Culture Ramblings on Sexual Themes in Modern Culture

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Okay question @OliverCromwell

A sociopath or very powerful person can take immoral actions, and still be apart of society. They just have to have their crimes overlooked or simply not be caught else they lose the regard of everyone else.

Self interest here is not to refrain from immoral acts-but to simply avoid any consequences of them.

That way you still get the benefits of not being an outcast, and still profit from your immoral acts.

How do you respond to this?
 

King Krávoka

An infection of Your universe.
But, you know, it's not like it's some right-wing criticism of modern society unnoticed by anyone else that you demand a "citation" for, indeed, nothing less than NPR has run an article on it before.
The premises of that article are just that work is squeezing people out of fuck, not that exo-vocationary culture is less fuck. It's sad that "people are having less sex" can realistically be considered a right wing criticism with the nu-right increasingly being about the sexual frustrations of its adherents. I'll take the whole claim with a grain of salt anyway, since the authors of those outlets are always trying to make society more hedonistic truth and morals be damned.
 

OliverCromwell

Permanently Banned
Permanently Banned
But see, there’s nothing wrong with the sociopath’s reasoning in principle, only in the realm of contingent facts. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with murder, rape, or any other crime because there’s no such thing as moral principles according to a contractarian theory of ethics.

If you actually lived in a society in which everyone believed in contractarian ethics (as opposed to a post-Christian society in which Christianity informs our moral intuitions), it wouldn’t look anything like the nice, liberal society neo-Hobbesians imagine it. It’d better resemble the war of all against all Hobbes thought a stateless society resembles, because contractarians don’t believe moral goodness as virtue ethicists see it even exists.

There absolutely is something wrong with the sociopath's reasoning in principle--it's irrational in the sense that it does not allow an agent to achieve best possible satisfaction of their premises. One says that a person is "wrong" to be immoral in the same sense that a vacuum is "wrong" to not suck up dust or a campfire is "wrong" to not set alight. By definition a preference is a thing that an agent seeks to satisfy, and in acting irrationally and not doing so effectively we can absolutely say that this is "wrong".

Societies have been demonstrably capable of ethical behavior before virtue ethicists or even the concepts of virtue and ethics existed--if even rats are capable of altruistic behavior driven by the evolutionary advantages conferred by being able to participate in mutual cooperation, I see no reason why this would not be true for human beings as well. Humans are not born with an understanding of the meaning of virtue and a justification for it, and yet basic morality has emerged in every single human society that has ever existed on the face of this earth, and altruistic and cooperative behaviors long before that. Clearly, there is some process that leads to it, and the beauty of contractarianism is that it explains and justifies this process.

The average Christian does not read Aquinas (in fact, the average Christian does not even make a serious study of the Bible), the average virtue ethicist does not read the Nicomachean Ethics, and the average contractarian will not read Morals by Agreement or Leviathan or any other contractarian work. Insofar as these or any other ethical theories influence average people in society, they do so through the broad, simplified basic principles that underlie them--we consult the full extent of ethical theory only when moral intuition and these basic principles fail to provide us with a clear answer, much in the same sense that one might turn to the Bible and/or one's priest when deciding whether or not to go to war, but I doubt one would do the same when deciding whether or not to murder somebody who has upset you. And the basic principles that arise from contractarianism are... reciprocity, prosocial behavior, and generally some basic concept of liberties such as the right to life. Hardly a non-functional society, is it?

Most people do not believe in the full breadth of contractarian ethics because most people do not believe in the full breadth any ethical theory and we can only baselessly speculate about a world where they do, because such a thing has never existed in the history of human society. To say that society will somehow lead itself to disaster if we all followed contractarianism and only contractarianism is both unprovable and entirely orthogonal to reality--this is just as true for both virtue ethics and christianity. I can just as easily assert that a society that runs itself according to contractarian principles would be vastly more moral than our own, because people would be more aware of their strategic self-interest and, being so aware, would act more morally because they can directly connect moral behavior to their own benefit; whereas a society that believed in Christianity (rather than a western society where the pre-Christian values of the Greeks inform our moral intuitions) would be nonfunctional, because people would be too preoccupied with life after death to improve the world we live in. Why is it that your bare assertion is right and my bare assertion is wrong?

Okay question @OliverCromwell

A sociopath or very powerful person can take immoral actions, and still be apart of society. They just have to have their crimes overlooked or simply not be caught else they lose the regard of everyone else.

Self interest here is not to refrain from immoral acts-but to simply avoid any consequences of them.

