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  #1  
Old 12-11-2002, 09:40 PM
librasoul22 librasoul22 is offline
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Question Altruism?

Is there REALLY such a thing?

Some people use examples such as the firefighters in NYC helping victims of the 9/11 attacks as pure altruism. But, playing devil's advocate, can't it also be said that somwhere subconciously, they were seeking personal glory?

I, for one, am a pessimist. I don't really believe in altruism. I think that people only do "good" in hopes of reaping some reward, or attention.

GC could use a good debate!
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  #2  
Old 12-11-2002, 10:13 PM
agger_rob agger_rob is offline
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I don't think that people who risk their lives to help others do it for personal gratifaction, per se. In the case of firefighters and other emergency response personnel, it's my view that what they do is a trained and conditioned response. "Okay, here's the problem, these are our options to help them, this one looks like the best choice" then they do it. The gratification comes later after the job is accomplished.

Wasn't there a debate on one episode of Friends about altruisms between Joey and Phoebe?
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  #3  
Old 12-11-2002, 10:46 PM
breathesgelatin breathesgelatin is offline
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Hey, I'm a philosophy major and just finished a course on ethics, so I know alot about this... I gotsa go study for my psychology exam, but after that tomorrow I'll post... In short, my opinion is that yes, altruism can be easily defended logically in philosophical dialectic.

But, I should point out, that there are many ethical theories which bridge the gap between egoism (every agent should act in his or her own interest solely) and altruism (every agent should act in the interest of others solely). Just to clarify, I don't think that librasoul is asking about altruism as the ethical system--few people would defend that or egoism. Most people balance a bit of each and use other systems (consequentialism, Kantianism, virtue ethics (although consequentialists are accused of being almost entirely altruistic)). I think what librasoul is actually asking if purely altruistic acts can occur---and I'd say yes. More on that later....

Ack. I'm such a dork.
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Old 12-11-2002, 10:47 PM
Kevin Kevin is offline
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You do what you want because that's what you want to do. You are seeking a response either externally or internally (like self-satisfaction). I believe the most honest thing to do is admit to yourself that what you do is for yourself. If you find that you are doing something you don't like.. you either stop and say that you didn't like that or you continue and have some kind of self-appreciation.. imagining yourself as an unsung hero, etc.
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  #5  
Old 12-11-2002, 10:59 PM
Dionysus Dionysus is offline
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I say yes, however I think it is an EXTREMELY rare occurance.
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  #6  
Old 12-11-2002, 11:14 PM
UofIL AXO UofIL AXO is offline
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In primate species (bare with me, i'm studying for an anthropology exam) altruism is used in two different forms:

reciprocal altruism: doing a favor so that a favor will be done to you

Kin altruism: (i.e. "taking one for the team") sacrificing oneself for the benefit of the family in order to ensure that the family genes will be passed on.

*sigh*

Hope I remember that tomorrow.
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  #7  
Old 12-11-2002, 11:25 PM
Cluey Cluey is offline
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I know this may sound a little bit odd, but I believe that it all depends on the way that you are raised. Selflessness is something that is learned, not something with which we are born. In the most simplistic form, giving is a sharing of blessings with those less fortunate than you. Charity is something that begins at home and shouldn't end on the porch.

Just my opinion...

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas. ~ Dale Evans Rogers
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  #8  
Old 12-11-2002, 11:43 PM
OUlioness01 OUlioness01 is offline
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i don't know...my grandfather gets nominatated for all these awards for volunteering, yet he doesn't want them. he's just trying to give back to the community. they named a park after him and he made them change the name so it would be named after the community. He does things for others so that they will have something instead of nothing. I guess I do kinda believe in it, beacue i believe he is altruistic. I think it is rare though, at least in younger geneations (and i'm definitely in the younger generation so i can say that)
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  #9  
Old 12-11-2002, 11:51 PM
Optimist Prime Optimist Prime is offline
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Altruism exists in other animals so why not people?
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  #10  
Old 12-12-2002, 01:39 AM
CanadianTeke CanadianTeke is offline
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I don't think altruism exists. Everything we do, we do for personal gain. Self Satisfaction is in itself personal gain, it makes us feel good and while it may do good for others, there is still that personal satisfaction. The NYC firefighters were not in any way altruistic, they got paid to go into the towers and attempt save people, and while many of them may have lost their lives in that process, i think there was probably some form of deeper heo complex. But those are just my thoughts.
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  #11  
Old 12-12-2002, 03:40 AM
breathesgelatin breathesgelatin is offline
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This thread turns me on. I LOVE PHILOSOPHY.

