trc@houti.UUCP (07/09/83)
Response to Tim Sevener on Altruism: I do indeed have a different idea of what altruism is. You define is as if it were merely benevolence. I claim that that is the sort of fallacy that altruists hope people will accept. In fact altruism is the belief that morality *requires* that people act in a manner that might be considered benevolent, if done voluntarily, regardless of the consequences to oneself. The more one ignores the bad consequences to oneself, the more moral an action of benevolence to someone else becomes - under altruism. This is not to say that altruists would support one giving up one's life for trivial benevolences. Even an altruist can see that that is inefficient - altruists go so far as to claim that a person has a *duty* to to continue living *only* in order to continue benefiting others. This is perverse and disgusting. You lend support to the above definition yourself later in your note, by claiming that "we all have some obligation to our fellow human beings". Of course, you are also failing to distinguish the difference between duty and obligation. Altruism requires that one sacrifice values for the sake of another, regardless of whether they have first done something for one, regardless of whether one agreed to help them in return for something they did, and simply because that other *needs* something. An obligation is must be voluntarily entered into by an individual, and is properly only taken on in return for some benefit received. Such benefits need not be material, by the way. The individual taking on the obligation is the one that should decide whether he/she will benefit from an agreement. If not, the obligation should not be taken. In the case of infants, no obligation is taken on, because the infant cannot volunteer. Parents should not have a child if their only reason is to try to force a "duty" to support the parent in old age onto the child. Of course, it is quite likely that a child will be willing to take on an obligation to support parents out of love for them. But if a parent has been hateful and harmed the child, so as to never earn that love, what is the source of the parent's claim on the child's life? Giving birth to a child does not make that child a slave. Giving gifts to someone that one loves is not altruistic. Giving up the pleasure of giving that gift to a loved one, and giving it to someone that does not deserve it, but needs it, is altruism. Supporting one's beloved child is not altruistic. Giving away money that would be used to feed that child, to feed some other person's child, is altruistic. Giving money to a charity need not be altruistic, if one is doing it because of the high value that one places on life, and because one feels pleasure at seeing undeserved human misery alleviated. Altruists cannot make such a claim, because they do not place a high value on life - only on the dutiful and efficient sacrifice of it. You also claim that Hitler's gas chambers were an example of supreme rationality. I must say, I am appalled at what you apparently think is rational. You are mistaken, of course. At best, one could claim that the gas chambers were *efficient* methods of murdering masses of people - efficiency may arise from the rational use of one's mind, but they are not equivalent. It is possible (but wrong) to limit the use of reason to "technical" problems, such as the most effective quantity of gas to use. It is precisely such limiting of reason that modern altruists often call for - claiming that reason is only useful in the "physical world", and that emotions (such as love - or hate) are the correct means of making moral decisions. In summary, yes we do seem to have different explicit definitions of altruism. However, you seem to have *implicitly* accepted my explicit definition - that one is duty-bound to sacrifice one's own values for others. Tom Craver houti!trc
tim@unc.UUCP (07/10/83)
One factor seems to be missing from all this discussion of
altruism. That fact is that altruism has been observed in non-primate
mammals. This observation was a big thing for sociobiology (which I
hear has been discredited, but the observation predates the theory).
The belief that humans are not inherently altruistic seems to be made
from the prevailing view in this Judeo-Christian culture that humans
in a state of nature are inherently base and immoral. The statement
was even made that "Nothing about morality has to do with physiology",
which is just another way of claiming that there is such a thing as
original sin.
The human mind is most emphatically not originally a tabula rasa.
The fact that members of various cultures have similar emotions is
sufficient demonstration of this. It is frustrating for me to see
people building on the irrational legacy of Judeo-Christianity without
even examining their assumptions. My feeling is that certain morals
are more or less hard-wired. Killing another human without cause is
repulsive to most people regardless of society's training. Since this
is true of almost all other species of animal, I see no reason to
assume it untrue of people as well. It can be wholly explained by
evolutionary processes, since tribes without this code hard-wired
would certainly not live as long or reproduce as efficiently as tribes
with it.
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