[cloverich]

I agree. I wonder if a better strategy would be to amend the definition of altruism to include doing something for someone else because it makes you feel good. Surely most would agree that "it makes me feel good to help someone" vs "I financially gained from helping someone" are not the same type of "selfishness" (excluding the genetic reductionist explanations).

[Tosh108]

My problem with this argument is there's an underlying assumption that the end of the day our basic core motive is selfish/egotistic, it might be so but many who use this assumption as a base of their arguments do not bother to prove it because believe that it is so.

[snowwrestler]

Since when did the definition of altruism exclude acts just because they make a person feel good?

There seems to some serious latent Puritanism in this discussion.

[HillaryBriss]

This leads to more questions, among them: why does it make me feel good?

Why doesn't it make me feel bored, sleepy, nauseous, repulsed, angry, etc. ?