"The theory is that when we act, we act out of self-love, or self-interest. Sometimes, more fashionably, the idea is that we only ever act of what is in the interest of our genes, but I shall consider the more traditional view first. This view goes under the heading of psychological egoism. It has a tremendous emotional power. If we believe it, we know the world, we are nobody's fool. We are not taken in by cant and hypocrisy; like conspiracy theorists, we have penetrated below the surface; like Freud finding sex everywhere or Marx finding economics everywhere, we see the real face of human beings behind the mask.

It is true that this view is not very popular among philosophers, but everyone acknowledges that it is one of those hardy perennials that never die, however thoroughly philosophers believe they have dug up the roots. The standard attempt to dig them up is due to Bishop Butler, and has been accepted and repeated in various forms by Bradley, Sidgwick, Broad, and many others. Butler begins with a powerful a priori point: even if there is a principle of self-interest, it has to be true that as well as acting on it in the abstract, we aim at particular external things. We want, on occasions, drink, food, warmth, exercise, and so on. These, the psychological egoist says, are desired as a means to our happiness or ease or content, it is in his interest that these particular desires are met, and it is because it is in his interests that the desires exist. But at any rate, says Butler,

that all particular appetites and passions are towards external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence; that there could not be this pleasure, were itnot for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion:there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another.

The point being that we have to admit that we have a desire for the water or food or whatever, since it were not so, there would be no 'pleasure' arising from satisfaction of the desire. The desire for water or food Butler calls a particular affection, and his first point is to distinguish having such a particular affection from having an interest in the 'pleasure arising' from its fulfillment.

What Butler is doing is forcing the distinction between:

(1) The object of my 'particular' desire, which might equally be for water, food, of the happiness of my neighbor...

on the one hand, and:

(2) The pleasure that will accrue to me upon the satisfaction of that desire

on the other hand. Inevitably the pleasure mentioned in (2) is my pleasure, because it is my desire that we are talking about. But, Butler argues, we should not conclude from that fact alone that the principle of my action is always self love. . .

The fallacy [of psychological egoism] turns on ambiguity in English constructions with the word 'pleasant'. If I am concerned for the survival of the whales, we might say that I find their survival pleasant to contemplate, and by confusion we might go on to say that this identifies a pleasure for the sake of which I am campaigning.

Why is this a confusion?. . .Not all desires seem to bring 'pleasure' upon being gratified. I may want to go for a run, not because I find it enjoyable or expect it to be pleasant, but because I believe it is good for my health, and I want to be healthy. Or, I might have a sudden craving for some special food, even though I don't much like its taste, and don't expect to get much pleasure from eating it. Psychologists sometimes talk of satisfaction of desire in terms of release of tension rather than onset of pleasure. . .[But] 'I want a paper and 'I want to be released from the pressure of wanting a paper' are two different things. . .If someone hurled me onto a couch and psychoanlyzed me out of my desire, and thereby released me from the pressure, I would not have got what I wanted--that is, a paper.

I might be satisfied with this way of removing the desire, but only if at some level I did not really 'identify' with the desire. . .If I want the destruction of my enemy, or the health and happines of my children, I don't want to live in a fool's paradise, in which I believe wrongly that my enemy has been destroyed or my children live in health and happiness. I want these things to be really so. My own states of mind are incidental.

[HERE COMES THE CLINCHER]
Egoism rightly notices that there is a subjective change: a change from a state of desire to a state of fulfillment. This is the change occurring when the subject has a desire gratified. Then the present suggestion of the egoist is that this change, whether we describe it in terms of a pleasure, or release of a pressure, or in some other way, is always the real object of desire. But Butler's a priori point is that this cannot possibly be true. From this change from 'having a desire to having no desire' can only itself be a parasitic object of desire. It is a change that presupposes a preceding desire--what Butler calls the particular appetite or passion, such as the desire for a paper or the well-being of my children in these examples--that is gratified or goes away. The desire to 'be someone who has his desires gone' is a second-order desire: it presupposes others. The egoist cannot simply pretend that the second-order desire is all there is. . .

