Altruistic deception (or the telling of “white lies”) is common in humans. Does it also exist in non-human animals? On some definitions of deception, altruistic deception is impossible by definition, whereas others make it too easy by counting useful-but-ambiguous information as deceptive. I argue for a definition that makes altruistic deception possible in principle without trivializing it. On my proposal, deception requires the strategic exploitation of a receiver by a sender, where “exploitation” implies that the sender elicits (...) a behaviour in the receiver that is beneficial in a different type of situation and is expressed only because the signal raises the probability, from the receiver’s standpoint, of that type of situation. I then offer an example of a real signal that is deceptive in this sense, and yet potentially altruistic (and certainly cooperative): the purr call of the pied babbler. Fledglings associate purr calls with food, and adults exploit this learned association, in the absence of food, to lead fledglings away from predators following an alarm call. I conclude by considering why altruistic deception is apparently so rare in non-human animals. (shrink)

Altruism is a well-established reason underlying research participation. Less is known about altruism in adolescent-parent decision-making about clinical trials enrolling healthy adolescents. This qualitative investigation focused on identifying spontaneous statements of altruism within adolescent-parent (dyadic) discussions of participation in a hypothetical phase I clinical trial related to adolescent sexual health. Content analysis revealed several response patterns to each other’s altruistic reasoning. Across 70 adolescent-parent dyads in which adolescents were 14 to 17 years of age and 91% of their parents (...) were mothers, a majority (61%) of dyadic discussions included a statement reflecting altruism. Parents responded to adolescents’ statements of altruism more frequently than adolescents responded to parents’ statements. Responses included: expresses concern, reiterates altruistic reasoning, agrees with altruistic reasoning, and adds to/expands altruistic reasoning. Since an altruistic perspective was often balanced with concerns about risk or study procedures, researchers cannot assume that altruism will directly lead to study participation. Optimizing the informed consent process for early phase clinical trials involving healthy adolescents may include supporting parents to have conversations with their adolescents which will enhance their capacity to consider all aspects of trial participation. (shrink)

This is the first collective study of the thinking behind the effective altruism movement. This movement comprises a growing global community of people who organise significant parts of their lives around the two key concepts represented in its name. Altruism is the idea that if we use a significant portion of the resources in our possession—whether money, time, or talents—with a view to helping others then we can improve the world considerably. When we do put such resources to altruistic (...) use, it is crucial to focus on how much good this or that intervention is reasonably expected to do per unit of resource expended (as a gauge of effectiveness). We can try to rank various possible actions against each other to establish which will do the most good with the resources expended. Thus we could aim to rank various possible kinds of action to alleviate poverty against one another, or against actions aimed at very different types of outcome, focused perhaps on animal welfare or future generations. The scale and organisation of the effective altruism movement encourage careful dialogue on questions that have perhaps long been there, throwing them into new and sharper relief, and giving rise to previously unnoticed questions. In this volume a team of internationally recognised philosophers, economists, and political theorists present refined and in-depth explorations of issues that arise once one takes seriously the twin ideas of altruistic commitment and effectiveness. (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)

Although volunteering is the most organized and formal manner of altruism, the two subjects are rarely connected in literature. In this article reviewed is the egocentric approach that is found in four social disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics and socio-biology , and the way that studies on altruism are based on Utilitarian philosophy and on the homo economicus perception of man. All of the above have influenced the study of volunteerism: the research questions, the study areas, and the conclusions on the (...) essence of volunteering. We then review a different approach based on Deontological philosophy: the alter-centric approach, already influencing the study of altruism. New directions of approaching and studying volunteerism are suggested. (shrink)

While many Christians accept the claim that giving to support the poor and needy is a core moral and religious obligation, most Christian giving is usually not very efficient in EA terms. In this paper, I explore possibilities for productive collaboration between effective altruists and Christian givers. I argue that Christians are obligated from their own perspective to give radically in terms of quantity and scope to alleviate the suffering of the poor and needy. I raise two important potential stumbling (...) blocks for EAChristian collaboration. First, Christians cannot assess outcomes using a straightforward utilitarian calculus of the sort preferred by many EAs, lest they run into a reductio. Second, Christians will want to give to support aims such as worship and evangelism that are not shared by secular EAs and that are not easily commensurable, making the allocation of giving resources more difficult. I conclude with some tentative suggestions about how Christians who are sympathetic to EA might become more effective in their giving. (shrink)

