If helping others doesn’t grant you pleasure (in any form whatsoever), then you may be altruistic, but you would be quite alien to our conception of altruism
The mother that jumps in front a truck to move out of the way the son and is instantly killed by said truck is both altruistic and does not grant pleasure. I’m tempted to say this is a direct refutation.
Selfishness is moral blind. It is neither inherently good, nor inherently evil.
Then it cannot be a virtue, as you say in the paragraph before.
I believe you need to rethink all the things you want to say and put them in a coherent form.
MrMind—You are completely off here. You have missed the fact that the Mother in your above example receives the supreme pleasure, although it be for the briefest of moments, of saving her son. This action may be deemed as good, but no less, it is entirely self-interested in it’s motivation: the preservation of ones OWN legacy.
Though you may have been tempted to declare otherwise, it is perfectly clear, directly or indirectly, that your “refutation” is simply short-sighted.
The causation order in the scenario is important. If the mother is instantly killed by the truck, then she cannot feel any sense of pleasure after the fact. But if you want to say that the mother feels the pleasure during the attempt or before, then I would say that the word “pleasure” here is assuming the meaning of “motivation”, and the points raised by Viliam in another comment are valid, it becomes just a play on words, devoid of intrinsic content.
The mother that jumps in front a truck to move out of the way the son and is instantly killed by said truck is both altruistic and does not grant pleasure.
I’m tempted to say this is a direct refutation.
Then it cannot be a virtue, as you say in the paragraph before.
I believe you need to rethink all the things you want to say and put them in a coherent form.
MrMind—You are completely off here. You have missed the fact that the Mother in your above example receives the supreme pleasure, although it be for the briefest of moments, of saving her son. This action may be deemed as good, but no less, it is entirely self-interested in it’s motivation: the preservation of ones OWN legacy.
Though you may have been tempted to declare otherwise, it is perfectly clear, directly or indirectly, that your “refutation” is simply short-sighted.
The causation order in the scenario is important. If the mother is instantly killed by the truck, then she cannot feel any sense of pleasure after the fact. But if you want to say that the mother feels the pleasure during the attempt or before, then I would say that the word “pleasure” here is assuming the meaning of “motivation”, and the points raised by Viliam in another comment are valid, it becomes just a play on words, devoid of intrinsic content.