Altruistic behavior is impossible. (psychological egoism)

I will keep my reply shorter this time. For every single action done by a human being in this world, just as I explained, you can use your imagination to pretend that there is a self interested reason behind it. I can't argue here, you can always do it. It's just a matter of imagination. The problem is that it has no connection to reality. That is what your are doing in attacking my homework argument - you are just imagining reasons behind one's actions. You said: "Improving the overall class grade is self interest because you are in that class and it makes you look better even if it has the alternating affect of making other people look better". That's an assumption that was not in my argument. You just imagined a relationship between improving the overall class image and my image. Which is wrong. Maybe I am just trying to help my colleagues achieve success. Because I am good person. The theme of the debate is "altruistic behavior is impossible" which means, by your own definitions,"the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others". It has nothing to do to your perception about a person's reasons, the questions that is under debate is if people can act altruistic - that is execute an action, for whatever reason or reasons they might have, but not out of self interest. Now, what you propose is that self interest is embedded in every reason. So whatever reason one has, what you mean to say is that the reason is always self interested. But again, an old man that chooses to save a child's life instead of his, just because it puts a higher value on the child's life is not self interest. For him, for the old man, maybe dying is not really what he had in plan - maybe he has nephews or family or a dog or a cruise ship waiting for him or a new drug that he is about to produce out of an unknown plant that he discovered and that new drug will end all human disease for ever and will grant people the possibility to live hundreds of years (you see, I have imagination also) and will also make him the richest man alive. But he makes a choice for the benefit of others (the parents of the child) and not for his own. Actually, I believe you have quite a cynical perspective of the world. People just doing good things not because they have to, but because they want to, most of them exhibit altruistic behavior. You say "It is hard for humans to accept the disorder or meaninglessness involved in this world.". Actually I believe that most humans are blind. There is order and meaning in the world, but they don't see it. And most of them, instead of searching they just choose to accept that there isn't any and behave accordingly - that is everyone for himself. As a last note, I will say that this being a debate, in my opinion you should be using it as an opportunity to embrace new perspectives and not to just re-enforce your own. When you say "Psychological egoism is a hard thing to argue as it is just human nature" or "How can you claim someone like that in a world where almost everything is explained by reason." it seems you are not giving any chance to any other argument. I am not saying I am right, that is why we are debating, I am just saying that it seems you are too convinced of your own arguments to even consider mine or someone else's. But I do have to admit you are making a good case. P.S.1: when a person holds a gun to your head and tells you to eat ice scream you do have a choice. You can choose to die. P.S.2: "How can you claim someone like that in a world where almost everything is explained by reason.". You are correct, almost everything is explained by reason. How about the rest, that isn't explained by reason?