Selfishness=Self-Interest=Self-Serving

My definition.

Other parties (their gain or loss or neutral outcome) are never my driving force for action.

Sweet.

sounds like you agree with me, with some extra steps.

If all acts are selfish in all possible worlds, you've created a definitional truth, which means you needn't go through an empirical analysis of various acts to determine which are selfish and which aren't. You've just created a tautology. — Hanover

Perhaps we'd need to redefine the word.

I see no contradiction.

No offense, but basic solipsism is pretty much an undisputed thing unless one lacks common sense.

So you constructed me? — Banno

In the same way I constructed the image of the screen in my head after receiving the lights through my vision.

Your true version is unknowable to me. I only know what my brain allows me to.

And even if there was an objective reality (not necessarily the universe itself, but the "truths" in it) out there, it's impossible to know outside our subjective experiences. — Copernicus

There are sounds outside our hearing range, or lights outside our visual capacity. If we hadn't advanced in science, we would never know they existed.

Right now, there could be elements billion times faster than light, but even our scientific observations are too rudimentary to detect them.

The same thing applies to the mind. Not everything is received or detected. So the whole picture is never captured. That's the bottom line.

are we happy now that there is more than is "inside your head"? — Banno

Now I see the problem. You had an idea of a solipsistic school of thought, which says your mind is a divine entity, if you will, that created the whole universe, your body, your thoughts, and everything, and you're a formless abstract entity in no-one-knows-where land. That's not what I follow. What I advocate for is that there is no way to know anything outside what our brains construct for us. And even if there was an objective reality (not necessarily the universe itself, but the "truths" in it) out there, it's impossible to know outside our subjective experiences.

Never? Is that true? — Banno

That's the idea. I'm skeptical.

But not made by your head — Banno

It is. I can't function without my brain. So my brain gives me the reality. And since the brain is an element of the universe, it's the universe blurring my vision from itself.

If everything is in your mind, how can you make sense of being mistaken? — Banno

I never sense true or false. I'm only skeptical.

comes from outside your head — Banno

Yes. But received and processed by my head. I can't bypass that.

You want my answer. Therefore I exist — Banno

You exist at least in my head. Therefore I want to debate.

Just because I might be the only real thing in the universe doesn't mean I'll have to die in mental solitary.

I daydream all day or imagine fictional stories (either to write books or movie scripts, or just to entertain myself while living in my basement as a societal hermit). Just because I'm societally reclusive doesn't mean I'll have to be a lifeless monolith in flesh.

solipsists don't deny objective reality. They are skeptical because of lack of proof.

So, assuming I'm believing in objective reality, what is your problem with the OP proposition?

let's not talk about me. Since you made solipsism central to this dispute, let's clear out what your primary objection against it is.

Agnostics are skeptical about God; Solipsists are skeptical about Reality.

No accepting, no denying. Just skeptical. — Copernicus

What is your proof for objective reality, @Banno?

The problem with this topic is in reasoning that if we find some benefit of an action, or a future beneficial state, that proves it's a selfish action.

But surely the intent matters here? — Mijin

Conscious intent isn’t the whole story. Most of what drives us operates beneath awareness. Neuroscience has shown that our emotional and instinctive systems start the process of action before we even realize it. When someone helps an elderly person cross the street, for instance, the brain’s empathy circuits light up before the person consciously decides to help. The decision is almost a justification after the fact. And those empathy circuits didn’t evolve for pure altruism — they evolved because helping others in the right context promoted survival and social stability, which ultimately benefit the individual and the group. Even when we feel selfless, we’re running on emotional patterns shaped by self-preserving systems.

The idea of duty or responsibility doesn’t escape this logic either. Duty isn’t the absence of desire; it’s a refined form of it. Acting out of duty satisfies psychological needs for belonging, coherence, and moral stability. A parent feeding a child might not think, “I’m doing this for myself,” but the brain still rewards the act with emotional satisfaction while punishing neglect with guilt or anxiety. These emotional mechanisms evolved to reinforce behaviors that protect both the individual’s identity and their lineage. In that sense, duty is not opposed to ego — it’s ego’s most organized expression.

The objection also touches on the paradox of “reasonless selflessness.” If a truly selfless act must have no internal motive at all, then it wouldn’t really be an act of will — it would just be something mechanical, like a leaf falling from a tree. All voluntary human actions require motivation. So, rather than being the absence of self, altruism is better seen as the transformation of basic self-interest into a more complex form of fulfillment — one that connects personal meaning with the good of others.

Even when we trace these instincts back to biology, the same logic holds. Behaviors like care, empathy, and moral obligation evolved because they improved survival and reproductive success. The very capacity for compassion is an evolutionary tool that served self-preserving systems in the long run. In other words, what we call “duty” is simply the most refined form of self-interest that evolution has produced.

So yes, intent gives moral texture to our actions — but intent itself arises from internal drives shaped by feedback loops of pleasure, coherence, and survival. To call an act “selfless” just because the person wasn’t aware of its benefit is to confuse consciousness with motivation. Every voluntary act comes from within: from emotion, instinct, or belief — all of which exist because they help the self endure.

Assume I do. How can Newton be proven wrong about light if you know only what is in your head? Newton and light are in your head? — Banno

This is hopeless.

