comment: >
  
  Here's a mind bender for you: maybe being selfish isn't necessarily a bad thing.
context: This kinda begs the question...   
  What does it mean for an act to be selfish? >
  
  Oh dang I'm not sure... maybe done without morality? Or done for the benefit of oneself? Both occurring simultaneously? >
  
  Most people would say that selfishness/selflessness is defined by the intended beneficiary. That means that the same action can be either selfish or selfless depending on the intent.  
  For example, giving to charity can either be selfless (because you aren't considering your self in the decision - you're primarily thinking about the wellbeing of others) or selfish (because you're doing it so you can boast to your friend about how much of a good person you are).  
  This is a non-consequentialist (not based on outcomes) form of morality.  
  The way that Immanuel Kant explains this problem is by defining what he calls "good will", which is the test for whether an action was moral. He says that an action taken with good will means that your only consideration when taking the action was the intent to abide by moral law. What that means in simple terms is that whether or not it's selfish is defined by what you were thinking about at the time you took the action. If you were thinking exclusively about your moral obligation to help others, then it's a moral action, but if you paid any attention at all to your own happiness then it was not purely "good will" motivating you. In this way, Kant would agree with you that just because an action made you happy, it's not necessarily selfish.  
  Non-consequentialism isn't the only type of ethical evaluation though.  
  For instance, a naturalist is someone who believes that our moral sense was invented by evolution to help us co-operate with others. From a naturalist point of view, all actions made with the intent to abide by moral law are actually selfish actions, because they invoke the biological desire to take actions which increase your likelihood to reproduce. A utilitarian (someone who thinks we should maximize the total amount of happiness in the world) would reject the entire classification of selfish and selfless because all that matters is the change in the total amount of happiness.   
  The question I would float is whether you had awareness that taking the action would improve your happiness before you did so. If you were aware it would make you happy, it is therefore impossible to possess purely good will as defined by Kant. If you didn't know, it's not possible for an action to be selfish because you didn't have access to the information required to act selfishly. It's not necessary that an action that makes you happier was selfish because it's possible to be unaware of that occurring, but in the vast majority of cases humans are good at predicting their future emotions and reactions to things in simple ways. >
  
  Did Kant ever expand on your question?
  It seems rather obvious to me that doing good things feel good. The question you float can only work once. After you feel good for doing good the first time, have you spoiled your good will? You will never be able to perform truly selfless acts because you have a memory of feeling good that first time?
  That seems rather silly and not well reasoned to me >
  
  I don't think Kant would argue that, sort of for the reason that you outline.
  More than acting from Good Will he postulated that you should treat people as ends and not as means. If you acted purely towards the ends of others in disregard for your own happiness then you would be treating yourself as a means and not an end.
  By acting in contradiction between the actions of yourself and others you would be violating your ethical imperatives. >
  
  Ah, the categorical imperatives. I always had trouble figuring those out. As words they make sense but you could apply another level of reasoning to them again to infinity (I know that you know that I know style) and eventually I decided that Kant didn’t have a workable model >
  
  I think it's because people mistake "helping to set off my dopamine release" as "having ulterior motives completely unrelated to your needs for help but for my greed."
  A good example of helping and feeling good is nurse aide work. It's not easy, it's dirty, it's thankless, irs underpaid, its a lot of work, you're almost always understaffed. But there are many CNAs who feel a sense of relief or dopamine release after fully cleaning a patient and getting them cleanly bundled and tucked in bed. 
  Sort of like vacuuming or cleaning your house and feeling good after. Or finishing a task and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
  Reddit has a lot of people who sit behind a monitor and never make moves. I'd hardly listen to them about whether doing something helpful for others make you feel good is selfish >
  
  Agreed. The whole "but altruism is selfish" line always felt a way of cheaply invalidating doing good to feel less guilty for not doing good.
  I mean, literally any act humans do is motivated by brain chemicals. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking etc. Any complex task is going to involve neurological motivators. To meet this imaginary standard for "pure" altruism unmotivated by any brain chemicals, you'd essentially need to have neurological dysfunction. Imagine if I just walked around saying "Actually, you didnt accomplish anything your entire life, it was your dopamine." Technically true, but also insufferably irrelevant.
  IMO, a much more relevant criteria is "prosociality" i.e. behaviour which aims to benefit others.
  Occam's Razor says that people just parrot this line as a defense mechanism. Because the idea that someone else is altruistically motivated makes others feel defensive. I used to organise climate protests and fundraise for poverty alleviation, and people would come up with all kinds of ulterior motives to "explain" my behaviour. I got accused of being brainwashed by foreigners a lot/being attention seeking, both of which were untrue if given any thought.
  Edit: I think this Tweet summarises it well:
  My biggest problem in these ACA debates? I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people.
  If someone starts from a position of "Well there has to be an ulterior motive because caring about others is impossible", I genuinely just can't explain my way through. So many people just can't conceive of themselves being motivated to help others that they deny the possibility that anyone else could be.. >
  
  Well the issue there with being accused of doing altruistic things for selfish reasons is because a lot of these people are fed bullshit and easily eat up the garbage from Fox News about how people are trying to take advantage of politics to push green energy and renewable and climate change because there is incentive for some industries. It's such a politicized topic that no matter what genuine reason you do it for, you will almost always be accused of being selfish by some pundit. I wouldn't pay attention to that even more than redditors. People have been calling each other nincompoop over politics for over a century. The more things change, the more things stay the same. >
  
  I think this Tweet summarises it well:
  My biggest problem in these ACA debates? I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people.
  If someone starts from a position of "Well there has to be an ulterior motive because caring about others is impossible", I genuinely just can't explain my way through. >
  
