Wednesday 26 January 2011

True Selflessness

I've given this subject this subject some thought. I've always thought that there was no such thing as true selflessness.

Let's define a selfless act first: To do something without benefit for yourself.
I believe that benefit includes feelings. After all, you are not truly selfless if you feel that what you are doing is right and it makes you feel good. You have other motivations. Helping the other person is a side effect of making yourself feel good. People don't give money because they're selfless. People give money because they feel it is the right thing to do, and that satisfies their feeling of justice or whatever. Gandhi did what he did because he felt it was the right thing to do. Which must have given him pleasure. If he 'felt' it was wrong what he was doing, but knew it was the right thing to do, he wouldn't have done it, I think.

To give you an example: would you torture your sibling to save a million people? Would go at them with a knife and extend their suffering for as long as humanly possible, if it was the only way to save an entire continent? Would you murder hundreds and forsake yourself and your own self-respect if it meant saving a species? I know very few people who would say yes. And yet, I think that is selflessness. To forsake yourself, and your feeling of self, for the benefit of a thousand. This has come up loads of times in movies: sacrificing one for a million, or a hundred for a billion, is according to the movies, never right. Experimenting on the few for the benefit of the species is amoral and wrong. And yet, from the point of view of the species, is it really?
Is it not truly selfless to let this horror go on because you KNOW it will be for the benefit of the species? Ponder about this for a bit. I dare you. Could you do something you would never do if it meant the survival of everyone you know? That, I believe, is what it means to be selfless. Not giving a homeless man enough money to buy a differently faced coin of the same value.

12 comments:

  1. fuck you google, I made a respons longer then the original post to this one and you fucking dared to just give me a 'we could not process' message.
    May you lose the game a million times over and still hate it.

    fuck, I really thought that was a good post but I can't be brought to it to write it again. I'll have to tell it to you on skype ore something.

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  2. Iskariot: boldly going where thousands of cynics have gone before. We welcome you to our ranks, brother. We may not have cookies, (I atesded them all) but we make a kick-arse coffee.

    I fully agree on what you say, though. What is often perceived as selflessness is, in fact, very selfish. "I donated money to help people in that earthquake-struck region. That gives me a good feeling."
    Don't get me wrong, though. This form of selfishness is needed. People in earthquake-stricken regions need that selfishness to survive, and I applaud it. But, in the end of the day, it's selfishness.

    Even in the examples you cited, there is no true, 100% selflessness. You know your acts help hundreds/thousands/millions/billions. That is something to hold on to. Something to justify your actions. Something to make you feel better about. Even if your actions left your mind scarred, tattered and broken, there is still that flicker of light you WILL hold onto.
    Unless you're a psychopath, who does what he does either out of sadism, or out of cold rationality. Either way isn't selfless.

    Me, pesonally, if I ever were in the position where I had to chose between killing a loved one or nuking a city somewhere where I know nobody, my heart will go out to the people of that city. I'm very much like the Prince in the 2008 Prince of Persia game in that regard. (SPOILER ALERT:) Screw saving the world from eternal darkness. I can bring back the woman I love from death.(END OF SPOILERS) Plus I like to think my sarcastic quips are occasionally funny.

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  3. If no act of selflessness is truly selfless, but society profits from these disingenuous acts of selflessness none the less. Then what's the problem. Okay, our daily used definitions of words like altruism are not fully consisted, and we should be aware of that in philosophical discussions, so we don't create a loophole in our logic because the language we use is not consisted.[1] But lets not be afraid of using this language in our daily lives. We I think we can rightfully say someone has been selflessness into donating money, without having to have the whole metaphysical discussion about selflessness itself. Because if we don't do this we will eventually stop using the word, until the point the word has no meaning anymore. Everything becomes an indifferent act of selfishness.[2] I think it's all just fine how it is, I'm just happier now that I know why things are fine, although far from perfect.[3] I refuse to be cynic about it.

    my apologies for the footnotes and the footnotes within the footnotes and those within those. It wasn't meant to look like this, it's just what it has become.


