Altruism

I

Introduction

Altruism, usually thought of as the tendency to help others without expectation of any future gain.

II

The Philosophical Questions

Does altruism exist? The very fact that some philosophers still pose this question says much about how hard it is to define. For example, it is said that an act on behalf of another may satisfy some inner desire of the actor (person performing the act). If this is the desire for future reciprocal gain, admiration, or even gratitude, most people might question whether the act was truly altruistic. But what if there is only a desire to do good, and under this inner pressure the actor helps someone else—anonymously, say, with no possibility of gain? Since the actor is still satisfying a desire, or relieving an inner pressure, some would claim that this act too is not altruism.

This kind of naive philosophizing is fun as a mental puzzle, but it has nothing to do with what ordinary people mean when they speak of altruism or altruistic acts. Altruism means an unselfish interest in the welfare of others, and a tendency to act unselfishly to help them. The term also refers to the philosophic doctrine that the general welfare of society is a responsibility all of us share, as opposed to egoism, which holds that we have no such obligations. These definitions correspond to the common uses of the word, on the individual and the societal level respectively. The word comes from the Latin alter, meaning “other”, which in turn corresponds to the French autre and the Spanish altro. So, when we help another without selfish motives or in general support of the notion of helping others, we are said to be performing altruistic acts or subscribing to the doctrine of altruism.

Unfortunately, like most ordinary language, these definitions are imprecise. Philanthropists who give away large sums of money often want their names permanently linked to the result, putting them on buildings or attaching them to scholarship funds. Does this mean they are not altruistic? Ordinary language still applies the term to them, viewing the desire to be recognized and remembered as a legitimate part of the act that does not (at least not largely or completely) negate the altruistic nature of the gift. Certainly most of us would say that they are altruistic compared to others of comparable means who never give away anything at all.

Of course, all acts performed by anyone have inner causes, achieve desired goals, or relieve some sort of inner inclination to act. Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, wrote, “the excellent person labours for his friends and for his native country, and will die for them if he must; he will sacrifice money, honours, and contested goods in general, in achieving the fine for himself. This is presumably true of one who dies for others; he does indeed choose something great and fine for himself. He is also ready to sacrifice money as long as his friends profit; for the friends gain money while he gains the fine, and so he awards himself the greater good.”

While such motives do not negate the existence of altruism, both the common and the philosophical viewpoints see it as involving different levels of selflessness, based on motivation and expectation of reward. The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, for example, defined eight degrees of charity. The lowest is “one who gives to the poor person unwillingly”. Giving before being asked is higher than giving after, and giving anonymously—ideally in both directions—is higher than giving where the donor and the recipient know one another. It is also commonly understood that not only the value to the recipient but also the value to the donor are important; thus a poor person who gives ten dollars to another may be more admirable than a wealthy person who gives thousands. This concept is conveyed by the saying, “giving until it hurts”, which can be a kind of informal test of how meaningful an act of philanthropy is.

III

The Anthropology of Giving

Cultural anthropologists have long been interested in giving, because it is a pervasive and central act in most non-industrial societies. For example, among the !Kung San hunter-gatherers of Botswana a successful hunter gave meat from a large kill to many others. Strict rules governed the distribution, which ensured that there was meat for all, and the hunter could rely upon the unspoken promise that when his luck ran out others would do the same for him. Far from gaining in status in any obvious way, the hunter had to belittle his own accomplishment throughout the process.

People were generous with decorative objects as well; a woman who made a necklace might give it to a friend to wear on the (again unspoken) understanding that either it would in time come back or that the friend would do something similar for her. So central was the act of giving in this culture that infants bringing food to their mouths might be met with the outstretched hand of an adult saying, “Give”, the first step in inculcating the spirit of generosity—or, literally, open-handedness.

Such systems are central to the economies of small-scale societies in which money, markets, and even barter play a negligible role. Anthropologists define two main kinds of giving in such cultures: generalized reciprocity and balanced reciprocity. In generalized reciprocity there is an expectation that someone who gives will eventually receive, but not necessarily from the person he or she gave to; “what goes around comes around”. In balanced reciprocity the expectation is that the recipient will return the gift.

In what sense if any are such gifts altruistic? They are certainly not market transactions; barter demands immediate return that is equivalent in value, while reciprocity generally demands neither. The gift, unlike the trade, is always embedded in a relationship and based on trust. But doesn’t the expectation of some kind of return, however delayed, negate the spirit of the gift? Well, suppose you have a friend to whom you give a Christmas present year after year but who never gives one to you. Unless the friend is very poor, you will probably stop giving after a few years, not because you gave the gift in a calculated way, but because the failure of reciprocity suggests that the friend is not really much of a friend.

