When it comes to caring about and helping those in need, our imaginations tend to be weak and our motivation tends to be parochial. This is a major moral problem in view of how much unmet need there is in the world and how much material capacity there is to address that need. With this problem in mind, the present paper will focus on genetic means to the enhancement of a moral capacity—a disposition to altruism—and of a cognitive capacity (...) that facilitates use of the moral capacity: the ability to grasp vividly the needs of individuals who are unknown and not present. I will address two questions, with more extensive attention to the first question. First, assuming we had excellent reason to believe that the enhancements were safe, effective, and available to all who desired them, would seeking these enhancements be inherently morally acceptable—that is, free of inherent wrongness? Second, would it be wise for a society to pursue these enhancements? I will defend an affirmative answer to the first question while leaving the second question open. (shrink)

Extraterrestrial Altruism examines a basic assumption of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): that extraterrestrials will be transmitting messages to us for our benefit. This question of whether extraterrestrials will be altruistic has become increasingly important in recent years as SETI scientists have begun contemplating transmissions from Earth to make contact. Technological civilizations that transmit signals for the benefit of others, but with no immediate gain for themselves, certainly seem to be altruistic. But does this make biological sense? Should (...) we expect altruism to evolve throughout the cosmos, or is this only wishful thinking? Is it dangerous to send messages to other worlds, as Stephen Hawking has suggested, or might humankind benefit from an exchange with intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy? Would extraterrestrial societies be based on different ethical principles, or would we see commonalities with Earthly notions of morality? Extraterrestrial Altruism explores these and related questions about the motivations of civilizations beyond Earth, providing new insights that are critical for SETI. Chapters are authored by leading scholars from diverse disciplines—anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, cosmology, engineering, history of science, law, philosophy, psychology, public policy, and sociology. The book is carefully edited by Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute and professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The Foreword is by Frank Drake. This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand whether evolution and ethics are unique to Earth, or whether they are built into the fabric of the universe. (shrink)

Separated from its anchorage in religion, ethics has followed the social sciences in seeing human beings as fundamentally characterized by self-interest, so that altruism is either naively idealistic or arrogantly self-sufficient. Colin Grant contends that, as a modern secular concept, altruism is a parody on the self-giving love of Christianity, so that its dismissal represents a social levelling that loses the depths that theology makes intelligible and religion makes possible. The Christian affirmation is that God is characterized by (...) self-giving love, then expected of Christians. Lacking this theological background, the focus on self-interest in sociobiology and economics, and on human realism in the political focus of John Rawls or the feminist sociability of Carol Gilligan, finds altruism naive or a dangerous distraction from real possibilities of mutual support. This book argues that to dispense with altruism is to dispense with God and with the divine transformation of human possibilities. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the ethical principles of effective altruism as they are articulated by Peter Singer in his book The Most Good You Can Do. It discusses the nature and the plausibility of the principles that he thinks both guide and ought to guide effective altruists. It argues in § II pace Singer that it is unclear that in charitable giving one ought always to aim to produce the most surplus benefit possible and in § (...) III that there is a more attractive set of principles than the ones Singer outlines that ought to guide effective altruists in their philanthropic practices and in their lives more generally. These principles fit better with his practical ambitions and with plausible attitudes about the limits of beneficence. (shrink)

"The chief problem of human life", wrote Auguste Comte, is "the subordination of egoism to altruism". This collection examines the nature and value of altruism as a moral virtue, restoring it to its proper place at the centre of our moral and political thinking. The first five essays in the collection explore the relationship between altruism and other moral concepts such as self-interest, autonomy, community and impartiality. The five essays in the second part show how altruism (...) is invoked in practical moral problems, including aid to developing countries, the market for human body parts, multiculturalism and the politics of recognition, and medical ethics. Through these discussions, the central role of altruism in moral thinking is brought into sharper focus. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} This article discusses a series of ethical and religious elements that occur in the debate concerning altruistic living unrelated organ donation. Our main focus is on the ethical attitude of altruist donation. In order to illustrate the connections between ethics and religion we use as a case study (...) the group of the so-called “Jesus Christians”. It is evident that this group, as a case study, is more important for the ethical and religious issues than for the medical issues related to organ donation and transplantation. However, it suggests the potential that, in certain cultural contexts, ethics and religion may have in promoting the idea of altruist donation. (shrink)

