Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Altruism and self-interest — whether and how action can aim at another’s good rather than one’s own — psychological egoism and its rivals, the empathy–altruism debate and self–other merging, inclusion of others in the self and identity fusion, team reasoning and group-directed preferences, identity in the utility function, the evolution of unselfish behaviour (kin, reciprocal and group selection), and the extent of the self as it bears on what counts as self-interest (ADR-062).
4 of 547 CLAIM documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLAIM-491 v5 | No action is selfless in the sense of aiming at a good that is no self’s: what is called selflessness, collectivist or altruistic, is concern for the good of a self extended to include others or a group, so collectivism is self-interest on a larger self-identity | The owner’s position, from the discussion that raised self-categorization theory (2026-10-28 and 29). Selves come at more and less inclusive levels: social identity in self-categorization theory, fusion, self-expansion, interdependent self-construal. Apparent selflessness is then concern for a larger self. Cialdini et al.’s “oneness” result is its best evidence; Batson et al.’s rejoinder and the risk of trivial truth are its objections. It does not say people are self-centred, or that groups have no good of their own. | Proposed |
| CLAIM-492 v2 | If the self is defined to include whatever an agent cares about, the claim that all motivation serves the self is true by definition and rules nothing out; the thesis has content only with a criterion of the self’s extent that can come apart from what the agent cares about | The classic objection to psychological egoism (Butler; Sober and Wilson, LIT-1683), turned on the owner’s thesis. “Every motive is my motive” is trivially true and does not make every motive self-interested. “My self includes whatever I care about” makes the thesis unfalsifiable. It is answered if the thesis names an independent criterion of the self’s extent, such as overlap, fusion or salient self-categorization, and predicts that motivation follows that criterion and not caring alone. | Active |
| CLAIM-494 v2 | Empathic concern for another produces motivation whose ultimate goal is the other’s welfare, and it does so when perceived self–other merging is controlled, so not all helping is concern for an extended self | The empathy–altruism hypothesis as Batson et al. (1997) defend it against Cialdini et al. (1997): in experiments (two, by the SEP’s account), empathy predicted helping with self–other merging controlled, and merging did not mediate it. Sober and Wilson (1998; LIT-1683) argue on independent grounds that psychological egoism is not established. Filed as the empirical objection to the owner’s thesis; both papers are unread, so the record holds the disagreement, not its resolution. | Proposed |
| CLAIM-546 | Negative frequency dependence that keeps two types in coexistence does not make their interaction cooperative: in Hawk–Dove with cost C above value V each type increases when rare and they coexist at the interior equilibrium of V/C Hawks, with Hawks still taking the whole resource from Doves, and on the Black Queen account producers of a leaked good and the cells that use it without paying coexist at a frequency set by the community’s need; so whether types persist together and whether they cooperate are separate questions, and a coexistence criterion answers only the first | From §3 of the synthesis “The Evolution of Cooperation: From Coexistence to Symbiosis to Morality”, which the owner supplied on 2026-11-04: “stable coexistence of strategies is not necessarily the same as stable cooperation: cooperators and defectors can coexist without eliminating exploitation”. The record held the ecological half, invasion growth when rare (CASE-118), and a case of the point (the Black Queen, THEORY-1048). It did not hold the point itself. Hawk–Dove makes it exact. The wording is the reader’s; adopting it is the owner’s call. | Proposed |