Does altruism exist?
 

It exists because you just defined it.

I think certain people can be more altruistic in certain situations than others.

Yes I think it does to a certain extent.

Altruism most definitely DOES exist. However, it seems these days that it is usually only a manifestation (or by-product?) of love.

I believe there is a reward or some sort of self benefit with every action. But I don't think it necessarily means we're entirely selfish and inconsiderate. What about charities? Wouldn't you consider them altruistic? If we perform actions that benefit or have a positive impact on other individuals whether they fulfil your own, I'd consider it altruistic. We have to support each other to make society work, and that involves altruism.

To a certain extent, benefiting yourself helps others as well. For example, when I am depressed about the world, it depresses those around me more. Now of course depression could help point out problems in the world without the ego and therefore can be valuable and altruistic at times - however it does very little to solve them.

In other words, it is probably better to value your self-contentedness and peace in the world of importance and significance. Even if it seems irrational at times, positive reinforcement is better in the long term.

i read somewhere that this is a really tricky question because altruism can be seen to be found as either 1)evolutionary maintenance, 2)a self-satisfier or 3)true selflessness. i haven't really made my mind up but i lean toward thinking that's it's probably a rather elegant blend of all three, which we may not really be prone to acknowledging for various reasons ranging from strict ideologies to lack of information.

i think the thread may have benefited from mentioning a bit of detail about the reasons why this question is one worth asking, being that people will generally answer with what they think they think if they've never really put much thought into it or made the proper considerations before stating their opinion... this probably comes off as presumptuous or something, but i say it because it hasn't been made evident that there is strength in the argument that altruism is a biological tool of sorts, serving the purpose of continuity of species. which kind of makes sense.

i think one tends to lean in to side of these three different viewpoints because we're not really taught to intuitively accept things that can't be properly expressed by our current state of understanding, being that the scientific method tends to compartmentalize everything so much, which speaks to our logical side, when altruism is more likely the result of our intuitive side... unless of course you're faking altruism for capital or social gain of course (just had to add that last part because it happens so much it likely plays a part in our collective perspective of altruism.).

Depends on the brand.
All brands point to no. There's always something to gain from the perspective of selflessness, even if it's the satisfaction of knowing its effects.

I believe it does. Of all the rotten people I've seen, met, or read about, you'd think I'd be in disbelief, but most people have a personal degree of altruism.

I remember reading a quote in a book from the Dalai Lama. It was something along the lines of being selfless to help one's self, the reward for selflessness is happiness. So I guess yes and no.

It depends on what you mean by existing. Pure altruism does not evolve because it means you give away something and get nothing in return. That's not something that goes rewarded. But reciprocal kindness, however, is a great strategy. We both have backs that need scratching at some point in time, we help eachother out. This means that kindness evolves and sometimes, it can look a lot like altruism. Perhaps so much that the two are almost identical.

Let's say you see a starving child on the telly as part of some charity program. Seeing the starving child stirs you to give money to the charity. You could argue that it is an act of altruism because the starving child or the charity will not give you anything in return. But you could also say that it is not altruism because the reason you reacted that way was because we humans have not evolved in a world where there are TVs. When we see people starving on TV, our biology doesn't know these people are not part of our group. So, you subconsciously reacted as if the starving person is part of your community and could reciprocate your kindness in the future.

So we're capable of acts that closely resemble altruism, particularly now that we live in a world which is so far from the sort of environments we've spent most of our evolutionary history as humans in. F.ex many people have strong, compassionate feelings for animals. It's likely not a capability we evolved because it's a great strategy to get emotional about animals, but rather something that happens because we've started treating and viewing animals more like people. So the compassion we've evolved to have for others in our group can f.ex bleed over to pets.

Is it altruism then?

edit :

Sometimes writing on my Nexus 10 these days. Auto correct made a mess a couple of places. :)

And for the sake of argument, I'll answer the poll with no with the argument that what looks like altruism evolved out of selfishness and thus it is not real altruism .. even though I can think of a couple of weaknesses with that argument.

whats altruisme?

Altruism or selflessness is the principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of "others" toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism or selflessness is the opposite of selfishness.

I get a life boner when I hold the door open for somebody, so no.

in other words a societie where people care for each other

How often do you open the door for people....?

i always hold the open for someone, and whenn there is no space in the bus, i let someone sit next to me

not necessarily more one where people are motivated to do something because they are truly feeling it... say for instance I held the door open for you because you had packages in your hands, and I did it because I truly felt like you needed my help... not because I was trained to do it from a young age... and if I didn't feel like you needed the help I wouldn't... my motivations would be purely from the heart and if not they wouldn't become actions...does that make sense?

it makes sense, that is what makes us human after all:wave:

But then bettering one's self also takes the strain off those who come into contact with you as well so it goes back to selflessness again.