The article argues that altruistic giving based on anonymity, which is expected to promote social solidarity and block trade in human body parts, is conceptually defective and practically unproductive. It needs to be replaced by a more adequate notion which responds to the human practices of giving and receiving. The argument starts with identification of the main characteristics of the anonymous altruistic donation: social separation of the organ donor from the recipient, their mutual replaceability, non-obligatoriness of donation, and non-obligatoriness of (...) reciprocation on the recipient’s part. Since these characteristics are also central to typical market relations, anonymous altruistic donation not only cannot promote solidarity but may encourage proposals for markets of transplantable organs. Thus, transplant ethics needs to be reframed. It needs to be rooted in, rather than promote, the practices of giving and receiving known to human societies. As the basis for such reframing, the idea of sharing in another’s misfortune is proposed. It relies on the human practices of giving and receiving and, with appropriate regulatory safeguards, can provide a better conceptual basis for blocking commercial exchanges of human body parts. (shrink)

In this volume, written in honour of the eightieth birthday of Professor Shimon Glick, world renowned experts in the field of medical ethics struggle with the question of how to weigh the respective values of autonomy, altruism and authority in dealing with real life bioethical dilemmas.

If people sometimes participate in research because of altruism—because they want to help in the search for treatments—should we revise our views about what kinds of experiments are ethical? If participants act out of altruism, we might let them accept greater risks than we would if they are motivated only by a desire for personal gain. But how can we know when participants are genuinely altruistic?

Levinas’s ethics of other‐centered service has been criticized at the theoretical level for failing to offer a conception of moral agency adequate to ground its imperative and at the practical level for encouraging self‐ hatred. Levinas’s explicit resistance to the incorporation of the phrase ”as yourself“ in the Judaeo‐Christian love command might seem to validate the critics’ complaints. The author argues, on the contrary, that Levinas does offer a strong and compelling conception of moral agency and that his ethics, properly (...) understood, does not entail self‐abnegation. Levinas’s attempt to counter excessive and manipulative self‐concern and self‐inflation by insisting on the dependent and situational position of the self has been wrongly overinterpreted as an abandonment of the self and its just claims. The author seeks to establish a more balanced understanding by focusing attention on the “ethics of welcome”, on Levinas’s distinctive conception of passivity, and on the role of the “third” in all human relations. (shrink)

The most popular defense of altruism has come from ethicists, mostly Western ethicists, who argue that for an action to hold any justification as it pertains to altruistic commitments, such an altruistic action must stem from the agent’s internal states such as beliefs, practical reasoning, desires, or deliberative attitudes. I refer to this as the internalist justification for altruism. On this internalist approach, the mere recognition of others—which I shall refer to as an externalist justification—albeit necessary for an (...) agent who wants to perform an altruistic act, is insufficient in accounting for the agent’s altruism. This paper offers an African model of communitarian ethics (ACE) under which the externalist justification for altruism is satisfied. I argue that at its core, ACE holds a normative conception of community and personhood that accounts for a sufficient externalist justification for altruism, which proponents of internal altruism have argued is insufficient. (shrink)

Ethics 101 offers an exciting look into the history of moral principles that dictate human behavior. This easy-to-read guide presents the key concepts of ethics in fun, straightforward lessons and exercises featuring only the most important facts, theories, and ideas. Ethics 101 includes unique, accessible elements such as explanations of the major moral philosophies, including utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and eastern philosophers including Avicenna, Buddha, and Confucius; and unique profiles of the greatest characters in moral philosophy.