  Yeah thats such a dumb argument because with these people they always feel like this right up until they're the one that needs help. Then all of a sudden it's "we should stop spending money on immigrants and more on Americans who need help." Well yall fucking voted against your own interest is what goes in my head hearing that. >
  
  This has some innately circular reasoning to it, when you follow it far enough.
  We do what we believe to be moral, and feel good for doing so. But we believe it to be moral because we're taught to feel good for doing so. If taught a different moral compass, the same acts can be of various morality. Stealing? Amoral. Stealing bread to feed oneself? Questionably moral. Stealing bread that is being hoarded, in order to feed others? Usually considered moral. But not by the owner of the bread? Morality is super flexible, and is entirely subjective. It changes constantly, often to reflect whatever rationale we are seeking in order to feel our own actions are "just". 
  People don't kill because they're evil. They kill because it is justified in their morality. "Following orders" or "defending my country" or "surviving on the street" or nihilistic acknowledgement of inevitability. But never "because I'm evil". In all cases, the act is taken for self-serving reasons, but rationalized to fit in to a moral framework that allows the person to feel "okay with themselves". When society tries to force someone to adopt a morality that would break that "I'm a justified good person" self identity, people break, mentally. We don't do well with internalized mortality that we don't feel justified by. We either change morality, or we lose our minds trying to find a way to fit their identity into the framework.
  Tldr: morality is subjective and flexible. We do what we do because it feels good (physically, even emotions are physical reactions). We change morality as necessary to rationalize the behaviors we want to do, so we can feel good about them. Once we have behaviors we can do that make us feel good, we do those. >
  
  
  But we believe it to be moral because we're taught to feel good for doing so.
  
  I'd disagree with this. We believe things to be moral because we're taught they're moral, but the emotional reactions are not taught. It's possible to feel bad for having done what one believes to be right, and it's possible to feel good while holding the belief that one's actions were wrong.
  Edit: actually I'll also disagree with this:
  
  People don't kill because they're evil. They kill because it is justified in their morality.
  
  People do things for many reasons and motivated by many values. Killing for morals is only one example of such. Moral values may be an explanation for what reason a person had to kill another, but so can any mumber of other values. >
  
  Its not selfish to be happy. It is selfish to be happy at the expense of others. >
  
  Not strictly at the expense of others, but often in spite of others feelings.
  For example, you randomly win a pizza at a baseball game, and you choose not to share it with the people around you.  There is no loss to you for sharing because you can't eat it all, and it will be unapetitizing in short order, but you still choose not to share.  You not sharing is also no loss to them either.  Regardless, choosing not to share in that situation is pretty selfish. >
  
  We humans are feeling beings with logic. All kinds of good neurochemstry happens when we do something like help others or other good things. Whilst the intention is to do good for it's own sake the chemical reward is actually higher. If we're simply doing good with the intention of the chemical reward it just doesn't work the same. So on top of moral (logical) reasoning there is a whole chemical reward that becomes associated with the behavoir. Usually there are both classical (chemical) and operant (intelectual) conditioned rewards going on for good behavours. >
  
  I don't think the problem is feeling happy for doing something good, but being motivated to do something good because it makes you feel happy. But even more so than happy: justified. >
  
  People do good things because it generally makes them happy. That's why they do it, and it's not selfish. 
  If doing anything good made everyone feel horrible, chances are not many people would do anything good because generally no one likes to feel horrible.
  I don't see your logic.
  Doing something good but filming it for any reason makes you selfish because then you do it for the wrong reasons. >
  
  That depends. People might do good things because the effect it has on the object makes them happy, that's a good motive.
  But alternatively (or mixed in?), people do good things because it makes them feel like a better person (justified). This motive is selfish. It may still result in a good thing being done, but the status of the one doing it either hasn't changed, or has only gotten worse (by status is mean real status, not their perceived status).
  I think I'm still going to give you a delta because I think you still caused me to move my position a bit, and it's helped bring clarity to my own thoughts, thanks! ∆ >
  
  There's also a difference between feeling like a better person for doing a good thing or deed in one's own opinion and feeling like a better person than someone else who didn't also do a good deed or bragging about it to others.
  I'll use the same example as before. People like to feel like they are good people and can do good in the world and for others. That does not make them selfish.
  I truly believe that someone who thinks someone else is selfish for doing a good deed and feeling good about it and themselves is, in fact, the selfish person. For no good reason other than to paint someone else's good actions as negative and would judge others for finding moments of positivity in life. 
  Also, how do I give deltas? >
  
  "There's also a difference between feeling like a better person for doing a good thing or deed in one's own opinion and feeling like a better person than someone else who didn't also do a good deed or bragging about it to others."
  Absolutely! One is much better than the other! But in either case, why, in doing a good deed, do you need to consider the goodness of yourself in the doing of it?
  You've actually changed your example a little bit, so I'm not quite sure where you stand. Before, you said people did things because it makes them feel happy about what they've done. Now, you say it's to feel like they're a good person, and they can do good. Is this actually what you think? The problem with this line is that even though you are actually causing good for others, those people are essentially a tool to you feeling good about yourself. To be "selfless" is to think of your self less. That is, I actually become small in my own eyes; I stop caring so much about myself. I become a tool for the purpose of actually doing good to others, rather than others being a tool to my being good.
  Your last paragraph is an assumption that makes it hard to convince you away from what you believe. There's not much I can really say against it, except that perhaps they say it because of a deeper ideology than the enjoyment of tearing others down in order to feel better about themselves?
  You can give a delta by either saying ! delta but as one word, or with the triangle I used. But you need to give a reason with it. But apparently I might be wrong since mine hasn't registered :/.