Altruism, some ideas quoted


NOTE:

Titles for later reference are in bold.
'good' quotes are in italics.
'very good' quotes are in italics and large.
everything else is quoted for background info

Altruism is most famously recognized as occurring within a biological family, often called kin-altruism. However in human societies altruism goes well beyond mere familial relations and is "widely lauded and is commonly considered the foundation for a moral life." (pg. 3) Altruism is recognized as affirmation and care for another person for their own benefit, regardless of how their benefit impinges upon one's own success

the counter argument
"human moral behavior ... has to be such that it is going to serve the individual." (pg. 158). Under Ruse's view, "Darwinian evolutionary biology is nonprogressive, pointing away from the possibility of our knowing objective morality" and thus "Darwinian evolutionary theory leads one to a moral skepticism, a kind of moral nonrealism." (pg. 165) 


and the counter to that
"Human beings often manifest radically sacrificial, consequentially altruistic behavior that reduces reproductive success without compensatory reciprocation or kinship benefit. Behaviors such as voluntary poverty, celibate orders of benevolence, Holocaust rescuers, and religious asceticism or martyrdom are examples in humans that have provoked reconceptualism or substantial refinement of evolutionary approaches to human altruism. And even less extreme behaviors, such as adoption of non-kin, anonymous philanthropy, and costly investment in reproductively inert endeavors such as art or funeral caches have stimulated the extension or nuancing of initial sociobiological accounts." (p. 221; internal citations omitted) 


CHALLENGES TO EGOISM
Daniel Batson challenges the common assumption that all behavior is selfish. Batson's "empathy/altruism" hypothesis is that other-oriented emotional response evokes a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing the other's welfare. Batson looks at more than 25 experiments to distinguish between self-directed motives and truly altruistic motives. Batson says that the tentative conclusion from his studies is that feeling empathy for a person in need does evoke altruistic motivation to help that person. 


Finally, Samuel Oliner analyzes altruistic behaviors of rescuers of Jews during WWII and volunteers working with the dying. He characterizes altruism as actions that are (1) directed toward another, (2) involve a high risk or sacrifice to the actor, (3) are accompanied by no external reward and (4) voluntary. After examining data of the two groups, both the rescuers and those involved in hospice, Oliner concludes that there is no single motivating explanation that triggers people to behave compassionately for the welfare of others. However, Gentile rescuers who risked their lives for Jews had learned compassion, caring norms, and responsibility for diverse others from parents and others in authority. Hospice volunteers exhibited a higher degree of intrinsic religiosity, despite a lower incidence of affiliation with mainstream religious traditions. Oliner suggests that social institutions, whether they be religious, educational or in the workplace, need to reconsider their roles and responsibilities so that they might foster kind and loving acts. 


In the context of human behavior, altruism, from the Latin root alter (meaning
“other”), concerns the place of the other in moral experience, especially when the
other is in need. An altruist intends and acts for the other’s sake as an end in itself
rather than as a means to public recognition or internal well-being, although such
benefits to self need not be resisted.


group altruism

An exclusive tribal solidarity—known also as tribal patriotism, tribal
loyalty, and tribal altruism—has mercilessly set man against man, and group
against group. It has killed more human beings and destroyed more cities and villages
than all the epidemics, hurricanes, storms, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions taken together. It has brought upon mankind more suffering than any
other catastrophe” (1954, p. 461).

The most significant moral, scientific, and religious challenge that we face
as a species is the overcoming of intergroup conflict.

If the inevitable correlate of altruism
is aggression, then is the capacity for empathy potent enough to overcome
the in-group/out-group barrier and to inhibit aggressive tendencies because of the distress that the empathic observer feels in response to the noxious consequences
of aggression (Feshbach & Feshbach, 1986)?Can the symbols that live in
us and in which we live bring us to full equality regarding altruism? Is empathy so
thoroughly the product of in-group evolution that in-group insularity is ineradicable?
The question here is not just whether empathy can be extended, that is, if it
is heavily or entirely constrained by in-group evolutionary origins. The further
question is how empathy, which by its very nature is ethically neutral, can be used
as a tool for nurture rather than for exploitative control. Even within groups, as
Joseph Conrad vividly depicts in his novels and as Hitler understood to his political
advantage, the ability to sense what others are feeling can be used either to provide
sensitive care or to manipulate, even cruelly dominate.

it equally provides a context in which hurting individuals in other groups can be selectively advantageous. Group selection favors within-group niceness and between-group nastiness.
(p. 9)

with the suspicion that the popularity of a purely egoistic image of the
human self is shaped by a culture of individualism and competition


true altruism?
All moral experience, she argues, begins in
discovering the other “as an ethical datum that makes a claim upon the self to
engage in other-regarding acts.” She devotes attention to the problem of genetic
reductionism, that is, interpreting human behavior in purely genetic terms. These
are terms that she brilliantly associates with the Pythagorean tradition. In her discourse
on discovering the other as other (“alterity”), she directly challenges the
idea that ethical life is possible from the vantage point of self-interest, no matter
how enlightened to long-term perspectives.

Kagan, in his “Morality, Altruism, and Love,” is particularly critical of evolutionary
biology, which he believes provides ideological support for a culture of
narcissism


HEDONISM
Psychological hedonism is one variety of egoistic theory. Hedonism claims that
the only ultimate motives that people have are the attainment of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. The only things we care about as ends in themselves are states
of our own consciousness. This special form of egoism is the hardest one to refute.
It is easy enough to see from human behavior that people don’t always try to maximize
their access to consumer goods. However, even when someone chooses a job
with a lower salary over a job that pays more, the hedonist can say that this choice
was motivated by the desire to feel good and to avoid feeling bad. Indeed, hedonists
think they can explain the most harrowing acts of self-sacrifice—for example,
the soldier in a foxhole who throws himself on a live grenade to save the lives
of his comrades. The soldier supposedly does this because he’d sooner not exist at
all than live with the knowledge that he had allowed his friends to perish. This hedonistic
explanation may sound strained; why not say instead that the soldier
cared more about his friends than he did about his own survival? But that the explanation
sounds strained does not mean that it must be false.

is the popularity of egoism due to the fact that we live in a culture that emphasizes individuality and
economic competition?