virus: Objective basis for compassion
« on: 2004-05-02 12:05:34 »
Q1: Is compassion objective?
A1:
1. All organisms base decisions on their own point of view. They use current input about their environment, combined with past experiences, to make decision about courses of action. This process is necessarily "objective" - with the organism at the center of the decision making process (BASIS).
2. Even if a person claims to be embarking on a philosophy which takes into accounts "nonselfish" viewpoints, this, itself, is a necessarily selfish decision - motivated by the experiences and research of the person (1)
3. The foundation of Objectivism is that each of us is motivated by our own pursuit of happiness and our own reason. This is equivalent to (1).
4. The term "community" comes from the Latin "communis", which is derived from "com", meaning together, and "munire", meaning defense or fortification. The proposition of mutual fortification is hardly a "selfless" goal. It is consistent, entirely, with the objective goal of happiness and reason (1).
5. A community agreement takes into account the needs of as many members of the community as possible. If an individuals needs are not addressed by the community then they have no logical reason to participate.
6. The ability to produce an agreement which addresses the needs of many people is often called diplomacy. Diplomacy is achieved by seeing issues from other people's points of view.
7. The ability to see issues from other points of view is also known as compassion. Taken in this context, however, compassion is a well-reasoned and objective way of being. Many individuals have come to the conclusion that their own welfare and happiness is best served by "serving in a community" or "being compassionate".
8. Compassion is thus a very advanced state of reasoning, requiring much research and understanding about the causes and effects within a society (1-7).
Q2: How does selflessness compare with compassion?
A2.
1. Being selfless is having, exhibiting, or being motivated by no concern for oneself.
2. Compassion, on the other hand, is motivated by seeing things from other peoples points of view, which, in turn, is motivated by community and personal welfare.
3. Assuming Q1A1 is true, then claims of selflessness are contradictory and are therefore false.
Q3: Is there a limit to reasoned compassion? Can someone have compassion for all living things?
A3.
1. The limit is, based on the definition above, the extent to which an individual can grasp that the prosperity of others impacts his own Prosperity, survival and happiness.
2. Since a person cannot make an objective decision without basis, a persons capacity for compassion, if it is well-reasoned, is limited to their understanding of other cultures, societies, and, when taken in a larger context, of our ecosystem, etc.
3. Some people have limited their compassion to others of their own race, reasoning that the prosperity of people of other races cannot possibly assist in their own prosperity. Other people limit their compassion to members of their country, religion, or to other limited communities.
4. Some people claim to have "compassion for all living things on this earth". This conclusion, also, can be reasonable. Once a person has expanded their community from self, to family, to nation, to humanity, they then begin to recognize a pattern. The conclusion of unlimited compassion is come to, not by direct experience interviewing and living with ant colonies and herds of buffalo, but by induction - realizing that humanity's welfare is intimately connected to the welfare of other living species.
5. If a person learns, in an objective manner, that humanity's survival in inextricably linked to the prosperity of various bacteria, insects, trees, phytoplankton and that the prosperity of these species are intimately connected to a complex ecology, it becomes reasonable to claim a global, ecological compassion in this (4) manner.
Q4: Can someone be charitable and objective?
1. If a person has a deep knowledge of the entity towards which he is being charitable
2. If a person has rational expectation that the charity will impact his life in a way such that his own happiness is improved
3. Or if a person has rational expectation that the charity will impact his progenitor(s) lives in a way such that their happiness, prosperity and survival are improved
Q5: I don't have direct experience or knowledge about the world in a detailed and intimate manner. Can I claim an objective selfishness and non-compassion due to this ignorance?
1. Many people gain information about other societies from television and rumor. These are, most likely, not authentic sources of information because they are driven by motivations of others. In other words, the people who produce this information are motivated by their own profits, as evidenced by their sale of advertising, subscriptions, etc.
2. If you are a member of group X and are convinced, by watching TV, that Y-ian people are dangerous, this is inauthentic if you have no personal and objective basis for your knowledge. Even if a Y-ian person has harassed you, it's a rather poor statistical sample and you can't ever be sure that this harassment by a Y-ian wasn't instigated by your own behavior, being one ignorant of the way of the Y-ians - since you've never had the opportunity to learn the Y-ian culture. Certainly your own culture has norms which, when violated, may provoke unwanted responses.
3. If you are a member of group X and are convinced, by listening to your friends and relatives, that Y-ian people are dangerous, this is still inauthentic. Perhaps your close friend had a particular flaw or trait that lent them to a false conclusion that Y-ians are dangerous. You on the other hand may not have this trait.
