Selflessness does not Exist

Intro: For my rebuttals I will just take out snippets from Pro's most recent entry as there is a lack of structure to address point by point. Rebuttals: "The concepts of morality and ethics only have meaning with respect to a specific goal. For most of humanity, this goal is, unsurprisingly, the benefit and prosperity of humanity." This is a fair statement, although morality is defined as "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." [1]. Just so we can be clear to a definitive, objective definition. "Thanks in part to our social upbringing, the mere act of performing a socially acceptable action, especially to one's personal detriment, is viewed as virtuous and worthy of praise and respect, and thus brings about positive emotions. " This certainly can happen, and positive emotions can definitely be a product of moral actions, or moral behavior. "Conversely, failing to perform a moral action often results in strong feelings of guilt and shame. In these cases, virtuousness itself is the benefit that outweighs the other detriments to the self. The situation is compounded further if punishment and social retribution is on the table - which is why laws are effective." Up to this point, Pro was fairly on point, but here is where I begin to disagree to a certain extent. It is a possibility to undergo guilt or shame, or social ridicule by failing to abide by moral actions, although, quite often selfless acts can be going the extra mile, if you will. Punishment and laws are not quite relevant to selfless acts, as laws are moral baselines, and selflessness is usually extended and going beyond the baseline, and acting beyond what is required, and expected. That is why guilt and shame aren't common occurrences due to failure of selflessness. Since guilt isn't usually a repercussion from lack of being selfless, then when we are selfless, we aren't elimating negative emotions. "In fact, it was almost certainly a poor objective choice in terms of his own benefit. At the time, however, his emotional state was enough to skew his judgment and make it seem worth the risk. As I said previously, a single strong emotion is often enough to block out other emotions, as well as one's reasoning capabilities. Thus, Autrey was still acting selfishly with regard to his emotion, just not intelligently." Since Pro basically concedes that it was a poor objective choice by Autrey concerning himself, this meets the requirements of what being selfless is. He was reducing the possibility of future positive emotion, increasing chance of negative emotion, and reducing the chance of negative emotion for Hollopeter and increasing the chance of positive emotion for Hollopeter. This was selfless in all aspects. As for the last sentence, I don't quite understand what Pro means by this. "However, it is psychologically impossible for one to actually perform any action contrary to one's own emotions." This is a very interesting thing. We are in fact unable to act considerably contrary to our emotion, but this could be to a certain degree. If we ultimately decide that a donation outweighs our loss, then we have acted selflessly. We may be reluctant to give, but ultimately to donate would be to decide it is the right thing to do. What if one regrets the donation afterwards or doesn't receive conscious emotional benefit from the donation? This would essentially be selfless, as there wouldn't be any emotional gain. Could one be void of emotional benefit? I believe they can be under certain circumstances, such as acting selflessly because they know it's the right thing to do, not because they will feel "good" about their own actions. "Regardless of whether they are correct, a vast majority of people on this planet have been convinced or taught that there exists some sort of objective, cosmic standard of morality that is always right and perfect and that we should all abide by regardless of the circumstances. This is often handed down by a deity and also accompanied by a promise/threat of an afterlife." Most morals presented by a religion shouldn't have different circumstances than morals that aren't accompanied by the possibility of a eternal or punishment of any kind. Because morals, are what are good and right, and shouldn't be effected by the threat or existence of a punishment. Because if they are, then they aren't truly morals. Obviously human error exists, and humans have the ability to be effected, but that doesn't eliminate objective morals and possibility of acting void of consideration of punishment.