Effective Altruism is a very new discipline. The first steps towards creating a community were made in 2009. Although the movement is young, it has already changed lives of many people and its popularity continues to rise. The idea of effective altruism is deeply rooted in philosophy, hence to understand it better an attempt will be made to reconstruct and present the philosophical framework of Effective Altruism. This part is intended to show the development of utilitarian thought (...) that led to Effective Altruism. I intentionally limited this reconstruction to the views of Peter Singer, as his philosophy inspired many effective altruists, especially at the beginning of the movement. I have tried to show that his earliest works were the first steps on the way to effective altruism. In the second part selected details of the idea will be referred to in order to show the current state of development of this branch of utilitarianism. In the last part, selected doubts and critical remarks will be presented that might be inspiration to adapt Effective Altruism to specific conditions of Central and Eastern Europe. It will be argued that advocacy for Effective Altruism is a fair way for effective altruists in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is now nearly mainstream among business ethics and business and society scholars but it has serious problems. One is well communicated by a quote from W. H. Auden: "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know." More to the point, stakeholder theory violates private property rights and freedom of association. It makes of people in business involuntary servants of "society," mainly of self-appointed moralists. This paper explores stakeholder (...) theory or CSR along these lines. (shrink)

Levinas's ethics of other-centered service has been criticized at the theoretical level for failing to offer a conception of moral agency adequate to ground its imperative and at the practical level for encouraging self-hatred. Levinas's explicit resistance to the incorporation of the phrase "as yourself" in the Judaeo-Christian love command might seem to validate the critics' complaints. The author argues, on the contrary, that Levinas does offer a strong and compelling conception of moral agency and that his ethics, properly understood, (...) does not entail self-abnegation. Levinas's attempt to counter excessive and manipulative self-concern and self-inflation by insisting on the dependent and situational position of the self has been wrongly overinterpreted as an abandonment of the self and its just claims. The author seeks to establish a more balanced understanding by focusing attention on the "ethics of welcome," on Levinas's distinctive conception of passivity, and on the role of "the third" in all human relations. (shrink)

In attacking utilitarianism Bernard Williams1 likes to consider the case of the man who has a choice of saving his wife or a stranger from drowning. Williams takes it as clear, and a problem for consequentialism, that the man has a moral obligation to save his wife. The relationship is a good thing without reference to consequences that one might suppose it requires if it is to be valuable.David Messick suggests a consequentialist view of certain relationships—for example, those that create (...) a limited altruism—that have survival value. Some kin relationships are like that; and insofar as they are, there is something to be said for them from a utilitarian point of view. Messick does not rest there, as his primary concern is fairness, but he does seem to hold that there is a utilitarian basis for valuing families and family ties. One need not be a sociobiologist to learn something about practical morality from the facts Messick adduces. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of hume's ethical theory maintains that sympathy is merely an empirical feature of motivation and ethics. This article argues for an alternative interpretation according to which sympathy is a necessary feature of practical reasoning. Hence, It is impossible to deny that we have altruistic reasons, Because such a denial requires adopting a particular perspective which reveals inexorably the existence of such reasons. What this entails is that hume's ethical theory includes an argument rendering skepticism about (...) altruism unintelligible. (shrink)

(2002). The ethics of altruism: Introduction. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 5, Altruism, pp. 1-8. doi: 10.1080/13698230410001702702.

This study explores the ability of career satisfaction to mediate the relationship between corporate ethical values and altruism. Using a sample of individuals employed in a four-campus, regional health science center, it was determined that individual career satisfaction fully mediated the positive relationship between perceptions of corporate ethical values and self-reported altruism. The findings imply that companies dedicating attention to positive corporate ethical values can enhance employee attitudes and altruistic behaviors, especially when individuals experience a (...) high degree of career satisfaction. (shrink)

