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<p>I like this. </p>
<p>I think Newton’s law 3rd law of motion can be extended to philosophy. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” The Chinese call this yin-yang, as silencefell mentioned. A completely selfish action has an equally selfless counteraction on the opposite side of the spectrum.</p>
<p>So to prove that there is true altruism, you just have to find an example of true egoism. </p>
<p>(Wow, this has made me optimistic)</p>
<p>^ I really don’t see the logic in that argument. Newton’s laws of physics don’t apply to things without mass. I know you were using it as an analogy, but it just doesn’t make sense. For every mountain, is there a valley? Not necessarily. For all the water-covered area on earth, surely an equal area must be dry? Nope. In fact, I suppose the spectrum of altruism is that of no altruism to very much altruism but not pure altruism. Every completely selfish act has no altruism. But every act has a selfish part of it, so there is no truly selfless act. Refer to my previous post for a more in-depth reasoning process.</p>
<p>I said it can be extended to philosophy, not geography. What does this have to do with mountain analogies?</p>
<p>Granted, not everything has an opposite.
But many things do. For example, love/hate, heaven/hell, life/death, pleasure/pain. When we talk about depth, sometimes we can only compare something with its opposite. (A person who’s never had anything sweet cannot you which foods are “bitter,” because “bitter” is relative when it has no comparable taste. Only after trying both types of food could they understand what it’s like to differentiate flavors, etc.) </p>
<p>You know when something has an opposite when it could not exist without one. </p>
<p>Here we can draw a parallel between good/evil & altruism/egoism.
Without good, evil cannot exist; the two are intertwined.
Likewise, without true altruism, pure selfishness cannot exist. The two are intertwined.</p>
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<p>Again, I think pure altruism would exist only to the extent that pure selfishness exists.</p>
<p>…I don’t think either exists, actually. </p>
<p>Although there are plenty of examples of selfishness in the world, I doubt anybody can be PURELY selfish. The very core of having an all-consuming ego involves having others approve of you, too. Being human involves caring about other people at some level, even if it’s only to further yourself. So if pure selfishness is ruled out, so is pure altruism.</p>
<p>Hypothetically, the only one with the power to be completely egotistical (or completely altruistic, actually) is God.</p>
<p>That’s such skewed logic, though! So you admit to there not being an opposite to everything, then arbitrarily decide that there must be for true altruism/pure egoism. </p>
<p>Altruism/egoism (not pure) are the opposing forces you’re looking for. Actually, I’d say selfishness/altruism is a bit more apt, but it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, I used geography as an analogy. But it still doesn’t make sense that you can apply it to philosophy–and only arbitrary parts of it. Give me an example of pure altruism. In the sense of absolute selflessness, I hold that it’s not possible. In doing the act, one satisfies what they set out to do–thus achieving something, which is in the interest of the self.</p>
<p>Edit: There are many purely selfish acts. Finding a piece of food and eating it is purely selfish. Keep in mind that selfishness does not necessarily mean bad selfishness. It just means looking out for oneself, and oneself only.</p>
<p>I don’t see how my logic is skewed. Your logic seems to be skewed. To you, true altruism does not exist…just because it never existed. But true selfishness has always existed, just because it has always existed. (Is that not arbitrary?)</p>
<p>Right, but I could say that finding a piece of food and eating it is not purely selfish.</p>
<p>You could have been influenced by your desire to appease your mother, who’d been nagging you to eat more vegetables.
You could have had a family to support, and therefore had to stay alive.
You could have been sampling a new chocolate because you work as a chocolate sampler.
You could have eaten the food because you like food, and you appreciate how it tastes.
