It is impossible for a person to make a decision against their own will. that is to say its impossible to make a decision without making it. Whatever it is that you choose to do, it will be because at that given time and those given circumstances, your choice was your best. And because you find every person living according to their own will, you will never find a person doing something completely and totally just for another person. your thoughts which you make as you perceive this are your own and are done only because you choose. therefor any action of any person at anytime is forever going to be self bound. or selfish. this law alone is why man-kind will never see world peace. even as I compose this I am binded by this law which makes me no better then anyone else. even though that is the goal for all. A person’s only true goal is to become better then other people. I’ll explain why I think this. Its because we make our decisions completely selfishly that we are all fighting to be better. better then our previous selves? im afraid not. what is your previous self if you lived in a world by your self.- the only way for you to know that you are advancing your status is to compare your status to another persons status. Otherwise how would you know what was advancing and what was not. So as you make your decisions, which you must do as a living thing, you are forever selfishly trying to become better....then other people.
I’m not sure if this is even on topic, but. I agree that a persons actions are selfish, in that I want my boyfriend to be happy because it makes me happy, and so I do actions which make him happy. However I must also balance in the want for my sister to be happy, and my work-collages, and the cat and not forgetting my boss, because if they are happy then I am happy, but sometime the cat does not matter, or the boss and so I can go on holiday with the boyfriend, but then maybe last time I went on holiday and left work behind it went terrible so I take it with me, or don’t go. I think you summed it up in ‘Whatever it is that you choose to do, it will be because at that given time and those given circumstances, your choice was your best.’ I think stating it as ‘your choice was what you perceived as your best capacity for happiness’ might clarify. ‘Its because we make our decisions completely selfishly….’ How does this fit with the prisoner’s dilemma? Could you also give the evidence for ‘Its because we make our decisions completely selfishly that we are all fighting to be better.’
Due to the fact that I believe everyone is made up of numerous semi-independent parts I have to say yes, you han make yourself do something against your will. If enough parts feel one way they can overide the remainder. Actually even one part can overwhelm all the rest if it feels strongly enough about something.
I agree that there is pro's and con's when making a decision, but whatever it is that you finally decide, the decision will be YOURS. No one elses. Even if a gunman asked for your money, it would still be YOUR decision to give him the money. It is impossible to do something against your own will. At every moment in time, your brain acts and reacts to the best of it's ability, period.
I have to agree that there is an underlying selfishness in our nature, but I also think that we have the ability to overcome this and perform altruistic acts. There are many examples of altruism in human behavior: parents protecting children, spouses/lovers protecting their partners, family members protecting other family members, etc. When I say "protecting," I'm referring to acts like risking one's own life (even if slightly) to save/protect another. Offering a kidney to a sister is an example. A stranger jumping in a river to save a child, before considering the full weight of the action (this recently happened in my home town), is another. Still, one has to consider that the selfish person will have the advantage of chance-to-survive in many or all of the examples I can think of. The by-stander that merely watched from the safety of the river's bank while the altruistic person saved the victim had a better survival chance. There are also selfish advantages to acts, which may seem altruistic at first. Such as the evidence that shows that early hominids often took care of clan/family members who were injured or crippled... the person taking care of the other group member might some day find him/her -self in a similar predicament. The "altruistic" act of an earlier day may serve as social capital that can be used in such instances. Politics, if you will. Interesting topic, I'm surprised more discussion hasn't ensued.
People seem to view selfishness as evil and a problem preventing the establishment of an ideal government or culture. Actually, cooperating with others and playing fair in your interactions is consistent with being selfish and looking out for yourself and your family.friends. How do you think we evolved from our primitive ancestors of 5-10 million years ago? Do you think we did it by acting like territorial predators such as lions? Do you think we did it by cheating and beating up on fellow members of our species? I claim we evolved due to being willing to cooperate with others of our species. We did it by playing fair with each other. How much of the goodies of our techological culture do you think you could produce all by yourself? If you could not trust anybody to treat you fairly, do you think you would cooperate with anybody? In a culture with nobody willing to trust others, how could you possbly maintain our current society. A society of composed of thieves, swindlers, and thugs will perish.
