do you get upset when people lie about their motives?

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Instincts are part of your self-interest. Your instincts to breathe, drink, and eat keep you alive. All animals acquire more instincts for some reason or other related to self-interest, including instincts you may wish you didn't have or didn't act on, or those which are no longer useful.

It might be easier to understand what you mean if you said explicitly what you did. At this point, what you are saying about what you did seems contradictory. You called it a random act of kindness, and then said that you acted instinctively, but kindness isn't instinctual; to be kind requires intent. You could do something instinctual that just so happens to benefit someone else, but that doesn't fall under the definition of kindness. But since both instinct and calculated intent are vehicles of self-interest, whatever you did was still selfish.

Kindness can have an element of instinct. Studies have shown that altruism is present in toddlers just above one year of age.

I think we differ on what "kindness" consists of. To me, "kindness" means an act that is planned intellectually for the specific goal of benefitting someone besides oneself. It can become somewhat instinctual after being done for many years, but it doesn't start out that way. It often consists of acts that are unnecessary, such as holding doors for people.

On the other hand, social animals have instinctual behavior towards other members of their group/tribe that serves the common interest: keeping the group well-fed, taken care of, etc. This behavior is more or less necessary to the cohesion and functioning of the group, and thus serves the self-interest of every member. I would place the behavior of toddlers in this latter group.

Remember: I said "an element" of instinct.

I have seen preschool children perform acts of kindness after some sort of deliberation.

Yes, but your element of instinct must be quite different from my element of instinct. I'm thinking that the only sense in which acts of kindness can be instinctual is by being performed so many times that they become automatic. I don't see how that would apply to toddlers as young as you mentioned; they've barely been alive long enough to have developed any sort of kind behavior, let alone to have made a habit of it.

I've seen very young children sympathize with adults who are crying. I sense that part of this reaction has an element of instinct.

It could be motivated by self-preservation--but it could also be an inborn desire to be kind.

Would be more accurate to say they are part of the species' self-interest. Instincts are programmed by nature after all.

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Does it? How can you be so sure?



I looked up the definition of kindness in a couple of dictionaries. I did not see any mention of intent there. I would like to see a reference for your claim (serious - not a joke).

I agree that conscious intent, at the very least, increases the LEVEL of kindness.

I don't know what you mean by that. I don't see how the concept of self-interest could be meaningfully applied to an entire species because "species" is an abstract concept, and therefore has no interests. On the other hand, individuals are concrete living beings who explicitly either want to live or do not want to live.



I don't know that it's something that you could verify with a dictionary. It's a matter of language usage. "Kindness" is used to describe acts that confer little or no benefit on she who acts, things for which one goes out of one's way to accomplish. We do not use kindness to describe parents doing the basic functions of keeping their children alive. We do not use kindness to describe people doing their basic job duties. It is not applied to acts that are considered "natural," to things which we take for granted and are done on automatic.

As the Wikipedia entry says, kindness is a matter of ethics; ethics being a branch of philosophy, an intellectual exercise, surely involves calculated intent and some sort of reasoning. Furthermore, what is considered kind differs amongst cultures, so one must first be conversant with cultural norms, then decide to follow them or not to be kind. That goes beyond instinct.

I can't understand what you have written here either. Unless you are a special individual for whom nature has programmed instincts specifically, what I said above should stand.



You're stretching it here. The generally accepted meaning of kindness in various cultures is that it is a virtue. I don't know of it being associated with intent at all, let alone self-interest.
And this is what even your wikipedia page says about kindness :

...and this is only one of the many problems with the world of concept.
You've got factors like good, bad, hurt, help, intent, and accident.
None of those criteria are real, and none could be proven.

This confusion is the trademark of concept, and one of the reasons that concept is a contamination of logic.

A simple but obvious example:
Someone wants to harm themselves, so you do the "kind" thing and hand them a weapon to use, but with the intent to help or harm? Nobody else really knows.
A claim in either direction could be rationalized, but neither can be proven.

There are instances where self-destruction of individuals serves to advance a species at the system level. Which way you want to label it is a function of your identity and nothing more. The identity is self-serving in nature, with true altruism having no logical purpose in identity. Therefore if altruism ever existed, then it would have been selected out of both memetics and genetics long ago.


The greatest atrocities of our species were at the time, believed by many to be done with good intent, and obviously there were those who benefited.

This should show the distinction between "certainty" and "knowledge".

