If you could obtain the altruistic high without doing any of the actual altruism, would it still be just as worthwhile?
The high is a mechanism by which values are established. Reward or punishment in the past but not necessarily in the present is sufficient for making you value something in the present. Because of our limited memories introspection is pretty useless for figuring out whether you value something because of the high or not.
If you have the values already and you don’t have any reason to believe the values themselves could be problematic, does it matter how you got them?
It may be that an altruistic high in the past has led you to value altruism in the present, but what matters in the present is whether you value the altruism itself over and above the high.
The high is a mechanism by which values are established. Reward or punishment in the past but not necessarily in the present is sufficient for making you value something in the present. Because of our limited memories introspection is pretty useless for figuring out whether you value something because of the high or not.
If you have the values already and you don’t have any reason to believe the values themselves could be problematic, does it matter how you got them?
It may be that an altruistic high in the past has led you to value altruism in the present, but what matters in the present is whether you value the altruism itself over and above the high.