Altruism

Altruism is either a practice or habit (in the view of many, a virtue) as well as an ethical doctrine. In Buddhism it is also seen as a fundamental property of human nature.

Altruism can refer to:

• being helpful to other people with little or no interest in being rewarded for one's efforts (the colloquial definition). This is distinct from merely helping others.

• actions that benefit others with a net detrimental or neutral effect on the actor, regardless of the actor's own psychology, motivation, or the cause of her actions. This type of altruistic behavior is referred to in ecology as Commensalism.

• an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help others, if necessary to the exclusion of one's own interest or benefit. One who holds such a doctrine is known as an "altruist."

The concepts have a long history in philosophical and ethical thought, and have 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 can be distinguished from a feeling of loyalty and duty. Altruism focuses on a moral obligation towards all humanity, while duty focuses on a moral obligation towards a specific individual (e.g. a king), a specific organization (e.g. a government), or an abstract concept (e.g. God, country etc). Some individuals may feel both altruism and duty, while others may not. As opposed to altruism, duty is much easier to enforce by an authority.

Altruism in philosophy and ethics

The word "altruism" (French, altruisme, from autrui: "other people", derived from Latin alter: "other") 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.

However, the idea that one has a moral obligation to serve others is much older than Auguste Comte. For example, many of the world's oldest and most widespread religions (particularly Buddhism and Christianity) advocate it. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it is explained as follows:

"Jesus made answer and said, A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest was going down that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on [them] oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out two shillings, and gave them to the host, and said, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee. Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him, Go, and do thou likewise." (Luke 10: 30-37)

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. 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. However, this does not mean that Nietzsche did not believe in helping people. He simply believed that a person shouldn't be prevented from having painful, but necessary, life experiences. Ayn Rand argued that altruism is the willful sacrifice of one's values, and represents the reversal of morality because only a rationally selfish ethics allows 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), 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 have provided some explanations for apparent altruism, as have traditional evolutionary analyses. Among the proposed mechanisms are:

• Kin selection including eusociality (see also "selfish gene")
• Reciprocal altruism, mutual aid
• Behavioral manipulation (e.g. by parasites)
• Indirect reciprocity (e.g. reputation)
• Bounded rationality (see e.g. Herbert Simon)
• Strong reciprocity
• Sexual selection

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 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 (e.g. 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 feeling"). Critics of this theory often reject it on the grounds that it is non-falsifiable; in other words, it is designed in such a way as to be impossible to prove or disprove - because immaterial gains such as a "good feeling" 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).

In contrast to psychological egoism, 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 don't know and will never meet. For example, 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.

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 doesn't, then he punishes him by not cooperating in the next step.

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".

In the context of biology, the "Tit for tat" strategy is also called reciprocal altruism.

Altruism in politics

If one is an adherent to the ethical doctrine called altruism (that people have an ethical obligation to help or further the welfare of others), then one will support the kind of politics that one believes to be most effective in furthering the welfare of others, regardless of the effect this may have on oneself. Since there is no general consensus on what kind of politics results in the greatest benefit for others, different altruists may have very different political views.

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."

The latter branch of altruist political thought, on the other hand, argues that egoism should be actively discouraged, and that altruists have a duty not only to help other people, but to teach those people to help each other as well. Thus, in politics, these altruists almost always take a left-wing stance, ranging from moderate social democracy to socialism or even communism. Moderate altruists of this branch may argue for the creation of taxation-funded government programs aimed at benefiting the needy (for example transfer payments, such as social welfare, or public healthcare and public education). Less obvious 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 and religion

All the major world religions promote altruism as a very important moral value. Christianity and Buddhism place particular emphasis on altruistic morality, as noted above, but Judaism, Islam and Hinduism also promote altruistic behavior.

See also

• Altruism in animals
• Psychology
• Euphemism
• Will (law)
• Trust (law)
• Tit for tat
• Reciprocal altruism

External links

• What is Altruism? (Altruists International)
• Biological Altruism
• The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State University

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.
• Comte, August, 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
• Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, The Philosophy of Poverty (1847)
• Spooner, Lysander, Natural Law
• Rand, Ayn, The Virtue of Selfishness
• 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 0465021212
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (1990), second edition -- includes two chapters about the evolution of cooperation, ISBN 0192860925