How about giving food to the poor {veteran's, immigrant families, and other people struggling} does that count as selfless?
Lets say you see a grenade and jump on it to save everyone else. I have heard accounts of that happening on Iwo Jima (on one of the accounts the grenade never exploded)
I dont have enough faith in humanity to believe that any act a human can possibly perfom would be 100% selfless, there's always something the individual believes to produce something positive for himself that motivates the individual to do what he's doing. So no, I dont think there are any purely selfless acts. And I see nobody has managed to come up with one yet either, eagerly waiting for someone to do so.
Well, the question as I understand it is whether a selfless act exists, not whether it has been or can be preformed.
In my view there is definitely the concept of a selfless act, but whether someone has actively taken part in a selfless act with no hidden meaning behind their reason for doing so or somehow benefited from is difficult to say and has most likely never happened or has only happened a miinute amount of times.
my History teacher says there are no selfless acts. he says even if you gain no physical reward or whatnot, you still gain that warm fuzzy feeling inside that makes you happy, and that is a reward itself. so i don't know. it's possible i'm sure. i'd like to think there are completely selfless humans. i'm not an expert on anything so i have no real clue
But my point is if he doesnt believe in an afterlife and he dies, then you know he did not do it for any personal gain.
If he/she is jumping infront of this grenade in the knowledge and satisfaction that his/her comrades will be alive and indebted to him/her and his/her family who knows there might be a purple heart too. This is a very specific case here aswell it is not general by any stretch of the imagination that's for sure.
jumping on a grenade is stupid. if you jump on it, you're only killing yourself. it doesn't actually save peoples lives. the shrapnel and shock wave will rip through your body and hit other people. you may stop the shrapnel, but you won't stop the shock wave, thats what kills people
Possibly not, but not being that particular human being you have no idea what they're thinking... who knows they might be thinking "If I do this, I will be remembered" therefore fulfilling their dreams of grandeur. Assuming they had dreams of grandeur.
We need to be careful with the arguments here. If they were really his comrades, he would already have a somehow rewarding goal in saving them. And if you take all factors that could make it feel rewarding on that small time interval away, I think the man would simply not jump on the grenade to save anyone. the original question's answer will reflect one's personal model of how our brain works, so there isn't much point in discussing it, unless some way to prove the theories is developed. The way I look at it, it's impossible for someone to commit a selfless act. And even though we can decribe a situation in which arguably someone is comiting a selfless act, it would never happen.
I've thought about this for a little while longer, and I have come to the conclusion that this sentence is wrong. Why? I disagree. If I give up my seat on the train for a pregnant lady, I didn't perform the act for satisfaction. I did it because I thought she should have the seat. If I get satisfaction from that act then so be it, but I didn't perform the act because I wanted the satisfaction that I might gain. Is anyone else with me? Are you guys feeling what I'm saying or am I wrong?
