This is a debate which has been raging between me and a colleague of mine for about a week now. I believe that there are such things as purely selfless acts. Acts which people can commit in which they receive no personal gain for. My friend on the other hand contends that every act has to have some measure of “selfishness” to it. My only problem is that she has set the bar so high that it is literally impossible to prove her wrong because her definition for a selfless act is unverifiable. In any case though I want to hear what you have to say, is every act committed by us contain some degree of selfishness or does that pure selfless act exist out there? The great thing about proving that there is a purely selfless act is you only need to find one
I'm sure there might be some selfless act to be done, but truly selfless acts must be pretty damn rare.
i dont think there is. if you give all your money to starving children you will probably get some sort of satisfaction
En contrare mon ami, I can almost guarentee you that alot of the initial money that Gates donated was not satisfactory to him. To answer to OP, yes, there are probably some truely selfless acts out there. I cannot counter your friend since your assertion that her standard is too high it very... vague, as you have provided no details to it. However, we CAN go down a reasonable list of possible ideas for selfless acts, Starting with: Sacrificing yourself for your country.
By this definition a selfless act would provide no benefit to the actor, perhaps even hurting the actor. This raises the question: should doing something selfless make us feel bad? Wouldn't it be preferable that the action be mutually beneficial, since the action benefits both the recipient and actor, isn't that better? I would guess that your friend feels that an actor benefiting by doing a kind thing cheapens the act. I found this argument illogical at some level. If doing a selfless act makes us feel better we would be more inclined to do such a thing. If there was no benefit there would be no inclination to repeat a selfless act. Our emotional responses give an important feedback. If you really wanted you could say that every act is selfish, but this selfishness is all together healthy. What we should really be looking at is the intent of the act rather than the effect. Regardless of who benefit from the action, who did the action benefit? Does the good of the act outweigh the selfishness of feeling good about the act?
It is very vague, but basically a selfless act would involve the actor getting zero benefit or satisfaction from it. I think this reply is interesting, because it brings up a couple of questions. Mainly is a selfless act inherently good and something we should strive towards, which it is often believed? and vice versa for selfishness. As you said before isn't the best act one which benefits everyone to some degree including the actor. Although I think under her definition a selfless act would be one in which the actor gains nothing while other parties are benefited. I guess our arguments has been framed around the idea that morality is a zero sum game, that every action has winners and losers. Which as you clearly stated it is not.
agreed. unless you end up dead you are going to likley feel some sort of satisfaction. Even Ghandi felt good about what he accomplished.
Then sacrificing yourself in such a way that you don't know what will happen. You can't be satisfied [or rather, most people cannot] without knowing what will happen with any certainty.
Personally I think your friends definition of a selfless act is pretty much impossible, because it is absurd and unreasonable. It seems paradoxical. What about a completely psychopathic, sociopathic, apathetic, soulless person giving away money to the poor? He would not get satisfaction from it. It's hypothetical of course, but I think if you argue vehemently you could settle the debate once and for all.
Well in my culture is you help me, I help you, Yes there are acts like that, an example I took a bullet for my younger brother
Depends if you have the same semantic issues with the concept of selflessness as people like Uni do with the concept of free will. There is no such thing as an objectively selfless, or 'true/absolute' selfless act because there is always some kind of benefit for the actor, but 'true/absolute' selflessness is a concept devoid of meaning. Similarly, free will might not necessarily exist as an objective and material fact, but that's because it's a human concept that exists to describe human phenomena. Both things exist insofar as our experience tells us they exist, and trying to worm around the issue by claiming that the 'true/absolute' standard can't be met is just pedantic.
Well dying for your country could be called a self-less act, because well you can't get any satisfaction from it after the fact because you would be dead.
Hmm, yeah maybe. In a way that would be helpful to someone else, but you could not have planned it or expected it at all, and the death would have to have been instantaneous.