    [1]To give an example of what I mean here, think about the story of the barber. "There is one city ,with only one barber. Every man who does not shaves himself gets to be shaves by the barber. Who shaves the barber? Voila, here you have it. We created a logical loophole in our language and now we live in a universe where a barber can at the same time shave himself and not shave himself. We have P and ~P at the same time. Except it isn't true in the real universe (or at least we hope so or should think it is even if it isn't because else we could just live as plants[1.1]. (In science contradictions should be kept at a minimum in the hope to get rid of them as soon as we can.) The problem here is language. Language is the cause of every philosophical puzzle that isn't solvable. So "of what one cannot speak, one should be silent", to quote the very wise men Wittgenstein who thought he had solved every philosophical problem with this. With this he doesn't mean that the misinformed should not talk about, lets say politics. He means that we should not talk about the pants of the crown prince of France since France is currently not a Kingdom. So there is absolutely no knowledge to be found about crown-prince his pants. [1.2] A good example what happens when you do allow things like this, is the ontological argument. The ontological argument is an argument that 'proves' the existence of a perfect being, mostly considered god, except it doesn't because it certain ambiguities in language that were later uncovered, ruling the ontological argument worthless. According to me, a part of philosophy and all of theology fall under this chit chat.[1.3]

    [1.1] See Aristotle his metaphysics. I'll look up the exact book on request.
    [1.2] Also the reason why I consider myself an atheist and not an agnostic. Yes, I think we cannot know whether a deity that transcends our senses can exist. So logically speaking, I cannot fully rule out the possibility of her existence. But since it is also impossible to prove her existence, we cannot speak about it, so we should be silent about it.[1.2.1]

    [1.2.1] This comes down of course to falsifiability. You can see how philosophers have been important to the development of modern science when you read about them. The reason why I'd rather fall back on the original and aforegoing idea's is because it I think it give more insight in why our current idea's are right.

    [1.3] I do consider philosophy valuable, while I don't think theology has any value at all.

    [2] Either that or only a select group of people stops using the word selfishness and alienates itself from the rest of the world.

    [3]Talking about language, ethics, epistemology.

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  4. Yeah, I'd be pissed if I wrote something up that long and lose it, too. Anyway.


    "If no act of selflessness is truly selfless, but society profits from these disingenuous acts of selflessness none the less. Then what's the problem. "

    There is no problem. It's a very healthy exchange of boons. Society benefits. You benefit. Everybody benefits. Nobody says there's a problem, only that the word 'selflessness' is technically wrong. It's a discussion of semantics, not ethics.

    "and we should be aware of that in philosophical discussions,"
    This would be exactly that kind of discussion.

    "The story of the barber"
    The problem with that one is that it fails to specify that the barber ONLY shaves people who don't shave themselves. Or that he doesn't grow a beard. Or that there aren't cities nearby that have similar barbers, creating a cross-city barber shaving community. Personally, I think there's too many loopholes in the 'Barber' loophole to make it worth anything. But I get your point. :P

    "So "of what one cannot speak, one should be silent", to quote the very wise men Wittgenstein "
    Who forgot that speculation is an art in and of itself.

    "who thought he had solved every philosophical problem with this."
    Except he didn't. :P He basically tried to 'end everyone's fun'. Debating on impossible suppositions (like your barber) is fun. It's an intellectual challenge that is very amusing for people who are not all that interested in running after a ball in the mud. If mr. Wittgenstein doesn't want to play, then he shouldn't. Nor should he stop anyone else from playing because he doesn't enjoy the game.

    "With this he doesn't mean that the misinformed should not talk about, lets say politics."
    See, this is what I think he should have meant. If you know nothing of subject X, and someone asks you about subject X, you should either refrain from answering, or state before your answer (and preferably again afterwards) that you know nothing of subject X. Uninformed opinions influencing curious people who want to learn is one of the main drawbacks of the internet.

