ka@spanky.UUCP (08/11/83)
As a believer that the middle ground between two extremes is more often than not an improvement over either of the extremes, I would like to reply to Tom Craver's argument that a middle ground between altruism and selfishness is bound to be worse than one or the other of those two extremes. To illustrate my point, Tom, I would like to point out that you yourself advocate a position somewhere between pure altruism and pure selfishness. Now I'm sure that you will disagree with this claim, so permit me to procede slowly. First let me define altruism and selfishness as I use the terms in this article. By altruism, I mean the philosophy of con- sidering only the welfare of others. I think I am using the word the same way you are; you suggest "selflessness" as a symonym for altruism, and a pure altruist is interested only in the effect his actions will have on other people, not on himself. I won't bother to define the word "welfare" because its exact meaning is unimportant for the purposes of this article. By selfishness, I mean the opposite of altruism, i. e. the philosophy of considering only the welfare of onself. I don't know if this is what you mean by selfishness, but if for you selfishness and altruism are not exact opposites, then it would seem that your argument for one or the other doesn't hold much water. To clear up any lingering confusion here, let me say that an altruist may act in ways which have the *effect* of protecting his own welfare; but the ultimate justification for his actions will always be the welfare of others. For example an altruist may move out of the way of an oncoming train, but his reason for doing so will be that he will be unable to help others after he is run over, rather than that he values his life. Similarly, a selfish person may act in ways that have the *effect* of enhancing other people's welfare, but the ultimate justifi- cation for doing so will always be to enhance his own welfare. For example, a selfish person may walk to the store and buy food rather than just taking it from the nearest neighbor, but his reason for doing so will be to avoid going to jail rather than a concern about the welfare of his neighbor. In <360@houti.UUCP>, you wrote: Benefit to one's self, constrained only by respect for the rights of others, *is* a sufficient basis for morality. The key word here is "constrained." Once you palce *any* constraint on concern for self, you no longer have pure selfishness. You have some point in between selfishness and altruism. Possibly I am taking your remark out of context, but I don't think so. You have argued that people have rights in any number of articles, and I don't see how the existance of rights can be compatible with pure selfishness. You can argue that Objectivism is based upon a concern for other people's rights rather than other people's welfare, but that doesn't change the issue. The philosophies of pure altruism and pure selfishness have no concept of rights, only of personal welfare. Therefore in either of these theories, violating some- body's rights is just one form of injuring their welfare. Any philosophy which contains any sort of prohibition against injuring other people's welfare cannot be pure selfishenss. You could argue that with pure selfishness nobody's rights would be vio- lated because it is never in anybody's interest to violate somebody else's rights, and that I have indeed quoted you out of context. This could lead to an interesting discussion, which I will leave for later if you want to take me up on it. You argued several months ago that a belief in rights was incompatable with pure altruism. I think that it is equally incompatable with pure selfishness. Kenneth Almquist
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (08/13/83)
Kenneth, you are doing it again. I am referring to: To illustrate my point, Tom, I would like to point out that you yourself advocate a position somewhere between pure altruism and pure selfishness. Now I'm sure that you will disagree with this claim, so permit me to procede slowly. First let me define altruism and selfishness as I use the terms in this article. This is dirty pool. Tom has already gone to considerable trouble to define altruism and selfishness. You do not even have the grace to use new words. You get to define altrusim and selfishness, and then all your proof falls out. This is *NO GOOD*. If you can prove from general principles that your definition of altruism is THE definition of altrusim, you can get away with it. Good Luck, philosophers and theologians have been arguing this for centuries and we still are not very far. Sometimes language is confusing, but that does not give you the freedom to change the definition of the terms that someone else has used and hold them to it, unless you can prove to them that your definition is logically equivalent to their definition. The normal reaction of someone who has had their words twisted in this way is to pack up their marbles and go home, you know -- do you really want to provoke this reaction in every one you argue with? laura creighton utcsstat!laura