From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 15:17:36 MDT
Jef writes
> Lee writes
>
> > We all understand the facts of the situation. All you've done
> > is to remove a useful concept from the English language: since
> > everything is selfish, it no longer serves a role in description;
> > nor do words such as "philanthropy", "unselfish", and "altruistic".
>
> Yes, we've agreed on the baseline, now let's move on to more productive
> discussion of these concepts.
> In the last few months, I have gone out of my way to praise excellent
> service, for example calling the head office of a retailer to let them know...
>
> In both cases, I think my motivations were two-fold:
> (1) [~ 80%] I was motivated by a rational desire to do my part
> to improve the world around me, by providing positive feedback
> on good service - why? - because I want my world to improve.
> (2) [~20%] I was motivated by my wetware to do something nice
> for someone and get a warm fuzzy feeling as a result.
>
> In my opinion, both of these motivations were completely
> selfish. It seems that you are implying that there's
> something more. Please help me understand if there is.
I do *not* think it appropriate to describe your reason number (2)
as selfish. For one thing, you make it sound like *you* exist
outside your wetware. You *are* your wetware. It has been
designed by evolution (it looks like) to be altruistic in
certain situations. Part of the mechanism of the way it's
implemented feels as though the warm fuzzy is your reward
and is your motive. Perhaps once, when you were a child,
it was your only reward. But now, even if you were going
to immediately die in either case, I'll bet that you would
still leave that tip. Now, it's become something that you
really want to do.
Secondly, I don't buy this "wanting to make the world a better
place". I think that you are rationalizing. By hypothesis,
this waitress will never affect you again. If the world is
indeed a "better place", it won't affect you. So why exactly
do you want to make the world a better place?
> I gave your thought experiment another earnest try, and here's what I came
> up with:
> (1)... My interactions with other people (simulated or not) would
> remain exactly the same and I would still care about them the same way.
So you would continue to tip a waitress in a restaurant that
you will never visit again? As Rafal wrote
### How long will you stay nice out of force of habit?
### Are you able to discard the layers of conditioning
### that normally would (hopefully) prevent you from
### stealing money from a blind beggar in the street?
(yes, that was his example, sorry). Rafal and I submit
that you should change your behavior. Why in the world
diminish your wealth in a strange cafe when no good would
ever come to you from it, and the world would only be made
a nicer place to a ridiculously small degree? Right now,
I claim, you do it because you have genuine feeling for
the waitress. If she no longer really existed, you should
stop tipping when you can get away with it.
> I feel that I may be still missing your point, however. I mentioned earlier
> the question about "how can an atheist be a moral person?" A related
> question is "how can an unbeliever feel awe of the universe?" Could it be
> that these questions relate in some way to this intangible quality that I
> think you're referring to?
Yes, I think that there is a connection. Some Christians
believe that they are only moral because of the Big Reward
lined up for them in the hereafter. So they infer that
morality without God is impossible (else, they reason, why
would anyone ever be altruistic?). But they are wrong,
because people were on occasion altruistic hundreds of
thousands of years ago, and---according to one theory I
like---men with genuine altruism often got the woman,
because she was winning the arms race at that point in
time, and could choose the sincerely altruistic male and
discard the one who was only feigning altruism.
Likewise for the "awe" you refer to. Our circuits for
awe came before anyone ever heard of God IMO.
Lee
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