Let us say there are good and bad people in the world. Human nature is gray, and you can’t tell the good from the bad until after experience.
In turn, let’s say we have a duty to ontology. That is good people recognize how reason, understanding, imagination, perspective, and judgment define who we are, and because these abilities enable everything else, they deserve respect. Likewise, some people use these abilities for worse, not better, so we have to recognize this diversity. Free will is out of our control, so we cannot compel bad people to do good things.
Now let’s say we have a naive altruist who doesn’t acknowledge this. Instead, the altruist believes people are necessarily good, and eagerly helps others. This includes helping bad people. The naive altruist also believes it’s socially responsible to compel others to be universally helpful.
What should the deontological egoist do?
As an added bonus, say the naive altruist has a Puritan attitude. The altruist is self-sacrificing to the point of confusing play with work. This is possibly, or even likely, due to a neglected upbringing such that the altruist feels too guilty to enjoy oneself.
Does “naive altruism” constitute people who are too lazy to learn basic science, but make the same topic over and over, asking the same bunch of glaringly ignorent people the same questions?
I was thinking more along the lines of rules of engagement. For example, maybe you belong to a club, and deontological egoists know the rules whereas naive altruists don’t. Naive altruists who don’t know the rules end up making fools of themselves by caring too much for their own good. They also accuse others of being unhelpful when others don’t have a responsibility to do so, nor do naive altruists necessarily have the authority to accuse.
How would a deontological egoist get a naive altruist to knock it off?
It’s like you rattled on for a second to distinguish the two perspectives and then failed to realize that one wouldn’t enjoy the same thing as the other.
The deontological egoist and the naive altruist are going to have severely contradictory definitions of “helping”, including helping others.
So neither will agree on what “helping” actually means or does. For the deontological egoist, “helping” is best described as self-realization. The naive altruist isn’t interested in self-realization.
Is it necessary for that? Or is it just not necessary that it not be the case?
Is it possible that a person who wasn’t self actualized might act out the proper behaviors to satisfy altruism?
Maybe self actualization may be the point at which is all makes sense, but I don’t even think a person needs to be self aware, let alone self asserted or whatever to simply do good things and not bad ones.
Good, you found one of Daktoria’s threads. I thought you would appreciate them.
Anyway, I think it would be good to get clear what you mean by each of these categories: (I wonder if conservative and liberal are not in the background somewhere) A deontologist follows rules, generally out of some sense of duty. They are less influenced by outcomes in their decisions about actions. They may or may not be an egoist. But since the deontologists in question here are egoists, I would take this to mean something that they strive to be noble by fulfilled ethical stances. They are not particularly trying to help others, but rather to be a certain kind of perfect character. Perhaps a bit reminiscent of Greek ideals.
The naive altruist, since they are being contrasted with these deontologists are, I assume, more pragmatic. I mean this not as a positive criticism, but simply that they focus on consequences and less on rules. They want to make things better. Since you are calling them naive, I assume that they are not simply consequentialists/pragmatics, but also have a false image of reality/other humans.
So one thing right off the bat is we have a potentially neutral descriptive term for the deontologist egoists but a pejorative term for the altruists. Any bridging of the gap between these two groups should start with neutral, more purely descriptive terms.
I’ll leave it at that for now, just to see if we are on the same page.
To me this means that is yet more to the category naive altruist than in implied by those two words. One could argue that a Buddhist or a Christian could be naive altruists, and even seeking to be that via their self-realization processes. But here that is not possible, so the term Naive Altruist needs further definition.
side note: if the goal of the deontological egoist is self-realization, it would seem like the naive altruist poses no problems. The DE can simply ignore the NA and seek his or her own realization. Unless one of the rules is to help, but then, really, all the DE has to do is say something like ‘pay attention more to what actually happens’ and similar post-event reminders to evaluate what just happened.
What if we turn the words around and look at a de ontological altruist, and a naïve egotist? That make more sense. A de ontological altruist could be a follower of the categorical imperative, seeking goodness for a reason. A naïve egotist, has yet to learn what it means to grow out of narcissistic self absorption, although having intrinsic ideas of goodness. Narcissism tend not to have a grasp on how goodness may be shared.
Ok, I’ll go with the idea that one can diffentiate a bad act from a good one, but the second you say that you make a practice of making good acts is the second you lost me.
