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Question Is there really such a thing as being selfless? Every scenario I can think of proves otherwise. Such as someone holding a door open for someone else going into a building. They either expect a thank you or want other people to think they are a good person. Does this make the word selfish essentially meaningless?

Accepted:
May 27, 2006

Comments

Well, yes and no. What is likely the case is that our actions all have many motives, only some of which we become aware. Holding open the door could be habit, and in that sense motiveless; or the motive could be the negative one of guilt at not holding it open; or the other person could be attractive, or important; or, as you say, the motive could be the reception of thanks; or it could be a dutiful, selfless act. This complex of motives yields at least two interesting philosophical problems: first, if and how one can train one's habits and develop one's virtues, so that non-moral motives have less effect upon one's actions. In short, so that one is not a slave to one's own impulses. Second, the question of whether a genuinely selfless motive is possible at all, and whether it could ever be a dominant or determining motive.

Your 'every scenario' argument seems to be a good one, but can be turned around. Many a scenario in which you see a selfish motive - such as greed - could be read otherwise. For example, suppose you find a book that was left in the park. Then, in the newspaper, you read of a reward for the return of the book. Returning it would involve you going to a good deal of trouble, however. Now, if the reward was small, and you returned the book, that looks like a selfless action; if the reward was large, and you returned the book, we tend to read that as a selfish action. The action was the same, though, and thus nothing in the large-reward case ‘proves’ selfishness. Motives are difficult to determine in individual cases; and tendencies (more people would return the book if the reward was large) do not prove the motive in every case.

"Every scenario I can think of proves otherwise," you write, but where is the proof? The mere fact that, for every piece of conduct I point to, you can think up a selfish motive does not prove your point because the motive you thought up may not be the agent's real motive.

What you have in mind, as proof, may be something along these lines: The fact that the agent did what she did proves that she preferred it over her alternative options. So she followed her preference and acted selfishly.

But this line of thought conflates a conceptual point (the option an agent chooses = the option the agent prefers = the selfish option) with a substantive insight. This is clear from the fact that the conceptual point does not rule out that an agent may (prefer to) do, for the sake of others, what she regards to be worse for herself. Indeed, she may sacrifice her own life for another.

One could respond that she must have regarded what she did as best for herself, for otherwise she would/could not have done it. But this response begs the question by assuming what was to be shown: that all actions are selfishly motivated, are attempts to do what is best for oneself.

In short: What you have is either a harmless conceptual point (the option chosen by the agent = the option preferred by the agent = the selfish option) which, indeed, renders the word "selfish" meaningless -- or an empirical conjecture for which you have given no evidence. An interesting insight into the human character would emerge if you were (a) to define selfless conduct in such as way that it is coneptually possible and then (b) to show empirically that selfless conduct so defined never actually occurs.