bd-from-kg

faustuz:

No. As you may have gathered by now, PE does not assert that our conscious motives are always self-interested. This is so patently false that it’s hard to see how any sane person could believe it.

Yes.

No doubt it is the correct explanation of many cases of apparent altruism, and perhaps (if one is willing to strain credibility to the breaking point) can be used to explain all cases of human altruism. Since motives are private and often subconscious, it’s impossible to demonstrate conclusively that such an explanation is false in any given case. But the question is whether it’s plausible that this is the correct explanation in all cases. Is this consistent with what’s known about human psychology? In fact, do you have any empirical evidence whatever that it’s true?

This is very good evidence that pleasure and pain (or more precisely, the desire to experience pleasure and to avoid pain) are motives for many actions. It doesn’t show that they are the only motives, any more than showing that it’s generally bright when the sun is shining and dark in the middle of the night shows that the sun is the only source of light.

First, PE doesn’t just claim that our actions are “generally consistent” with our self-interest; it makes a universal claim about all human actions.

Second, biologists have identified mechanisms often favored by natural selection which produce non-self-interested behavior. The two main ones are kin selection and reciprocal altruism.

Finally, even if evolutionary theory predicted that we would always act in ways that are in fact in our self-interest, it wouldn’t follow that the motive for all actions is self-interested, any more than the fact that natural selection causes us to act in ways that result in procreation implies that we do so because of a desire to procreate.

How did morality get into this? The question you should be asking here is whether there is any natural explanation for the existence on non-self-interested desires. And even if you don’t “see a mechanism”, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. Ignorance of a cause does not imply absence of a cause.

Really? You don’t see how it could even be logically possible for any being to have any other motivation? This is a rather gigantic failure of imagination. I see no difficulty at all in imagining such a thing. It’s clearly possible. It’s logically possible that someone could be motivated exclusively by a desire to maximize the number of purple turtles, or by a desire to make the overall ratio of hydrogen to helium nuclei in a given region as close as possible to 10.67 to 1. If something is logically possible, the only way to find out whether it’s so is to observe the real world. The question is an empirical one: do human beings have any motivations other than maximizing their own pleasure and minimizing their own pain?

tronvillain

bd-from-kg, do you agree with faustaz's interpretation of your definition of psychological egoism? By that I mean this: "Psychological Egotism, as I understand it from your definition, would posit that humans always consciously act in their best interest." If you do, then those quotes of me do not support your assertion that I am a psychological egoist. If you do not, then perhaps they do.

From those quotes:
Do you seriously think that this is not the case?

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:
No. See my reply to Faustaz.

I don't know what you mean by "the reason the agent has that aim". We talked about this on the other thread. My interpretation of it was that you meant that the aim or goal of helping someone else is instrumental, with the ultimate goal being the agent's self-interest, but you denied that this is what you meant. So on this point I simply don't know whether I agree.

But the second and third sentences are pretty clear. No doubt this is at least part of what's going on in some cases, but I'm quite sure that it's not what's going on in all cases.

What's more, this sort of thing doesn't represent a purely self-interested motive. If a person gives money to charity to "feel good", we need to ask why it makes him feel good. For instance, he might desire that some other people be better off and feels good because he believes that giving the money to charity will have this result. In that case part at least of his motive is the desire that other people be better off, which is clearly not self-interested. Similarly, if it makes him "feel good" because he feels that he's "done the right thing" or acted virtuously, he must have a desire to do the right thing or to act virtuously, and again these are not (by any reasonable definition) self-interested desires. So again part of his motive is not self-interested.

Of course, I don't think that a desire to help others (for example) is always accompanied by a desire to experience the satisfaction of "feeling good" about doing so. No doubt it usually has that result, and anyone who has acted altruistically in the past will probably expect this result (in ordinary cases). But the fact that he expects it doesn't mean that the desire for it is part of his motive; it isn't necessarily what he's aiming for, either consciously or subconsciously. Indeed, in some cases (like diving on a live grenade to save one's buddies) it's very difficult to argue that the agent expects to "feel good" as a result of his action.

bd-from-kg

Keith Russell:

You’re right; altruism isn’t about pleasure (the agent’s pleasure, anyway). But that doesn’t mean that an altruistic act can’t give pleasure. In fact, it generally does. The question is whether the pleasure that an act produces is a pleasant by-product of getting what we were aiming for or whether the expectation of this pleasure was the motive for the act – i.e., the pleasure was itself the very thing we were aiming for.

It’s simply a fact of human nature that we (usually) derive pleasure from getting what we desire (or more precisely, from bring about a state of affairs that we find desirable), no matter what it is. But that doesn’t mean that this pleasure was itself what we desired. In fact, it’s logically impossible that pleasure derived from getting what one desired can also be the very thing that one desired in the first place.