ART and, in particular, IVF and ICSI, are essentially a laboratory experiment, but which, due to its specificity, goes beyond the disciplinary boundaries, explicitly acquiring an ethical-axiological dimension in the interaction zone of the members of a particular community involved in child-bearing. At the same time, it is noted that the activity and choice of a way to solve problems with childbirth has a characteristic severity, due to the traditions and level of civil and social maturity of a country, (...) due, among other things, to the level and achievements of technical equipment in this industry of knowledge and practice. According to foreign studies, about half of all subfertile people in developed countries are trying to overcome their infertility with the help of medicine, and research data indicate that the proportion of such individuals is growing. The most difficult problems of reproduction are associated with low quality of oocytes or low ovarian reserve ; aspermia and deep teratozoospermia, can not give hope to a couple to have genetically related offspring. However, donor programs create additional opportunities for social motherhood / paternity. Donation of oocytes is found in ART programs at least 3 times more often than donation of spermatozoa. At the moment, donation of gametes and embryos raises a number of ethical, legal, medical and socio-psychological issues that require competent support from experts of a wide range of specialists, as well as competent, non-commercial, primarily due to the interaction between donors and recipients. The analysis of possible modifications of family and kinship ties is based on the idea of transforming social relations, in which assisted reproductive technologies play a fundamental role, building a system of “new kinship and new family.” By entering into the intimate process of the birth of life and acting as a regulator of the composition of participants in this process through the stimulation of responsibility to present and future relatives, reproductive technologies affect the initial moral requirements in the community, redefining universal values based on the specific situation. Scenarios of childbearing through ART with the involvement of additional participants are possible in the context of the legal field, but legally fixed anonymity of the donor leaves many unresolved issues related to the problems of hereditary diseases, genetic abnormalities and epigenetic changes; in addition, there is a problem associated with the possibility of unintentional incest, as well as the difficulties of the child’s self-identification and the closeness of his genealogy. Solutions to these issues are postponed until later, thereby initiating future dramatic situations, ethical conflicts and dilemmas with a poorly predictable positive outcome. (shrink)

Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally published in 1980, gives an account of "altruistic emotions" and friendship that brings out their moral value. Blum argues that moral theories centered on rationality, universal principle, obligation, and impersonality cannot capture this moral importance. This was one of the first books in contemporary moral philosophy to emphasize the moral significance of emotions, to deal with friendship as a moral phenomenon, and to challenge the rationalism of standard interpretations of Kant, although Blum’s "sentimentalism" owes (...) more to Schopenhauer than to Hume. It was a forerunner to care ethics, and feminist ethics more generally; to virtue ethics; and to subsequent influential interpretations of Kant that attempted to room for altruistic emotion and friendship, and other forms of particularism and partialism. In addition, the work has been widely influential in religious studies, political theory, bioethics, and feminist ethics. (shrink)

In Kant’s ethics, disinterest is derived from the concept of the categorical imperative and is taken to be the condition of the possibility of all moral actions. Schopenhauer, by contrast, treats disinterest as a necessary but insufficient condition for morality, and severs it from its ties to the categorical imperative. Disinterest, for Schopenhauer, leads to the concept of compassion, which he praises as the sole ground of all morality. But compassion seems fundamentally opposed to disinterest, since it involves taking an (...) active interest in someone else’s plight: a consideration not really treated in Kant. In this paper, I tackle the problem of reconciling compassion, in Schopenhauer, with the criterion of disinterest that he inherits from Kant. I also take up the challenge of explaining compassion’s altruistic tendency to act for another’s well-being if we take Schopenhauer’s determinism at face value, and acknowledge that human actions are fundamentally egoistic. (shrink)

Just as there are rational requirements on thought, there are rational requirements on action. This book defends a conception of ethics, and a related conception of human nature, according to which altruism is included among the basic rational requirements on desire and action. Altruism itself depends on the recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.

From the ethicist the_ New Yorker_ calls “the most influential living philosopher,” a new way of thinking about living ethically.

The significance of scientific research into the evolution of altruism for environmental ethics can be highlighted through an analysis of recent debates over William Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness. Recent debates over how to explain altruism have become particularly charged with ideological weight because they are seen to have some consequence for how we understand the human moral project, especially with regard to nonhuman life. By analyzing the place of evolutionary theory in the work of environmental ethicists some (...) conclusions can be drawn about the extent to which these debates, and evolutionary research into behavior more generally, are and are not significant for environmental ethics. In particular, the most important issues at stake for environmental ethicists concern the conditions under which altruistic forms of behavior can thrive and the degree to which we can consider intensive forms of altruism to be unstable and anomalous, or rather stable and predictable outcomes of social evolution given favorable conditions. (shrink)

