More on altruism, benevolence, and the virtue of integrity.
Friday, March 18, 2005

More on altruism, benevolence, and the Virtue of Integrity.

In my previous blog, I described an argument I was having with my roomate, Rick, over the concept of altruism and it's connection to the Iraq war. here is his response:

"Tom,"

"I basically agree with everything now that I know the definition of
altruism you are using."

"The dictionary says it's
'unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others'"

"So by the dictionary definition, altruistic people are not selfish (not
even petty selfish). Also notice that the dictionary doesn't say
anything about sacrifice. It just says unselfish. So I was going by the
dictionary definition - and I know that the dictionary isn't the source
of all wisdom, so it's perfectly ok for you to have another definition.
Your definition would be more like 'fake self-sacrificing regard for
welfare of others' which is a common disease."

"I was confused by this terminology and some other people you talk to may
be too - sometimes when you say you're opposed to altruism it sounds
like you are opposed to 'unselfishness' and opposed 'regard for others'
(going by dictionary). But I see that you are actually opposed to
(petty) selfishness and you probably care about others. Rand's good guys
clearly express that they hate to see society suffering from corruption
and loosing out on the benefits of free trade - so they do care about
society - and I'm sure Rand did care about society."

"When I think of somebody truly altruistic (by the dictionary
definition), it's someone like a scientist that went ahead and told the
truth even if it meant his own demise. And I respect those people
greatly."

"-rick"

Here is the response that I sent him:

Rick, thanks for responding. :) My definition is roughly based on the works of Auguste Comte, the guy who coined the term "altruism". He said that what he meant by "altruism" was the idea that you cannot take your own interests into account at all when making decisions, i.e. that you must be totally selfless. I recognize that even this definition is self-contradictory, which is the point I was making in the previous essay.

You say that "Rand's good guys clearly express that they hate to see society suffering from corruption and loosing out on the benefits of free trade - so they do care about society - and I'm sure Rand did care about society." The proper term for what you are describing is "benevolence", which indicates a feeling of good will towards others. Benevolence is a good trait to have. I certainly wouldn't want to have a friend who wasn't benevolent. But unlike "altruism", the concept of "benevolence" doesn't include the idea of giving up one's own happiness. In fact, benevolence is a consequence of not giving up one's happiness. Typically, a happy person doesn't like to see other people doing badly as it tends to "bring him down". Unfortunately though, philosophers and politicians have worked hard to replace the term "benevolence" in popular usage with "altruism" in order to obscure the distinction between the two. As you pointed out, they have largely succeded. The dictionaries now simply define "altruism" as benevolence. But politicians still use the word in it's original meaning (when they're not replacing it with new code words like "civic duty" or "humanitarian"). Thus they are able to appeal to the citizen's innate feeling of benevolence and at the same time covertly slip in the idea that human beings should serve the state. It's sneaky as hell, but that's really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how these people manipulate language.

You also say, "When I think of somebody truly altruistic (by the dictionary definition), it's someone like a scientist that went ahead and told the truth even if it meant his own demise. And I respect those people greatly." You bring up a complicated issue. We have to adopt certain principles in order to survive and flourish in the world: Principles like "always tell the truth", "don't initiate force against others", "always be rational", etc. Yet following those principles won't always be in our own interests. Sometimes it may actually hurt us to do so. All we can say is that it will work out more times than not if we follow them. On the other hand, the reason we adopted the principles in the first place was in order to make our lives better. So what do we do if following our principles will cause us harm? Clearly we cannot evaluate each and every case to see whether we should follow the principle or not. If we did, that would defeat the whole purpose of having the principle in the first place. The whole idea behind principles is to free up our mind from having to make elaborate pragmatic calculations, so that we can go on with our life. And yet, there are a few extreme cases one can get into in which it is manifestly not in one's interest to follow one's principles. For example, the case of the scientist you speak of. I don't know what to do in those cases, because you're basically screwed no matter which way you look at it. There is no way to stay psychologically healthy in an environment where acts of integrity are punished. If somebody wants to speak the truth and die in such a situation, I don't blame him. On the other hand, I don't blame him if he lies in order to save his skin either. The reason you applaud the scientist who speaks the truth anyway though is because his action is a manifestation of the Virtue of Integrity (which happens to be one of the seven central virtues of the Objectivist ethics) which is normally a life-enhancing principle. That is a difficult moral issue that I would dread having to deal with, and that I hope I never have to.



--------------------------------Tom