The effective altruism movement (EA) is one of the most influential philosophically savvy movements to emerge in recent years. Effective Altruism has historically been dedicated to finding out what charitable giving is the most overall-effective, that is, the most effective at promoting or maximizing the impartial good. But some members of EA want the movement to be more inclusive, allowing its members to give in the way that most effectively promotes their values, even when doing so isn’t overall-effective. When we (...) examine what it means to give according to one’s values, I argue, we will see that this is both inconsistent with what EA is like now and inconsistent with its central philosophical commitment to an objective standard that can be used to critically analyze one’s giving. While EA is not merely synonymous with act utilitarianism, it cannot be much more inclusive than it is right now. (shrink)

I want to explain some of the gaps I see between the concepts of morality and altruism. Indeed, there are three concepts here that need to be disentangled, not just two. Evolutionists use the terms “altruism” and “selfishness” in a way that differs from the usage found in ordinary parlance. So my goal is to separate evolutionary altruism, psychological altruism, and morality. Morality includes a variety of characteristics. There is more to morality than altruism. If we can avoid the mistake (...) of thinking we have explained the whole when we have explained only the part, we may yet be able to advance our understanding of what morality is and where it came from. (shrink)

‘Altruistic punishment’ (i.e., costly punishment that serves no instrumental goal for the punisher) could serve, as suggested by the pertinent experimental literature, as a powerful enforcer of social norms. This paper discusses foundations, extensions, and, in particular, limits and open questions of this concept-and it does so mostly based on experimental evidence provided by the author. Inter alia, the paper relates the (standard) literature on negative emotions as a trigger of second party punishment to more recent experimental findings on (...) the phenomenon of ‘spontaneous cooperation’ and ‘spontaneous punishment’ and demonstrates its (tight) emotional basis. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential for free riding on altruistic punishment. While providing valuable insights into the understanding of social order, ‘altruistic punishment’ is thus not the golden keystone of social stability. (shrink)

Abstract.Altruism, defined here as a regard for or devotion to the interest of others with whom we are interrelated, is pitted against two other dispositions in human beings: nepotism and egoism. We propose that to become fully human is to become more altruistic. We describe how altruism is mediated by our physiology, is expressed in our psychological development, is evolving in our social institutions, and becomes the moral communities that enforce our sense of right and wrong. A change in (...) any one of these influences changes our disposition—changes who we are and what we do—potentially making altruism more possible in the world. (shrink)

Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy.

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)

Acts of helping others are often based on mixed motivations. Based on this claim, it has been argued that the use of a financial reward to incentivize organ donation is compatible with promoting altruism in organ donation. In its report Human Bodies: Donation for Medicine and Research, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics uses this argument to justify its suggestion to pilot a funeral payment scheme to incentivize people to register for deceased organ donation in the UK. In this article, I (...) cast a sceptical eye on the above Nuffield report's argument that its proposed funeral payment scheme would prompt deceased organ donations that remain altruistic . Specifically, I illustrate how this scheme may prompt various forms of mixed motivations which would not satisfy the report's definition of altruism. Insofar as the scheme produces an expectation of the reward, it stands diametrical to promoting an ‘altruistic perspective’. My minimal goal in this article is to argue that altruism is not motivationally compatible with reward as an incentive for donation. My broader goal is to argue that if a financial reward is used to incentivize organ donation, then we should recognize that the donation system is no longer aiming to promote altruism. Rewarded donation would not be altruistic but it may be ethical given a persistent organ shortage situation. (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)

