X-Message-Number: 17064
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:09:10 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: The Origins of Altruism

A couple of days ago Peter McCluskey wrote

>I don't think Ridley said anything that was clearly relevant to
>our attitudes towards animals who don't cooperate with us.

Matt Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue" says (p. 137):

"At [the core of Frank's insight] lies the idea that acts of genuine
goodness are the price we pay for having moral sentiments - those
sentiments being valuable because of the opportunities that they
open in other circumstances.  So when somebody... tips a waiter
in a restaurant she will never revisit, gives an anonymous
donation to charity... she is not, in the long run, being
selfish or rational.  She is simply prey to sentiments that
are designed for another purpose: to elicit trust by demonstrating
a capacity for altruism."

(I will admit that the author, Matt Ridley sometimes goes back
on this later in the book, in the sense that he sometimes makes
it sound kind of "calculated", say, for example, to give blood.)

Here, Peter, is how this applies to animals that do or do not
cooperate with us (e.g., how we may feel sympathy for a rhinoceros
with a hurt foot):  The "genuine goodness" referred to above is
a sort of "price" that we pay for actually having true moral
sentiments.  Thus your instinctive feelings for some kitten that
you encounter that has a broken leg arise directly from these 
things that have been built into you "because of the opportunities
that they open in other circumstances", just like Ridley said.

The rest of you:  Scott, Robert, Kennita, etc., are you any
closer to seeing what I am talking about, and why this book
"Origins of Virtue" is at the top of so many peoples list

of suggested readings, and why it completely changed how I
myself looked at all this a few years back?

>>Sarah Hrdy's book "Mother Nature" [contained something like]
>>
>> women have been partially successful in detecting genuine
>> kindness, and have "rewarded" actually kind men with
>> favors.  Thus this behavioral characteristic has found its
>> way into our genes."
>
>I don't think Hrdy said anything like that; I think the argument to
>which you are refering comes from The Mating Mind.

Yes, you are right.  The basic idea is from Geoffrey F. Miller's
"The Mating Mind".  He writes, (page 292)

"We have the capacity for moral behavior and moral judgments
today because our ancestors favored sexual partners who were
kind, generous, helpful, and fair.  We still have the same
preferences.  Badiv Buss's study of global sexual preferences
found that "kindness" was the single most important feature
desired in a sequal partner by both men and women in every one
of the 37 cultrues he studied.  It ranked above intelligence,
above beauty, and above status."

Okay :-)  so I'll take credit then for suggesting that an
arms race developed between women seeking ***genuine*** kindness
in men (so that their children would later benefit), and men
seeking to *appear* altruistic, and that women to this day
are still partly successful in having bred into men (and thus
into all of the men's descendents, women and men alike) actual
kindness.

By the way, for everyone else reading this.  Understand that 90%
of these books *still* discuss the way that the selfish gene
works, and how you *must* account for altruism or anything
else in terms of greater genetic fitness.  A (IMO stupidly
defined) "pure altruism" that somehow had no impact on fitness,
is, of course, impossible.  Flatly impossible.

>Now that I understand what you are refering to, it seems likely
>that we have been disagreeing mainly on terminology.  I agree
>that when talking about the proximate causes of human behavior,
>it is appropriate to classify many acts as altruistic, and that
>seems to be much of what you are trying to emphasize.  [Yes.]
>I [on the other hand] have been describing the origins of ethical
>systems, and I continue to maintain that, when explaining what
>caused our most basic beliefs, selfish causes are the only
>coherent type of answer.

Beliefs about what is ethical?  I'm not one hundred percent sure
that I'm following you.  Suppose that we believe that it is not
ethical to cheat someone (even if they don't know that it happened
to them and no one knows that we did it).  I agree that a big
component of the anti-cheating meme in our ethical system still
arose from self-interest.  But, in general, doesn't a small
component also arise from a genuine and direct feeling of
compassion or sympathy for the swindled?

Lee

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