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there is no such thing as a selfless act

L2R said:
Tell me what you think the difference is and how it is relevant.
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Well, as an example - Purposely dying for someone else is a lot different than savings someone's life to be a hero AND tell the tale. But even purposely dying for someone is not necessarily a selfless act. There are many reasons why someone would jump in front of a train to save someone. Calculating the risks and weighing up the benefits and cons, even if wrong in a snap moments judgement, still happens.
 
That difference you are putting emphasis on doesn't support your assertion that "it happens". Where are you getting this "it happens" from?

Joeof1ego, you're in too deep in this subject. Give it up, fella.
 
It's the only way to act truly selflessly.

Actually this judge-less state is nothing special. We spent a lot of time in it, it's just not noticeable.
 
Fair -

But I still don't believe that exists.

Even if the act was initiated by purely subconscious thought, that subconscious thought is still a part of self.
 
I understand and appreciate your position.

That initial thought has no rationality. It's an impulse based entirely on predisposition. Rationality happens later and it makes our acts seem more rational than it is. Pm me if you would like, and I'll happily share an excellent academic article on this.
 
Is that predisposition determined by earlier rational, reasonable and moral thoughts that you have had throughout life?

Sure I'll give the article a read :)
 
everything you are exposed to generates this predisposition. one seldom has rational control over it.

pm will be sent to you shortly. :)
 
7ca5p said:
So would you be grateful for your life? Would you tell your children to be grateful for their lives? Or would you inform them that you and they only existed because of an evil intention? Would that render their whole existence evil?

Would you be ungrateful for your own life? Would your existence from then on be tainted with evil?



Imagine they've saved you're life, and perhaps you never even realised their malicious intentions. Would you then think how great they were? And how malevolent they were as a being?

These are the questions that led me to say you were being too simplistic.

I think this whole "Good Vs Evil" thing is a distinctly human trait, that the grand cosmos doesn't even care about.
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The best example I can give of intent & outcome being bad leading to good is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There was no lack of ill intent but the outcome was a blessing to all Christians. So the bad intent does not live on. The deed has been done full stop.

7ca5p said:
I think this whole "Good Vs Evil" thing is a distinctly human trait, that the grand cosmos doesn't even care about.
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You may well be correct here. Essential for humanity in a social context but for divinity, who knows?
 
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L2R said:
That difference you are putting emphasis on doesn't support your assertion that "it happens". Where are you getting this "it happens" from?

Joeof1ego, you're in too deep in this subject. Give it up, fella.
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How about actually proving your comments first?
 
When you say shit like "prove your comments" you sound like an imbecile. Unlike droppers, you can do better than that.

If you have any specific questions about my posts, I'll answer them as well as I can.
 
I tend to agree with this as why else would we really do anything? Everything we do even if it is a really good thing is out of some self interest on our part. A person may very well say as a example give almost the last buck he has to someone who is hungry but that is because it would pain that person more to not help that person rather then to go hungry himself. Granted that is a oversimplification of exactly why we do things but i think alot of it comes down to avoiding pain physical or emotional which we are pretty much hard wired to do anyway.
 
seems that way on the surface, bro. it doesn't really hold when one really examines the terms in application.
 
a friend sent me this today. dilbert gets it.
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From a philosophical perspective there is no such thing as either. Everything just IS.. neither good nor bad but where we ARE or our vantage point.. determines our perspective on any situation.
 
There is no selfishness or selfissness
Everything was set in motion, then quatum physics came into play. Ever since then everything, including our thoughts (which are controlled by processes we have no control over) have just been completely random or ust what would be expected by quantum physics. Molecules became advanced enough to produce life. With neurons, thought became possible - just random firiing from different stimulation. Brains become more complex, but they are atill nothing but machines that are "us". Decide how we feel, what we think, everything we are. Just a state produced by a complex state of neurotransmitters

We may think we have beliefs, morals, and principals that we stand up for or that mean something to us, but they mean nothing. They are completely worthless trash. There is no meaning in anything. We have no control at all. We never have and we never will have any control over our thoughts or actions/ We are just robots without control. We all want to think we have some control over our lives, but our lives don't belong to us. They are not even real in any real sense of the word. Your beliefs do not matter. Doing the right thing does not matter. Doing what you think is a selfliss act is meaninglessness because you had no control over it. It was already going to happen that way.
 