It has become common to distinguish between altruistic and commercial contract motherhood (or ‘surrogacy’). Altruistic arrangements are based on the ‘gift relationship’: a woman is motivated by altruism to have a baby for an infertile couple, who are free to reciprocate as they see fit. By contrast, in commercial arrangements both parties are motivated by personal gain to enter a legally enforceable agreement, which stipulates that the contract mother or ‘surrogate’ is to bear a child for the intending (...) parents in exchange for a fee. She is required to undergo medical examinations and to refrain from behaviour that could harm the foetus. The intending parents are the child's legal parents from the outset. The parties to the contract can, but are not expected to, maintain contact after the transaction is completed. We argue that contract motherhood should not be organized according to the norms of the gift relationship, and that contract mothers should be compensated for their labour. However, we accept that there are good reasons for rejecting the commercial model as a suitable framework for contract pregnancy, and argue, instead, in favour of viewing it as a profession. (shrink)

In my work as a transplant ethicist I have always been interested in the topic of altruism. Thus, when a book appeared with the title, Pathological Altruism, I was very intrigued to read it. An exceedingly heavy book, however, arrived in my mailbox, and I admit I was taken aback. But upon reading Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson, I was not disappointed.

In this paper, I reframe the long-standing controversy between ‘psychological egoism’, which argues that human beings never perform altruistic actions, and the opposing thesis of ‘psychological altruism’, which claims that human beings are, at least sometimes, capable of acting in an altruistic fashion. After a brief sketch of the controversy, I begin by presenting some representative arguments in favour of psychological altruism before showing that they can all be called into question by appealing to the idea of an (...) unconscious self-directed motive. I will then point out that this argumentative strategy not only debunks the reasons for favouring psychological altruism, but also those for favouring psychological egoism; hence it is no use in settling the dispute between the two views. In the second part of the paper, I will try to break this deadlock by reframing the whole controversy, shifting it away from the concept of motive, towards the broader notion of motivation. As it turns out, this shift enables the debate to centre on altruistic emotions and their motivational power, thereby allowing evolutionary arguments to enter the debate and tilt the balance in favour of psychological altruism. (shrink)

One of the main objections against effective altruism is the so-called institutional critique, according to which the EA movement neglects interventions that affect large-scale institutions. Alexander Dietz has recently put forward an interesting version of this critique, based on a theoretical problem affecting act-utilitarianism, which he deems as potentially conclusive against effective altruism. In this article I argue that his critique is not as promising as it seems. I then go on to propose another version of the institutional critique. In (...) contrast to Dietz's version, it targets not the core principles of effective altruism but rather some important methodological assumptions made in EA research, namely diminishing marginal returns and low-hanging fruits. One key conclusion is that it may be time for critics of effective altruism to shift their attention from the theoretical core principles of effective altruism towards the methodological tools actually employed in practice by the EA movement. (shrink)

Ioannidis relies on existential and feminist psychoanalysis to provide a radical and intertextual philosophical analysis of altruism. Following Nietzsche, he traces altruism to the phenomenon of giving one’s word.

Addresses a range of phenomena related to the general question of when people behave in an altruistic fashion. This book contains topics that include how empathy induced altruism can actually be a threat to the some larger collective good, and the role of egoism in the production and maintenance of social order.

Effective altruists aim to do the most good that they can do with the resources available to them, without causing themselves or their dependents significant harm thereby. The argument presented in this paper demonstrates that there are no morally relevant dissimilarities between living kidney donation and living kidney selling for effective altruistic reasons. Thus, since the former is allowed, the latter ought to be allowed as well. And, there are important moral differences between living kidney selling for effective (...) class='Hi'>altruistic reasons and other reasons for kidney vending, such that standard objections against markets in human kidneys do not attach to those markets designed around principles of effective altruism. The reasonable conclusion to draw from this is that eligible effective altruist kidney donors ought to be allowed to sell their kidneys to others in need, if they so desire. Because of this, law and policy ought to be changed to allow for this exceptional case: current laws that ban kidney selling for everyone, irrespective of their reason for selling, are unjustified. (shrink)

Moral pyschology and cultural analysis of the Sam Bankman-Fried fraud and effective altruism generally, with help from Beauvoir, Aristotle, and Bertolt Brecht.