That way you still get the benefits of not being an outcast, and still profit from your immoral acts.

How do you respond to this?
If you possess the Ring of Gyges and are assuredly capable of avoiding any negative consequences that might come about due to your actions, then certainly, your self-interest is to do whatever you wish. But the Ring of Gyges is fiction--in the real world there is no person so powerful or so capable that they are categorically, assuredly able to avoid the discovery of their misdeeds or not suffer from retaliation for them. The strongest men, the most powerful kings, and the wealthiest billionaires still must fear for their ability to participate in society--even the strongest and richest and most powerful have had their misdeeds exposed, and the consequences of such exposure (ejection from society's mutual cooperation) are just as grave for them as they are for anyone else in the world.

And if that is not the case, well then, isn't it just as much in everyone else's self-interest not to allow someone so strong, so rich, so powerful, and so forth to come about in the first place? After all, you may well be the victim of whatever immorality that he might commit, just as I or anyone else, and it seems irrational to be willing to cooperate with such an actor when they are able to defect at a whim and you are powerless to stop it or even realize it has occurred. Is it not, then, strategically rational to include that an actor should not be so powerful in the constraints that we require to engage in mutual cooperation in the first place? Most people would agree that the creation of an artificial intelligence an order of magnitude more powerful than human beings without some sort of ethical constraints built into it would be immoral precisely for this reason, for instance.
 

The Name of Love

Far Right Nutjob
Why is it that your bare assertion is right and my bare assertion is wrong?
Because mine is not a bare assertion and yours is.

There have been Christian societies, and they were so successful that, even now, modern contractarians are dependent on Christian social capital even as they intellectually undermine it with their arguments.

Also, animals are not capable of moral behavior by a long shot, and you confusing pro-social behavior with moral behavior really demonstrates my point: contractarians don’t know what morality and goodness actually are. In fact, what moral goodness actually is doesn’t concern the contractarian; he changes the subject to “what’s the lowest common denominator set of rules that will allow everyone to pursue their own ends within a society that I’d prefer to live in?”
 

OliverCromwell

Permanently Banned
Permanently Banned
Because mine is not a bare assertion and yours is.

There have been Christian societies, and they were so successful that, even now, modern contractarians are dependent on Christian social capital even as they intellectually undermine it with their arguments.

Also, animals are not capable of moral behavior by a long shot, and you confusing pro-social behavior with moral behavior really demonstrates my point: contractarians don’t know what morality and goodness actually are. In fact, what moral goodness actually is doesn’t concern the contractarian; he changes the subject to “what’s the lowest common denominator set of rules that will allow everyone to pursue their own ends within a society that I’d prefer to live in?”
Yes but you see, while there have been successful societies that believe in Christianity, by your own metric that’s not the same thing as “Christian societies”. If you can just arbitrarily assert that societies which proudly and openly believe in contractarianism—such as America in the time of the founders—did not, in fact, actually believe in contractsrianism and were instead influenced by the pre-contractarian culture they inherited, I can just as easily assert that societies that believe in Christianity are not actually Christian and instead influenced by the pre-Christian culture they’ve inherited. After all, what do Plato and Aristotle have to do with Christianity, hmm? Methinks that Christianity is dependent on classical Greek social capital even as they undermine them through their arguments. How can you prove that all Christians really believed in Christianity and didn’t just say they believed in Christianity while actually believing in the pre-Christian western worldview derived from Greece and Rome? If you can arbitrarily declare that people who professed to believing things, and in fact in all their actions deeply seemed to believe those things (as with the founders and Contractarianism, or medieval Europe and Christianity) did not in fact believe those things simply because they happened to still be influenced by the previous beliefs of their society (something that literally every society always has), then you can declare that every belief that had every existed on Earth is, in fact, not genuine and not meaningful.

First off, that’s not even the subject I was discussing in my example—animals are capable of altruism, which goes beyond the common denominator necessary to maintain society, which is why I say animals are capable of “moral behavior” (since I think more or less everyone agrees that altruism is unambiguously moral behavior).

Contractarianism certainly doesn’t concern itself with the “lowest common denominator”, it concerns itself with those rules regulating behavior that are rationally derived from the basis if cooperation between rational agents. And that’s what morality is—a set of rules regulating behavior and distinguishing “good” behavior from “bad” behavior, a definition you can pull from any dictionary. Contractarianism captures this just as much as whatever ethics you have does.