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  5. "Also the reason why I consider myself an atheist and not an agnostic."
    So you're saying that you're an atheist because you don't believe you can discuss the (non)existence of an as-of-yet unproven deity? Thousands of atheists spend their time doing exactly that. I'd say it's the agnostics who shrug and move on.

    "So logically speaking, I cannot fully rule out the possibility of her existence. "
    Proves my point.
    It also amuses me that you attach a gender to a god you just professed not to believe in, and a gender that is completely the opposite of the gender most people (including 99+% of people who DO believe in god) attach to that god.
    Again, personally, I'm with George Carlin: If God exists, he is a man, because no woman would or could screw things up like this.

    "I do consider philosophy valuable, while I don't think theology has any value at all."
    I think, at the very least, theology has an entertainment value to it.

    "Everything becomes an indifferent act of selfishness."
    People need people to look up to. If 'selflessness' as a word becomes obsolete, then we will begin applying various degrees of selfishness. I don't think people will ever stop recognizing kindness and generosity.

    "Either that or only a select group of people stops using the word selfishness and alienates itself from the rest of the world."
    Why? As I said, there are many words to describe, say, donating money. I already gave 'kind' and 'generous'. There's also 'thoughtful', 'caring', 'concerned'... All of those words would still be correct. Only 'selfless' would stop being used. And personally, I never use it anyway (apart from in debates about the word itself), and I'm not THAT alienated from the rest of the world.

    Anyway, that's my opinion on your opinion. A whole box of cookies may or may not have been eaten during the creation of this comment.

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  6. In to parts because:
    "De HTML-code kan niet worden geaccepteerd: Mag maximaal 4.096 tekens lang zijn "-google message.
    The story of the barber is a classic one in philosophy as it can prove how you can create a contradiction in certain logical systems. I saw this one at the Uni in my course of logic. It's considered quite a powerful argument. But in dutch we can of course just say the barber is a female as the dutch word for barber isn't necessary gender determined.

    "[...]it fails to specify that the barber ONLY shaves people who don't shave themselves."
    I did mean to imply that and I don't see how I failed that sentence appart from a stupid spelling mistake (change the second time you see the word *shaves* with *shaved*). I think when I say "Every man [...]" I really don't see you loopholes here.

    "There is one city ,with only one barber. Every man who does not shaves himself gets to be shaved* by the barber. Who shaves the barber?"

    Out of this you know that every men in the city is shaved. Either by himself or by the barber. Since the barber is a men he falls under one of these categories. The question is in which?

    Let my try to give a more formal version of this paradox. I'm going to use the English word collection (voor verzameling, zie wiskunde verzamelingen leer) but it might not really be the right word as I am not familiar the English terms used in math.

    Lets make a collection P that consists out of all collections that do not contain itself. This will create the same type of paradox because where are you going to put P itself? If you put P in the category of all collections that do not contain itself, it will contain itself making it a collection that does contain itself, putting it outside itself but if you do that it will become a collection that contains itself![1]

    "There is no problem. It's a very healthy exchange of boons. Society benefits. You benefit. Everybody benefits. Nobody says there's a problem, only that the word 'selflessness' is technically wrong. It's a discussion of semantics, not ethics.

    "and we should be aware of that in philosophical discussions,"
    This would be exactly that kind of discussion. "
    Very much true. I did not mean to criticize here in any way. Just wanted to point out something. :p

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  7. "If 'selflessness' as a word becomes obsolete, then we will begin applying various degrees of selfishness."
    In theory[3], imagine everyone becomes aware that the word selflessness is obsolete. Everyone knows its obsolete because a person A gives alot of money money to that earthquake fund because he knows it makes him happier. And everyone also know person B gives little to no money to that earthquake fund because, it would make him unhappy[4]. Are we really going to put various degrees of judgment on person A and B? I mean, we already know both are selfishness. But since selfishness has no opposite anymore, then how are you going to put degree's in it? If you have the colors black and white, you can mix them to various degree's of grey. Now if you remove black from your colors, everything becomes white. If you remove selflessness from the balance, you can get only selfishness with no degree's of variation. Person A and person B just provide themselves with their needs. A happens to be a little bit better for society then B, but you cannot judge them. You cannot say A is less selfish then B, because that would implicate that A is more selflessness then B and you just said that 'selflessness' is obsolete.
    The reason why I think someone may get the idea that selflessness is obsolete is because it is indeed a fictional word but that does not mean it is less useful. (I am not sure how far I have to explain this to be clear. Let me know if you get my point or please try to explain to me why I am wrong here or you could even try to explain why we are both in some aspects right, but seem to have different hidden premisses.)


