The Is No Such Thing As A Totally Selfless Act/Reaction

[Pattern-chaser]

Terrapin Station,
It comes down to the fact that it is not possible to react against one's own will.

Of course it is. One can be coerced to act against one's own will. An American with a gun, as an example, will normally be sufficient to cause someone to act against their will....

[Ecurb]

Terrapin Station,
It comes down to the fact that it is not possible to react against one's own will.

Of course it is. One can be coerced to act against one's own will. An American with a gun, as an example, will normally be sufficient to cause someone to act against their will....

This comes down to semantics. The person being coerced to do something he would not otherwise do at gun point is acting in accordance to his own will -- but the threat of being shot has alterred what he "wills" to do.

[AverageBozo]

Whatever you do you must make it the property of your will inorder to respond/react.

I disagree. There are acts that are instinctive, reflexive or automatic.

[Pattern-chaser]

Terrapin Station,
It comes down to the fact that it is not possible to react against one's own will.

Of course it is. One can be coerced to act against one's own will. An American with a gun, as an example, will normally be sufficient to cause someone to act against their will....

This comes down to semantics. The person being coerced to do something he would not otherwise do at gun point is acting in accordance to his own will -- but the threat of being shot has alterred what he "wills" to do.

OK, I take your point. But Popeye asserted that "it is not possible to react against one's own will". Including your point, this says that one is acting according to one's own will even if one is coerced into that action. So yes, there is a semantic issue here, but it is in danger of making a nonsense of what is being discussed if 'free will' can be coerced, yes?

[popeye1945]

Terrapin Station,
It comes down to the fact that it is not possible to react against one's own will.

Of course it is. One can be coerced to act against one's own will. An American with a gun, as an example, will normally be sufficient to cause someone to act against their will....

Patter Chaser.
Have you ever heard the phrase, there is always a choice? Indeed one can be coerced into any reaction whatsoever, but it must ultimately be your will behind the movement to do so. One doesn't need to like it for it to be the truth.

[Pattern-chaser]

Pattern-Chaser,
Have you ever heard the phrase, there is always a choice? Indeed one can be coerced into any reaction whatsoever, but it must ultimately be your will behind the movement to do so. One doesn't need to like it for it to be the truth.

I don't deny what you say. Rather, I think that the way you express it introduces confusion. As I said:

So yes, there is a semantic issue here, but it is in danger of making a nonsense of what is being discussed if 'free will' can be coerced, yes?

[popeye1945]

You are assuming freewill, I prepose there is no such thing as freewill. To believe in freewill one must ignore a whole history of causes which one has no responsibility for and isn't even aware of for the most part. I agree the semantics does confuse the matter somewhat. A person with a gun in front of one is a more immediate cause for one to react as told to.

[Sculptor1]

This is not unrelated to another thread dealing with the fact that there is no such thing as human action, that it is all basically human reaction. All organisms are reactive creatures. Take a behaviour which is considered heroic, the subject sees a friend in peril and reacts in a manner that puts his own life in danger, but in order to do that he must make the response the reaction the property of his own will, he can only react after he has done so. So when he does respond in this heroic manner he is fulfilling his own will, which makes it not entirely selfless. Mind you it takes nothing away from his heroic reaction its just the process is better understood. Any thoughts on the matter?

It's fine to play games like this.
This one attempts to render a selfless act as false.
Okay that is fine.
But if that is so, then it is also true that no act could ever be selfish in any sense.

A man who gives up his own life to safe the life of his children is not in anyway being selfless, because all he is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
By the same taken a man who decides to impoverish an entire community by securing a monopoly on their food supply and raise prices until they hurt, thus making himself a superbly rich man, is in now way selfish because all he too is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
Both men are simply being who they are. Neither selfish nor selfless.

[popeye1945]

Sculptor,
You're missing the point. I said in the intro that the fact that in order to react to a situation one must first make it the property of their will to do so, that detracts nothing from a heroic deed, it just clarifies the process of reaction. As I stated in another thread there is no such thing as human action there is but human reaction, precisely because it must be motivated and made the will of the subject before there can be response/reaction.