It is widely agreed that living kidney donation is permitted but living kidney sales are not. Call this the Received View. One way to support the Received View is to appeal to a particular understanding of the conditions under which living kidney transplantation is permissible. It is often claimed that donors must act altruistically, without the expectation of payment and for the sake of another. Call this the Altruism Requirement. On the conventional interpretation, the Altruism Requirement is a moral fact. (...) It states a legitimate constraint on permissible transplantation and is accepted on the basis of cogent argument. The present paper offers an alternative interpretation. I suggest the Altruism Requirement is a moral fiction—a kind of motivated falsehood. It is false that transplantation requires altruism. But the Requirement serves a purpose. Accepting it allows kidney donation but not kidney sale. It, in short, rationalizes the Received View. (shrink)

Recent brain imaging studies support sociobiology’s earlier claims about morality, altruism, and religion being rooted in evolved brain function. Despite these insights, however, neuroscience and sociobiology, like theology, provide incomplete answers to persistent what and why questions regarding the metaphysical aspects of human behavior. This essay addresses some unsettled issues along these lines by combining a priori economics principles with the standard consilience of natural science and moral philosophy.

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.

Arguments against directed altruistic living organ donation are too weak to justify a ban. Potential donors who want to specify the non-related person or group of persons to receive their donated kidney should be accepted. The arguments against, based on considerations of motivation, fairness and (non-)anonymity (e.g. those recently cited by an advisory report of the Dutch Health Council), are presented and discussed, as well as the Dutch Governments response. Whereas the Government argues that individuals have authority with regard (...) to the allocation of their organs, partial considerations have not been sufficiently explored. In addition, it is argued that partial relationships govern human life, are significant and should be valued highly. These relationships are at the core of accepted living kidney donation between relatives (family members, partners, friends). Respecting the particular act of living donation goes beyond respect for autonomy; it touches upon our personal and social identity. Donation, e.g. of a kidney, is not undertaken strictly for the benefit of the recipient, but also to meet the moral standards we wish to set for ourselves. This consideration, rooted in a view of moral identity, provides the basis for many forms of directed donation that are both partial and justified. If the importance of this is not recognized, social policies can be neither adequate nor effective. (shrink)

Child labor is often condemned as a form of exploitation. I explore how the notion of exploitation, as used in everyday language, can be made precise in economic models of child labor. Exploitation is defined relative to a specific social welfare function. I first show that under the standard dynastic social welfare function, which is commonly applied to intergenerational models, child labor is never exploitative. In contrast, under an inclusive welfare function, which places additional weight on the welfare of children, (...) child labor is always exploitative. Neither welfare function captures the more gradual distinctions that common usage of the term exploitation allows. I resolve this conflict by introducing a welfare function with minimum altruism, in which child labor in a given family is judged relative to a specific social standard. Under this criterion, child labor is exploitative only in families where the parent (or guardian) displays insufficient altruism towards the child. I argue that this welfare function best captures the conventional concept of exploitation and has useful properties for informing political choices regarding child labor. (shrink)

Effective altruists either believe they ought to be, or strive to be, doing the most good they can. Since they’re human, however, effective altruists are invariably fallible. In numerous situations, even the most committed EAs would fail to live up to the ideal they set for themselves. This fact raises a central question about how to understand effective altruism. How should one’s future prospective failures at doing the most good possible affect the current choices one makes as an effective altruist? (...) This question is important to answer not only because every effective altruist will face this question due to typical human akrasia, but also because how the question is answered will determine just how demanding effective altruism can be. I argue that no matter how effective altruists answer this question, they will have to take on some commitments seemingly antithetical to their movement. More precisely, I argue that effective altruism is subject to a dilemma. Effective altruists’, at times, implicit actualist assumptions (i) commit them to conclusions seemingly antithetical to what typical effective altruists actually believe, as well as the spirit of the movement and (ii) undermine effective altruists’ arguments against moral offsetting and giving to charities close to the heart. Yet, effective altruists’, at times, implicit possibilist assumptions (iii) also commit them to conclusions seemingly antithetical to what typical effective altruists actually believe, as well as the spirit of the movement and (iv) undermine typical responses to demandingness worries for the normative conception of effective altruism. I argue that the best way out of the dilemma is to accept hybridism, though even hybridism won’t preserve every commitment of effective altruism. (shrink)

