Talk:Self-preservation

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jmmatthews5. Peer reviewers: Jackson Francis.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merger with "Will to Live" article

I'm going to start a project to merge this article with the current "Will to Life" article. Given the philosophical similarity of the two articles, and how editors on both page have some philosophy background (Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza) I think this is not an unwarranted cause. Comicreader13 (talk) 10:03, 24 September 2017 (UTC)Comicreader13

What sort of merge are you proposing? Copying Will to Live into a subsection of this article, and redirecting it here? Aratos (talk) 13:06, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Help with references please

I've expanded the article with what (I hope) is a generally accepted overview of how self-preservation evolves. I don't want to be accused of original research, but I'm having difficulty tracking down some good sources (I don't have access to any of the journals). If someone could review and lend a hand with the references, that would be great. GM Pink Elephant (talk) 11:45, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Self preservation

<Commenting on the phrase in Self preservation—Self preservation is part of an animal's instinct which demands that the organism survives at all costs. Pain and fear are parts of this mechanism.>

From Harry Austryn Wolfson's The Philosophy of Spinoza 1934, Reprint edition 1983; ISBN: 0674665953; Vol 2: p. 195; Conatus:

But increase and diminution imply a certain standard of measurement. What the standard is by which the affections of the body are measured, to ascertain whether the acting power of the body is increased or diminished by them, is explained by Spinoza in Propositions IV-X. The standard of measurement, he says, is the conatus (effort, impulse) by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being. Every affection of the body is said to increase the acting power of the body in so far as it increases that endeavor for self-preservation; it diminishes the acting power of the body in so far as it diminishes that endeavor. This endeavor for self-preservation is the first law of nature and is the basis of all our emotions.

Yesselman 17:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

İt says This behavior works in the exact opposite direction of the survival instinct in the Self Destruction part. I find this part wrong because self destruction is self preservation itself, works in the exact same way and maybe the same thing with different level. The reason of seeing this as a completely opposite or different inscint against self-preservation is the people that doesn't understand the continuity of the bloodline. I don't 'understand' either.

Wolfson's Conatus

<Commenting on the phrase in Self preservation—Latin Conatus: Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.>

From Harry Austryn Wolfson's The Philosophy of Spinoza 1934, Reprint edition 1983; ISBN: 0674665953; Vol 2: p. 204:

Thus "conatus," "will," "appetite," and "desire" are all taken by Spinoza as related terms. They all have in common, according to him, the general meaning of a striving for self-preservation and of a pursuance of the means to further the attainment of this self-preservation. This striving is not a free act by which an affirmation or denial is made, but rather an act which follows from the necessity of the eternal Nature of G-D. Desire, then, is not a pursuit of something which has already been adjudged as good, for such a judgment follows rather than precedes this kind of desire. "We neither strive for (conari), wish (velle), seek (appetare) nor desire (cupere) anything because we think it to be good, but on the contrary, we adjudge a thing to be good because we strive for, wish, seek, or desire it" (3P9n). And since to Spinoza any object which affects us with pleasure is called good (4P8p), what he has said of good applies also to pleasant, that is to say, we do not desire a thing because it is pleasant, but, on the contrary, a thing is pleasant because we desire it. Still ....

Yesselman 17:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Just plunking the phrase into the article as if it were a dictionary entry doesn't seem right -- can someone write a transition or somesuch that ties together/clarifies the significance of "conatus" with the actual article title. EEMeltonIV 15:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Spelling

I believe the entry should be spelled self-preservation (with a hyphen) rather than self preservation (as it is currently spelled). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.160.142.237 (talk) 20:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• Added request for move at WP:Requested moves#Uncontroversial_requests. Paradoxian (talk) 21:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Expansion

I have a hard time believing that this article doesn't deserve more than the half dozen sentences that it currently consists of. I'm no evolutionary biologist or social psychologist but there must be at least enough study out there for an article a few paragraphs in length. Kinemaτ 08:47, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

There needs to be a section about psychology's discussion of self-preservation. The page would link well with Freud's Death Drive (if there is indeed a wikipedia page on that). I really want to see this page expanded.71.57.68.16 (talk) 05:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)SMF

low importance

How is this basic concept rated "low-importance" by the Wiki project? --95.118.51.194 (talk) 11:44, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree. It would seem as though there's some black box deep within each of us that provides the impetus for every action and we spend our lives wiggling about trying to do respond to its prods as best we can. It is perhaps a reflection of our outward looking culture that we assign "low importance" to this most essential ... "drive"? ... "imperative"? ... instead of trying to understand it better: to figure out how it works and how best to meet its demands.

This is a start, but as Maslow suggests, the escape from pain and pursuit of pleasure insufficiently describes human motivation. Perhaps as the author of this article suggests, there just isn't enough material out there to call on. That's sad.

I completely agree. I'm feeling as though I've entered a different reality. I was looking for the apparently disfavoured term "survival instinct" and was directed here, and find instead of the expected (at Wikipedia) dense realm of discussion and references, the very opposite: a few paragraphs that have Spinoza, scarcely a modern voice, as their chief support. Given that we are probably talking about the core of all psychology, why is this claimed by philosophy, a category that the Greeks used to cover everything but we use chiefly to describe those things that aren't claimed by any more austere heading? I know I'm going to wake up any minute now. --70.79.64.157 (talk) 17:50, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

--24.244.32.156 (talk) 19:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

force to survive?

i know wiki isn't a research site but i was wondering which part of your dna tell you to survive? that part must be the same in all living things and i dont thing that such a part exist so i end up on the idea that the way the dna is build simple forcing you to survive.isnt that funny.....at 18 of april this year my cousin committed suicide i believe the world that humans build is way too complex even for the humans (is that make sense english is not my native language)