ALTRUISM
(FROM
WIKIPEDIA)
Altruism is unselfish
concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional
virtue
in many cultures, and central to many religious traditions. In
English, this idea was often described as the
Golden rule of ethics. In
Buddhism it is considered a fundamental property of
human nature.
Altruism can be distinguished from a feeling of
loyalty and
duty.
Altruism focuses on a motivation to help others or a want to do good
without reward, while duty focuses on a moral obligation towards a
specific individual (for example, a God, a
king),
a specific organization (for example, a
government), or an abstract concept (for example,
country etc). Some individuals may feel both altruism and duty,
while others may not. Pure altruism is giving without regard to
reward or the benefits of recognition.
The concept has a long history in
philosophical and
ethical thought, and has more recently become a topic for
psychologists,
sociologists,
evolutionary biologists, and
ethologists. While ideas about altruism from one field can have
an impact on the other fields, the different methods and focuses of
these fields lead to different perspectives on altruism.
Altruism in ethics
-
The word "altruism" (derived from
French autrui "other people") was coined by
Auguste Comte, the French founder of
positivism, in order to describe the ethical doctrine he
supported. He believed that individuals had a moral obligation to
serve the interest of others or the "greater good" of humanity.
Comte says, in his Catechisme Positiviste, that "[the] social
point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion
rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of
every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our
contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or
accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service....
This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human
morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of
benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must
serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely." As the name of the
ethical doctrine is "altruism," doing what the ethical doctrine
prescribes has also come to be referred to by the term "altruism" —
serving others through placing their interests above one's own.
Philosophers who support
egoism have argued that altruism is demeaning to the individual
and that no moral obligation to help others actually exists.
Nietzsche asserts that altruism is predicated on the assumption
that others are more important than one's self and that such a
position is degrading and demeaning. He also claims that it was very
uncommon for people in Europe to consider the sacrifice of one's own
interests for others as virtuous until after the advent of
Christianity.
Ayn
Rand argued that altruism is the willful sacrifice of one's
values, and represents the reversal of morality because only
rationally selfish ethics allow one to pursue the values required
for human life.
Advocates of altruism as an ethical doctrine
maintain that one ought to act, or refrain from acting, so that
benefit or
good is bestowed on other people, if necessary to the exclusion
of one's own interests (Note that refraining from murdering someone,
for example, is not altruism since he is not receiving a benefit or
being helped, as he already has his life; this would amount to the
same thing as ignoring someone).
Altruism in ethology
and evolutionary biology
In the science of
ethology (the study of behavior), and more generally in the
study of
social evolution, altruism refers to behavior by an individual
that increases the
fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of
the actor. This would appear to be counter-intuitive if one presumes
that
natural selection acts on the individual. Natural selection,
however, acts on the gene pool of the subjects, not on each subject
individually. Recent developments in
game theory (look into
ultimatum game) have provided some explanations for apparent
altruism, as have traditional evolutionary analyses. Among the
proposed mechanisms are:
The study of altruism was the initial impetus
behind
George R. Price's development of the
Price equation which is a mathematical equation used to study
genetic evolution. An interesting example of altruism is found in
the cellular
slime moulds, such as
Dictyostelium mucoroides. These protists live as individual
amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a
multicellular fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves
to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body. Social
behavior and altruism share many similaraties to the interactions
between the many parts (cells, genes) of an organism, but are
distinguished by the ability of each individual to reproduce
indefinitely without an absolute requirement for its neighbors.
Altruism in politics
Some opponents of the ethical doctrine
called altruism (that people have an ethical obligation to help or
further the welfare of others) argue that the doctrine is dangerous
as it can lead to violations of individual liberty if the state
enforces the principle. For example,
David Kelley says, "If self-sacrifice is an ideal — if service
to others is the highest, most honorable course of action--why not
force people to act accordingly?" He believes this can ultimately
result in the state forcing everyone into a collectivist political
system.