All your complaint is doing is redefining “moral goodness” and presupposing that it is simply whatever your own worldview promotes and achieves—in which case of course neither contractarianism nor any other theory of ethics satisfies it. But that's not because contractarianism is wrong, it’s because your argument is facile and bankrupt and all other ethical theories are made to compete not against each other on their own merits but on an an arbitrary, lopsided playing field set by a shambling imbecile.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Yes but you see, while there have been successful societies that believe in Christianity, by your own metric that’s not the same thing as “Christian societies”. If you can just arbitrarily assert that societies which proudly and openly believe in contractarianism—such as America in the time of the founders—did not, in fact, actually believe in contractsrianism and were instead influenced by the pre-contractarian culture they inherited, I can just as easily assert that societies that believe in Christianity are not actually Christian and instead influenced by the pre-Christian culture they’ve inherited. After all, what do Plato and Aristotle have to do with Christianity, hmm? Methinks that Christianity is dependent on classical Greek social capital even as they undermine them through their arguments. How can you prove that all Christians really believed in Christianity and didn’t just say they believed in Christianity while actually believing in the pre-Christian western worldview derived from Greece and Rome? If you can arbitrarily declare that people who professed to believing things, and in fact in all their actions deeply seemed to believe those things (as with the founders and Contractarianism, or medieval Europe and Christianity) did not in fact believe those things simply because they happened to still be influenced by the previous beliefs of their society (something that literally every society always has), then you can declare that every belief that had every existed on Earth is, in fact, not genuine and not meaningful.

First off, that’s not even the subject I was discussing in my example—animals are capable of altruism, which goes beyond the common denominator necessary to maintain society, which is why I say animals are capable of “moral behavior” (since I think more or less everyone agrees that altruism is unambiguously moral behavior).

Contractarianism certainly doesn’t concern itself with the “lowest common denominator”, it concerns itself with those rules regulating behavior that are rationally derived from the basis if cooperation between rational agents. And that’s what morality is—a set of rules regulating behavior and distinguishing “good” behavior from “bad” behavior, a definition you can pull from any dictionary. Contractarianism captures this just as much as whatever ethics you have does.

All your complaint is doing is redefining “moral goodness” and presupposing that it is simply whatever your own worldview promotes and achieves—in which case of course neither contractarianism nor any other theory of ethics satisfies it. But that's not because contractarianism is wrong, it’s because your argument is facile and bankrupt and all other ethical theories are made to compete not against each other on their own merits but on an an arbitrary, lopsided playing field set by a shambling imbecile.

The founding fathers of America built their concept for a society based on Christian ethics. You can call them contractarians only insomuch as that system happens to overlap with Christian ethics.

We don't even need to go that far though. We can look at the eponymous Pilgrims from the Mayflower, and what came of their society. They explicitly were seeking a place to go and live where they would not be persecuted for their religious beliefs, and founded a colony on Christian principles. They prospered, and became the first permanent colony in what eventually became the USA. They did not progress or develop without hardships along the way, most notably dabbling with Socialism, but as was said by one of their leaders, they needed to repent from 'thinking we were wiser than God' before they could begin to prosper.

De Toqueville, in his famous study of American culture and what made it so prosperous so rapidly, and able to so quickly become a relevant factor on the world stage, specifically and explicitly noted it was the strong Christian ethics that underwrote the nation's strength.

Can you point to an instance where even a single town or village was founded on a group of people with stated and dedicated contractarian principles? Not a set of other principles which happen to overlap, but those principles specifically.

I'm not terribly familiar with contractarianism, so I honestly don't know if there is one.

Also, a significant number of Christians do pick up the Bible and study it regularly. And plenty also pick it up when struggling with sinful impulses, such as striking (or worse) someone for wronging us. Your assumption that this is not the case suggests to me you have little experience with actual Christians, instead of 'nominal' christians who have simply picked up some heritage from cultural inertia.

Myself, I read from my Bible multiple times every day, with an odd day here and there missed.
 

OliverCromwell

Permanently Banned
Permanently Banned
Can you point to an instance where even a single town or village was founded on a group of people with stated and dedicated contractarian principles? Not a set of other principles which happen to overlap, but those principles specifically.

I'm not terribly familiar with contractarianism, so I honestly don't know if there is one.

Also, a significant number of Christians do pick up the Bible and study it regularly. And plenty also pick it up when struggling with sinful impulses, such as striking (or worse) someone for wronging us. Your assumption that this is not the case suggests to me you have little experience with actual Christians, instead of 'nominal' christians who have simply picked up some heritage from cultural inertia.

