99Percent

Not for objective morality, because empathy can't be objectively determined. That empathy exists is an objective fact, but not that it can be objectively measured or relied upon as rational because its a feeling, not a conscious logical thinking. For example I might feel more or less empathy for different people, or none at all. This is not objective.

Altruism is not valid because it negates the self that is the one that actually values things. Altruism is in effect a self destructive mechanism in the search of "higher" meaning outside the self, but the self must be the ultimate value in itself. There can be no higher value than the self and its purpose of being which is happiness. That is why I find altruism irrational.

Sure, for theistic moral system altruism "works" because theism is irrational at its core, but of which a "rational" system develops.

For nontheistic moral systems I find it impossible to justify altruism without resorting to some value that is greater than the individual self such as the greater good of society or of future mankind, either of which can't work because what is "good" can only be felt, determined and perceived by the individual because the individual mind is fully sovereign only to itself.

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: 99Percent ]</p>

tronvillain

bd-from-kg:
I use a rather wider definition of "self-interest" - one which includes altruistic impulses. That is, having altruistic impulses makes certain actions in your interest which would not been so otherwise.

tronvillain

99Percent:

Yes, I would be hiding what I did, but so what? I would be perfectly capable of not telling anyone I was a murderer and living a normal life.

Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. You simply weight the potential for the payoff for getting away with an action against the potential penalty of getting caught for an action, and pick whichever is higher. You may or may not ever do the same action again, depending on similar calculations. Oh, and all of the gains from previous actions are not necessarily lost as a result of getting caught at a single action.

tronvillain

99Percent:
Even if we ignore the flaws in your example (there are several), the conclusions reached in a two person system are not necessarily the conclusions reached in a system consisting of millions of people. The contribution of a random person out of those millions to my life is essentially zero - the real world is nothing like your example.

bd-from-kg

Jamie_L:

Well, I find the argument convincing! Not everyone agrees. Anyway, it goes like this.

First, it seems to me to be a self-evident principle of rationality that more knowledge and understanding are preferable to less. But what does this mean exactly? Well, it seems to me that it can only mean that choices that one makes when one has more knowledge and understanding are in some sense more valid, or are to be preferred, to those that one makes when one has less. More rigorously, the choices that one would make if one had more knowledge and understanding are more valid, or are to be preferred, to those that one would make if one had less. I think that a good way to express this is that it is rational to prefer a choice that one would make if one had more knowledge and understanding over a choice that one would make if one had less. Finally, this implies that, if a rational person happens to know that he would prefer (and therefore choose) a particular choice of action in a given situation if he had enough knowledge and understanding, he will make that choice even if he would otherwise be inclined to make a different one.

Two comments:

(1) Yes, I have made this argument before, and supported this point with a number of examples. But it seems so self-evident that it hardly seems necessary to give a lot of examples. Still, if someone is inclined to seriously dispute the point, I’ll be happy to provide some.

(2) The point is not rigorously valid as stated, because having more knowledge can affect which choice actually makes sense in some situations. For example, if you’re deciding whether to watch a particular movie or read a particular book, detailed knowledge of the contents might well make it rational not to do so, since the element of surprise and novelty would then be lost. Similarly, if you’re deciding whether to take a certain college course, a detailed knowledge of just what it is that you’d learn might make it pointless to take it, since you’d then already know the things you might have learned by taking it. However, this can be fixed up by stating the principle more rigorously. Unless someone is really interested in how this can be done, I don’t intend to get into this, but propose to speak as though the principle is rigorously valid as stated.

Second, what we would do if we had enough K&U is to act altruistically.

Most people find this, shall we say, less than self-evident, so I’ll expand on it. I actually have two arguments for this, but for the moment I’ll just present one.

The first argument is based on empathy. However, “empathy” can mean many things. In particular, it can refer to knowledge and understanding of what makes another person “tick”: an understanding of the desires, dispositions, attitudes, beliefs, etc. that drive him to do the things he does. A second meaning, which is conceptually completely distinct from the first, is a sympathetic identification with another person; feeling his own desires, goals, etc. almost as if they were one’s own.

Now “empathy” in the first sense is simply a variety of knowledge and understanding. And my central contention (with respect to the second point) is that empathy with another person in the first sense will lead a rational person to take that person’s interests and goals into account in his decisions.

It is really rather telling that the two meanings of “empathy” defined above are so frequently confused. In fact, in explaining my theory one of the biggest barriers is that so many people insist on interpreting “empathy” in the second sense no matter how many times I try to explain that I’m using it primarily in the first. My claim is essentially that empathy with someone in the first sense will cause a person to have empathy with that individual in the second. And the strongest argument for this claim is precisely the fact that these two meanings are so entangled in most people’s minds that they find it difficult to distinguish clearly between them. The reason for this, of course, is precisely that it’s true that empathy in the first sense leads to empathy in the second. And we are all so familiar with this that it is actually very difficult for us to imagine empathizing with someone in the first sense without also empathizing with them in the second.

Actually I would go further than this. I claim that, as empathy in the first sense (that is intimate understanding) with another person becomes more perfect, the effect will inevitably be that one will treat his goals and desires more and more nearly as if they were one’s own. In other words, perfect empathy (in the first sense) would cause one to treat his goals and desires on an absolutely equal basis with one’s own.

