Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T11:40:02.138Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

VARIETIES OF ALTRUISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

Philip Kitcher
Philip Kitcher*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Discussions of altruism occur in three importantly different contexts. During the past four decades, evolutionary theory has been concerned with the possibility that forms of behaviour labelled as altruistic could emerge and could be maintained under natural selection. In these discussions, an agent A is said to act altruistically towards a beneficiary B when A's action promotes the expected reproductive success of B at expected reproductive cost to A. This sort of altruism, biological altruism, is quite different from the kind of behaviour important to debates about ethical and social issues. There the focus is on psychological altruism, a notion that is concerned with the intentions of the agent and that need have no connection with the spread of anyone's genes. Psychological altruists are people with other-directed desires, emotions or intentions (this is a rough preliminary characterization, to be refined below). Finally, in certain kinds of social scientific research, the important concept is that of behavioural altruism. From the outside, behavioural altruists look like psychological altruists, although their motives and preferences may be very different.

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 121 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

De Waal, F. 1996. Good Natured. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Waal, F. 2007. Primates and Philosophers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U. 2005. Human altruism – proximate patterns and evolutionary origins. Analyse and Kritik 27: 6–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinberg, J. 1975. Psychological egoism. In Reason and Responsibility, ed. Feinberg, J., 501–512. Belmont: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Goodall, J. 1988. The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. S. 1993. The evolution of human altruism. Journal of Philosophy 90: 497–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. S. forthcoming. The Ethical Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, J-J. 1978. The Social Contract. In The Basic Political Writings, 141–219. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Runciman, W. D. and Sen, A. 1965. Games, justice, and the general will. Mind 74: 554–562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, T. 1984. Choice and Consequence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, A. 1984. Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Smith, A. 2001. The Wealth of Nations. New York: The Modern Library.Google Scholar