Have you read Mark Twain’s “What is Man”? If I recall correctly, there he lays out his argument that man is already always selfish. For example, we do good deeds ultimately for our own comfort, because they make us feel good. (If I recall rightly, he also makes the, to me rather more interesting, point that people are born happy or sad rather than are made happy or sad by specific, supposedly uplifting or depressing, thoughts. That seems to anticipate the modern pharmaceutical approach to mood regulation.)
For my part, I think that “selfish” must describe a proper subset—not too small, and not too large—of human actions, in order to be a meaningful word. If, as Mark Twain claims, everything we do is selfish, then the word is useless and meaningless. While I acknowledge that practically everything done to benefit others without a clear quid pro quo in mind does indeed seem to have the effect of giving the doer spiritual comfort if nothing else, and may ultimately be done on that account (something we might test by observing a brain damaged patient who has lost the ability to feel that comfort), I would still call those actions “unselfish”, simply because these sorts of actions are the paradigms, the prototypes, the models, the patterns, the exemplars, the teaching and defining examples, of “unselfishness”. A selfish action necessarily involves a degree of unconcern about others. If there is sufficient concern for others, then the action is no longer selfish even if Mark Twain’s psychological analysis of that concern (in terms of felt “spiritual comfort”) is correct.
Have you read Mark Twain’s “What is Man”? If I recall correctly, there he lays out his argument that man is already always selfish. For example, we do good deeds ultimately for our own comfort, because they make us feel good. (If I recall rightly, he also makes the, to me rather more interesting, point that people are born happy or sad rather than are made happy or sad by specific, supposedly uplifting or depressing, thoughts. That seems to anticipate the modern pharmaceutical approach to mood regulation.)
For my part, I think that “selfish” must describe a proper subset—not too small, and not too large—of human actions, in order to be a meaningful word. If, as Mark Twain claims, everything we do is selfish, then the word is useless and meaningless. While I acknowledge that practically everything done to benefit others without a clear quid pro quo in mind does indeed seem to have the effect of giving the doer spiritual comfort if nothing else, and may ultimately be done on that account (something we might test by observing a brain damaged patient who has lost the ability to feel that comfort), I would still call those actions “unselfish”, simply because these sorts of actions are the paradigms, the prototypes, the models, the patterns, the exemplars, the teaching and defining examples, of “unselfishness”. A selfish action necessarily involves a degree of unconcern about others. If there is sufficient concern for others, then the action is no longer selfish even if Mark Twain’s psychological analysis of that concern (in terms of felt “spiritual comfort”) is correct.