Well, clearly your understanding of the word "selfish" is yours and yours alone. Selfishness is being chiefly concerned with your own advantage to the exclusion of others. The moral implication of that is in fact a separate issue. As soon as one concerns themselves with the welfare of others they are not acting selfishly even if the welfare of others isn't their major concern. That's obvious, merely from a simple common sense understanding of the term.

Your game apparently is to get people to describe behavior, then because all behavior has some reasoning attached to it, label that reasoning as selfish so that you can level some heavy handed criticism (quite hypocritically I think) against their basis for making normative claims and that is sophomoric and puerile.

 

EDIT:

I'm sorry I didn't address your question. Why, in my opinion is "societie's" definition of "selfish" superior to your definition? I think that is your question. There is a very simple answer to that . The definition of "selfish" that everyone else uses actually affords us the ability to make a distinction and there is (at least seemingly) a distinction to be made. Your definition of "selfish" on the other hand encompasses all action. It is meaningless. It describes nothing. You might as well just say that all actions are actions which is true in a very trivial sense.

Highlighed for relevence.
EXC, your argument seems to be based on your own definition of "selfish" which doesn't match the definition of the people you are criticising.
You are effectively strawmanning them by using a different definition to them.

There is a difference between "selfishness" and "rational self interest".
Rational self interest is doing what is best for your personal human needs.
Selfishness is when you chase a desire at the expense of people around you.
Because a fair amount of our human needs require social acceptance and co-operation, selfishness is actually short sighted irrationality rather than genuine rational self interest.

I think that we all believe in "rational self interest" and that "morality" is important because it helps us meet this.
You seem to be attacking strawmen that no one believes in anyway.

You mean, is "having regard" for others selfish if it's selfishly motivated?
I think it's time we distinguish between "justification" and "motivation".
Justification is about why we "should" do something.
Motivation is an explanation of why we do do something.
Even if a person's behaviour is rationally justified in serving their self interest, that doesn't mean it's in their mind motivating them.
The majority of our actions are out of habit rather than from making rational decisions.
In those cases, we have the pure motivation of having a disposition to do them, that they feel right to do.

If someone has found that acting without regard for others has caused him hassle, he might decide to devellop regard for others to avoid this hassle.
So far, it's a purely selfish motivation.
After a while, this regard internalises and just becomes part of his natural habits.
He is no longer "thinking about himself" in this regard, he does it naturally.
He has a natural regard that requires no further motivation, it no longer needs a selfish motive.

 

You need to explain what you mean by "delusion" as well.
Normally, delusion means that they believe something to be true when it's false.
But you call compassion a delusion.
If someone feels for someone then they have compassion - they feel it.
Even if, as you claim, it comes from "conditioning". If they've been conditioned to have compassion (i.e. feel bad at someone else's suffering) then it's still there. They still have this compassion.

I just don't see how you can call compassion a "delusion".
If someone feels bad at someone else's suffering, that's compassion and they have it.

READ THE DEFINITION.  You are missing the key phrase in both 1. and 2.  "without regard for others" "in disregard of others"  Self gratification without regard or concern for other people is selfish.  Self gratification while regarding others is NOT selfish.

Examples: I want that penny lying on the sidewalk.  I push a child out of the way, stomp on an old man, and kick the homeless person on my way to the penny.  I am selfish.

I want that penny lying on the sidewalk.  I gently encourage a child back to her mother, assist an old man down some steps, and politely ask the homeless person if he wants the penny before I pick it up and put it in my pocket.  I am not selfish.

Okay, overly simplified, but that is the meaning of the definition.  Not that I wanted the penny, but that I didn't tromp all over everyone else on the way to getting the penny.

Also, from my long ago ethics class:

Morality is what you, personally, believe to be right or wrong.  Notice there is NOTHING here about what is right or wrong, only that it is an individual's beliefs.

Ethics is how you conduct yourself as regards contracts.  How do you do business?  Do you meet your obligations? 

Law is the codification of ethics and morality, that is, it is morals and ethics written down and defined with consequences for not following the law.

Morality has nothing to do with society.  It is about the individual.  Ethics is more concerned with an individual's interactions with societal relationships.  Law is all about society.  My morals may or may not match up with the law.  If my morals are in line with the law, I will probably feel less stressed and more willing to follow the law.  But if I want to stay out of jail, I had best follow the law. 

My morals are my own.  I own them.  I determine them.  I decide how I'm going to follow them - not my parents, not society, not religion, not you.  You get to decide about your own morals.  And from reading your posts, you are chock full of morals.  Never say you don't have any, because you are stiff with them.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

I don't see the point of invalidating perfectly good concepts just becaue they are abused by people with a hidden agenda.

We all know what it means to be a prick - as in someone who cares not how his (or, indeed, her!) actions creates problems and grief for others - so obviously that is "selfish" in a different way than it is being "selfish" in such a way that you are looking after yourself and your personal interests but still acknowledging the personal space and integrity of other people by virte of some rather simple principles of "morality" such as considering the consequences of your decisions from alternative points of view from tyhose that are only about self-gratification.

