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David Pinsof's avatar

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Paula. I’m afraid the logic of Darwinism should cast doubt on any genuine motivation to make the world a better place, even if doing so benefits the self in the process. The reason is that fitness is relative to other members of the breeding population. If I benevolently help everyone have an extra kid, including myself, then my benevolent genes will have no advantage over alternative genes. They will not take over the population. It is only when a gene benefits its carriers relative to noncarriers that it increases in frequency. That’s why our motivations are mostly in comparison to other people--I wrote about this in “There’s a problem with our desires”. As for why we find it rewarding to help strangers, I think the answer is that we are motivated to convince others that we are good people (according to how our culture defines “good”), and we are also motivated to convince ourselves that we are good people, so that we can more effectively convince others. Just as a defense lawyer rehearses their case and gathers evidence for their defendent’s innocence prior to the trial, we rehearse our case and gather evidence for our own goodness prior to the “trials” we face in life if anyone ever questions our character. That’s why we find it rewarding to help strangers--especially when they are particularly sympathetic according to our culture, when we can help them in a particularly valiant way, and when the specific way we’re helping them is considered praiseworthy in our culture. At the end of the day, yes, I think it is a kind of status-seeking and a kind of signaling. Which doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it’s the best Darwinian explanation for it anyone has yet come up with. As for the beauty of art, there may be some self-interested benefits to it as a kind of play or practice or fine-tuning of one’s cognitive and perceptual equipment. You can read more about that hypothesis here: https://dl.icdst.org/pdfs/files/308beb8f79706ad5590518a03d7a1866.pdf

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The Intellectual Narcissist's avatar

Thank you for your reply! Your article and your comment haven't answered all my questions, but they made me reflect. I'll try to read some of your other posts to see what else I can learn or reflect on.

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