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Some relevant reading from Pinker with a perspective from from cognitive science (Green & Cohen studies are worth reading)that I believe L2R was alluding to:

Is Nothing Sacred?

And “morally corrosive” is exactly the term that some critics would apply to the new science of the moral sense. The attempt to dissect our moral intuitions can look like an attempt to debunk them. Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested — to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes. The explanation of how different cultures appeal to different spheres could lead to a spineless relativism, in which we would never have grounds to criticize the practice of another culture, no matter how barbaric, because “we have our kind of morality and they have theirs.” And the whole enterprise seems to be dragging us to an amoral nihilism, in which morality itself would be demoted from a transcendent principle to a figment of our neural circuitry.

Full link: http://http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html

It's hard to talk about any of this outside of evolution.
 
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Tryptamine*Dreamer said:
There is no selfishness or selfissness
Everything was set in motion, then quatum physics came into play. Ever since then everything, including our thoughts (which are controlled by processes we have no control over) have just been completely random or ust what would be expected by quantum physics. Molecules became advanced enough to produce life. With neurons, thought became possible - just random firiing from different stimulation. Brains become more complex, but they are atill nothing but machines that are "us". Decide how we feel, what we think, everything we are. Just a state produced by a complex state of neurotransmitters

We may think we have beliefs, morals, and principals that we stand up for or that mean something to us, but they mean nothing. They are completely worthless trash. There is no meaning in anything. We have no control at all. We never have and we never will have any control over our thoughts or actions/ We are just robots without control. We all want to think we have some control over our lives, but our lives don't belong to us. They are not even real in any real sense of the word. Your beliefs do not matter. Doing the right thing does not matter. Doing what you think is a selfliss act is meaninglessness because you had no control over it. It was already going to happen that way.
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I respect your opinion on this but I disagree with you as to believing in morals and principals:

Yes humans have a complicated "brain" full of neurotransmitters/chemicals that are connected to how we process information etc. This is why we have a brain right? We use our brain to think and be in charge of ourselves and our emotions. To compare a human to a robot is just not right. Humans have in control of actions. These actions whether positive or negative will have an impact on how the future is going to be set up. Even if most of us think that we have no control of our future, we actually do and this will depend on the decisions each and every one will make. We make our lives and no matter how you look at it or how selfish or selfless you may turn out to be.
 
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Tryptamine*Dreamer said:
We may think we have beliefs, morals, and principals that we stand up for or that mean something to us, but they mean nothing. They are completely worthless trash. There is no meaning in anything. We have no control at all. We never have and we never will have any control over our thoughts or actions/ We are just robots without control. We all want to think we have some control over our lives, but our lives don't belong to us. They are not even real in any real sense of the word. Your beliefs do not matter. Doing the right thing does not matter. Doing what you think is a selfliss act is meaninglessness because you had no control over it. It was already going to happen that way.
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I would fall into the category of hard determinism by most standards but I would never go so far to say morals are completely meaningless.

"A man's character is his fate"

Maybe your reaction should be taken in the context in which the topic was first addressed or the way some contributors have carried on the philosophical bull $hitting in the face of modernity :D
 
Emotions are not rewards, they are triggers which lead to actions that are based on logic.
The fact that we feel happy is not selfish. Whether we chose to starve or kill, we are happy with the decision.
The only way we can logically feel good about starvation is by caring about that other living thing.
Any decision could help us further down the road, it could hurt us as well, but that cannot be used to rationalize our decisions.
We can also make decisions we are not happy with and ones which are completely illogical.
 
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