With regard to their political convictions,
altruists may be divided in two broad groups: Those who believe
altruism is a matter of personal choice (and therefore selfishness
can and should be tolerated), and those who believe that altruism is
a moral ideal which should be embraced, if possible, by all human
beings.
A prominent example of the former branch of
altruist political thought is
Lysander Spooner, who, in Natural Law, writes: "Man,
no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for
the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten
the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man
must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and
how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them." Things such as
a law that motorists pull over to let emergency vehicles pass may
also be justified by appealing to the altruism ethic. Finally,
radical altruists of this branch may take things further and
advocate some form of
collectivism or
communalism.
On a somewhat related note, altruism is often held
— even by non-altruists — to be the kind of ethic that should guide
the actions of politicians and other people in positions of power.
Such people are usually expected to set their own interests aside
and serve the populace. When they do not, they may be criticized as
defaulting on what is believed to be an ethical obligation to place
the interests of others above their own.
Altruism in
psychology and sociology
If one performs an act beneficial to others with a
view to gaining some personal benefit, then it is not an
altruistically motivated act. There are several different
perspectives on how "benefit" (or "interest") should be defined. A
material gain (for example, money, a physical reward, etc.) is
clearly a form of benefit, while others identify and include both
material and immaterial gains (affection, respect, happiness,
satisfaction etc.) as being philosophically identical benefits.
According to
psychological egoism, while people can exhibit altruistic
behavior, they cannot have altruistic motivations.
Psychological egoists would say that while they might very well
spend their lives benefitting others with no material benefit (or a
material net loss) to themselves, their most basic motive for doing
so is always to further their own interests. For example, it would
be alleged that the foundational motive behind a person acting this
way is to advance their own psychological well-being ("good
feelings"). Critics of this theory often reject it on the grounds
that it is
non-falsifiable; in other words, it is impossible to prove or
disprove because immaterial gains such as a "good feelings" cannot
be measured or proven to exist in all people performing altruistic
acts. Psychological egoism has also been accused of using
circular logic: "If a person willingly performs an act, that
means he derives personal enjoyment from it; therefore, people only
perform acts that give them personal enjoyment". This statement is
circular because its conclusion is identical to its hypothesis (it
assumes that people only perform acts that give them personal
enjoyment, and concludes that people only perform acts that give
them personal enjoyment).
The
empathy-altruism hypothesis states that when an individual
experiences
empathy towards someone in need, the individual will then be
altruistically motivated to help that person; that is, the
individual will be primarily concerned about that person's welfare,
not his or her own.
In common parlance, altruism usually means helping
another person without expecting material reward from that or other
persons, although it may well entail the "internal" benefit of a
"good feeling," sense of satisfaction, self-esteem, fulfillment of
duty (whether imposed by a religion or ideology or simply one's
conscience), or the like. In this way one need not speculate on the
motives of the altruist in question.
Humans are not exclusively altruistic towards
family members, previous co-operators or potential future allies,
but can be altruistic towards people they do not know and will never
meet. For example, some humans donate to international
charities and volunteer their time to help
society's less fortunate.
It strains plausibility to claim that these
altruistic deeds are done in the hope of a return favor. The game
theory analysis of this 'just in case' strategy, where the principle
would be 'always help everyone in case you need to pull in a favor
in return', is a decidedly non-optimal strategy, where the
net expenditure of effort (tit) is far greater than the net profit
when it occasionally pays off (tat).
According to some, it is difficult to believe that
these behaviors are solely explained as indirect selfish
rationality, be it conscious or sub-conscious. Mathematical
formulations of
kin selection, along the lines of the
prisoner's dilemma, are helpful as far as they go; but what a
game-theoretic explanation glosses over is the fact that
altruistic behavior can be attributed to that apparently mysterious
phenomenon, the
conscience. One recent suggestion, proposed by the philosopher
Daniel Dennett, was initially developed when considering the
problem of so-called 'free riders' in the
tragedy of the commons, a larger-scale version of the
prisoner's dilemma.
