Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuna
You're left with a feeling of complacency about yourself, that you did the right thing.
If tipping the waitress made you feel terrible about yourself, you wouldn't repeat the process the next time.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
Because if you didn't then you would know that you hadn't and it would cause you to feel "bad". Or more accurately it would cause a release of chemicals or some such (yeah, accurate) into your brain that you would find unpleasant. This has been programmed into you so that you would respect cultural conventions and make you and the rest of humankind better able to interact with each other for the purpose of survival. And on and on until the entire concept of altruism just becomes a carrot and stick.
|
The debate is over whether or not that can be considered correlative. You can't say that people are necessarily not altruistic because they feel good when they act altruistically.