Seeking revenge, perhaps I 'run upon certain ruin' to do harm to my enemy. Here the object of my particular desire is my enemy's harm. I do not act for the sake of my own pleasure, nor, obviously, for the sake of my own ruin. I concentrate my efforts on my enemy. Such examples exist, empirically, and they seem to be enough to refute any psychological egoist who believes that self-interest is always one of our objects, even if Butler has shown that it cannot be the only one. Butler shrewdly offers us the bad case as well as the good, presumably since the example of malice or revenge is perhaps more apt to appeal to the cynic, who prides himself on detecting self-interest under the bland mask of goodness. . .

Concern for my neighbor's good is just that--a concern. It is no more opposed to my own interst than resentment, or ambition, or concern for an inanimate object or pet."

That is taken from Simon Blackburn's book Ruling Passions, Chapter 5, "Looking out for yourself". He also goes on to refute genetic/biological arguments about the same topic. Pretty much represents what I believe...

That was a helluva lot to type. I'm almost embarassed to post it but now that I've typed it up I'm sure not wasting it.
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  #12  
Old 12-12-2002, 11:39 AM
Optimist Prime Optimist Prime is offline
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Here is an example of altruism:

A soldier gets shot and is badly injured. His fellow troops are carrying him back and they see a greande/land mine/ whatever it was on the ground. The solider who may or may not make it at this point its unclear lies down on top of it so that his fellow soldiers won't be slowed down or hurt from the shrapnel. He died when it went it off so that people could live. That is altruism. Altrusim is rarer in humans because we have so few viable and effective natural enemies. In other animals it exists more abudantly because altrusitic behaivor is attractive for potentional mates, therefore the animals with the genes for altruism pass it on to there offspring more often than those with out. It also doesn't have to be that dramatic. Here is another, more realistic example of altruism.

You are in highschool with group of your friends. One goes up to some one and asks him to buy the beer. He took a risk for the group, that is altruism. The guys that carried the beer in their cars to beach week were altruistic. If they were stopped they were screwed.
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  #13  
Old 12-12-2002, 11:48 AM
MoxieGrrl MoxieGrrl is offline
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In the purest form, can altrustic events only occur when they are done subconsciously? Even if one is doing something good that will not necessarily benefit them per say, it they are still getting something in return (feeling pleased with doing something).
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  #14  
Old 12-12-2002, 12:03 PM
agger_rob agger_rob is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Optimist Prime

You are in highschool with group of your friends. One goes up to some one and asks him to buy the beer. He took a risk for the group, that is altruism. The guys that carried the beer in their cars to beach week were altruistic. If they were stopped they were screwed.
But the people who asked or drove will also reap the benefits and enjoyment of drinking the beer with their friends. So it's a sacrifice, but they also get the payoff in the end.
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  #15  
Old 12-13-2002, 04:13 AM
KSig RC KSig RC is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by CanadianTeke
I don't think altruism exists. Everything we do, we do for personal gain. Self Satisfaction is in itself personal gain, it makes us feel good and while it may do good for others, there is still that personal satisfaction.
Whoops, I think we fell into the fallacy of complex question here - let's use a regular ol' dicitonary definition of altruism here (from webster's):

Altruism: Unselfish concern for the well-being of others; selfless

(ps - breathesgelatin, i'm sure you'll do well in class, but i don't think you really got the gist of the thread . . . all good though, an interesting read)

In this way, it is insignificant to the argument that one 'feels good' (self-satisfaction) when performing a beneficial act for another; they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

(Drawing two unrelated points into a single proposition is the fallacy of complex question)

If we use a regular, everyday definition of altruism with regard to societal actions and norms, then of course it exists. You sort of strawman the argument by including personal gain, which realistically isn't a part of the equation for the type of altruism we're discussing.

If we use a biological definition, ie "performs actions beneficial for the group but harmful to the self", we start to find it harder to see examples of altruistic behavior (btw, well-put Billy) . . . but we're not talking about evolutionary benefits of altruism, we're discussing whether people can be altruistic in everyday life.

PS - Librasoul - I think you're making the same mistake in comparison . . . it's ok, you're still cool
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