My previous efforts were not deemed worthy of consideration, — Paine

Pardon?

Then you'd need to understand the difference between philosophy, doctrine, law, evidence, science, etc.

Elaborate, please.

Proven? Are you certain? — Banno

In the realm of science. Or at least the books we read.

Don't tell me you're planning to bring solipsism (a philosophy) into science or court ("your honor, reality is subjective and deceitful, hence the crime didn't happen").

Do you understand that? — Outlander

Yes. Newton believed light wasn't a wave. He was proven wrong. I can be proven wrong. But from my equations, I'm pretty solid on my conclusion.

Might get a Nobel in math and then 200 years later someone proves me wrong and the Nobel committee is left feeling like a twat.

It happens.

you tell us that we don't count for anything — Banno

That sounds like a charge without evidence.

Supposing that all you need is a definition. — Banno

To see what you mean. Perhaps you meant your way of thinking?

poor thinking — Banno

define it

You love it. You keep coming back for more. — Banno

I go to the grocery store to get fruits. Do I need to marry the cashier for that?

What's wrong with self-serving social interactions?

Looks like @Banno has a personal vendetta for me being a radical individualist while him being a communitarian.

So, nothing went wrong, it's just, it didn't seem to "catch" or what have you, in the sense of throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. — Outlander

Looks like papers won't cut it. Need a book to cover everything.

Impossible = not possible.

Theoretically (practically unattainable) = possible. (albeit unlikely) — Outlander

I don't think I quite caught what you meant.

But you probably will not get that reference. — Banno

No, I don't.

If you start with the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer. — Banno

Where was my question wrong?

But for you, that's all there is... — Banno

Yes, to myself. I wrote and sang a song for you by myself. You're free to give feedback.

you are, like it or not, a part of a community, a member of a group — Banno

Yes, I'm forced to accept the social contract involuntarily, and I don't live in a utopian individualistic planet, so yes, I happen to live in a community.

But still we could arrange a separate bedroom for each member despite sharing the same house, instead of putting everyone in the common room floor (which communitarians do).

Just because we eat, play, and dance in the same house doesn't mean we'd have to sleep together.
Just because we coexist and transact monetary and other values in a society doesn't mean we'd have to be socially bonded (to a point where the collective interest supercedes the individual's).

I'm not in the mood for trolling, so I'd ask you politely to either get serious or find a different discussion.

To put it bluntly, your views, your limitations perhaps, weakness even, are yours and yours alone. Even if in principle they are shared by every person you've ever met or ever will meet, there's more than enough people (7 billion+) to warrant the belief that perhaps your way of looking at life, or rather, how your mind is forced to process life, isn't the only way to do so.

Does that make sense? — Outlander

ISN'T THAT WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS? Unless we're talking math (or science), my arguments don't have to be universally accepted. Philosophy is a higher form of art, which is a subjective expression of oneself.

Well, this is one person's opinion. Your assurance, your worldview, the way you were raised and so live your life. Surely you don't think out of the billions people alive and who were once alive, it's impossible not one person could have thought differently than how you do in a way that laughs in the face of the way you perceive life must be lived? — Outlander

(a+b)^2 might have been a2+2.0045ab+b2 in some corner of the universe, but from our observation (practicality) or mathematical equations (theory), we derive that it's impossible to happen.

separate the self from what is not self — Paine

That's not the point. We're not separating anyone. I just said humans are programmed to be selfish. If some physical properties manage to be selfless, it's not humans.

Your version of solipsism is not the one I follow. Something like anarchism vs libertarianism vs liberalism. Close, but different.
— Copernicus
It's not my version - I don't exist. It's the reality of your realisation that you are the only mind, closing in on you.

So you are certain that you are never certain about anything. Cool. I'd say that problem was with coherence rather than certainty.

What I argued was that you can't betray your self
— Copernicus
You are betraying yourself, by writing as if we were here. We don't exist. There is only what you have in your head. — Banno

You're now swimming in solipsism. I don't see any point in arguing if you'd deviate from the OP.

Agnostics are skeptical about God; Solipsists are skeptical about Reality.

No accepting, no denying. Just skeptical.

You seem very certain bout that. — Banno

Don't remember when I ever was.

Yeah, it is. All those threads about not caring for anyone else - that's all part of your realisation that you are alone. — Banno

No. What I argued was that you can't betray your self. Nothing more. Solipsism isn't even involved in this.

If you are taking letters coming through a screen, then there exist letters and a screen. But no, you are a solipsist. There is only your mind, so the stuff I write here is somehow just part of that. — Banno

Your version of solipsism is not the one I follow. Something like anarchism vs libertarianism vs liberalism. Close, but different.

It's all in your head — Banno

I never know FOR SURE. That's the idea. No accepting, no denying.

Most people are selfish — Outlander

From my argumentative conclusion, all people are, and it's impossible not to be.

With the right fine-tuning and your own personal chaperoning and stewardship can turn into something readable and thought-provoking. I feel you've yet to take that step, however. Pardon me for saying. — Outlander

I'd like to know where it went wrong.

Again, people, this argument (OP) is not based on solipsism. Don't get distracted.