OK, so we may be sophistic and say that strategical dispositions for not making yourself into an unpopular prick are "selfish" on a larger scale, because you don't want to be the subject of various types of revenge - but this is to debate in a fool circle. Clearly, an act of the moment can be "selfishly" motivated by the protagonist but still be perceived as "unselfish" by most observers. What alternative terms should we use then? Any reasonably intelligent person of some life experience knows the difference between being "selfish" and just taking care of business in an ethical manner. A certain nimbleness is required to pull that off. A balance.

The only reason for having regard or pretending to have regard for others is for one's own concern.

Haven't you dated a guy that seemed to have a high regard for your welfare, but all he wanted was to get laid? I think we all play this game and put on the act.

If we don't have free will this discussion is meaningless because we only do what seems like the best strategy maximize our own pleasure and comfort.

Genetics and conditioning have combined to produce behaviors that humans and animals use to maximize survivability and that of it's genes. In humans we judge what's right by how it feels.

 

Right, but this means then that we do things like charity, government, relationships, etc... based on how it makes each of us feel rather than it's actual long term effect. This is why we can't solve problems like war, poverty, person conflicts.

It's like if someone has a weight problem. They could eat a cheeseburger now because it makes them feel good now, or they could say no because they feel better in the long run. Either way it only concern for themselves. Now you could beat yourself up and tell your self your a worthless fat pig other people could insult you until you gained the will power to diet. Or you could let medical science treat you with pills and surgery to reduce the discomfort of dieting. Which is better?

We do the same thing with trying to get people to be compassionate and unselfish. One is insulted and outcasted until they conform to the pressure. And some people never conform to the pressure.

 

A delusion is holding onto a belief despite strong evidence to the contrary. So as an analogy, if we held onto a belief that the earth was the center of the universe despite evidence to the contrary, this belief would greatly hold back the advance of astronomy. Same thing with any social advance toward increasing pleasure and reducing pain.

Most people are arguing the world would be better if we had more compassion and less selfishness. I believe this is wrong, we just need to apply science and rationality to the causes of pleasure and pain.

But look at people with autism. The are castigated for their lack of 'compassion' and empathy. Same thing sometimes happens to people with brain injury that restricts their ability to feel. What are they lacking that you have? Just an ability to derive pleasure from these compassionate activities. But society ignorantly treats it as moral failure.

If there is to be any hope of resolving this issue, your thesis must be made clear and comprehensible. Consequently we must separate these disparate claims. Claiming that individuals always act (knowingly or unknowingly) to promote what is in their interests is different than to claim that they act to promote what they take to be in their interests. It's a difference between your real and perceived interests.

You are very adroit at moving between these claims which gives what you're saying the appearance of having more explanatory power than it actually does. Neither claim however is singularly plausible. The first is flawed on empirical grounds. Many times people fail to promote their interests, even when others would agree they are trying to promote them. One may obtain what they want, yet remain unsatisfied. It is not the case that people always aim to promote their real interests.

The second alternative is shown to be equally implausible when you consider, as I said earlier that your interests and your self-interests are distinct. It very well may be true that individuals always act to promote what they believe to be in their interests, it is not the case that they always act to promote what they believe to be in their self-interest. Often people believe they are acting from benevolent motives. Even if it can be shown that people are sometimes mistaken about that it doesn't strengthen your argument because to show that they had a hidden motive only proves that they were mistaken about what their motive really was, it doesn't prove that they were mistaken about what they believed their motive to be. Since they believed their motivation was to promote their non-self interests, the second alternative is also defective.


I fear that the answer for humanity may elude us for some time. I don't really have an answer to that question. I readily admit that there is a seed of truth in what you are saying. It should be obvious to anyone that they are frequently motivated to promote their self-interest, and that upon reflection, occasionally one finds that their actions once believed to be unselfish were actually motivated purely by a desire for self-satisfaction. Furthermore, actions that are perceived to be unselfish are usually rewarding in some way regardless of motive. I believe that all adds to the allure of such theories. 

To answer your question about sufficient proof, the weakness of this theory is not lack of evidence. There is plenty of evidence that people are selfish to be seized upon. The appeal and deficiency of the thesis are one and the same, namely its ambiguous formulation. There's a difference between motives and consequences, between interest and self-interest, real interest and perceived interest, and between claiming that people always act to promote their self-interest to some degree, and claiming that they always choose actions which will promote their self-interest more than any other available option.

Some may be confounded because these distinctions are not readily apparent or immediately evident, but when the disparities between these ideas are clearly delineated we see that it is not correct. It is not true. It is not an accurate description of human motivation or behavior to say that people are always motivated by self-interest.

I think it is also important to put the word "important" in proper context.

NONE of us are "important" to biology. The species can continue on without any individual here.

When I say "important" I am simply strictly speaking from an economic aspect. YOU can own a restorante but you cant do all the work yourself. There needs to be someone serving the food and washing the dishes. IF those people don't have to go to government for help and CAN get what they need from the job they have, that costs everyone less. HOWEVER, if all a business cares about is their CEOS, their ability to market and their shareholders and their profits, at the exclusion of those who work at the bottom end and want no rules at all, then why should big business be surprised when the middle and poor ask for help from government?

