A lot rides on the insertion of 'ultimately' into that question, because that opens the whole debate on karma/heavenly reward etc.

However if 'ultimately' were taken out, then I would say - sure, many people do that, all the time. You see large and small acts of selflessness on a daily basis.

Hi Duke, welcome to the site.

I think that selflessness occurs all the time, and I don't think it is through some imperative to ensure the survival of the species. I can see someone struggling and my urge is to help them. It is that fundamental drive that helps hold society together.

Agree with both Wayfarer and MikeL but to be devils advocate ,if someone gained pleasure or happiness by helping another would that not negate the selflessness.

Whether or not you benefit though, you are still feeding a starving child, helping an aged person, curing a disease or taking a bullet for your country, Which wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Instead of questioning the motives of someone who does something good, isn't it better to celebrate the deed?

Agree with both Wayfarer and MikeL but to be devils advocate ,if someone gained pleasure or happiness by helping another would that not negate the selflessness. — The duke

Interesting you say that. There is a Buddhist method called Logong, meaning 'mind training'. It is a series of slogans or aphorisms which the practitioner contemplates day by day. One of them is 'don't act with a twist', and the commentary on it was about exactly this point: don't act selflessly, so that others (or even yourself) will think 'my, how selfless I'm being!' Because, obviously, if you act selflessly for some secret gain in self-esteem or other-esteem, then you're not acting selflessly. It's as easy, and as difficult, as that.

well put Wayfarer! Also the reason for the post.

My view on this is simple.

Do we complain about water or air being tasteless? We don't because these are unmodifiable properties of air and water. I think the word here is necessary as opposed to contigent.

Similarly, can the self, its gain or loss, ever be surgically removed from human actions? No. The self is a necessary part of all interactions, social or otherwise.

If so, finding gain in a person's actions and holding that against him, diminishing the value of his action, is as foolish as complaining that air and water are tasteless.

The definition of a selfless act must be attuned to the facts of neccesity and contingency.

someone gained pleasure or happiness by helping another would that not negate the selflessness. — The duke

It depends. For me it would make me feel good, sure. But the feeling would not cause the action. It would be a result of the action. The action would be instinctive. Thus there is no negation.

Mike by definition if you get any gratitude out of it,it's no longer a selfless act.

Honestly don't know if there's a right answer or the definition is wrong...

I might have to disagree here with your definition of a selfless act.
Google defines selfless as: Selfless is the opposite of selfish. If you're selfless, you think less about your self, and more about others.

Would I step in front of a bus to save a child? Probably. We all would and it would have nothing to do with the feelings generated by doing so.

The person who thinks he's being selfless by giving more of his mind to the external world rather than to the internal world (introspectively) is often more selfish than one who includes himself in his worldview. A lot of people seem to forget they are in the world and a part of it: this is surely an illusion which could possibly lead to being more selfish than otherwise. To have the right intentions, it's necessary to have self-recollection. Selfishness is more often seen in people who think they're doing the right thing to the point of bigotry. If you never doubt yourself while you look out at the world filtered through some rigid code, there is a danger of a log being in your eye. This aphorism describes a possible defect that may develop in one who thinks selfishness is about excluding himself from his worldview (who thinks he ought not think of himself):

"And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?"

Selfishness doesn't mean thinking of oneself. Right intention requires self-recollection and mindfulness of the environment: they're a part of the same context or continuum.

The OP asks if it's possible to help another without helping oneself. In other words, do you help another in order to to help yourself thereby? Is it selfish to want to help another along these lines? The object would be to do so without creating a zero sums game wherein it might be possible one is embittered when he has to help another, which would be the converse of good feelings resulting from the good deed. It would be necessary to obviate any chance of staining oneself in helping others (for it to be pathogenic to the benefactor); if oneself were worse off for helping, then he shouldn't help (this would be a zero sum game). Perhaps only people who have mastered themselves should help others. Otherwise, stained people tend to corrupt everything they interact with even if offering succor. The right means work wrong in the wrong hands. Getting the log out of your eye (helping yourself) is the first order of business.

Perfect.
The "Know thyself" team
Xenophone's Socrates 'on making friends'

S: Are you a good person yet?

R: Most likely, not fully.

S: Then how would you expect a good person to be friends with you?

R: Oh...

Some people become monsters while trying to help others, tending to make all the wrong sacrifices. This isn't the right way. Maybe if such a person as I describe would stop and have a look at himself and see he spreads poison while believing he should be thanked, then maybe he could become a genuine helper instead of a poseur.

Would you want helped by someone that was messed up? Where messed up could mean he had severe cognitive dissonance, was Machiavellian, a psychopath, or narcissist? Personally, I hesitate to allow some people to help me, people who failed to understand loving kindness before they thought they had learned what it meant to help someone. The subtlest form of violence is to make another feel inferior. Being truly kind to someone is the first major step toward helping them, and actually anterior to any other form of succor. If I believed someone were truly kind, I'd have no problem accepting their assistance in some way.

No one's perfect no thing is perfect. Albeit, you can tell who is genuine and who is putting on airs. Falseness spreads itself and makes the world a worse place in all it affects, especially because the human system (or I could call it a market society, or a commercial pathology) rewards falseness. Genuinely good people don't fail to be kind in the subtlest of ways. Genuine goodness recognizes itself in others ; counterfeit people think they're good people but have no relationship with themselves by which to gather honest feedback to know if this is true or not, and if they are ugly inside, it's usually this deformation that "helps" others, their eternally repressed shadow projects itself into the world. Basically, the more someone convinces himself it's necessary to sacrifice his feelings, love, and reason to conform to the demands of the human system (with all its perversions), the larger the shadow grows and the more impossible it becomes not to see through its lens...even when "behaving" as though you wanted to be giving and to help others. Behaviorists are no good to anyone.

Relationships aren't something to run like a business. One of the main seals of genuinely good people is that they've gotten outside of the tit for tat disease born of the business model.