I want to understand a phenomenon and it is important to me to be as clear as I can be about what that phenomenon is. Please allow me one more try.
Playing to my strengths, I shall make full use of my artistic talent...
I am the person on the left. The thought-bubble reveals that
I have a concern. I want something nice to happen to someone or something.
Specifically, I want something nice to happen to one of the people or things in
the right-hand column.
I might want nice things for me and only for me. If so, my concern will be literally and
purely me-ish or, to use the more
common term, self-ish. The object of
my concern will be my self and only
my self. Such concern will sometimes motivate
me to try to pursue nice things for myself. In such circumstances, I will try
to help myself.
I might instead want nice things for someone or something
other than just myself. I might want nice things for you, or for a particular
cat, or for my community, or for humanity, or for the poor, or for countless
other potential beneficiaries. This is the phenomenon I want to understand: concern
for the positive welfare of anyone or anything other than just the self. I want
to understand concerns that are other-ish
rather than purely and solely self-ish.
And I want to understand when such concerns motivate attempts to help others.
That’s it! I want to understand people being concerned about
the positive welfare of others, whether that concern is expressed in thought,
feeling, and/or action.
This is the phenomenon
I want to understand. I call it “altruism” and I think there are three good
reasons for doing so. First, the word literally means other-ism, which highlights
the central feature of the phenomenon I am interested in. Secondly, “altruism”
allows useful comparisons with “selfishness” (with concerns only for one’s own
welfare), “aggression” (with concerns for others’ negative welfare), and
“indifference” (without concern). Thirdly, “altruism” is a word often used in ordinary
discourse when discussing the phenomenon I seek to understand. This is most
apparent when people claim its absence. When someone says, “X isn’t being
altruistic” they mean that - perhaps despite appearances and claims to the
contrary - X is not in fact concerned
about somebody else’s positive welfare.
“The map is not the territory” is a phrase sometimes used to
remind people about the difference between things and the symbols used to represent
those things. My interest is in a particular phenomenon and I use the word
“altruism” to refer to that phenomenon. I don’t mind (too much) if other people
use other words for the same thing or use the same word for other things, just
as long as everyone is clear. Problems arise, though, when people focus on the
map instead of the territory. When
people insist that “altruism” is this
or means that, they are often making
claims about the territory based on their preferred maps rather than trying to choose
or mark out an appropriate map after a close examination of the territory. Even
this would be fine if the people doing it were careful, but often they are not.
People sometimes make claims like “organ donation is
motivated by benevolence rather than altruism” (Ferguson et al., 2008) or that
“empathy is more powerful than sympathy” (Matthews, 2013). Such assertive, fact-like claims would
only make sense if the words used in them had fixed meanings that corresponded
clearly to real-world phenomena. A cursory look at any relevant literature will
make it blindingly obvious that this is not the case. Daniel Batson (2009), for
example, differentiates eight commonly-used meanings of the word “empathy”. One
of these is identical to what people usually mean when they use the word
“sympathy” (Wispé, 1986). Given this, to say that “empathy is more powerful
than sympathy” is almost nonsensical and it certainly risks being misleading. Ditto
claiming that “organ donation is motivated by benevolence rather than altruism”.
“Empathy”, “sympathy”, “benevolence” and of course “altruism” are “essentially contested
concepts”. People will probably always disagree about how they should be used.
Many scholars approach “altruism” in this “the map dictates
the territory” way. Such scholars will not like me calling the phenomenon I am
interested in “altruism” because it does not have some or other condition that
they think is essential to use the word “altruism” properly. Experience tells
me that such people are usually best avoided if one is interested in
understanding a phenomenon rather than getting waylaid by dubious claims about what
particular words really mean.
To repeat, I am interested in the phenomenon of people being
concerned about the positive welfare of others and I think “altruism” is at
least as good a word as any for this phenomenon.
With sincere best wishes (please see the ‘diagram’ above if you need help
interpreting this).
References/further
reading
Batson, C.D.
(2009). These things called empathy: Eight related but distinct phenomena. In
J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The
social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 3-15). Cambridge: MIT press.
Essentially contested concepts. (No date). Wikipedia. Link
Ferguson, E., Farrell, K., & Lawrence, C. (2008). Blood donation is
an act of benevolence rather than altruism. Health
Psychology, 27 (3), 327-336.
Map-territory relation. (No date). Wikipedia.
Link
Matthews, C. (2013). Why empathy is more powerful than sympathy. Huffpost
Healthy Living, Dec 12. Link
Wispé, L. (1986). The distinction between sympathy and empathy: To call
forth a concept, a word is needed. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 50, 314-421.
How to cite this
blog post using APA Style
T. Farsides. (2013, December 19). Alternatives to selfishness. Retrieved
from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/12/alternatives-to-selfishness.html