I say this about as often as you talk about your home furnishing, but you really are a positive role model for would be self-destru… altruists. You do what’s generally considered wrong, you admit to it without any joy or condescension, just simple factual statements. Someone as dogmatic and moralistic as VR may attract tentative followers, but every person you ‘save’ from doing something stupid like ruining there savings, health, career, positive outlook, etc. you made a friend. Yes, that new friend wouldn’t do much for you (you say your offline friends would, you must be feeding them a line of tripe rather than the good advice you tell people on ilp), but they certainly would offer some thanks if asked.
The only reason to build people up with your advice is because the ones who hear you are by default the one’s who know you and the one’s who don’t don’t by default, so the hell with them. Or you could always build people down like moralizers, hardly helping the world except incidentally and creating a long list of people who don’t particularly like you for what your advice has done to them.
I’m just saying that in the nebulous swirl of shit that is the universe, the possibility exists that a blind, dumb, deaf imbecile might stumble across the appropriate set of actions to satisfy whatever label for whatever set of actions you might be looking for. In theory of course. If you wanted to actually see this imbecile do it and you planned on picking the actions you were looking for, you’d probably have to sit and watch a whole ton of them.
I give people in real life the same advice I do on ILP. I explain that licensed professionals run the risk of losing a license and 100k in educational expenses and they have no other knowledge in most cases that might earn them a comparable living. That’s more risk than 3 years in min security for selling the amount of drugs you’d have to sell to spend the same money as the average attorney and pay no taxes.
There are 4 people in the city where I live who’s entire existence…rent, utilities health insurance fuel car payments etc are ALL a direct result of my actions. I guess I should mention that sometimes. I haven’t done a whole lot of retail in a long time. So in effect what I do is source enough to satisfy the demand and then see to it that it flows in such a way as to maintain the most profit over time. I run very low margins in a lot of instances but because of that I can have it really easy and just do volume. A friend of mine is having a surgery this morning. He’s gotta get a bunch more melanomas cut off. He has these surgeries every week. He will probably die in the next couple of years and he’s only 35. He can’t work, he doesn’t have a family and his health insurance costs him out the ass. So I help him…in a sense. He makes a lot more off it than I do. The first philosophy book I ever read was Berkowitz’s “the ethics of an immoralist”. The allure of it and the notion that I could just get what I wanted to get and do what I wanted to do and have what I wanted to have by virtue of my own will so long as I asserted it properly turned out to be a dangerous idea. A lot of people overdosed. A lot of people ruined their relationships with their loved ones, lost scholarships got kicked out of college, arrested, beaten and robbed god only knows man it’s a much nastier world out there than you often see on tv. I think it’s bad for dumb kids to be given the idea that it doesn’t matter if other people make choices that cause themselves to suffer so long as you know more than they do and you can figure out a way to benefit from it.
Another friend of mine was homeless 2 years ago and had no place to go and now he’s about to move to another state and live in another friend’s rental house and I"m going to help him to retire so that he can rest after a life of sleeping in the rain and shit.
I could go on and on. I used to sell cocaine and heroin and extacy and a little meth here and there and I just kinda ended up growing up in that environment and it took me until I met some people who lived clean normal lives to realize the harm I’d been contributing to. SO…I try to be a good person now. Like you know…MLK or Mandella. Those guys knew that some laws were unjust and that the alleviation of human angst and or suffering should be the primary goal for everyone.
Damnit Smears, have you never read a word I wrote when I talk about myself or morality in general? I could write a book about your life. Your making a 180, from talking pragmatically about morality, to using vagually defined terms that you don’t even bother to clearify, such as ‘good’ and ‘cruel’. If you have a moral theory you want to share, while avoiding the specifics (being that they would by nessesity be ludicrously contrived) and wish to change your name to Mo then just go ahead and do it!
Your still setting a positive example overall and even if you stopped I would have nothing really neagtive to say about you, just less positive. I’m not equipped with the background to speak to you on ethics, but I would challenge you to do some critical thinking, maybe find away to keep away the boredom here on ilp; look over any given thread I started on morality, and then you tell me what argument I would have against this seemingly new position of yours.
You say you think a true philosopher can argue both sides, so please spare me the feeling of being a broken record on mute this one time and make the arguement for me!!!
I’m not attempting to lay out a moral code. There’s this whole thing with language where when you try and define something it’s almost impossible to create definitions that include and only include the things that you want to be there. So if I start making up a moral code, then no matter what people will do things I don’t think are good and try and shove em into my rules by ignoring the part about knowing the right and wrong thing to do. I’m sure you’ve seen this 100 times. Basically, I’m just saying what I might do if I were under a given set of conditions when I talk about morality. Also, I like to argue the other side. So any assertions I happen upon, I like to assert the opposite. It’s just a habit.