Altruism is generally accepted to be the practice of unselfish concern for the well-being of others coupled with an associated measure of personal cost. Altruism as an actionable treatise for living aims to benefit society. While altruistic acts have traditionally been viewed as virtuous, in some cases, positive outcomes might not be forthcoming if the actor is not enlightened about the consequences of specific courses of action. While this precept has been argued extensively in historical commentary, no formal definition (...) exists for it. This article terms this concept as ‘unenlightened altruism’. The article reviews the scant extant discourse on ‘unenlightened altruism’ in scholarly literature, provides a formal definition for the ideology, opines consequentialist implications and correlates it to related ethical constructs. From the consequentialist standpoint, it is argued that it might be more ethical not to act than to act out of unenlightened altruism. (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)

Effective Altruism encourages affluent people to make significant donations to improve the wellbeing of the world’s poor, using quantified and observational methods to identify the most efficient charities. Critics argue that EA is inattentive to the systemic causes of poverty and underestimates the effectiveness of individual contributions to systemic change. EA claims to be open to systemic change but suggests that systemic critiques, such as the socialist critique of capitalism, are unhelpfully vague and serve primarily as hypocritical rationalizations of continued (...) affluence. I reformulate the systemic change objection, rebut the charges of vagueness and bad faith and argue that charity may not be worth doing at all from a purely altruistic perspective. In order to take systemic change seriously, EA must repudiate its narrowly empiricist approach, embrace holistic, interpretive social analysis and make inevitably controversial judgments about the complex dynamics of collective action. These kinds of evidence and judgment cannot be empirically verified but are essential to taking systemic change seriously. EA is thereby forced to sacrifice its a-political approach to altruism. I also highlight the importance of quotidian, extra-political contributions to perpetuating or changing harmful social practices. Radical efforts to resist, subvert and reconstruct harmful social practices, such as those involved in economic decision-making, could be just as effective and demanding as charity. But such efforts may be incompatible with extensive philanthropy, because they can require people to retain some level of affluence for strategic reasons but to repudiate both the acquisition of significant wealth and charity as is currently organized. The wealth and status of some critics of charity may indeed be incompatible with effectively contributing to social change, but the altruistic merits of charity are neither as obvious nor as easily demonstrated as EA believes. (shrink)

This paper shows that altruism may be beneficial in bargaining when there is competition for bargaining partners. In a game with random proposers, the most altruistic player has the highest material payoff if players are sufficiently patient. However, this advantage is eroded as the discount factor increases, and if players are perfectly patient altruism and spite become irrelevant for material payoffs.

Sober and Wilson have propose a cluster of arguments for the conclusion that “natural selection is unlikely to have given us purely egoistic motives” and thus that psychological altruism is true. I maintain that none of these arguments is convincing. However, the most powerful of their arguments raises deep issues about what egoists and altruists are claiming and about the assumptions they make concerning the cognitive architecture underlying human motivation.

If altruism requires self-control, people must consider altruistic acts as costly, the benefits of which will only be recouped in the future. By contrast, I shall present evidence that altruism is dictated by emotions: Altruists secure an immediate payoff from performing altruistic acts, so no element of self-control is present, and no future reward is required or expected.

Effective altruism encourages people to donate their money to the most effective, efficient charities. Some effective altruists believe that taking a longtermist priority—benefitting far-off future, enormous generations—is one of the best ways to use our resources. This paper explains how the longtermist argument as laid out by William MacAskill in his book What We Owe the Future, is unconvincing. MacAskill argues that we should ensure that the future is very well-populated on the assumption that it will be on balance good (...) over bad. This reasoning, however, fails to account for additional moral considerations that most people would endorse. The present critique of pronatalist longtermism advances a critical benefit theory compatible with putting our energy into preventing and alleviating serious harms to actual future generations without intensive pronatalism. (shrink)

How much should someone contribute to trying to prevent unnecessary deaths and severe hardships? MacAskill, Mogensen, and Ord propose tithing for most of the rich (as measured by income), which has been influential in the effective altruism community. My aim in this article is to contribute, through amending their proposal, to their important project of searching for a weak or very weak principle of sacrifice that would still revise upward how much money goes to the most effective organizations. I do (...) so by presenting four objections to their argument based on demandingness, fairness, net wealth, and historical and contemporary injustices. Then, I show that a principle of progressive can overcome these objections and better fits the reasons MacAskill, Mogensen, and Ord give in favour of their principle than their proposed operationalization of tithing. (shrink)