[RJG]

A man who gives up his own life to save the life of his children is not in any way being selfless, because all he is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
By the same token a man who decides to impoverish an entire community by securing a monopoly on their food supply and raising prices until they hurt, thus making himself a superbly rich man, is in no way selfish because all he too is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
Both men are simply being who they are. Neither selfish nor selfless.

I can't disagree with this. Well said. - You have changed my view.

-- My initial thoughts on this topic was that it is logically impossible to be selfless (to do for others; not for self); therefore everyone is selfish (can only do for themselves), which was bad logic (as the impossibility of X does not mean the automatic possibility of ~X). Sculptor makes a good point. It is not that they are necessarily "selfish" (or "selfless"), it is that they are just doing (reacting) as they only can, (...which seemingly agrees with Popeye's main point.)

We are all just auto-reactive beings. Therefore our actions/reactions cannot technically be labeled as "selfish" or "selfless" any more than we can label the actions/reactions of any individual domino as "selfish"/"selfless" in a string of falling dominoes.

[Sculptor1]

A man who gives up his own life to save the life of his children is not in any way being selfless, because all he is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
By the same token a man who decides to impoverish an entire community by securing a monopoly on their food supply and raising prices until they hurt, thus making himself a superbly rich man, is in no way selfish because all he too is doing is fulfilling the dictates of his will.
Both men are simply being who they are. Neither selfish nor selfless.

I can't disagree with this. Well said. - You have changed my view.

FFS.
These examples are so **** stupid, they were designed to show how wrong the idea was.
The examples render selfless ans selfish as meaningless concepts.

-- My initial thoughts on this topic was that it is logically impossible to be selfless (to do for others; not for self); therefore everyone is selfish (can only do for themselves), which was bad logic (as the impossibility of X does not mean the automatic possibility of ~X). Sculptor makes a good point. It is not that they are necessarily "selfish" (or "selfless"), it is that they are just doing (reacting) as they only can, (...which seemingly agrees with Popeye's main point.)

We are all just auto-reactive beings. Therefore our actions/reactions cannot technically be labeled as "selfish" or "selfless" any more than we can label the actions/reactions of any individual domino as "selfish"/"selfless" in a string of falling dominoes.

[popeye1945]

Selfish not selfish, the fact the in order to do something one must make it there will to fulfill that will which means he has a personal investment in the out come. This is process and does not diminish heroic reactions to dangerous situations. Again it is simply clarifying the process as something that is not entirely selfless.

[popeye1945]

I can't disagree with this. Well said. - You have changed my view.

-- My initial thoughts on this topic was that it is logically impossible to be selfless (to do for others; not for self); therefore everyone is selfish (can only do for themselves), which was bad logic (as the impossibility of X does not mean the automatic possibility of ~X). Sculptor makes a good point. It is not that they are necessarily "selfish" (or "selfless"), it is that they are just doing (reacting) as they only can, (...which seemingly agrees with Popeye's main point.)

We are all just auto-reactive beings. Therefore our actions/reactions cannot technically be labeled as "selfish" or "selfless" any more than we can label the actions/reactions of any individual domino as "selfish"/"selfless" in a string of falling dominoes.
[/quote]

RJG
I stated that the process did not detract from the deed done just that the subject's reaction has an emotional element the desire to fulfill his will which makes it not entirely selfless. Common sense tells us a heroic deed is itself largely selfless if one puts one's life on the line to aid another. Perhaps I am missing something here. To exploit another with no consideration for what happens as a result of the exploitation certainly does seem to me to be selfish. We are not talking about someone in isolation but someone as a member of a community with a given morality, it sounds to me like the inferrance is that the subject is an autonomous being and as Nietzsche stated, morality and autonomy are mutually exclusive. Am I missing something here?

[popeye1945]

Whatever you do you must make it the property of your will inorder to respond/react.

I disagree. There are acts that are instinctive, reflexive or automatic.

AverageBozo,
Instincts are conditioned reactions made over time to become automatic and below the consciousness level. They arise when the object say a predator is a constant in ones environment still a reaction but you may have a point here, as the reaction bypasses all thinking because thinking takes time and to much time means death.