These are important processes because they formed the foundation of human societies long before markets and capitalism existed. But how does reciprocity become altruism? Suppose one hunter is more skilled than others. They will not expect a balanced return, only that the other hunters will do the best they can and perhaps do more of another task, such as making bows and arrows. But since meat distribution cannot be anonymous, we have to ask whether the better hunter’s generosity is mitigated by a desire for status and admiration. This appears to vary from culture to culture, but it is limited because there are no great status differentials in hunter-gatherer societies. In any case, to the person who is hungry, the meat probably tastes as good whether or not the motives of the donor were pure.

Gifts can also have very negative aspects. Burdensome obligations may be incurred, the recipient may be humiliated by the gift, and the essence of balanced reciprocity in some cultures is a competitive display of wealth and power. The potlatch ceremony of the Kwakiutl, Native Americans of the north-west coast of North America, pitted two rich chiefs against each other as they competed fiercely to see who could give away more—and who was thus more powerful.

IV

Evolutionary Insights

In recent years evolutionary biologists have introduced a new perspective on altruism that has greatly changed the philosophical debate. For those who understand Darwin’s theory of natural selection and how it has shaped the form and function of living things, altruism—a behavioural function—has always been a puzzle. The currency of Darwinian altruism, if it existed, would have to be fitness, which in the strictest terms means only relative success at reproduction. Also, this behaviour, to contribute to fitness, would have to have some degree of genetic basis. This would not have to mean that the genes were mainly in control of altruism, only that they made a significant contribution. For such a complex behaviour, there would no doubt be several or even many genes making up this contribution, still leaving much to be determined by experience.

Something that might be called altruistic behaviour appears to exist in many organisms, including some that are far simpler in structure and function than we are. The classic example is the self-sacrifice of the worker bee that eviscerates itself and dies in the process of defending the colony by stinging an intruder. Even if we were to give up the possibility of explaining human altruism in evolutionary terms, we would still have the nagging puzzle of apparent selflessness in other species. How can the individual that makes the sacrifice, giving up its own reproductive success, leave behind any genes that would promote altruistic behaviour in subsequent generations? (See also Animal Behaviour.)

Another way to think about this is to try to see it from the viewpoint of a gene. (Of course, the gene does not have a viewpoint; this is merely a thought experiment.) It can only be present in a given organism today if it enhanced the survival of that organism’s ancestors; otherwise it would have disappeared from the genome. The gene is thus a minuscule survival machine, and in this sense it must be completely “selfish”. So another way to think of the question is: How can a “selfish” gene make an organism that is selfless? Or, how can a “selfless” gene be passed on to future generations?

Some biologists had tried to solve this problem by referring to “survival of the species” as a process that overrides survival and reproduction of the individual. For reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion, most authorities today consider this a weak force at best. The same applies to survival of the group, which theoretically could explain self-sacrifice. (The problem with this explanation is that except in special circumstances, individuals can leave a group and survive by allying themselves to another group; the original group was not essential to the individual’s reproductive success.)

Several more successful solutions to the problem are now widely accepted. The most important is kin selection, proposed in the 1960s by William D. Hamilton. A gene can lead an organism to sacrifice itself for another individual to the extent that the recipient of the altruistic act also carries the same gene. The likelihood of this is heavily influenced by how closely related the two individuals are. Thus altruistic or unselfish acts should be distributed roughly in proportion to how closely the altruist and the beneficiary are genetically related. In fact, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane had anticipated Hamilton’s mathematical argument by several decades when he joked that he should have been selected to die in the act of saving two siblings, four first cousins, eight second cousins, and so on, since those numbers would be the threshold for maintaining his “selfless” genes in the population despite his untimely death.

A second solution, proposed by anthropologist Robert L. Trivers, is pertinent to the theme of reciprocity discussed earlier. If individuals of a species are 1) sufficiently long-lived and 2) have adequate memory capacity, then the gene promoting self-sacrifice could maintain itself if it directed the acts preferentially at those likely to reciprocate. This reciprocal altruism could result in an alliance that might work to the advantage of both partners for a long time. Interestingly, a study of gift-giving among !Kung hunter-gatherers by anthropologist Polly Wiessner showed that gifts are given preferentially among relatives, so in that system both kin selection and reciprocal altruism were operating. There are also experimental models of altruism in the context of economic game theory, but these tend to define altruism in very unconventional ways.