Of course, nothing like perfect empathy with even one other person has ever been achieved; it is plainly an experience that the human mind is not capable of. But it is remarkable that a degree of empathy that falls far short of the kind of perfect understanding that I’m talking about often has essentially the same effect. The only difference is that the failure to achieve perfect understanding will often cause the empath to misperceive the desires and goals of the empathee (if I may coin a term).

I have offered psychological explanations for this phenomenon in other threads, but the important thing at this point is simply the empirical fact that empathy (in the sense of knowledge and understanding of another person) does in fact have the effect described.

Now obviously no one could possibly have (or would even want to have) any great degree of empathy with all of the people who might be affected by his decisions. But the point is that, once we understand that the effect of strong empathy with (i.e., a fairly thorough understanding of) another person is to cause us to take his interests into account more or less equally with our own, it’s clear that the effect of having this kind of empathetic understanding of all of the people that can be affected by our actions would be to cause us to take all of their interests into account equally with our own. In other words, the effect would be that we would act altruistically.

But having even this much empathy (in the first sense) would simply be an increase (a vast increase, to be sure) in our knowledge and understanding. And according to the first principle explained above, a rational person will make the choice that he would make if he had more K&U over the choice that he would make with less (i.e., the amount of K&U that he actually has) if he happens to know what that choice would be. But we often can see what choice we would make if we took everyone’s interest into account equally, and (as we just saw) this is the choice that we would make if we had enough K&U. Therefore this is the choice that a rational person will make. In short, altruism is rational and selfishness is irrational.

That’s the argument, anyway. (As I say, I’ve left out part of it, but this is enough for now.)

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

But this erases the distinction between self-interested and altruistic acts. Everyone always has some motive for doing what he does. If having a motive (i.e., an impulse) automatically makes an action self-interested, everything that anyone does is self-interested.

But there is a useful (and widely recognized) distinction between self-interested actions and altruistic ones. Abolishing this distinction by linguistic fiat (i.e., by redefining words to mean something other than what they are commonly taken to mean) does not contribute to clear thinking, but to obfuscation.

It seems to me more useful to call an act self-interested if its purpose or motive is primarily to further one's own interests, and altruistic (or at any rate unselfish) if its purpose or motive is primarily to further other people's interests.

An even more useful distinction is between selfish and unselfish actions. A selfish action is one where the agent takes into account only his own interests, whereas an unselfish act is one where the agent takes the interests of other people (ideally, everyone affected) into account.

tronvillain

bd-from-kg:

Yes, altruistic acts are self-interested acts, as are selfish acts. We distinguish between them primarily because of the difference in their payoffs - "altruistic" acts tend to have a payoff in positive emotion rather than anything base or concrete.

It seems to me more useful to call all acts self-interested, but to call an act "selfish" if its purpose or motive is to to further one's own interests at the expense of the interests of others, and altruistic (or at any rate unselfish) if its purpose or motive is primarily to further one's own interests along with the interests of others. Exactly how "selfish" or "unselfish" these acts will be will depend on the type of interests concerned - concrete or case emotional interests will be percieved as more "selfish" than higher emotional interests.

A reasonable person should always attempt to take into account the interests of everyone concerned when making a decision, but whether the decision will be "selfish" or "selfless" will depend on the the degree that emotions make favouring the interests of others in one's own interest.

LordSnooty

I have to stand up and say that I disagree strongly. An altruistic act does not HAVE to be selfish. I don't know, maybe I give people undue credit, but acts of altruism can occur in which there is no positive payoff, emotionally or otherwise.

Paul

bd-from-kg

99percent:

Saying that a morality is “objective” doesn’t mean that the truth of moral statements can be objectively determined in the sense you seem to have in mind; it just means that (at least some) moral statements are true or false, regardless of what anyone thinks. And in any case, I no longer consider my moral ideas to represent an objective morality. Anyway, I discussed this at length on another thread and you didn’t bother to answer, so I’m not going to waste more time on it here.

Again, it’s not clear what you mean by “objective” here, but it has nothing to do with objective morality. Anyway, in my “moral system” it doesn’t matter in the least whether someone actually does feel empathy or not.

None of this makes the slightest sense. There’s no logical reason why the valuer must be the thing valued. There is no reason to think that a person’s own happiness must be his “purpose of being”. There is no reason why a person cannot value anyone or anything more than himself. And if by “highest value” you mean something other than “that which one values most highly”, I can’t imagine what it could be.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. why does altruism have to be justified? Why shouldn’t we require selfishness to be justified instead? What, in your mind, would constitute justification of altruism or selfishness? How does the fact that the individual mind is sovereign only to itself imply that altruism cannot be “justified”? And if what is good can only be determined by the individual, how can morality be objective?

K

99Percent:

The drive to perform acts of altruism makes a lot of sense when viewed as a genetic survival mechanism. Groups whose members are willing to sacrifice to benefit others in the group have a distinct advantage in survival. By performing an altruistic act, an individual may not survive. That individual may not even leave any offspring to pass on genetic information. But, if the altruistic actions of a few allow the other members of the group to survive, the genes of other group members will live on. In reasonably small groups (families, clans, etc.), there should be a large degree of shared genetics.