In
game theory terms, a free rider is an
agent who draws benefits from a co-operative society without
contributing. In a one-to-one situation, free riding can easily be
discouraged by a tit-for-tat strategy. But in a larger-scale
society, where contributions and benefits are pooled and shared,
they can be incredibly difficult to shake off.
Imagine an elementary society of co-operative
organisms. Co-operative agents interact with each other, each
contributing resources and each drawing on the common good. Now
imagine a
rogue
free rider, an agent who draws a favor ("you scratch my back")
and later refuses to return it. The problem is that free riding is
always going to be beneficial to individuals at cost to society. How
can well-behaved co-operative agents avoid being cheated? Over many
generations, one obvious solution is for co-operators to evolve the
ability to spot potential free riders in advance and refuse to enter
into
reciprocal arrangements with them. Then, the canonical free
rider response is to evolve a more convincing
disguise, fooling co-operators into co-operating after all. This
can lead to an evolutionary
arms races, with ever-more-sophisticated disguises and
ever-more-sophisticated detectors.
In this evolutionary arms race, how best might one
convince comrades that one really is a genuine co-operator,
not a free rider in disguise? One answer is by actually making
oneself a genuine co-operator, by erecting
psychological barriers to breaking promises, and by advertising
this fact to everyone else. In other words, a good solution is for
organisms to evolve things that everyone knows will force them to be
co-operators - and to make it obvious that they've evolved these
things. So evolution will produce organisms who are sincerely moral
and who wear their hearts on their sleeves; in short, evolution will
give rise to the phenomenon of conscience.
This theory, combined with ideas of
kin selection and the one-to-one sharing of benefits, may
explain how a blind and fundamentally selfish process can produce a
genuinely non-cynical form of altruism that gives rise to the human
conscience.
Critics of such technical game theory analysis
point out that it appears to forget that human beings are rational
and emotional. To presume an analysis of human behaviour without
including human rationale or emotion is necessarily unrealistically
narrow, and treats human beings as if they are mere machines,
sometimes called
Homo economicus. Another objection is that often people donate
anonymously, so that it is impossible to determine if they really
did the altruistic act.
Beginning with an understanding that rational
human beings benefit from living in a benign universe, logically it
follows that particular human beings may gain substantial emotional
satisfaction from acts which they perceive to make the world a
better place.
Comparison of
altruism and tit for tat
Studying the simple strategy "Tit
for tat" in the
iterated prisoner's dilemma problem,
game theorists argue that "Tit for tat" is much more successful
in establishing stable
cooperation among individuals than altruism, defined as
unconditional cooperation, can ever be.
"Tit for tat" starts with cooperation in the first
step (as altruism does) and then just imitates the behaviour of the
partner step by step. If the partner cooperates, then he rewards
him with cooperation, if he does not, then he punishes him by
not cooperating in the next step. For example one country could
offer another a
free trade deal on the condition that it is returned by the
second country (tit for tat); or alternatively it could offer it
unconditionally (altruism). However, the second country may take
advantage of this unconditional offer and continue with tariffs,
farming subsidies etc.
Confronted with many strategies that try to
exploit or abuse cooperation of others, this simple strategy
surprisingly proved to be the most successful (see
The Evolution of Cooperation). It was even more successful than
these abusing strategies, while unconditional cooperativity
(altruism) was one of the most unsuccessful strategies. Confronted
with altruistic behaviour, Tit for tat is indistinguishable from
pure altruism.
Robert Axelrod and
Richard Dawkins also showed that altruism may be harmful to
society by nourishing exploiters and abusers (and making them more
and more powerful until they can force everyone to cooperate
unconditionally), which is not the case for "Tit for tat". (See also
comparison of
entrepreneur and
entredonneur)
In the context of
biology, the "Tit for tat" strategy is also called
reciprocal altruism or
Mutual Aid (one of the earliest proponents of it being
considered a basic natural behaviour was
Peter Kropotkin).
