all that has apparently changed is your perception of my position. Now, saying that you prefer doing X to doing Y but that it pleases you to do X rather than Y, or saying that it pleases you to do X rate than Y but that you prefer doing X to doing Y is gibberish, but it is also unrelated to the discussion at hand.

Yes, but neither of them are what I am saying.

I do not believe I have ever used that argument. Still, exactly how is it tautological?

That is what I have said all along, but altruism is not the same as "true altruism", which in denying any element of selfishness in preferring the good of others to one's own reveals itself as a figment of the imagination, like "real free will."

So, are you suggesting that this is simply a problem with the definitions we are using, as was suggested earlier? I do not think that is it. My point is ultimately that if an altruistic act caused (other things being equal) pain rather than pleasure, no one would do it. If you agree with that then there it was simply a matter of definition, but otherwise...

*chuckle* What does it mean to make a rational decision but to weigh the benefits of the options and select the most beneficial? Perhaps you mean something else by "rational" than I do.

I would say that you are violating your own stipulations. Smith is not irrational, but then Jones' death does not actually benefit him since he takes pleasure in Jones being alive. This may be the "preferences as brute facts" versus "preferences explained" conflict again.

Damn. I really need to stop replying point by point. This is taking forever.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

ManM

Tronvillain, you seem to be making the claim that people only desire what would give them pleasure. What would prove your position wrong?

Jamie_L

All,

Although the thread has run a little off course, it's still relevant to the OP, and I am rather interested in the current course. So, as the original poster, I give everyone permission to proceed on this course guilt free.

Anyway, not much to offer at this time, but keep plugging away. I'm somewhat on the fence as far as this debate goes, and I'll be curious to read any future posts on the topic.

Jamie