I think altruism is relative to a specific scenario. For example, it is more altruistic to go out of your way to help someone up after they have fallen, than to kick them in the face for your own amusement.

You can argue that you do both through your self for selfish reasons, but the latter has less empathy so is less altruistic.

Only when other people are around, so they can see how nice I am. Scratch that, if it's a hot girl too.

Well it would be strange if you stood there holding it open when no one else was around...

;)

You pointed a flaw in the wording of my joke. +10 observational skills. :D

Yes and no. Or, better said, there is altruism and there is selfishness. Yesterday I read something about it, by Adam Smith:

It sounds cynical, but the man is right. There is the other side, though. Imagine that you had to choose between your finger or the death of millions of people. Would you lose your finger if you could save the lives of all that people?

-------------------------------------

Now I'm thinking about medical scientists devoting their lives to trying to alleviate Human suffering. Some of them work for private companies. In that case, is there some dose of altruism there or is it just about making a profit? Or maybe both things?

There may be altruism in little things too. For instance, let's see the Internet. Many people share their knowledge for free. Free software, free cultural works, etc. Also, take a look at Music Banter. Don't we visit the Name that Tune section in order to help someone who we don't know for nothing in exchange?

Altruism exists because its opposite exists. And opposites create eachother. Good creates bad, ugliness creates beauty, light creates darkness, chaos creates order, and vice versa, and so on and so forth. Take life for example: if everything was alive and lived forever we wouldn't regard it as life because we only know life in relation to what isn't life.

It's interesting to note that many altruists are altruistic because they realised that being selflessly good to others makes the self feel good. But does that still mean they're being altruistic? I don't suppose it matters really, it's a philosophical question that only morons like myself would ponder.

^I agree. Altruism exists because selfishness exists, and both are defined within a spectrum of human behavior. It's sort of meaningless imo to drag biology into this discussion and bring up the many ways that people might indirectly benefit from altruistic behavior. The fact is that anything that doesn't ultimately benefit your genes in some way won't evolve and so it's pointless to frame the question in that way. We originally defined these terms based on subjective human values, i.e. traits that we admire in other humans vs traits that we find distasteful. We shouldn't lose sight of that very basic dynamic.

I enjoyed this statement, and it is exactly why I say altruism doesn't exist.

Ok, explain this one to me.

I was driving home last night, guy runs out of gas on a blind corner, gas station is just ahead. Me getting out and helping him push didn't make me feel any sort of way. I just did it on instinct. Pure gut instinct. As much as the guy, yelled at me "naw baby I got dis..." I pushed anyway. I was in a ****ty mood to ice the cake that was my **** fest of a day, so when I did this I was not exactly feeling warm and fuzzy. Might have been why I said "Dude, shut up! And steer..." Did I get a rush of warm fuzzies afterward? Nope.

Now get this, I looked at my phone walking back to my car. One missed call. A coworker and friend of mine, drove past, saw me, (little ole me) pushing a huge ass caprice down the street, and simply called to ask what I was doing.

Didn't stop to help me their friend, who was actually doing something completely altruistic. This guys has a connection to me, forget the stranger, I am the only one that established a connection with the stranger. So by that rational if we were all out to feel good and pat ourselves on the back my friend would have stopped to help me, help the stranger and we would have all sat down and sang kumbyah afterward. Because we all felt good. That did not happen.

I think you did it on instinct because you have been programmed to believe it was the right thing to do. And programming can go a long way.

Therefore... still not altruism.

I would argue that altruism does exist, it's not just not the pure ideal of altruism that some people think it is. Altruistic behavior is our behavior that is irrational in terms of personal survival, but somehow helps the survival chances of species or individual members of the species. It doesn't matter whether the altruistic behavior makes the organism feel good or not, though typically it does and that's why they do it.

In primates (including early humans) altruism stemmed from limited inbreeding (a typical trait of social organisms). It turns out that social animals are more willing to help out fellow members of their species that share more resemblance to them. The benefits/cost of altruism aren't necessarily realized by the individual itself, it is a random mutation that favored reproduction of social species, and thus, those groups of primates had a higher chance of survival than groups with more in-group competition.

Altruism - EvoWiki

I wouldn't call that altruism myself. Being nice to family who you share genes with is called kin selection. The reason doing so has evolved is because generally, there's a fitness reward associated wth it, which means there's a selfish reason behind it all. By being "altruistic", you are doing something to perpetuate your genes and ensure your biological fitness. Can it then be altruism?

It's the same thing with social bees kamikaze-killing themselves for the good of the hive. Unlike us humans, a worker bee always has the same set of chromosomes from her (haploid) father, and they make up 50% of her genes. So 50% of the genetic material will always be the same. Then they also inherit one of two sets of genes from their (diploid) mother. So, putting it simply, on average any worker bee will share 75% of her genes with her sisters.

