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Altruism across disciplines: one word, multiple meanings

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Abstract

Altruism is a deep and complex phenomenon that is analysed by scholars of various disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, biology, evolutionary anthropology and experimental economics. Much confusion arises in current literature because the term altruism covers variable concepts and processes across disciplines. Here we investigate the sense given to altruism when used in different fields and argumentative contexts. We argue that four distinct but related concepts need to be distinguished: (a) psychological altruism, the genuine motivation to improve others’ interests and welfare; (b) reproductive altruism, which involves increasing others’ chances of survival and reproduction at the actor’s expense; (c) behavioural altruism, which involves bearing some cost in the interest of others; and (d) preference altruism, which is a preference for others’ interests. We show how this conceptual clarification permits the identification of overstated claims that stem from an imprecise use of terminology. Distinguishing these four types of altruism will help to solve rhetorical conflicts that currently undermine the interdisciplinary debate about human altruism.

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Notes

  1. The actual term ‘altruism’ started to be used around the mid-nineteenth century. Auguste Comte (1851–1854) defined it as the motivation to act benevolently—as opposed to ‘egoistic’ motives, which are directed towards the agent’s self-interests.

  2. Behavioural and brain sciences have recently made important advancements in our understanding of human decision-making (Bargh et al. 2010). Philosophical questions originally formulated on dated views of the cognitive architecture of the mind—in our case, that action results from a single causal chain starting with one primary motive—might have simply become inadequate or confusing in view of current scientific understanding of the mind.

  3. Interestingly, proximate mechanisms can themselves be accounted for with ultimate explanations (Clavien and Chapuisat 2012; West et al. 2007).

  4. We use quotation marks because the term homo economicus is also used for referring to economic theories that might not fit this description because they take no stance on which preferences are contained in human’s utility function (Kirchgässner 2008).

  5. Some of Ken Binmore’s big claims—e.g. he describes himself as a Hobbesian (2006)—might lead to think that he is an advocate of the “homo economicus” model. However, it should be noted that he does not deny the existence of sympathetic preferences—at least toward closely related individuals (2005: chap. 7).

  6. In practical cases, the fitness consequences of a behaviour are often estimated over a shorter period, but with the assumption that they are representative of an effect on the final life-time fitness of the individuals.

  7. Other example of this type of confusion between proximate and ultimate explanation are to be found in (Gintis et al. 2008: 249; Chaudhuri 2011: 78).

  8. We are of course not denying the fact that instances of behavioural altruism can be moral. Our point is that these behaviours unlikely qualify as moral in virtue of being behaviourally altruistic.

  9. One could debate on this point however because it is not always clear whether the authors defend a flexible or a more demanding form of other-regarding motivation (Vromen 2012). Moreover, it is in principle possible to formalize fine-grained other-regarding motivations in terms of utility functions (see Clavien 2012b).

  10. It is still a matter of debate however, to what extent this would help to improve the axiomatic theory used in economic theory (Binmore 2005).

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Acknowledgments

We thank the editor, an anonymous reviewer, Chloë FitzGerald, Conrad Heilmann, Laurent Keller, Laurent Lehmann, Jessica Purcell, and Jack Vromen for comments on the manuscript. We are grateful to Philip Kitcher who gave us the impulsion to work out the concept of “preference altruism”. Our research is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Fondation du 450ème of the University of Lausanne.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, UNIL-Sorge Biophore, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Christine Clavien & Michel Chapuisat

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  1. Christine Clavien
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Correspondence to Christine Clavien.

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Clavien, C., Chapuisat, M. Altruism across disciplines: one word, multiple meanings. Biol Philos 28, 125–140 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9317-3

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