Since we have learned that human organs can be used to treat severe health problems, only donation has been considered for organ procurement. Among the other possibilities that can be used after a person’s death, purchase or systematic removal have been a priori rejected. However, we will show that the appeal to individual altruism have resulted in some of the aporias of the present situation. Subsequently, we will consider how systematic organ removal from deceased persons can be made acceptable in (...) liberal and democratic societies. Finally, we will suggest that individual choices with regard to systematic organ removal could well be registered in a way that allows proper implementation of present French legislation. (shrink)

Effective altruism sounds so innocuous—who could possibly be opposed to doing good more effectively? Yet it has inspired significant backlash in recent years. This paper addresses some common misconceptions and argues that the core “beneficentric” ideas of effective altruism are both excellent and widely neglected. Reasonable people may disagree on details of implementation, but all should share the basic goals or values underlying effective altruism.

Effective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: -/- Premise 1. Extreme poverty is very bad. -/- Premise 2. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do (...) it. -/- Premise 3. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things. -/- Premise 4. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. -/- Conclusion. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. -/- I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. -/- For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. -/- Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I introduce several possible interpretations of it, and press several objections to it by stressing overpermissiveness, luck, and rights. I defend strengthening the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice without making it overdemanding. -/- I claim that Premise 3 can be attractive to both consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Nevertheless, by showing that effectiveness sometimes violates fairness, I propose a method which avoids always helping the greater number and always giving everyone equal chances of being helped, which is compatible with effective altruism. -/- Against Premise 4, I assess the systemic change objection, which states that effective altruism unjustifiably distracts individuals from systemic change. By considering risk and the moral standing of the future extremely poor, I claim that the systemic change objection is partially successful, but cannot undermine effective altruism. -/- After analysing all of these, I argue that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. (shrink)

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.” Using interview data with eight infertility specialists, 20 intended parents, and 70 Indian surrogate mothers, as well as blogs and media stories, we demonstrate how market actors (...) justify their pursuits through narrating moral frames of compassion and altruism that are not incidental but systematic to and constitutive of transnational surrogacy. We observed two predominant moral frames: surrogacy liberates and empowers Indian women from patriarchal control; and surrogacy furthers reproductive rights. Within these frames, the market exchange of money for babies is cast as compassion, which allows commissioning clients to sidestep accusations of racism, classism, and sexism. Yet, we reveal that the ability to navigate around these threats relies on racist, classist, and sexist tropes about Third World working-class women. Further, we find that surrogate mothers did not experience significant changes in economic status after surrogacy. (shrink)

Proponents of the standard evolutionary biology paradigm explain human “altruism” in terms of either nepotism or strict reciprocity. On that basis our underlying nature is reduced to a function of inclusive fitness: human nature has to be totally selfish or nepotistic. Proposed here are three possible paths to giving costly aid to nonrelatives, paths that are controversial because they involve assumed pleiotropic effects or group selection. One path is pleiotropic subsidies that help to extend nepotistic helping behavior from close family (...) to nonrelatives. Another is “warfare”—if and only if warfare recurred in the Paleolithic. The third and most plausible hypothesis is based on the morally based egalitarian syndrome of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, which reduced phenotypic variation at the within-group level, increased it at the between-group level, and drastically curtailed the advantages of free riders. In an analysis consistent with the fundamental tenets of evolutionary biology, these three paths are evaluated as explanations for the evolutionary development of a rather complicated human social nature. (shrink)

This paper presents quantitative data on altruistic cooperation during food acquisition by Ache foragers. Cooperative activities are defined as those that entail a cost of time and energy to the donor but primarily lead to an increase in the foraging success of the recipient. Data show that Ache men and women spend about 10% of all foraging time engaged in altruistic cooperation on average, and that on some days they may spend more than 50% of their foraging time (...) in such activities. The most time-consuming cooperative activity for both sexes is helping during the pursuit of game animals, a pattern that is probably linked to the widespread sharing of game by Ache foragers. Cooperative food acquisition and subsequent food redistribution in hunter-gatherer societies are critical behaviors that probably helped shape universal, evolved, cooperative tendencies that are well illustrated in modern experimental economics. (shrink)