If a worker bee would have her own children, she would only share 50% of her genes with each child (the other half would come from her father), which is actually less relation than she would have to a new sister. So, in fact, a better strategy for a worker bee to maximize fitness would be to ensure that her mother, the queen, births more sisters .. even if it means giving her life for that cause. Is it then altruism? I would say not, because the basis of it all is selfish.

edit :

A simple mechanism by which one might argue that altruism exists is by variation. The optimal strategy or expression of a trait depends on the environment. Let's say that there's a gene that makes people nice and it evolved because being nice raises their fitness, so it evolved out of selfishness. But how nice should you be? That depends on the environment and generally speaking, the environment changes constantly and you also have genetic variation and so the gene will generally never be optimally expressed. A person would either be too nice or not nice enough. If they are too nice, you could argue that that is altruism.

A gene could also mutate, resulting in a new behaviour making an individual behave more altruistic.

Note the context of the altruism wiki. Kin selection is not altruism, but it is a proposed mechanism for altruism.

Gene propagation is not the human reason for altruism; that's the evolutionary reason. For example, sex yields children, but that's not why we do it; we do it because it feels good. If reproduction relied on some kind of intellectual acknowledgement of the fate of the species, we would probably be doomed. Instead, it relies on us having an urge to get off.

Altruistic urges aren't much different in that regard. It makes some people feel good to make sacrifices for others. The individual hasn't necessarily reached the conclusion that it will increase the odds of their genes propagating, they are just following compulsions that randomly developed through evolutionary pressures and happened to lead to the propagation of genes that tend to lead to such traits.

yes. i don't see the dilemma at all because your genes are not the ones being described as altruistic. you, the animal, are the one that is making a sacrifice. the genetic programming that compels you to make that sacrifice doesn't cancel that out.

Some great points made here :)

I get them too and I could just leave it at that. It could be a matter of perspective.

Still, the nitpick in me thinks true selflessness would have you gain nothing, not even an unconscious fitness reward. It exists f.ex when an "altruistic" optimal strategy fails to be optimal and becomes too nice to the point where it's actually self-destructive fitness-wise. Natural selection would work against it and adjust those genes accordingly. To put that in a more social perspective, I think a good society should create an environment that promotes selflessness and altruism (whether one thinks of it as a real thing or not).

Somewhat related, I once read about green beard hypothesis (think it was green). The idea is that a gene gives a man a green beard (easily recognizable) and the gene also controls friendly behaviour towards others with green beards. The gene is selfish; it's promoting its own survival when it recognizes itself in other individuals. That could also be a way for "altruism" to exist, but again the underlying evolutionary mechanism is, of course, selfish.

I'm not sure if any "green beard"-genes have been identified, but I should look into that.

the way i look at it is basically that it is selfish at a genetic level but not selfish at the level of the individual organism. the gene that codes for the altruistic behavior is in itself selfish since genes by definition are selected based on their success in propagating themselves. so if the gene itself had any sort of agency you would have to consider it selfish. but the organism is not the gene, and the organism doesn't actually benefit from the sacrifice the gene has programmed it to make. e.g. the bee example; the genetic lineage might benefit from that sort of sacrifice. the individual bee that makes the sacrifice doesn't benefit. if they did then it wouldn't be a sacrifice.

so i think that there is a real distinction to make between instincts which promote the organism's individual well being and survival and those that promote the organism to sacrifice those priorities, and i think it makes sense to label the latter as altruism.

I disagree with separating one's genes from who they are, because I don't believe in souls. One does not exist without their coding, a different one exists.

Genes are only half the story, though. The other half is how environment shaped and selected those genes. A pair of monozygotic twins cam develop differences in personality (in fact, we do monozygotic twin studies comparing twins raised together to twins separated at a young age to tease environmental effects from genetic effects.)

i don't believe in souls either. i believe in brains. all i'm saying is the individual organism doesn't benefit from making the altruistic sacrifice, so the individual organism isn't being 'selfish.' the gene might benefit, but the gene is not the organism.

@Both: The organism wouldn't exist without the genes, it would be a different organism. In order to be altruistic, it would literally have to lack survival genes and contain specific 'sacrifice without reward', communal or individual, genes. And that just plain doesn't happen because the species wouldn't have made it this far.

Edit: Maybe it's a matter of defining altruism. In my eyes, it is a concept that does not exist. But I do think the 'fake' altruism sometimes exhibited is admirable enough.

I think, in general, the differences are in the semantics of altruism. I agree, to some extent, that idealistic altruism doesn't exist, though it may crop up as a social construction. The problem, in terms of falsifiable observations, is that motivations can't be directly observed like behavior can, so altruism is defined behaviorally in a biology context. The means that the intrinsic value system is neglected.

This is an interesting problem to me. Imo, marketing and propaganda research and a model similar to Maslow's Hierarchy could help to make a rational concept out of internal value systems (really, we know that sex, money, and food are up there, but then there's more complicated social rules that emerge from social value systems like religion, law, and community).