Myself, I read from my Bible multiple times every day, with an odd day here and there missed.
My entire point is that this is a ridiculous standard to hold when deciding what values a culture "believes" in. Shockingly, cultures change, and the principles on which they were originally founded are not necessarily the principles that they most strongly believe in now. By this logic you could argue that Rome is not and has never been a Christian society and that Mecca is not and has never been an Islamic society, simply because they were founded long before Christianity or Islam were ever a glint in anybody's eye, and endlessly assert that any Christianity or Islam you might see in Rome or Mecca now are obviously just Christian or Islamic principles that just so happen to overlap with their previous Greco-Roman or Arabian pagan societies. I think we can both agree that this would be rather ridiculous, no?

Likewise my point with mentioning that most Christians have not studied the Bible is not to argue that no Christians do but to point out that people absolutely can follow some set of moral principles even without having a total, sophisticated understanding of its philosophical basis. As far as Christianity is concerned, for the majority of Christian history the vast majority of Christians never studied the Bible--they weren't literate, and most of the time the Bible wasn't even written in vernacular--and yet we don't hesitate to say that, say, Rome in 1000 wasn't a Christian society (or at least @The Name of Love doesn't, seeing as though he's repeatedly identified himself with the Catholic Church), and it seems absurd to assert otherwise.

I don't think the historical record suggests that the America of the 1770s was nearly as religious as the America of the Puritans of the America of the Second Great Awakening (for one thing, if it was then what would the Second Great Awakening have happened at all?), nor that the primary influence on the Constitution and the political thought of the founders wasn't the works of Locke and other major contractarian thinkers of the time who a good number of the Founders explicitly cite and whose thought is clearly reflected in the US constitution and most of the post-independence state constitutions, but frankly that's a well-tread historical argument that I doubt either of convince the other on. Even ignoring that, however, there are clearly significant parts of modern America which aren't especially religious (per recent polling Portland is plurality irreligious) and yet they haven't somehow collapsed back into the state of nature as The Name of Love wants to suggest. My point is asserting that this doesn't count because these people are mere cultural Christians without any secular basis for their ethical behavior simply for living in a society that happened to be majority Christian in the past is just as ridiculous as asserting that Rome obviously was never Christian simply because they lived in a society that happened to be majority Greco-Roman in the past. That every society is to some degree influenced by the past does not mean that they are necessarily defined by it.

At any rate, if you want to persist down this sort of ridiculous geneological thinking, I can do you one better--all human societies that have a notion of morality fundamentally based in contractarian thinking. Hamilton and Price's work on altruism suggests fairly clearly that altuistic impulses and general human moral intuitions evolved as a method of enabling cooperation with other humans and participation in cooperative societies, which is also the basic idea behind Contractarian ethical theory. Your Christianity and its notions of the golden rule and forgiveness and altruism are in fact meaningful and followed only insofar as they overlap with these human moral intuitions derived from contractarian thinking. In fact, every other notion of morality that humankind has ever had is meaningful only insofar as it overlaps with these intuitions. Contractarianism is the morality of biology, which existed before any human society or moral creed ever did--all of society is founded on fundamentally contractarian principles as a result, even if people aren't necessarily conscious of it.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
Altruism doesn't exist.
Very extremely wrong, because humans don't operate on a rational basis. The rational self-interest argument for child-rearing is extremely complex and bears no applicability to the natural world outside humans, and as humans are in most fundamental respects no different from any other great ape, it therefor bears no applicability to the human state of nature.

Fundamentally, child rearing is driven by two things. Annoyance at the complaints of the child providing a negative drive to suppress lack of support, and altruistic emotional responses, joy at advancing the interests of another, making supporting the child a positive drive. The positive drive is fundamentally necessary for any societal evolutionary theory to exist, as there is no way to reach deliberate instruction from the negative drive.

Without altruism, there is no mechanism to persist human traditions of constructive behavior, until you already have extensive constructive behaviors to engage in advanced reason.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
Very extremely wrong, because humans don't operate on a rational basis. The rational self-interest argument for child-rearing is extremely complex and bears no applicability to the natural world outside humans, and as humans are in most fundamental respects no different from any other great ape, it therefor bears no applicability to the human state of nature.

Fundamentally, child rearing is driven by two things. Annoyance at the complaints of the child providing a negative drive to suppress lack of support, and altruistic emotional responses, joy at advancing the interests of another, making supporting the child a positive drive. The positive drive is fundamentally necessary for any societal evolutionary theory to exist, as there is no way to reach deliberate instruction from the negative drive.

