nucleation

QUESTION-300: Is any motivation aimed at another's good and at the good of no self, however far a self can extend to include others and groups?

2 min read

Properties5
StatusOpen
Tagsaltruism, self, moral-psychology
Linedistributed-agency
Cited as “answers” byCLAIM-491 — 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, CLAIM-494 — 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
Cited as “bears on” byCLAIM-492 — 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

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Why it is a question

The owner’s position is CLAIM-491: there is no selflessness. People with collectivist attitudes have a larger self-identity, and collectivism is a self-interest that respects the good of a group identity. Three bodies of work make the position more than a slogan.

  • Inclusive selves. Self-categorization theory treats social identity as a self-categorization at a more inclusive level, no less a self than personal identity (THEORY-1114, from Turner et al. 1994). Related accounts:
    • self-expansion treats close others as included in the self (Aron et al., LIT-1706);
    • identity fusion treats the personal and group self as merged (Swann et al., LIT-1735);
    • cultural psychology finds selves construed interdependently (Markus and Kitayama, LIT-1703).
  • Helping traced to oneness. Cialdini et al. (LIT-1728) found that helping tracked perceived self–other “oneness”, not empathy.
  • Evolution. Hamilton’s rule (THEORY-655) has organisms valuing a relative’s fitness by relatedness: an evolutionary analogue of a self that extends to kin.

Two things keep it open:

  • Empirical. Batson et al. (LIT-1700) report that empathy-induced helping survives control for self–other merging (CLAIM-494).
  • Conceptual. If “self” means whatever one cares about, the thesis cannot be false (CLAIM-492).

Two further positions cut across the dichotomy:

  • Team reasoning (Sugden, LIT-1782) makes “what is good for us” a mode of reasoning that is neither self-interest nor altruism.
  • Johnston (LIT-1759) runs the thesis in reverse: if the self is as large as what one identifies with, the good person’s self is humanity.

The question also touches the phenomenology of the “we” the owner mentioned:

  • Zahavi (LIT-1758) on how one comes to see oneself as one of us;
  • León (THEORY-1115) on a “we” built by individualization, not depersonalization;
  • Parfit’s question of what matters in survival (THEORY-464).

What would count as an answer

  • A criterion of the self’s extent that can come apart from caring. Candidates: perceived overlap (Aron’s inclusion-of-other-in-self scale), fusion, salient self-categorization, or relatedness in Hamilton’s sense.
  • For a yes: evidence that concern for another’s welfare motivates action when that criterion shows no extension of the self to the other.
  • For a no: evidence that every such motivation disappears when the extension is controlled.

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