It’s probably best to not even talk about “altruists” here. An altruist is either someone who believes that one ought always to be motivated by a desire to do good to other people (an absurd theory, in my opinion, but at any rate a moral theory), or someone who always is motivated solely by such desires (and of course there ain’t no such animal). What we’re talking about here is not altruism (the moral theory) or altruists (in either sense) but altruistic acts – acts that are motivated by a desire to do good to others. Although no one can always be motivated purely by a desire for the good of others, it seems clear that some people sometimes are.

Still, human nature being what it is, it’s barely possible that there are no purely altruistic acts; some element of self-interest may always manage to creep in. But PE doesn’t content itself with this modest claim. It says that self-interest is either the only motive, or (in its weaker forms) the primary or dominant motive for every act.

99Percent

bd-from-kg: It would be a matter of correctly defining "true" altruism. An act that is done purely for non selfish reasons seem to be contradictory, because the act is done by the actor itself, so there must always be a reason for acting, despite its apparent unselfishness for the outside observer, the actor is indeed making an act that is propelled by his own actions and therefore there is something compelling him to act and since that something is indeed affecting the actor to the degree of him acting then it necessarily follows that the actor is gaining something out this act, of which only he knows what it is consciously or subconsciously.

The problem arises when trying to determine objectively whether that action does indeed benefit the actor the most. It would appear that acts of self sacrifice at first glance seem self defeating until one realizes that the actor does indeed gain an implicit self-realization and therefore happiness for himself when he commits the "unselfish" altruistic act. So in these cases its upto the moral agent to determine if this fleeting momment of happiness (before he selfdestructs) is sufficient cause for the self sacrificial act. And obviously it is, because he indeed committed it.

Another situation, confusedly discussed here, is the moment when the actor seems to abandon reason itself for momentary self pleasure (hedonism) which in the long run it might seem obvious that he will harm himself. Examples abound, such as the pleasures of smoking, drinking and eating greasy steaks. In these cases the moral agent is obviously valueing subjectively that the immediate pleasure is worthwhile against the disadvantage of lesser health which is another value. In these cases objectivism fails because its up to the moral agent to decide these things as his own happiness can only be perceived by him. For me, as an example, smoking is a horrible hazzard as both my parents had terrible nicotine addiction problems that made them suffer tremendously when they wanted to quit, so I don't even consider the possibility of smoking. But for others smoking casually is not a problem at all and they can certainly enjoy occasional smoking without big detriments to their health. So its really a case of subjectivist ethics where objective morality has nothing to say. Its nothing different from the case where an individual values the pleasure of feeling self-accomplished when he sacrifices his life for the lives of others.

So where does objective morality really come in play? When there is a lie involved, when the obvious truth is compromised. Individually this comes about with great feelings of guilt, when in fact you know you have violated your own principles.

As an outsider you can objectively determine immorality simply by looking at the truth of moral decisions. Do you need to lie to hide the fact that you have been cheating to your wife? Do you need to lie when the cashier asks you if you kept extra change? Do you need to lie when they ask you if you have a body buried in your backyard? Do you lie to the IRS when it collects your taxes? Do you have to lie that you were not fired on your last job during the job interview? etc.

I can tell if you are being immoral if you have promised never to eat chocolates yet I see you gorging yourself to a bunch of Hersheys. You are betraying your own principles and if you are doing that to yourself, whats stopping you from being dishonest and therefore immoral to others?

Notice here that the "truth" in these cases fall in the human realm of understanding. The absolute truth is that which is understandable between rational and thinking human beings. For example it would be absurd to make up a "truth" that negates the validity of your marriage (for example: "its just a piece of paper that is probably lost somewhere anyway") so you justify your actions by making an intellectual copout and proceed to have an affair with another woman without feelings of guilt. But the truth is still there anyway, observable by others, and this is where objective morality comes into play.

In short subjectiveness is a valuation of possible different gains and losses. Objectiveness is absolute, the actions are either valid or not.

The AntiChris

I take your point, but such a broad definition of "altruism" would necessarily embrace those acts of altruism which are clearly motivated by overt self-interest (to improve ones status in society, for tax incentives etc).

In the original thread, my understanding was that we were discussing those acts where coercion or overt self-interest played no apparent part in motivation.

Chris

The AntiChris

bd-from-kg
Jeez bd, are you a curmudgeon in real life?
In my reply to your questioning of this, I did explain that my comment was made in the context of the discussion we were currently having and was in response to a previous statement that an altruistic act is a totally selfless act in which there is "no positive payoff, emotionally or otherwise".

