My point in the last post was that, given certain circumstances, it can be in your interest to smoke or to not be healthy. What I hoped that this would show is that whatever activity you may do or property you may have the circumstances could be such that doing it or having it would be in or against your self-interest.
You asked in your comment how it could be against one's self interest to live a long healthy live even if that person did not want to, but I think that cases can be imagined where it would not be in that person's interest. Imagine a totalitarian state (like the one you mentioned in your example) where it is also a law that anyone who lives longer than the last great leader is deemed to have "undesirable genes" and so all of these people are painfully put to death along with their descendants. Here it would seem that a long and healthy life is against one's self-interest and is also likely to be something that someone does not want. Another example. Imagine a person who in the prime of his life commits a terrible crime and is, as a result, sentenced to prison for the rest of his life where he is occasionally tortured yet closely monitored my medical professionals so that he will live as long as possible. It would seem to me that a long and healthy life is not in this man's self-interest whereas a quick an painless death would seem as though it is.
My question then is, if these examples are correct, how could it possibly be that a long and healthy life is always in one's self interest? Imagine a war scenario where the fate of a nation rests on a stranded platoon of soldiers who, if they continue to fight will all surely perish, yet they will give the rest of the army enough time to turn the tide of the war and secure their nation's independence. However, they are also offered the chance by the opposing side to surrender and thus live long and healthy lives, yet be subject to a foreign power. Which option is in the interest of the soldiers? Here I think the question is difficult, but again what I think it shows is that a long and healthy life is not obviously in one's interest nor is it always in one's interest.
So then my point is this, no property of an individual or activity in which that individual is engaged is always in that individual's self-interest. If this is true then what can it be that determines self-interest other than the individuals desire to accomplish certain goals? The only thing that does seem to be always in one's self interest is, given the right sort of understanding, desire satisfaction. Of course it would be the satisfaction of every whim, but rather of those desires which are derived from some overarching major desire such as to achieve eudaimonia. On this understanding it would be easy to see why certain properties and actions become or stop being in one's interest because one's circumstances would without doubt have an effect on how one goes about satisfying his desires.
Possibly, one might think that the good is that which determines self-interest. But then an analysis of the good would need to be given which allows for what is good to be relative to the set of circumstances being considered. I don't know if there are any accounts of the good that are likes this.
My question then is this: what other than some sort of desires view could account for the relativity of self-interest? And, if none can be given how could the desire view be opposed?
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Aaron- Good examples! The first two show at least that in addition to length and health we need to add 'less rather than more pain' (or something like that) to 'self interest'. But I am not so sure about the descendants being zapped example. Having a long, healthy, painless life would not be in my descendants interests in that example but how does that not make it in my interest? Of course I might CARE about my descendants, even more than I care about myself. And that might be the morally right thing to care about. But how does any of that show that it is not in my interest to have a long, healthy, painless life? - Something similar goes for the soldiers I think. Surrender might be the morally wrong thing for them to do but I don't see how that shows it is not in their interest to surrender. In fact this seems a good example of where self-interest flatly conflicts with morality.
So I am not at all convinced by what you are calling the 'relative' view of self-interest. The fact that there are good examples of where, say, health is against one's interest (because only healthy people are drafted into the army say) doesn't show that it is what one wants most that determines self-interest, only that something that normally is in one's interest like health can in some circumstances work against it. But that is only because something that usually leads to a long, healthy, pain free life (health) in that case works against this. The problem with the relative (= strongest desire) view is that there are clear cases where one's strongest desires are not in one's interest to follow (the normal smoking cases for instance, where there is no extra feature that turns out to make smoking better for you than not, it just damages your lungs). If the strongest desire made for self-interest then someone who badly wants to smoke is, on this account, doing something in his self-interest even if it makes him ill and leads to his early and painful death. Surely that can't be right.
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