“[S]ince altruism dictates that we should hold our interests or values in no regard when acting, altruism actually states that the personal value of the beneficiary be irrelevant to our action!”

Most certainly not. Moral judgment is a necessary means for achieving an altruistic ends. Does anyone believe handing money over to a drug-dealer is going to be in anyone’s best interests? You assume receiving money is necessarily a benefit. For a destructive person (to oneself or to others), receiving a wad of cash is a detriment. To determine whether an act of charity will be effective requires careful formation of conscience. Only then can you act in accord with your values, not for some self-serving purpose of making yourself feel good or getting a ego boost out of imposing your will on others, but because you genuinely believe it is in the best interests of others.

And, yes, the ideal is to act in others’ best interest without discriminating based on their relationship to you. But we are of limited means and pragmatism dictates we help those near us. I’ll be able to serve soup at the local soup kitchen far more effectively than flying myself around the world to serve the starving. So I give my labor locally and I give my money (after careful research) to institutions that, through the power of “economy of scale”, can make more effective use of the money.

In sum, pragmatic altruism requires a decision matrix carefully constructed from your education and life experiences. And that whole thing about achieving true happiness, I think the real irony is that the only true happiness comes from not fretting about obtaining it. Namely: be selfless! Peeeaaace!

Re: your post

Check this out: Teachings of Jesus on love.

Paul

maybe this is why Jesus makes no sense to many. yet, i find that in this i agree. i do believe that we are to love those who are most despicable. this stems from the love that i believe God shows to us. i am often God’s enemy, yet He continues to love me.

peter

“Morality,” “Love,” and “Altruism” aren’t tangible things like rocks or glass jars, things which can be seen, measured, etc. In fact, I don’t think people even really think of them as abstract “things” so much as ways to describe how we behave, feel, or act. To say that morality has to have an individual’s best or interest or the group’s best interest in mind is simply a world view. At best, we have a general consensus about these terms, and that’s about it. Even politically, “morality” means so many different things.

The world and life are not black and white, even if the argument of whether they are black and white can be reduced to an A or B response. Not to be nasty, but this article seems to be the kind of pretentious coffee shop argument that philosophy undergrads have in between discussing which is the best Pavement record.

There’s something interesting to human altruism (*my* use of the word, I don’t care if it is the “wrong” use): it may be experienced as altruism, but looking at it from a big-picture, it does become “selfish”.

If a mountain biker meets another with a flat, he’d typically give him his spare tube, and expect nothing in return. He’d rather ask the recipient to “pay it forward”. The result is a better society, the result and aim is arguably “selfish” from a big-picture perspective, and that’s how human cooperation could evolve. But the individual’s actions are not directly beneficial to the individual, and is experienced as a selfless act, despite it’s ultimate “selfish” benefits. Contributing to wikipedia, to open source, etc etc…

Is it necessary to recognise the “big picture selfishness” of a moral and subjectively/experientially “selfless” act in order for it to be “moral”? Of course not, since my question reduces to “moral acts are moral”, heh.

But that’s the easier question. Bigger sacrifices (a mother giving up a life for a child, or a revolutionary for a cause) can just as easily be considered “selfish” as long as you define the question right. Jesus dying in a protest of Roman oppression could also ultimately be considered selfish, as he selfishly died for the values he held dear? (Um, yea, here I’m with the liberal Bible scholars in not paying too much attention to the substitutionary atonement for sins idea that seems to rule Christianity these days.)

But I’m being overly verbose here, as all I’m really talking about is semantics. Viva selfless self-sacrifice in selfish pursuit of greater ideals for human cooperation and compassion.

becky

Evanescent isn’t espousing anything. He isn’t saying “selflessness is immoral, therefore go out and be selfish.” He’s merely using reductionist logic to break down the term “altruism” without imposing any creed.

I have read the bulk of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and it is starkly different to what Evanescent is talking about here.

You could summarize Rand’s philosophy by saying that she holds selfishness as a personal virtue.

Evanescent is saying that simultaneously calling yourself selfless and altruistic is a contradiction in terms, because the practice of altruism requires one to hold up his moral ideal above others, which is a selfish act.

Rand does not say this…

ScottL, you should really read Evanescent’s article. It’s quite good.