Doctors hold coexisting ethical duties to avoid causing deliberate harm to their patients (non-maleficence), to act in patients’ best interests (beneficence), to respect patients’ right to self-determination (autonomy) and to ensure that costs and benefits are fairly distributed among patients (justice). In the context of non-directed altruistic kidney donations (NDAKD), doctors’ duties of autonomy and justice are in tension with those of non-maleficence and beneficence. This article examines these competing duties across three scenarios in which general practitioners (GPs) could (...) promote NDAKD to healthy adults. In the first—when a healthy adult patient prompts the GP to discuss NDAKD—the GP is ethically obligated to counsel the patient about NDAKD to respect their autonomy, yet this does not constitute any form of promotion of NDAKD. In the remaining scenarios, healthy adult patients are unaware of the possibility of NDAKD. In the second, it is ethically permissible for GPs to indirectly raise awareness of NDAKD among healthy adults by displaying recruitment campaign material to non-specified groups of patients in their waiting rooms. In the third, it is ethically impermissible for GPs to directly promote NDAKD to individual healthy adults by raising the possibility of NDAKD with such individuals. The major counterarguments raised against this position are problems with kinds of counselling that fail to reach expected professional standards, rather than problems with the ethical claims made in this article. (shrink)

Effective altruism (EA) is a movement devoted to the idea of doing good in the most effective way possible. EA has been the target of a number of critiques. In this article, I focus on one prominent critique: that EA fails to acknowledge the importance of institutional change. One version of this critique claims that EA relies on an overly individualistic approach to ethics. Defenders of EA have objected that this charge either fails to identify a problem with EA's (...) core idea that each of us should do the most good we can, or makes unreasonable claims about what we should do. However, I argue that we can understand the critique in a way that is well motivated, and that can avoid these objections. (shrink)

Can economics, which is based on the notion of individual optimization, really model individuals who have a sense of exteriority? This question, derived both from Marcel Mauss's sociological analysis of the social norm of gift-giving and from Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenological analysis of the idea of 'otherness,' leads to the problem of whether it is possible to model altruism with the tool of optimization. By investigating the ways in which economic theory can address this challenge, and by introducing a postulate (...) of methodological altruism following Levinas's theory of the constitution of subjectivity through otherness, this paper uncovers an alternative foundation for the very notion of optimizing calculation - no longer as a self-centered initiative, but rather as an other-centered response. This makes it possible to clarify the implicit content of usual economic individualism, and to see on the basis of which ethical arguments the economic method of optimization may be upheld. The paper studies the consequences of this renewed foundation of optimization for the organization of a fair and efficient interaction between altruists. (shrink)

In this entry, we discuss both the definition of effective altruism and objections to effective altruism, so defined.

'Altruism' was coined by the French sociologist Auguste Comte in the early 1850s as a theoretical term in his 'cerebral theory' and as the central ideal of his atheistic 'Religion of Humanity'. In The Invention of Altruism, Thomas Dixon traces this new language of 'altruism' as it spread through British culture between the 1850s and the 1900s, and in doing so provides a new portrait of Victorian moral thought. Drawing attention to the importance of Comtean positivism in (...) setting the agenda for debates about science and religion, this volume challenges received ideas about both Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as moral philosophers. Darwin saw sympathy and love, not only selfishness and competition, throughout the natural world. Spencer was the instigator of an Anti-Aggression League and an advocate of greater altruism in Britain's dealings with the 'lower races'. It also sheds light on the rise of popular socialism in the 1880s, on the creation of the idealist 'altruist' in novels of the 1890s, and on the individualistic philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, and G. E. Moore - authors considered by some to be representative of fin de siècle 'egomania.' This wide-ranging study in the history of ideas is highly relevant to contemporary debates about altruism, evolution, religion, and ethics. (shrink)

Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models (...) of organ donation. It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved. (shrink)

Altruism has long been taken to be the guiding principle of ethical organ donation in the UK, and has been used as justification for rejecting or allowing certain types of donation. We argue that, despite this prominent role, altruism has been poorly defined in policy and position documents, and used confusingly and inconsistently. Looking at how the term has been used over recent years allows us to define ‘organ donation altruism’, and comparing this with accounts in (...) the philosophical literature highlights its theoretical shortcomings. The recent report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics reaffirmed the importance of altruism in organ donation, and offered a clearer definition. This definition is, however, more permissive than that of altruism previously seen in UK policy, and as a result allows some donations that previously have been considered unacceptable. We argue that while altruistic motivation may be desirable, it is not necessary. (shrink)