We are in this together, not in a litteral connected sense anymore than a guy I have never met in Japan owes me anything personally. WE are however affected by others, and in that sense without the self introspection of ourselves, we can get tunnel vision and fail to see the grander economic scope. It is easy to think of oneself and that is a quick and short route.

The right wants to make it out to be  the left claiming "you owe me". NO, no one is "owed" anything. I am suggesting that since we are not cold and callous and that we are capable of introspection, that we use it and understand that others ARE NOT clones of each other. Being aware of one's surroundings and being aware that what one does DOES affect others.

I think we should put violent people in prision. Forgive me for not wanting to be physically harmed.

Having said that it is true that most people do not get to pursue their happiness. They are sold utopias to be like others. They are sold expensive endevors like marriage. They are taught that if they don't have material things or live in a mansion, they are loosers.

Kids idolize singers and sports figures and their parents tell them "you can be whatever you want " failing to tell them that the spots at the high end are few and most don't get there. On top of that the pay gap is making it more and more impossible to make ends meet and people have to work more and more for less.

I DO think people should pursue what makes them happy, but our economy is not maximizing that ability. Our economy teaches society to chase their neighbor instead of being themeselves.

You claim that people always pursue their real interest, and their real interest is self-satisfaction at the moment. Yet they remain unsatisfied, so their actions could not have been the pursuit of their real interest because satisfaction was their real interest according to your definition.

Saying that people always seek satisfaction but that doesn't guarantee that they will be satisfied is an admission that one's actions are sometimes the pursuit of things that are not their interests unless you're talking about their perceived interests.

 

The difference between one's interest and one's self-interests is that all of your interests are your interests, but they are not all your self-interest. People have many interests. The fact that an interest originates from you doesn't automatically make it an interest in your welfare or advantage.
 

 

What one should do or what one "needs to" do are important matters I think, but it's not the matter I'd like to address at the moment. You've made a claim about what people actually do, and human nature. One that I consider to be implausible. It is quite different to say that people ought to be self interested and so they ought not give to charity than to say that people are self interested so they will not give to charity. One is a philosophical matter while the other is not, and realistically, if the second is true then the first is completely irrelevant.

I think the name and the avatar paint sort of an androgynous picture.

Haha. Incidently, the vigor is probably due to my competitive enjoyment of debate.
Another 'incidently'; defending the concept of compassion nearly did get me laid once. If I hadn't been feeling too ill that night to go through with it...

We go through a lot of changes from being babies.
The main ones I can think off is puberty (at 10 years I was extremely baffled by TV shows like Saved by the Bell and the main guy's obsession with a girl) and another main one is having your own child (I've heard that I completely changes your life perspective). But there's also just general maturation. e.g. as a baby, we cry when we're hungry, as we get older we might ignore hunger if we're really absorbed in an activity we're doing.

Personally, my experience of "compassion" was largely similar to yours, not "getting it" and being told I was being "selfish" and that I should feel more "caring". That said, I did notice genuine feelings of compassion. Feeling bad for someone else's ills or feeling happy for someone else's fortune without it being in relation to me. The most obvious examples are books and films, because you get absorbed into a story and aren't thinking about yourself.

I've noticed that it comes out most when I'm "relaxed", that is, my own "needs" are largely satisfied.
When I'm not worrying about my own problems, I generally find it easier to appreciate someone else's.

I wouldn't say "always", but pedantacism aside...
Is the concept of "selfishness" the problem here, or is it how it is being abused.
The couple you described seem to be resorting to angry accusations rather than calmly discussing the problem.
What if they had instead said; "Seriously now, I've cooked for the last 4 days in a row and you're willing to do one. I think I'm getting a bit of a rough deal here..."

It's basically accusing them of being a bit selfish, but it does so in a clear rational way, rather than just bitching at them.
Personally, I think that the problem was "bad communication" rather than a problem with the concept of seflishness.

Again, I don't think "morality" and "fairness" are the problem here. Look at the bit in bold - "That only leads to one party taking advantage of each other" - that's a statement in favour of fairness. It sounds to me that your disagreement is with what some people claim is "fair", but is really "unfair".

I think morality is similar. What you say about cooperation and social contract are effectively moral claims - infact you seem to have a very familiar moral theory to Thomas Hobbes. "Egotism" (the humans just chase their own pleasure) and "Social Contract Morality" (that we need to follow rules of co-operation to achieve this) are classic philosophical positions. I think that you're problem isn't with the concepts of "fairness" and "morality" but more with how these concepts can be abused, and how some people have incorrect notions of what is moral and what is fair.

Sounds fair.
"Drop out"s should be given achievable targets that will gradually get them back on board, be given the support needed to succeed, but only if they're doing their bit too. Incidently, that's generally how social security works. In England, to get jobseeker's allowance you need to show evidence of looking for work. It's not a flawless system but it's on the right track.