Without altruism, there is no mechanism to persist human traditions of constructive behavior, until you already have extensive constructive behaviors to engage in advanced reason.

No, you're wrong, and you even prove yourself wrong.

You see, "altruism" means this:

the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

What you are talking about is not altruism. "Joy at advancing the interests of another" is not altruism. Donating to charity is not altruism.

People raise children not out of rational self interest or out of altruism, but out of the morally and biologically reinforced satisfaction that they get from raising children. Calling that altruism given the dictionary definition of altruism is sophistry and obfuscation in the extreme and is generally why people like Nietzsche and Rand stood against compassion and altruism respectively.

This is why I say altruism does not exist by the definition that people often think of it. Selflessness does not exist. Sacrificing oneself for another does not exist.

All of these things are done because one prefers doing so to the alternative.

At the absolute closest point you can get to altruism, people sacrifice themselves for the satisfaction of living up to their own high ethical and moral principles, put even that is not altruism by its literal definition.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
What you are talking about is not altruism. "Joy at advancing the interests of another" is not altruism. Donating to charity is not altruism.
So you're going with a bluntly absurd definition of literally not caring about something yet putting resources toward it anyways. In the definition you give, "disinterested" is the same form of "interest" as in the phrase "conflict of interest". Merriam-Webster has this as definition 4-A-2 of interest, "participation in advantage and responsibility", where you're trying to use definition 1 or 2.

In other words, your utter ignorance of the fact that "disinterested" has several definitions keeps you from recognizing what people actually mean by that word, that altruism is benefit to others without benefit to oneself. Merriam-Webster has this listed very bluntly as definition 2 of Altruism: "behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species".

Feeling good about it doesn't make it stop being self-sacrificing. By that "logic", shoving a wire in your spine to lock yourself in permanent orgasm is the peak of self-interest because it's perpetual pleasure. There are interests beyond mere emotion and sensation, there is material needs and possessions that qualify for one's self-interest.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
So you're going with a bluntly absurd definition of literally not caring about something yet putting resources toward it anyways. In the definition you give, "disinterested" is the same form of "interest" as in the phrase "conflict of interest". Merriam-Webster has this as definition 4-A-2 of interest, "participation in advantage and responsibility", where you're trying to use definition 1 or 2.

No.

In other words, your utter ignorance of the fact that "disinterested" has several definitions keeps you from recognizing what people actually mean by that word, that altruism is benefit to others without benefit to oneself. Merriam-Webster has this listed very bluntly as definition 2 of Altruism: "behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species".

Does it benefit a mother to sacrifice her life for her child? Who decides that? The mother does. If the mother does, it means she prefers a scenario where she dies and her child lives than where she lives and her child dies.

Therefore, sacrificing herself for her child benefits her. That is the path that fulfills an important goal where alternatively available paths do not.

Also, generally, people behave in ways that can often be described by the social construct of altruism on an individual or tribalistic level, and very rarely on the species level.

Feeling good about it doesn't make it stop being self-sacrificing. By that "logic", shoving a wire in your spine to lock yourself in permanent orgasm is the peak of self-interest because it's perpetual pleasure. There are interests beyond mere emotion and sensation, there is material needs and possessions that qualify for one's self-interest.

No, but it being your preference as to what occurs does. If you are at a place where many potential options meet, and you decide that you prefer a specific path over all other paths- I do not believe that "self sacrifice" is a good way to describe that scenario.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
Does it benefit a mother to sacrifice her life for her child? Who decides that? The mother does.
She doesn't, though, not by the measures with which the terms "altruism", "self-sacrifice", "self-interest", and damn near everything else in this argument are defined by general society, and indeed everyone in this thread other than you. The entire notion of self-sacrifice is that you have some real physical resource, even if it's some portion of bodily integrity, and by losing that without personally benefiting from the act, you demonstrate virtuous behavior because you place some other thing above your own material benefits.

Fundamentally, the line of discussion is about resources, not feelings. Not preferences, not beliefs, the things being sacrificed are what you can hold, what you can touch, what is there for others to interact with. Because cognitive states cannot be determined definitively. Performative virtue is such a basic element of society that setting the bar at material detriment is a commonplace matter specifically because it weeds out the mere socialites who will sell themselves out the next moment in a wholly contradictory fashion, because they'll hardly ever surrender their physical comforts.

