IN> Selflessness Paradox

[dande002 at fish.co.uk]

Quoting bc_petery <bpetery at yahoo.com>:

> Would a truly selfless person expect other people to act selflessly?
> Is it selfless to expect selfless behavior in others?

It depends what you think the point of selflessness is.  (And I think that this
is where the bright-canonical IN equation of good with selflessness breaks
down.)

According to common-sense selflessness is asymmetrical.  That is, an action that
benefits the agent is never selfless, but the same action benefitting someone
else would be.  In this case a selfless agent would not wish any specific
person to be selfless all the time, since each specific person would benefit
more if they acted non-selflessly at least some of the time.
A selfless agent might think that given the way most people act at the moment,
generally speaking it would be better if most people acted more selflessly than
they do.  But a selfless agent would want people to act in a self-benefitting
way at least some of the time.

That assumes that the point of selfless action is to benefit other people.  If
the point is something else: to annihilate individuality and independent
thought for example, then a selfless agent would want everyone else to be
selfless.  This is appropriate to a dark-heaven setting.

An Elohite would define selflessness as whatever produces the greatest good,
regardless of who exactly benefits.  For an elohite it is symmetric.  This
means that it is perfectly compatible with selflessness to benefit the elohite
if that creates the greatest good.  If it's a choice between buying a small
child an ice-cream and buying itself a good glass of wine, arguably an Elohite
should objectively all things being equal[1] buy itself the wine, because it
will appreciate it more.
Now you'd think that if everyone concentrated on bringing about the greatest
good it would help bring about the greatest good - but it is pretty much
accepted among philosophers that some valuable activities, which are necessary
for the greatest good, can't be achieved if that is the sole reason you care
about them: e.g. bringing up children, falling in love.
This presumably is why there were at least five other Choirs even pre-Fall.

David Anderson

[1] e.g. the child has not been led to believe that there is a possibility of
ice-cream.