This.


People are charitable / nice / selfless because they like the feeling they get when they do something nice for someone else or maybe it's because they want other people to respect them more or maybe they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't help others- whatever the reason, the benefactor only does it for himself.

"Generally accepted" has nothing to do with reality, and is quite volatile.
The fact that the definition is linked to the concept of "virtue" is a dead give-away that acting out virtuous behaviors would trigger the chemical reward pathway inside the brain, thus serving the individual performing the behaviors.

"Intent" is indeed a deeper description to be applied to the definition of kindness. It gets one closer the actual origins of a behavior by exploring the origins of the thought patterns that resulted in the behavior. Therefore, intent is a more significant conditional to be applied when trying to determine selfless or selfish to a behavior. It is more revealing than simply observing parts of the behavior and collecting subjective assessments of the behavior.


However, I am aware that there are people who claim that their reality is defined not by real things, but by how they make other people feel. I just don't share that belief.
I think other people have the ability to "feel" absolutely anything they want at any time, and that trying to manipulate someone's feelings is fundamentally wrong.

That is similarly purely conceptual. There is no systematic level, no abstract "advance". There is nothing that we have a name for. Ultimately you are just applying the same age old, archetypical thinking to "nature".

Nature or species gets "advance" - compared to what? What's the measure? Who is the outside observer determining it and at which point?

To pass these type of philosophical arguments I've personally decided to think simply: nature is movement, and leave it there. There is no "advance", "value" or "gain". If I'd use these type of concepts I'd use them to suit my variating personal needs and point of views - as we do. Through the concepts we use, we have a direct window to our "soul", not to the "surrounding nature".

Kindness.... In my personal experience came "naturally". There was an inner need to give and receive it, like there was an indeterminable need to eat and breath. It felt "natural" to relate that way and in personally sensed experiences it also has so far proved to be the best way to relate - both as a receiving and giving end. It was and is a gut feeling, a calling, and that's where I leave it.

It is not an argumentable, let alone wordy or complicated philosophy to live along. It's simple: nothing compares, but let's love still.

In a system of living species, advance can be measured in terms of anti-entropy. One measures the advance in terms of how individuals collectively meet the goals of the codes in the algorithm. Normally this is coded in the DNA. Specifically a system of a species is judged by measurable numbers of individuals, how many ways they have adapted to features of the environment, and percentages of efficiency by which they interact with their environment.

Yes advancement is a concept, and the intelligence of the DNA code is also a concept. Neither are real, but can be directly applied to the real world because they are not that many layers removed from the real world, and are measurable.

Perhaps the age old archetypical thinking isn't all that bad when applied more correctly?

Unless I misunderstand you, then It actually seems to me that you are helping make my point about the significance of intent.

In this context "intent" isn't just some bit of wishful thinking buried hopelessly in layers of abstraction. Intent is found and measured by looking into the conditionals of the code involved. The conditionals test for advancement toward a goal, and react in a way that advances (as I explained above) the code. The logic of the code, when combined with the laws of physics, produces results in the real world that we call natural selection.

There, is encoded the intent to preserve and advance the individual, the species, and the system of the species. There is no true altruism to be found. A true altruism would have been selected out long ago.

In contrast, the environment of human imagination is full of concepts that are hopelessly embedded in layers of abstraction. When any logic is applied, the results in the real world are unpredictable, represent contaminated logic, and are functionally garbage. This is because the "logic" that uses these abstractions is not operating in an environment controlled by the laws of physics, but in the imagination of humans.

In this case the observer is only relevant in the sense that the imaginations of the humans involved either agree with each other or they don't. The results in the real world, or the intent used by the algorithms are still the same no matter how the imagination decides to spin it.
Actually, the age old trick is to add so many layers of abstraction (like pretty wrapping papers) to something so that the real intent isn't visible to most observers. That's why I say our society is almost entirely based on deception.

Once again, we use simple abstractions to describe logic patterns that produce results in the real world, BUT when we start adding extra layers to those abstractions, they become more and more deceptive, and worthless.

Perhaps you believe like some far eastern philosophies that the real world is not knowable, and only abstractions are knowable? In that case the imagination of each individual creates their own reality, and so individuals can think of themselves as selfless and full of love if they want to, no matter what sort of results transpire in the real world.

Personally, I believe that denial of the real world is an incorrect view.

Or they do see the reality and are simply following the societal mores...