According to some modern philosophers, most
notably those in western countries, altruism may have yet another
purpose. The belief that someone special to the person (a friend,
family or other) may have some kind of benefit from the act, and
thus makes it logical to do such.
[citation needed]
Altruism and
religion
Most, if not all, of the world's
religions promote altruism as a very important moral value.
Christianity and
Buddhism place particular emphasis on altruistic morality, as
noted above, but
Judaism,
Islam,
Hinduism and many other religions also promote altruistic
behavior. Altruism was central to the teachings of
Jesus
found in the
Gospel.
From biblical to medieval
Christian traditions, tensions between self-affirmation and
other-regard were sometimes discussed under the heading of
"disinterested love," as in the Pauline phrase "love seeks not
[solely] its own interests." In his book on Indoctrination and
Self-deception... Roderick Hindery tries to shed light on these
tensions by contrasting them with impostors of authentic
self-affirmation and altruism, by analysis of other-regard within
creative individuation of the self, and by contrasting love for the
few with love for the many. If love, which confirms others in their
freedom, shuns propagandas and masks, assurance of its presence is
ultimately confirmed not by mere declarations from others, but by
each person's experience and practice from within. As in practical
arts, the presence and meaning of love become validated and grasped
not by words and reflections alone, but in the doing. This is not
one of the inexplicable miracles of the modern world and has often
been compared to the great golden egg sciences. Though it might seem
obvious that altruism is central to the teachings of Jesus, one
important and influential strand of Christianity would qualify this.
St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologia, I:II Quaestion 26, Article
4 states that we should love ourselves more than our neighbour. His
interpretation of the Pauline phrase is that we should seek the
common good more than the private good but this is because the
common good is a more desirable good for the individual. 'You should
love your neighbour as yourself' from Leviticus 19 and Matthew 22 is
interpreted by St Thomas as meaning that love for ourself is the
exemplar of love for others. He does think though, that we should
love God more than ourselves and our neighbour, taken as an
entirety, more than our bodily life, since the ultimate purpose of
love of our neighbour is to share in eternal beatitude, a more
desirable thing than bodily well being. Comte was probably opposing
this Thomistic doctrine,now part of mainstream Catholicism, in
coining the word Altruism, as stated above. This is not one of the
inexplicable miracles of the modern world and has often been
compared to the great golden egg sciences.
[edit]
References
- Batson, C.D. (1991). The altruism question.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Fehr, E. & Fischbacher, U. (23
October
2003).
The nature of human altruism. In Nature, 425, 785 – 791.
-
August Comte,
Catechisme positiviste (1852) or Catechism of Positivism,
tr. R. Congreve, (London: Kegan Paul, 1891)
- Oord, Thomas Jay, Science of Love
(Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004).
-
Nietzsche, Friedrich,
Beyond Good and Evil
-
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
The Philosophy of Poverty (1847)
-
Lysander Spooner,
Natural Law
-
Ayn Rand,
The Virtue of Selfishness
-
Matt Ridley,
The Origins Of Virtue
- Oliner, Samuel P. and Pearl M. Towards a
Caring Society: Ideas into Action. West Port, CT: Praeger, 1995.
-
The Evolution of Cooperation,
Robert Axelrod, Basic Books,
ISBN 0-465-02121-2
-
The Selfish Gene,
Richard Dawkins (1990), second edition -- includes two
chapters about the evolution of cooperation,
ISBN 0-19-286092-5
-
Robert Wright, The
moral animal, Vintage, 1995,
ISBN 0-679-76399-6.
-
Kelley, David
Epistemology and Politics: Ayn Rand's Cultural Commentary
- Madsen, E.A., Tunney, R., Fieldman, G.,
Plotkin, H.C.,
Dunbar, R.I.M., Richardson, J.M., & McFarland, D. (2006)
Kinship and altruism: A cross-cultural experimental study.
British Journal of Psychology
[1]
[edit]
See also
[edit]
External links
