Does Altruism Exist?

Of course altruism exists. I’ll explain below.

First, though, I don’t pretend that this informal essay is a thorough or profound exploration of deep philosophical or psychological issues. The points I want to make are, in the end, pretty simple. I won’t make much effort to edit this down, so probably it’s too long. I may not do a great job of making my points clear, but here goes.

It seems that a common point of view (in some circles) is that altruism, or ethical behaviour, doesn’t really exist. That, it is said, is because human conduct can all be explained by that fact that humans are driven by some pleasure versus pain calculation. Or, put another way, humans maximize utility. So, according to that point of view, thinking in terms of ethical behaviour or altruism is a philosophical blunder, or perhaps a misunderstanding of human psychology.

A move commonly made to defend this point of view is to use a perverse and unwarranted definition to altruism (and related concepts)

A typical conversation that illustrates my point might go like this:

Jane: Bob donated one of his own kidneys to his son Mike. How selfless!

Dick: So Bob preferred to lose a kidney rather than see his son die of renal failure.

Jane: Yes.

Dick: Aha!

Jane: “Aha” what?

Dick: Well it’s not really selfless of Bob if he preferred that outcome, is it?

Dick believes that he has corrected Jane’s sentimental, perhaps delusional conceptual error about human conduct. That is, she believes that Bob’s decision is selfless, or ethical, or altruistic. Dick believes that she is mistaken, and that he has cleverly explained away altruism as a kind of philosophical unicorn. But he has made a blunder, not Jane.

I believe Dick’s error consists of two related parts:

• unwarranted reductionism, and
• a perverse and unwarranted definition of altruism.

Dick, and many other thoughtful people, think that once you point out that people act on their motivations, there is nothing more that can meaningfully be said about human conduct. To clarify (I hope), saying that Bob “preferred” such and such and outcome is no different than asserting that “Bob acted for some reason he had”, i.e., that he was motivated by some internal process that led to his decision. This observation is true, but trivial. It’s barely an insight at all, and falls far short of important ways in which we view, analyze and evaluate human conduct.

So, let me try to make clear what I mean by reductionism. Perhaps another caricatured conversation will help:

Jane: I’d like a cinnamon bun with my coffee, please.

Dick: You realize, of course, that all matter consists of electrons, protons, and neutrons.

Jane: Yeah, so what?

Dick: Well, since cinnamon buns and cyanide capsules are both made of the same subatomic particles, there is no good reason for you to prefer a cinnamon bun over a cyanide capsule with your coffee. Here’s your double-double and a dose of cyanide.

So, in this admittedly silly example, Dick believes that, since matter can indeed be conceptually reduced to a set of subatomic particles, there is no use in treating matter has having properties, or structure, above that subatomic particle level. Of course, that is ridiculous. And, it is equally ridiculous to apply this kind of reductionism to human conduct. Human experience, and decision-making, are not adequately described by a single, structureless net calculation of pleasure and pain.

The reductionism gets even worse when it is formalized and misapplied. This might involve the invocation of utilitarian philosophy. Here, acting on some internal motivation is said to be a matter of maximizing utility, i.e., minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure, or something of the sort. There is plenty of literature in diverse fields that actually uses the unit of the util to describe the net amount of pleasure minus pain, or at any rate, to describe the measure of positive outcomes that humans are said to maximize.

This model of human behaviour has very little explanatory force in most contexts. It may be useful in, say, some areas of economics, or in modelling the behaviour of non-human artificial intelligence agents. But, it does almost no useful work in larger settings. Why?

Well, the problem here is that utility, or the amount of utils, is a single number. It treats human experience, and human decision making, as a structureless number that, in any given instance, is the net sum of the pain and pleasure that a human experiences, or calculates will result from a decision. But human experience does not reduce to a structureless bottom line number.

It may fair to say that a person’s decision to act, to choose to do one thing rather than something else, collapses into a single net calculation. That calculation leads to a decision, a single, chosen outcome that the person opts for. As far as I know, we experience only a single thread of time; actions are done or not done. But this decision making process, and the fact that the person preferred, or chose to do what they did, does not collapse all previous or current human experience into a single, featureless number. Ordinary experience shows this. I’ll go back to the kidney donation example to show what I mean.

Having donated one of his kidneys to his son, it is implausible that Bob experiences life thereafter (in respect of the kidney donation) as an undifferentiated single level of contentment, or utility. His experience is likely to have plenty of aspects to it simultaneously, and that even vary from time to time. Bob may suffer from some pain, and perhaps a post-surgery infection. He may suffer some fear that his remaining kidney may also fail. But, at the same time, he is happy and relieved that his son no longer has to have regular dialysis, and can hope to lead a long, healthy life. All of these things, and many more besides, are likely to be part of Bob’s experience. And, he probably foresaw such possible consequences—pros and cons—in making his decision to donate his kidney. Although he may indeed feel that his sacrifice was worth it in the end—or not, he may regret the decision—that does not mean that his decision and its aftermath are nothing but a featureless, single number of utils.

In other words, neither Bob’s decision, nor the experience of its consequences, are reducible to pleasure minus pain.

The fallacy that altruism does not exist depends, in a way related to the above, to implicitly defining it as something that must end up being an illusion.

A reasonable, workable definition of altruism is not hard to come by. My dictionary defines it thus:

Altruism is the unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

We are readily able to observe, in ourselves, conduct and motivation that meets this definition, and conduct and motivation that does not. Of course, we may be uncertain, due to ambiguous or missing evidence, what someone’s motives might actually be. We might be uncertain of our own motivations. But that is not because the concept of altruism is vacuous.

We usefully distinguish the honest auto mechanic from one who lies about repairs a car needs, conceptually and practically. We understand the difference between a lawyer who dips into a trust fund and hides such conduct, from one who doesn’t. We can identify, conceptually and practically, a person who devotes their life to helping others, foregoing the accumulation of wealth.

So, we define altruism as a pattern of conduct, and (likely) a pattern of internal motivation, this is not at all illusory or vacuous. We observe it on others and in ourselves.

So what is the perverse definition used to argue that altruism does not exist? It seems to be something that is precluded by any kind of internal decision making process that a human might make. It is possible in every case (barring some mental disfunction) to add “but he preferred that outcome or he wouldn’t have made that choice. Right, so if that is true of every decision, this point of view holds that altruism must be something else in which this inevitable, universal decision making does not operate. But that is defining the problem away, in view of the fact that the workable definition of altruism involves very recognizable motivations and behaviours.

Such a denial of the existence of altruism may, perhaps, stem from an aversion to certain accounts of human nature. Perhaps religious accounts of humanity that assert that there is such a thing as pure, disembodied “good” that humans tap into, might explain this. But altruism, as we rightly understand it, does not require the operation of some ineffable Holy Spirit from beyond the material realm.

I should add that determinism and freedom of the will might be part of this argument. It does seem that, if freedom of the will is an illusion, ethics may be also. But even if everything, including human action, is strictly determined by prior causes, that does not imply that all patterns of behaviour are indistinguishable and undifferentiated. We can still notice that difference between a father who donates a kidney to an ailing child, and one who decides not to.

So, that’s my argument. Perhaps it boils down to “we know altruism when we see it in ourselves or others”.