You seem to be trying to make a "ring -1" argument, trying to argue below any actually observed phenomenon to argue true motivations and pure reason... Without being able to understand the lines between interest as preference, interest as presence within a structure, and indeed interest as return on loan investments.

Also, generally, people behave in ways that can often be described by the social construct of altruism on an individual or tribalistic level, and very rarely on the species level.
The terminology used is "others of its species", not "the rest of its species", it's entirely applicable to benefiting only a single other individual. You're being a staggeringly bad pedant who appears willingly ignorant of definitions, and you seem to hold the bizarre position that personal preference is the only determinant of benefit. Not, you know, access to physically necessary resources. Or basic bodily integrity.

And the point of that is that altruism is not a social construct to begin with, it's a pattern of behavior that exists within purely instinctive layers such as the rudimentary responses of insects and pre-learning human actions. An infant's cries are no social construct, and the parent's response is little impacted by any such thing; both of these are wired into our brains at birth.

You are not the arbiter of what "altruism" means, and you keep demonstrating you take an utterly bizarre position on every involved concept.

No, but it being your preference as to what occurs does.
Fundamentally, preferences are what you believe will make you feel good, they're even less objectively real than the emotions are! Just because "your preference" is to burn six figures of your own property, does not mean you have not been self-sacrificing, because you have made your personal conditions factually materially worse for no personal gains.
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
She doesn't, though, not by the measures with which the terms "altruism", "self-sacrifice", "self-interest", and damn near everything else in this argument are defined by general society, and indeed everyone in this thread other than you. The entire notion of self-sacrifice is that you have some real physical resource, even if it's some portion of bodily integrity, and by losing that without personally benefiting from the act, you demonstrate virtuous behavior because you place some other thing above your own material benefits.

Fundamentally, the line of discussion is about resources, not feelings. Not preferences, not beliefs, the things being sacrificed are what you can hold, what you can touch, what is there for others to interact with. Because cognitive states cannot be determined definitively. Performative virtue is such a basic element of society that setting the bar at material detriment is a commonplace matter specifically because it weeds out the mere socialites who will sell themselves out the next moment in a wholly contradictory fashion, because they'll hardly ever surrender their physical comforts.

You seem to be trying to make a "ring -1" argument, trying to argue below any actually observed phenomenon to argue true motivations and pure reason... Without being able to understand the lines between interest as preference, interest as presence within a structure, and indeed interest as return on loan investments.


The terminology used is "others of its species", not "the rest of its species", it's entirely applicable to benefiting only a single other individual. You're being a staggeringly bad pedant who appears willingly ignorant of definitions, and you seem to hold the bizarre position that personal preference is the only determinant of benefit. Not, you know, access to physically necessary resources. Or basic bodily integrity.

And the point of that is that altruism is not a social construct to begin with, it's a pattern of behavior that exists within purely instinctive layers such as the rudimentary responses of insects and pre-learning human actions. An infant's cries are no social construct, and the parent's response is little impacted by any such thing; both of these are wired into our brains at birth.

You are not the arbiter of what "altruism" means, and you keep demonstrating you take an utterly bizarre position on every involved concept.


Fundamentally, preferences are what you believe will make you feel good, they're even less objectively real than the emotions are! Just because "your preference" is to burn six figures of your own property, does not mean you have not been self-sacrificing, because you have made your personal conditions factually materially worse for no personal gains.
The benefit the broad achievesis the continuation of her gentics. I don't really have an opinion on the topic. Just thought I'd point that out
 

OliverCromwell

Permanently Banned
Permanently Banned
What you are talking about is not altruism. "Joy at advancing the interests of another" is not altruism. Donating to charity is not altruism.

People raise children not out of rational self interest or out of altruism, but out of the morally and biologically reinforced satisfaction that they get from raising children. Calling that altruism given the dictionary definition of altruism is sophistry and obfuscation in the extreme and is generally why people like Nietzsche and Rand stood against compassion and altruism respectively.
So in other words... exactly what Hamilton and Price, and by exstension both I and the field of biology, defined as altruism? I mean if you want to insist that altruism is the wrong word for this quality than go ahead, but it doesn't make the rest of what I said any less valid.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
So in other words... exactly what Hamilton and Price, and by exstension both I and the field of biology, defined as altruism? I mean if you want to insist that altruism is the wrong word for this quality than go ahead, but it doesn't make the rest of what I said any less valid.

Yes. I don't think it should be described as altruism, because while that may be what your average biologist understands it as, the word has much greater religious and cultural significance outside of that with different meanings.
 

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