1. In every single case, with no exceptions? What about people who give their lives for others? Or people who endure extreme pain for others?
2a. Your argument is based on knowing the subjective feelings of others. This violates Mises' axioms.
2b. How do you know? This belief seems religious to me. If it is, then that's fine, I guess. Agree to disagree.
Now, REQUIRING others to act altruistically, or saying it's their DUTY, doesn't sit right with me. But that's a different beast.
Oh, and...
3. If the altruistic person feels good, it's still altruism. See the attached definitions from heritage dictionary. (Note: Multiple definitions do not supersede each other. The second and third definitions can each be used on their own without the first.)
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I maintain that all voluntary acts are selfish in the sense that they would not do the act if they didn't feel it was the best of available choices that would bring them the most personal satisfaction (or least dissatisfaction) - especially the giving of one's life for another
I don't think you've addressed my three points:
1. Dead people can't experience satisfaction.
2. Your argument is based on magical godlike knowledge*.
3. Selfishness isn't relevant.
* keep in mind that the reason Mises argued against knowing other people's subjective value judgements is that it is often used to justify utilitarian attempts to even out everyone's subjective experience AKA communism
I guess it depends on how you define "true" altruism as stated by Max. I took it to mean "unselfish." So I still maintain that there is no voluntary unselfish act. I cannot read people's minds but I can tell a lot by their actions.
I would further define a "selfish act" as "any act that one perceives to be beneficial to one's self in any given situation."
I think "doing good because it feels good" is exactly the situation that the word "altruism" was invented for.
But we're really just talking about semantics at this point. We can agree to disagree.