What about Martyrs, people giving their lives for others. How does this help them? I see no political gain, they will be dead. How can this be explained as a selfish action?
To some martyrdom offers the ultimate in status... a final status, but an ultimate one. Also, martyrdom helps one's own group/family. Often, suicide bombers' families receive compensation for the sacrifice of the bomber, for instance. I do, however, agree that there is likely some sincere martyrs in history, if not a lot. I just think that there is also an underlying selfishness with others.
I completely agree with this. Even if you were to run into a burning building to save someone else, you did it because *you* felt you had to. what does that mean? doesn't it mean that if you didn't do it, that you would feel guilty for the rest of you life? That possible death is better than suffering a life knowing that you did nothing to help? that the possibility of the joy of saving the person outweighs the risks? If you truely felt no negative emotions in connection with other people, then the death of a loved one would be no big deal. you might think it's bad that the person is dead, but you can't feel disapointed, or sad, or like you've "lost" something. So if the only negative emotions you could feel were about yourself, then the question of losing a loved one or hurting yourself would be an easier one to answer. As long as the loved one didn't have something that you needed to survive, then you'd choose yourself. You can't feel guilty or sad remember? you don't even have a concept of it. the person is just gone now, oh well. however, we do feel compasion for other people suffering. *we* feel bad for them. That means that our acts to help them are most often born of our desire to not *feel bad*. in other words, our feeling bad leads us to help other people. The best kind of selfishness, but still selfish, IMO. Why do Christians who don't want to donate money still donate? because God said so. So what? because if you don't listen to him, you go to hell. So? being in hell would be bad. and again we are back to the selfish point. If you are a church-going Catholic, and you dan't want to suffer in hell, you follow the rules, part of which is donating money to help other people. edit: inresponse to the martyr question directly. If life for you is watching other people suffering, and you feel terrible because of that, death may look attractive to you. if life=suffering and death=nothing, then death certainly looks like the lesser of two evils. And if in dying, you are able to help aliviate some of the suffering which made you miserable during life, death looks even better. still selfich, though, as you are trying to best relieve your own suffering. it just happens that getting rid of your own suffering has to come through the relief of the suffering of others.
Ultimately we do everything for our selves, if you define it that way. Same thing as that ultimately our existence is pure magic by god. It says nothing about how anything works, but it's ultimately the truth.
The prisoners dilemma is the thought experiment where there are two people(A and B) who committed a crime jointly, and the person who confesses would get a shorter sentence for owning up. Each must choose to be silent or speak without knowing what the other is doing. Thus there are four possible outcomes. A could confess, B could confess, both could confess, or both could be silent (both would be convicted). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/ boils down to the idea that to be rational is to be self-interested. . .
but there is always the chance that if neither talk, then neither will get convicted. The question, IMO, is not self-interest, that is a given. the question is the scope. lets say you are in a hunter-gatherer society. you are out hunting by yourself, and you kill a deer. Are you looking for a short-term benifit for yourself? then keep all the meat for yourself. Keep yourself alive right now. Are you looking for a short-term benefit for your bloodline? then keep all the food for your family. keep your reletives alive now. Are you looking for a long-term benefit for you and your family? share your food, and improve the chances that in the future, if you are unable to find food, your village will help provide for you and yours as a thank you for sharing now. You can learn, through expirience, that sometimes sacrificing of yourself in the short term can benefit your long-term survivability. So to be selffish, you often have to act selflessly. (this came from a paper I wrote in college on this very topic)
Which is the point of the prisoners dilemma, if they just behaved rationally then they would be silent and both go free. But they have learnt that people don’t behave rationally, and so doubt what the other person will do. All this is within game theory. Yes learning to be unselfish –the test of giving a child 10 sweets, and having her share them with another child. The second child has the right to refuse or accept how the sweets are shared, and if she refuses both don’t get the sweets. Children tend to be selfish in the first round, have their offer refused and ‘learn’ to share equally in the second round.