In this paper we examine Fehr’s notions of “altruism”, “strong reciprocity” and “altruistic punishment” and query his ascription of altruism. We suggest that, pace Fehr, altruism cannot be defined behaviourally because the definition of altruism must refer to the motives of actors. We also advert to certain inconsistencies in Fehr’s usage of his terms and we question his explanation of altruism in terms of ‘social preferences’.

Detection of genuine altruists could be a solution to the problem of subtle cheating. Brown et al. (Evol Psychol 1:42–69, 2003) found that humans could detect altruists using nonverbal cues. However, their experiments can be improved upon in several ways, and further investigation is needed to determine whether altruist-detection abilities are human universals. In our experiment, we used video clips of natural conversations as the stimulus. We asked a sample of Japanese undergraduates to rate their own level of altruism and (...) then to estimate the videotaped targets’ altruism using the same scale. The perceivers were able to estimate the targets’ altruism levels accurately. Perceivers’ altruism score did not affect their ability to discriminate between altruists and non-altruists. Perceivers’ impressions of the altruist and non-altruist targets were also found to be different. Coding of nonverbal behavior of the targets revealed that altruists exhibited more “felt smiles” than non-altruists, which also supports the results of the previous study. (shrink)

Effective altruism is a philosophy and a social movement that aims to revolutionise the way we do philanthropy. It encourages individuals to do as much good as possible, typically by contributing money to the best-performing aid and development organisations. Surprisingly, this approach has met with considerable resistance among activists and aid providers who argue that effective altruism is insensitive to justice insofar as it overlooks the value of equality, urgency and rights. They also hold that the movement suffers from methodological (...) bias, reaching mistaken conclusions about how best to act for that reason. Finally, concerns have been raised about the ability of effective altruism to achieve systemic change. This article weighs the force of each objection in turn, and looks at responses to the challenge they pose. (shrink)

The concept of altruism is used in very different forms by computer scientists,economists, philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and biologists. Yet, in order to be useful in social simulations, the concept altruism requires a more precise meaning. A quantitative formulation is proposed here, based on the cost/benefit analysis of the altruist and of society at large. This formulation is applied in the analysis of the social dynamic working of behaviors that have been called altruistic punishments, using the agent based computer (...) model Sociodynamica. The simulations suggest that altruistic punishment on its own cannot maintain altruistic behaviors. Altruistic behavior is sustainable in the long term only if these behaviors trigger synergetic forces in society that eventually make them produce benefits to most individuals. The simulations suggest however that altruistic punishment may work as a social investment , and is thus better called decentralized social punishment. This behavior is very efficient in enforcing social norms. The efficiency of decentralized social punishment in enforcing norms was dependent on the type of labor structured of the virtual society. I conclude that what is called altruistic punishment emerges as a type of social investment that can evolve either through individual and/or group selection, as a successful device for changing or enforcing norms in a society. Social simulations will help us in better understanding the underlying dynamic working of such devices. (shrink)

That self-interest is a source of reasons for action has rarely if ever been controversial in philosophy. That the interest of others is such a source for normal persons has often seemed to philosophers to need argument. I refer to non-instrumental normative reasons, and I assume that when one has a reason of this kind to do something, doing it is prima facie rational. If the only source of basic reasons for action—those having non-instrumental normative force, and in a certain (...) sense non-derivative force—is self-interest, then the only way ethics can have a rational grip on us is through our viewing others as in some sense means to our own ends. This does not make ethics impossible, for it might be true and quite credible that in the long run our self-interest is adequately served only by leading a minimally moral life. I have long argued, however, that self-interest is not the only basic source of reasons for action and, more positively, that the basic grounds of practical rationality are in a special way impersonal. In “Audi on the Rationality of Altruism”, Charlott Becker and her colleagues explore my case for this view. (shrink)