4. Thus (from 2,3), the only way to verify information provided by (1), is to directly involve oneself in a community. Barring real research and some degree of direct experience, it is more logical to come to "no conclusion" about another community, than to assume that they are not deserving of compassion.
5. Even if you are quite certain that members of group Y are violent, aggressive and mean you harm, compassion is still an effective mode of thinking for reducing the aggression and, potentially, mitigating harm to oneself.
> 5. Even if you are quite certain that members of group Y are violent, > aggressive and mean you harm, compassion is still an effective mode of > thinking for reducing the aggression and, potentially, mitigating harm to > oneself.
I agree..
And if both groups have infinite resources, that is also the only way to bring about peace and resolution to hostility and conflict situations. One side has to start the peace process by stopping all retaliations.
One might also conjecture that groups disseminating false facts and covering up truths, (such as routine torture of iraqi prisoners), are in fact worsening the situation and creating a very dangerous situation where a one-sided perception of reality does not equate with the facts on the ground to the other side of the conflict.
Short term, this may be beneficial, if your goal is indeed to continue the strife and fool somebody into supporting it, but if the real goal is actual peace, the falsification of facts leads to total misunderstanding and misreading of the situation, e.g.
Re:virus: Objective basis for compassion
« Reply #2 on: 2004-05-03 11:45:05 »
[simul] Objective basis for compassion
1. All organisms base decisions on their own point of view. They use current input about their environment, combined with past experiences, to make decision about courses of action. This process is necessarily "objective" - with the organism at the center of the decision making process (BASIS).
[rhinoceros] Fair enough, but notice that this "objective" decision-making procedure as described can be different for each individual, hard to follow, and hard to be communicated with others. In other words, it is subjective. Then, the argument becomes "The subjective is objective". In a sense it is. But caution is needed, not to mix the conceptual-cognitive view with the mechanical non-justificational view, or else both words will lose their meanings and the whole argument will become mute.
Also, since our perception of the world is grounded on our senses, experience, and categorizations which in turn are based on our genetic makeup, it is not that simple to define the essential term "objective" in a clear and operational way. A good attempt is to definine objectivity through intersubjectivity, but this is not trivial either.
[simul] 2. Even if a person claims to be embarking on a philosophy which takes into accounts "nonselfish" viewpoints, this, itself, is a necessarily selfish decision - motivated by the experiences and research of the person (1)
[rhinoceros] This is along the same line of reasoning. Both compassion and lack of compassion, supernatural beliefs or lack of them, can be shown to be objective in the same way. I have no doubt that selfish motives can be ascribed to a mother who jumps into the fire to save her child, or to a warrior who is willing to risk getting killed for honor or for the sake of his/her community.
On the other hand, we have Evolutionary Psychology which makes a good enough case that many of our behaviors are not really based on cognitive processes -- that cognitive theories come afterwards to give a justificational explanation. When it comes to altruism, EP claims that it has been hardwired in us at a pre-cognitive level just because those who had it survived and/or mated better.
Words are tools of categorization for particular contexts and they are adopted or dropped according to their utility. At some point, it is possible that the "selfish unselfishness" view will provide us with more utility than the traditional "selfish vs unselfish" dichotomy. For now, I think EP has made a better case on this particular topic, while retaining the concept of unselfishness.
[simul] 3. The foundation of Objectivism is that each of us is motivated by our own pursuit of happiness and our own reason. This is equivalent to (1).
[rhinoceros] Heh. I wonder... when you say Objectivism with a capital "O", do you mean what I think you mean...? Ayn Rand, that is?
The ability to empathise is often considered uniquely human, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. But it might in fact be an incredibly simple brain process meaning that there is no reason why monkeys and other animals cannot empathise too.
That is the conclusion of Christian Keysers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues. The team used a functional MRI scanner to monitor volunteers while their legs were touched and while they watched videos of other people being touched and of objects colliding.
To the team's surprise, a sensory area of the brain called the secondary somatosensory cortex, thought only to respond to physical touch, was strongly activated by the sight of others being touched.
<snip>
This means we can feel empathy without building up complex theories about what others feel, Keysers says. Instead, after we have learned what feeling goes with being touched ourselves, our brains become conditioned to trigger the same feeling when we see others being touched.
<snip>
[rhinoceros] Well, I guess some people already knew that from pr0n. [Not that I would know *indecipherable grin*]. Anyway, if this is right, it means that at least some primitive elements of empathy are pre-conceptual.
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