Acknowledgement of the role emotional payback plays in motivating moral behaviour has about as much effect in the way we conduct our day-to-day living in the real world as does acknowledging the role determinism plays in free will - not one iota.
I don't know if you're using a 'technical' meaning of "pleasure" here to denote the resolution or satisfaction of emotional needs or tensions, but I've never used the word and certainly did not intend to suggest that "pleasure" (as commonly understood) is what we're "aiming at".
To describe an altruistic act as one that is motivated by a "desire to benefit other people" without reference to some underlying emotional 'need' has about as much explanatory power as saying we desire to benefit other people "just because". Of course, to claim that all human activity is fundamentally motivated by some emotional need is, to all practical intents and purposes, meaningless. It only becomes an issue worthy of debate if it is claimed that a specific area of human activity does not have this attribute.

I am at a loss as to why you find what I've said to be so controversial. I can only think that there's some confusion in the language we use to describe the distinction between moral motivation and basic human behaviour.

Chris

bd-from-kg

The AntiChris:
To be precise, you rejected Pryor’s view that “altruistic acts are not necessarily motivated by any expected emotional payoff”, which entails that you believe that all altruistic acts are necessarily motivated by an expected emotional payoff. This is pretty clear-cut. I really don’t understand what you’re arguing about. Most people would simply not agree that an act which is motivated by a desire for an expected emotional payoff can reasonably be called “altruistic”. If this is the motivation, you’re using the people you’re helping as means. Your real or ultimate end is happiness or satisfaction for yourself. If you really believe that all acts are motivated by an expected emotional payoff, you can only say that altruism exists by redefining altruism beyond recognition. Which seems to be exactly what you’ve done. Tronvillain says essentially the same thing, but makes a distinction between “altruism” (by which he seems to mean “apparent altruism”) and “true altruism”, which he says does not exist. How is what you’re saying any different from what tronvillain is saying, other than the fact that you use somewhat different terminology?

Anyway, the claim that all acts are necessarily motivated by an expected “emotional payoff” is precisely the doctrine of psychological hedonism, which is a version of PE. So regardless of what you say about altruism, you’re certainly espousing PE.

I’m baffled. This statement was taken word for word from what you said: “I therefore agree with Pryor that ‘Our pleasure isn't some unexplained effect of our actions’ but disagree that, at a fundamental level, it is not what we're aiming at.” To disagree that pleasure is not (always) what we’re aiming at is to assert that pleasure is (always) what we’re aiming at.

It appears that you mean this to apply to all acts, not just altruistic ones: No act is ever motivated (ultimately) by anything but a desire for pleasure. Whenever we desire anything but pleasure, it’s because we want to experience the pleasure that we expect to derive from getting it. Which is to say that a desire for anything but pleasure is always instrumental; the “something else” is desired as a means to achieving the ultimate end of experiencing pleasure. Isn’t that your position? Well, this is just garden-variety psychological hedonism. Why are you so determined to avoid a label that describes your position perfectly?

Because it’s controversial. More precisely, it’s not that I find it controversial (at least among professional philosophers; almost all of whom reject it), but that I consider it clearly wrong.

It’s possible that I’m still misunderstanding you in some way. On the “murder for gain” thread I asked you to explain just what you meant by “emotional need”. (I’m not sure that I understood your answer, but it seemed to be a long-winded way of saying the same thing you’d said elsewhere.) For example, when you say that a decision to feed a starving man derives from an “emotional need”, if you mean that it is motivated by a desire to relieve his suffering – a desire that may well be based in some sense on emotions - we really have no disagreement. But this doesn’t seem to be what you’re saying. (I.e., it doesn’t seem that this could be what you mean by an “expected emotional payoff”.) You seem to be saying that it must be motivated ultimately by an expectation that you will obtain some emotional satisfaction from feeding him. In either case, of course, you have a desire to feed him. But the question is whether feeding him is necessarily an instrumental end – an end desired only as a means to achieving some further end (namely your own happiness) – or whether it’s possible that it’s a final or ultimate end; an “end in itself”. You might have emotional reasons for regarding it as an end in itself, but that’s a different thing from regarding it as a means to experiencing some emotion.

