Discriminating Altruisms

Sooner or later discussions of population problems raise the issue of altruism. Why should I refrain from exploiting the environment because posterity may some day wish that I had? Or because today's poor want a larger share of the world's wealth? Is altruism natural? Is it safe? Altruism, like "will," may be one of those topics on which universal agreement is impossible. In both cases opposing arguments seem quite convincing—until you listen to the other side! In general, having names for things makes for clarity in discussion; but one wonders if that is so in this instance. For thousands of years people worried about the best balance between self-considering actions and actions that focus on the interests of others, but the disputes may have become more acute since neat names were coined. The earliest use of the word "egoism" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1722, with "altruism" appearing in 1853. Often the creation of a noun ("substantive") seems to presume the presence of a substance, a physical thing. Students of mental functions used to waste a great deal of time looking for the "faculties" of the mind; ultimately psychologists abandoned that substantive. Should "egoism" and "altruism" also be jettisoned? Perhaps not yet: but many arguments can be curtailed if we note two different referents of the word altruism. Sometimes the reference is to the motives inside the mind of the altruist; at other times we are interested in the consequences of the action. Philosophical and religious writers are more concerned with the former; students of politics and bioethics with the latter. Religions are interested in promoting virtuous thought, but all assertions about motives suffer from the "egocentric predicament," the inability of each of us to really know what is going on inside any other mind. (Assertions made by the other do not help because how can I know he is telling the truth?) Determinations of consequences do not have this shortcoming since consequences lie outside the brain of the actor. Bioethicists adopt a consequential approach to altruism. This is the path followed here.