    "[...]and I'm not THAT alienated from the rest of the world."
    Come on lets not deny it.[5] :)



    [1] On a side note, this is the Paradox of Russel and it was crucial into proving that Frege's system of arithmetic was not consisted. This was a major blow in philosophical history to the logical positivists who thought that they could base math on logic, and all the other sciences on math creating the fundamentals for a completely logical world view that was above all doubt. In which they failed. Out of reaction against this Postmodernism sprout that declared everything relative. My opinion on this is that we might not be able to define things in absolutes but that treating the world like they exist will bring us the most advancement that that is a good thing for practical reasons. I think modern science philosophy is mainly consisted with this view.

    [2] it doesn't according to the most recent research.

    [3]because in practice I don't believe you can make the word selflessness obsolete,

    [4]I am going to ignore the whole issue whether someone know beforehand whether it is going to make them happier or not. Our theoretical agents just know what their emotional response is going to be to their own actions. This of course knowing that it might not be in the real world.

    [5] Bad joke that is ironical since it is made by me.

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  8. [3]because in practice I don't believe you can make the word selflessness obsolete.

    Might be true. Definitely worth thinking about, anyway. Consider this: can something which has no value except for it's absence of a value have value?
    Selflessness exists only as a term for describing something which is impossible. It's like infinity. But if the universe as we know it wasn't infinite, drawing a line would be different. With your black vs white argument: if you don't have black anymore, you just approach black, and you WILL KEEP GETTING DARKER without ever reaching black.
    And while I agree that it seems that this makes judging degrees of selfishness more difficult, I really think it's possible for humanity to live without a word which makes people feel as though they are being, well, selfless.

    In truth, I believe the only way to be truly selfless is to do something to which you are mentally, ethically and every other -ally opposed to, for no good reason, such as, say, strangle your own mother to death with a kittens entrails. If you can't justify it to yourself, you're being selfless. I think. :p

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  9. @Iskariot
    "With your black vs white argument: if you don't have black anymore, you just approach black, and you WILL KEEP GETTING DARKER without ever reaching black."
    (Iskariot - 6 February 2011 17:39 )

    I was talking about the word black. Anyway, removing the entity black from the world is even more interesting as removing the word 'black' from our language.
    Okay so our idea is that we don't have black anymore, but we still have the word 'black'. Now I think the word 'black' isn't obsolete in this case provided that we are still able to approach it in a certain way. Lets say be making things grey. If we would live in a world where you had white, grey, and near black. The word black would be invented. It would be used to refer to the darkest grey one can imagine and also to the fictional identity of true black.

    On your definition of selflessness.
    I'm sorry, I'd rather not follow you there. Have you been digging in the internet recently?

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  10. "On your definition of selflessness.
    I'm sorry, I'd rather not follow you there. Have you been digging in the internet recently?"

    I'm not going to go there either. I'm just pointing out that it seems to be the only way not to pump some dopamine or other happy-drugs to your pleasure centers (not going to mention real-world rewards) when you make your decision. I'm not saying selflessness is good is what I'm saying.

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  11. I think we better stick with the old fashion definition of selflessness. I'd be easier to explain to children. Later we can explain how it doesn't really exist.

    Your current proposition of, doing an action that doesn't create dopamine in ones brain is not an agreeable definition to me. We should at least include that someone else was intended to be helped with this action.

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  12. But helping people is something that touches one of the happy spots in my brain. And I'm sure there are others like me, so for us, true selflessness as you describe it IS very much impossible.

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