In my first post,
I suggested that people sometimes do things because they want to have a
positive impact on others’ lives. In my second,
I suggested that when people do this, they, their goals, and their behaviour
can be called altruistic. I suggested that this was no more contentious than a
claim that when people seek to harm others, they, their goals, and their
behaviour can be called aggressive.
Understood like this, altruism and
aggression are goal-seeking. When altruistic or aggressive, people strive for outcomes
that they think will be good or bad for others because that is what they want
to achieve.
Grammatically, the altruist or aggressor is
a subject whose immediate goal is to
try to influence another’s welfare and the other’s welfare is the object of the altruist’s or aggressor’s
desire and action. Semi-formally, in altruism a person (P) strives (s) to have a positive influence (↑) on another’s
(O) welfare (w) (Ps ↑ Ow)
and in aggression a person strives to have a negative influence (↓) on another’s
welfare (Ps ↓ Ow).
As also mentioned in my second post, a
person can strive to have an impact on his or her own welfare. Prudence, which
involves a person striving to improve his or her own welfare, was given as an
example. In prudence, the subject (P, the person who acts) is the same as in
altruism or aggression. Only the object of their immediate desire and action is
different. In prudence, a person strives to have a positive impact on the self’s
welfare: Ps ↑ Sw.
Differentiating P and S helps keep clear
the distinction between the subject and the object of goal-seeking action. When
a person engages in altruism, aggression, prudence, or any other goal-seeking behaviour,
the subject is the same; it is the person performing the action in order to pursue
their goal. What differs across these behaviours is the object of that person’s
immediate desire and action. In altruism and aggression the object is another;
in prudence the object is the self.
Differentiating P and S is also useful in trying
to keep separate two meanings of the slippery phrase “self-interest”.
Because they engage in goal-seeking behaviour,
it is tempting to think of altruists as ultimately irredeemably “self-interested”.
They are, after all, striving to achieve things they want and they presumably
anticipate some sort of satisfaction if their goals are achieved. But because people
pursuing any goal can be called “self-interested” in this sense, even if the
immediate object of their desires and actions is not the self, perhaps the term
“personal-interest” might be better here. People have all manner of goals or personal
interests, only some of which have welfare of ‘the self’ as the immediate object
of interest.
As well as being personally interested in
the sense of having goals, the prudent are also self-interested in a much more direct way. Their personal interest
is specifically to intentionally seek benefits for the self. The self’s welfare
is the object of their immediate desires and actions. They have personal goals
(“self-interest” #1) to promote their self’s
welfare (“self-interest” #2).
People are also self-interested in this
additional, intentional, direct sense when they seek to harm the self. For want
of a better phrase, I shall call this “self-abuse”: Ps ↓ Sw. In prudence and self-abuse, people strive (and are therefore
personally interested) to affect their own welfare (their self-interest). In
altruism and aggression, people strive (and are therefore personally interested)
to influence others’ welfare (other-interest). The table below illustrates
these two different senses of “self-interest”.
(Personal goal) Goal object
Aggression s↓ “Other-welfare”, i.e., harm to other
Altruism s↑ “Other-welfare”, i.e., help for other
Prudence s↑ “Self-welfare”, i.e.,
help for self
Self-abuse s↓ “Self-welfare”, i.e., harm to self
In my nextpost I will review one of the most sustained programmes of empirical
research in the psychology of altruism. I will suggest that it has been severely
compromised by almost everyone involved apparently failing to adequately
appreciate this essential difference between these two different uses of the
phrase “self-interest”.
Key points
The subject of action is the same whenever
a person engages in goal-directed behaviour: it is the person engaging in the
behaviour to pursue those goals.
Goal-seeking behaviours are
differentiated one from another by the object of the action, e.g., help for
another (Ps ↑ Ow), help for the self (Ps
↑ Sw), harm to another (Ps ↓ Ow),
or harm to the self (Ps ↓ Ow).
Final
thoughts and further reading
In trying to keep things as clear as
possible, I have not mentioned above a third sense of “self-interest”. This is
the notion that some things are ‘objectively’ good for people’s welfare, i.e.,
‘objectively in their (self-) interest’. It is possible to say, for example,
that a person attempting to be prudent acts from ‘self-interest’ (i.e., pursues
personal goals) when trying to promote their ‘self-interest’ (i.e., to improve
their welfare as they see it) but ultimately does not act in their ‘self-interest’
(i.e., because alternative actions would have better promoted that person’s objective
welfare). I do not believe it is in helpful to continue to use the phrase
“self-interest” as promiscuously as some do, especially when trying to
understand the phenomenon of people intentionally trying to help others.
Blackburn, S. (2001). Ethics:
a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Also published
as Being Good).
Jensen, M. C. (1994). Self-interest, altruism, incentives, and
agency theory. Journal of Applied
Corporate Finance, 7 (2), 40-45. [Link]
How
to cite this blog post using APA Style
T. Farsides. (2013, October
7). Where’s the “I” in altruism? Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/10/wheres-i-in-altruism.html
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