Selfish Altruism? (1)

A couple of months ago, I had a pleasant evening out with a nice woman. The conversation turned to philosophical matters, and we ended up debating whether there is in fact such a thing as altruism.

My friend claimed that altruism in reality does not exist. She believes that every single act we do, every single decision we make is, at bottom, done for selfish reasons. She believes that even when we make a decision to forgo our own material self-interest in favor of that of someone else, we invariably do so for some underlying selfish reason.

Now I do not dispute that this does in fact occur. There are any number of ultimately egotistical reasons that people may perform kind deeds for others. For example:

1. A person may act kindly to another in the belief that the beneficiary will reciprocate at some point in the future.
2. A person may know that they will receive public recognition for their acts of kindness.
3. Conversely, a person may act kindly for fear that if they do not, they will be perceived by others as callous.
4. I may actually enjoy the activity involved in helping someone else. For example, someone may need to know a certain piece of information, and I enjoy the intellectual challenge of finding things out.
5. A person may act kindly in order to reinforce a positive perception of themselves, be it a feeling of superiority over another person, or simply a feeling that I am a good person.

However, I disagreed with my friend's categorical claim that behind every selfless act there lies a selfish ulterior motive, for three reasons:

1. Experientially, I know that I have been in situations where it certainly felt to me that I was helping someone else for no other reason than simply that is what needed to be done because justice demanded it, without any thought of what reward would accrue to me personally.

2. Intuitively, it is very hard for me to accept the point of view that an armed bank robber and a mother caring for a sick child are simply both pursuing their own self-interests, and the only difference between the two is the form that this self-interest happens to take. It certainly does not seem that people who commit acts of cruelty are acting from the same inner place as those who commit acts of love.

3. If all acts that people commit are done so for selfish reasons, it would seem that there is no basis for morality. For on what basis can we deem some acts moral and others immoral if every act we do is done for our own selfish good? On what basis can we try to appeal to someone to choose act A over act B if we believe that in both cases, the act will be simply one of self-interest?

When I asked my friend what evidence she had that all acts done for others are ultimately done for some form of self-gain, her answer was that if there were no self-gain, we would not do such acts. I think this answer is tautological. My friend has simply taken it as axiomatic that all acts are performed for self-gain.

So for my friend, even a mother nursing her infant is doing so for selfish reasons: she sees the baby as an extension of herself, and therefore, since she so identifies with the baby, any acts which she does for her baby is in fact an act done for her own benefit.

Or take someone who has suffered from a disease, and then establishes a charity to help others suffering from the same disease. My friend claims that here too, the philanthropist has their own self-interest at heart, in trying to attain vicariously a sense of healing through the help they provide for others.

I believe that it is possible to demonstrate the falsity of my friend's position. I will attempt to do so in the second part of this piece.