Another example may illustrate the point better. A mother sees her child run in front of a speeding car and rushes out to snatch him away from danger. Now obviously the mother’s desire to save her child arises from her emotional attachment to the child. But is it necessarily the case that she did it in order to experience the emotional satisfaction of having saved her child (although this motive may be subconscious), or is it possible that her motive was simply and solely to save the child? My position is that the desire to experience the emotional satisfaction might or might not be present, but the desire to save the child (simply for the sake of saving the child) must necessarily be present, and it is almost always the dominant, if not the sole, motive. If the mother happened to know that, in that particular case, she would not derive any emotional satisfaction at all from saving her child, she’d still do it. In other words, her desire to save the child is a sufficient motive for her doing so, even if other motives also happen to be present.

bd-from-kg

99Percent:

This is what is often called the logical argument for PE. It’s essentially the same as the argument that I outlined in my reply to Tani:

If we define “self-interest” in such a way that anything that someone cares about – world peace, a cure for AIDS, whatever – is part of his “self-interest” simply by virtue of the fact that he cares about it, the concept of “self-interest” becomes vacuous, and the claim that all actions are motivated by self-interest becomes true by definition, and therefore uninteresting. To make PE a substantive theory – a theory that actually makes some claim about “how things are” – “self-interest” must be defined in a reasonably restrictive way, so as to include only things that would ordinarily be considered part of someone’s self-interest: his life and his happiness, for example. (This list is not meant to be exhaustive; a person’s sanity, or a reasonably accurate conception of how thing really are, might be included. E.g., it might be considered to be in one’s self-interest not to be in the Matrix without knowing it.)

Once we define self-interest in some such reasonable way that is independent of what the agent desires, or at least excludes certain desires as not being self-interested, this argument collapses.

You seem to be talking here about acts like falling on a live grenade to save one’s buddies. The argument appears to be that a perfectly healthy young man with everything to live for might decide that he will obtain more happiness from killing himself in this horrible, painful way than from anyhing else that he might do. This is so ludicrous as to hardly deserve comment.

A somewhat better argument would be that he might do it because he judged that he would be so unhappy if he didn’t sacrifice himself that death would be preferable to such a life. This is still pretty implausible, but let’s suppose that it’s true and consider why he might judge that he would be miserable.

One reason might be that he would suffer from guilt. But why would he suffer from guilt? Presumably because he cares deeply about his honor. But to say that he cares about his honor is to say that he desires to be an honorable man, which is to say that he desires to adhere to a standard outside himself which does not originate from him, which is independent of his own desires. (He’s free to not desire to be honorable, but he can’t change what it means to be honorable. If he thought that he could, he’d just change what it means so that it didn’t include inconvenient obligations like the obligation to fall on a live grenade.) But a desire to adhere to a standard independent of his own desires is not a self-interested desire in any reasonable sense.

Similarly, he might suffer from feeling that he had “let down his buddies”. But (assuming that this is not just another way of saying that he would feel that he had acted dishonorably) he would only suffer in this way if he had a positive desire not to let down his buddies – that is, a desire to protect them. But this is again not a self-interested desire in any reasonable sense.

The same kind of argument clearly applies to any other possible motivation of this sort. Clearly the fellow who falls on a live grenade is not doing so because he thinks that it will be fun, or that it will lead to a happy, fulfilled life – that is, he doesn’t think that it will be in his self-interest in any recognizable sense. Any happiness that he obtains from doing it must derive from the thought that he will be accomplishing something that he desires – i.e., bringing about a state of affairs that he considers more desirable than the alternatives. And what makes it seem more desirable to him cannot be his own happiness, because he won’t be around. So it must be something other than himself, which means that it is a non-self-interested desire. It’s pretty clear that in almost all cases the thing that makes the resulting state of affairs more desirable to him is that his buddies will still be alive, which is to say that it’s an altruistic desire.

This isn’t really relevant. You seem to be arguing that seemingly irrational acts are often in some sense rational. But the question before the house is whether all acts are motivated by self interest.

The rest of your post is devoted to morality, which I am steadfastly trying to steer this thread away from. This is the Philosophy forum.

99Percent

bd-from-kg: Yes I agree with what your are saying and I suggest a way to determine what is the difference. There is a clear difference when someone claims to care about such as world peace, etc, by just stating it from someone who indeed acts to achieve that which he says (or not) are his altruistic principles. A person who in fact takes action to achieve an "altruistic" goal is by its act itself taking it for his own happiness and therefore automatically egoistic. The view of the effort made to achieve the goal is what makes it objective (say by donating money). However when he merely claims he desires world peace, etc he is just expressing his subjectivistic desire to others.And what better way than to see if the agent in fact is acting, making a physical effort to achieve what he supposedly desires? However as I say, once he acts he indeed is acting to achieve it so it cancels any "true" altruistic motives.You pretty much answered your own objection in the following paragraphs. But let me also state that in the face of violence particularly man initiated one, its difficult, if not impossible to determine what is objectively morally valid.Yes, but its still a desire, desired by him alone which nevertheless propels him to act.