Human Motivations Are Never Selfless
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Selfless: entirely concerned with things other than yourself and your own needs and wants.
Motivation: the desire to act and move toward a goal; a reason for action.
People don't necessarily follow their conscience (i.e. follow their morals) because they "want to feel better" about themselves. They do it because they understand the difference between "right" and "wrong". People demonstrate this every day.
You are making an assumption, that there is NOT a 5th element
You've listed 4 elements, but didn't necessarily "prove" them-- they are just statements that can either be agreed to or disagreed with.
stepping in front of a bullet may in fact be instinct....but does that preclude it being a selfless act?
People may 'fight' for another reason than preserving "the self" .
"instinct" does not automatically equate to "self-ish".
Instinct is an unconscious act or urge. It has no conscious motivation behind it at all, which means that it is neither selfish or selfless.
as I stated, "Fight or Flight" may not necessarily be a self-preservation tactic
Regardless of being conscious or not, or an urge, an instinct is still a motivation, correct?
My four points necessarily contradict each other sometimes. Prove that there is an action that contradicts all four, and you have proven a fifth element. Otherwise, I can relegate motivation for that action to one of my four points.
This was actually a really interesting debate. I would say that both sides did very well here in framing the outline of their argument.
For me, this boils down to whether con can find a specific example of a selfless act performed by humans.
The example he chooses is someone taking a bullet for a child. (There are a variety of related sub items con touches upon). Con points out that the individual likely isn’t thinking about what they will gain, but the other individual benefit.
The definition pro gives (albeit late) for selfless is:
“Selfless: entirely concerned with things other than yourself and your own needs and wants.”
From here, the back and forth is about automatic reactions and whether they constitute a motivation - whether they are selfless or arbitrary. I don’t necessarily think that an reaction like diving in front of a child is necessarily unconscious or thoughtless - but this doesn’t really play out in the debate so I won’t consider it.
The conspicuously missing definition in this debate is “motivation”, and the back and forth between pro and con really all stems to the difference between their interpretation of motivations.
If “motivation” is either conscious, or means the direct reason for performing an action, then this goes to con.
If I am to accept motivation as more of an inherent or indirect cause for why the action is considered then I would chose Pro.
For example - jumping in front of a bullet as con points out is not some for joy, or motivated by direct benefit - but the instinct likely has some degree of inherent indirect conferred benefit. IE: the reason that the instinct exists is to assist long term survival.
For me, what this boils down to is some very basic interpretations that con gave me, and that covered in the definitions.
Con spelt or that there is no direct benefit conferred for dying for a child. The scenario seems pretty clear cut - sacrifice yourself for someone else. This appears on its face altruistic and inherently selfless. That pushes me towards con.
The definition provided by pro is that selfless is a where your not concerning yourself with your own benefit. This seems more in line with what Con is arguing - that an instinctual behaviour isn’t focused on the self - and can be considered selfless.
On top of this, without much in the way of detailed discussion on what motivation mean, I feel the implicit definition pro seems to use is a bit too tenuous for me to accept.
For these three reasons, I am pushed over to cons side, and will award him arguments.
Very interesting debate though guys.
Sources to Pro. Con uses 0 and doesn't even back anything he says up with anything other than his own extensions on the matter. Pro uses links to psychology websites and academic '.edu' websites in a very efficient way relative to Con in order to back up the notion that there exist two valid theories of human motivations. The Needs theory is more important to this debate as it backs up Pro's idea that continues for the other Rounds that even when we fight immediate impulse that seems selfish, we are being selfish for the long-term benefit of how we feel about ourselves and our self-image in the eyes of others as a means of power etc.
Con does nothing but ask Pro questions and then expand on Pro's answers... What I mean is, Con is literally helping Pro to make his (Pro's) case better, for the entire debate, even helping Pro by insisting that human instincts are not selfish.
I know what Con was trying to do, it was the only interesting way to fight this debate as Con. Con was trying to do the inverse of what most 'Con'-sides do here. Most Con debaters argue that instinctive, impulsive and brutal needs/wants are selfish while the extension of our need to feel good and better than evil scum isn't itself selfish. Con in this debate instead tries to reverse the burden of proof and explore how/why anything is selfish in the first place. Pro does the reverse to Con, asking how anything is selfless and Con could have gone into Buddhist and Taoist philosophy to explore the concept of a person consciously removing the 'ego' despite still being alive and present mentally but doesn't explore that at all.
Con was basically hosting a talk show where Pro was the interviewee and Pro performed adequately indeed.
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There's no true altruism is an interesting but non-falsifiable hypothesis. I ultimately take the side that it's without significance if good people do good because they enjoy it.