100% agree with your take on altruism here. My intuitive definition of the term is something along the lines of “actions taken with the intention of increasing good and/or decreasing bad in the world,” regardless of outcome. For instance, someone who donates to charity, but the charity is secretly killing babies or something, is still doing an altruist action, albeit one with a tragic outcome. In short, what matters is intentionality, imo. If I do something purely good for myself, that is an altruistic act if and only if I am doing it with the intentionality of making the world a better place. Since my subjective happiness is part of the world, one might argue that any act of self-pleasure should be considered altruistic. That doesn’t seem like the typical understanding of altruism, however, as I imagine most would only consider a “selfish” act to be altruistic if done with the intentionality that the benefit I receive will ultimately result in improving the lives of others, external to me. Ultimately the prior view does seem more appealing to me however, since it seems silly to arbitrarily define oneself as not being part of the world.
[EDIT: note that I may have written the above comment after taking sleeping pills, and as such, it may or may not be comprehensible. Sorry about that!]
I think it makes sense! It follows easily from your definition that actions which increase your capacity to do good, without doing harm themselves, align with your value system. To bring it full circle, I’ll bet your high-capacity and low-capacity selves can find all kinds of ways that the latter can make the former even more powerful.
100% agree with your take on altruism here. My intuitive definition of the term is something along the lines of “actions taken with the intention of increasing good and/or decreasing bad in the world,” regardless of outcome. For instance, someone who donates to charity, but the charity is secretly killing babies or something, is still doing an altruist action, albeit one with a tragic outcome. In short, what matters is intentionality, imo. If I do something purely good for myself, that is an altruistic act if and only if I am doing it with the intentionality of making the world a better place. Since my subjective happiness is part of the world, one might argue that any act of self-pleasure should be considered altruistic. That doesn’t seem like the typical understanding of altruism, however, as I imagine most would only consider a “selfish” act to be altruistic if done with the intentionality that the benefit I receive will ultimately result in improving the lives of others, external to me. Ultimately the prior view does seem more appealing to me however, since it seems silly to arbitrarily define oneself as not being part of the world.
[EDIT: note that I may have written the above comment after taking sleeping pills, and as such, it may or may not be comprehensible. Sorry about that!]
I think it makes sense! It follows easily from your definition that actions which increase your capacity to do good, without doing harm themselves, align with your value system. To bring it full circle, I’ll bet your high-capacity and low-capacity selves can find all kinds of ways that the latter can make the former even more powerful.