Abstract

This essay begins with the insight that humans generally treat themselves well. The possibility is thus raised that when one person deliberately acts for the benefit of another it is because the actor experiences the beneficiary as having a fundamental characteristic that is the same as one which is experienced in the actor. Nothing is more fundamental to the normal existence of a human being than consciousness. The structure of the human mind, including consciousness as a component, is such that it generates an emergent property, the self. The self is a formal property, exactly the same from person to person, because it is a property of the character of consciousness , not the objects of consciousness . Although the self is not a thing, still as a property of consciousness it provides for a person the fundamental experience as an existent being located in time and space. This last expression indicates the meaning of this fundamental experience for that person. ;The possibility exists, by means of various mental states, to experience others as objects essentially different than the experiencer in that they lack self-consciousness, or, alternatively, as persons essentially the same as the experiencer in that they have self-consciousness. These experiences are available on a continuum by degree from one extreme to the other. The more another person is experienced as essentially the same as the experiencer, the more the experiencer tends to treat that other person well in the strong and natural manner that the experiencer generally treats herself well. The existence of the self as an emergent property of the character of consciousness, with the attendent meaning that that experience carries, is the condition in human beings that gives rise to the possibility of altruistic behavior by those human beings. The fact that it can be experienced in one person, and as in another, in varying degrees from non-existent on the one hand to full-blown on the other hand explains the vast variety in the degree of altruistic behavior observed among humans