You could have eaten it because it is abnormal not to eat food. (unless you are suicidal and/or anorexic, which would indeed be abnormal.)</p>
<p>Try to find a perfect example of pure selfishness. It’s just as hard to find as a perfect example of altruism, because a million influences, conscious and unconscious, act upon everything we do. There aren’t enough ways to close all the loopholes, because humans are not simple creatures.</p>
<p>aw human behavior is pretty simple. i think the language you’re using to talk about human behavior just makes it seem complex! </p>
<p>i don’t know, isn’t something only complex if you can’t describe it simply. but once you find out a way to describe it simply it becomes - poof - simple. isn’t that how it goes?</p>
<p>I never said pure altruism doesn’t exist because it has never existed. I said it doesn’t because it <em>can’t</em> exist, which was addressed in-depth in my previous responses. </p>
<p>Firstly, it’s clear that I disagree with the arbitrary premise that true selfishness must have an opposite that is true altruism. Perhaps I’m missing something that you’ve explained, but I see no reason to believe this. To appease your argument, however, I’ll continue.</p>
<p>Secondly, let’s figure out what we agree on. We agree that a truly selfless act is one that concerns the needs of ONLY other people and not the person performing the act. We agree that a truly selfish act is one that concerns the needs of ONLY the person performing the act. </p>
<p>Now, since a purely selfish act is simply one that only concerns or benefits the self, I think there are a copious amount of examples for this (both self-absorbed and innocuous versions of selfishness). I’ve probably done at least fifteen purely selfish things today. Your rebuttal of the food example was full of unfounded speculation. To address your points, though, I’ll set out a perfect situation. A man with no family who is about to commit suicide shoots another man, steals his wallet and the groceries he’s carrying, and eats the food within the grocery bags as his last meal. He was simply too lazy to use his own money to buy food, so he killed a man and stole his food. This benefits nobody but the suicidal man; thus, it is a purely selfish act. A thought experiment can achieve the same conclusion. If every person on earth is killed but one, every act the remaining person does is purely selfish. This just shows that purely selfish acts are not only possible but also common.</p>
<p>The fundamental detail is the presence of self in every action. When someone is selfish, he/she is dealing with only his/her needs. When someone is selfless, he/she is dealing with others’ needs–but he/she is carrying out the act, so his/her needs/satisfactions are being addressed as well! The self is present in both selfish and unselfish acts, but others (and their needs) are only present in selfless acts.</p>
<p>“A man with no family who is about to commit suicide shoots another man, steals his wallet and the groceries he’s carrying, and eats the food within the grocery bags as his last meal. He was simply too lazy to use his own money to buy food, so he killed a man and stole his food.”</p>
<p>…Your example does not make sense. How would a suicidal man be too lazy to buy food but not lazy enough to commit homicide? I would think the latter would not only be more difficult, but expend more energy, require more skill (marksmanship, etc.), a complete negation of morals, and the psychologically demented mindset of a sociopath. (A sociopath, by the way, would not be likely to commit suicide.) </p>
<p>“If every person on earth is killed but one, every act the remaining person does is purely selfish.”</p>
<p>So, if the last person alive buried his wife before he dies of a heart attack, is that a selfish act?</p>
<p>selfish
<p>And even if he ended up dying of old age, your statement is not necessarily true. You must first ask what reasons that person has for living.
He might want to stay alive to honor the memory of a loved one, or of mankind.
He might stay alive in order to accomplish something; for example, write a documentary in the hope that some extraterrestrial being will find it after he dies.
He might live in the hope to find another living human being. After all, how would he know he’s the only person left in the world?
He might stay alive because it’s against his religion to commit suicide.</p>
<p>In these instances, said “last man alive” is not concerned only for himself.
For any act that he did to be perfectly selfless, he would have to ONLY be concerned with himself. That rules out grieving for other people, or even thinking about other people while doing it (because at this point in the hypothetical catastrophe, others have absolutely nothing to do with him). </p>
<p>And it would never work, because he could never forget that he is alone.</p>
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<p>Interesting statement. Please elaborate.</p>
<p>^ I’d like to hear about that as well.</p>
<p>But your exceptions do not prove me wrong. They prove that there are possible non-selfish acts, but I only need one fully selfish example. Perhaps there are some non-selfish things the last man could do, but if he chose to eat food (not for survival but for pleasure), play video games, etc. they’d all be examples of purely selfish acts. I’m sorry, but there’s no conceding on this one. It’s quite clear that there is such a thing as a purely selfish act. As for the suicidal man example, you missed my point. Rather than calling him a sociopath and trying to devalue the example by making it seem too unlikely to happen, I’m sure you saw that only a simple modification is necessary. We can say that the man is not suicidal but instead stole someone else’s food for his own gain (again, no family to care for and no one else is in mind). Much simpler. This is still an example of a purely selfish act. I’m not sure how you’re not seeing that it’s easily possible. Any action only concerned with the self (of which there are many) is a purely selfish action.</p>
<p>Haha, Studious, I won’t dispute you further. But your examples are rather unsubstantial…more an exercise in extrapolation than anything else (lazy suicidal sociopath killing for food? Thought process of the last man alive on earth? At this point, we can only infer).</p>
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<p>There is an infinite amount of reasons why any individual would want to stay alive, even if it’s not for the benefit of friends or family members. You are simplifying human nature into a cut and dried example that sounds good in rhetoric. People can’t live only for themselves. Not even in theory. I’m not “seeing it” because it would be inhuman/animal-like to generalize humanity like that. </p>
<p>Your argument has failed to convince me that human beings can be completely and absolutely selfish. It has also failed to convince me that my “skewed logic” is wrong. </p>
<p>(An “I’m completely right” attitude won’t help substantiate your opinion. It is already obvious that you have very strong convictions, but I see things differently.) </p>
<p>If you wish, you can use logic to try to dissuade me, and I will keep an open mind.
(If you don’t want to, that’s fine too.)</p>
<p>^ I completely agree with you that no human can live completely selfishly for an extended period of time. But I was under the impression that we were talking about a single act. A purely selfish act is just one instance, and a person who commits such an act could be altruistic for every other moment of his/her life (though I don’t think this would happen). It is absurd to me that every action ever made and every possible future action always has the interest of others in mind. There are of course actions people do to further just themselves. And this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Someone enjoying ice cream alone is not helping anyone else or doing something that is in anyone’s interest but his/her own. The examples could become more elaborate, but I simply don’t think that every action includes considerations for others.</p>