Can altruism be unified?

Highlights

• Biological, psychological, and helping altruism are distinguished.

• There is no essence to altruism, but the relations among forms of altruism can be studied empirically.

• Three forms of altruism are placed within a common altruism space.

Abstract

There is clearly a plurality of forms of altruism. Classically, biological altruism is distinguished from psychological altruism. Recent discussions of altruism have attempted to distinguish even more forms of altruism. I will focus on three altruism concepts, biological altruism, psychological altruism, and helping altruism. The questions I am concerned with here are, first, how should we understand these concepts? and second, what relationship do these concepts bear to one another? In particular, is there an essence to altruism that unifies these concepts? I suggest that while there is no essence to altruism, this does not mean that the array of altruism concepts is completely disunified. Instead, I propose we place all the concepts into a common framework—an altruism space—that could lead to new questions about how this space can be filled.

Introduction

‘Altruism’ clearly has diverse meanings. In discussions of altruism, many are careful to distinguish between biological (or evolutionary) altruism and psychological altruism. Biological altruism is often understood to center on fitness exchanges, whereas psychological altruism is based on intentions—an act is psychologically altruistic not because of the outcomes, but because of particular intentions of the actor. This distinction has become all but standard in the study of altruism (Sober & Wilson, 1998).

The psychological–biological distinction, however, does not appear to exhaust the range of varieties of altruism. The reason for this is that there are forms of altruism that are not clearly either biological or psychological in nature. Some instances of helping, for example, count as altruism independently of both the psychological mechanisms driving the behavior and their fitness consequences. Such ‘helping altruism’, as I will call it, is a genuinely distinct form of altruism.

In this essay, my goal is to clarify the taxonomy of altruism concepts and to consider whether this diversity merely constitutes distinct concepts loosely related and collected under the rubric of altruism, or whether there is a deeper unity. I propose that while there is no essence to altruism, one can take what I suggest are the three central altruism concepts, render them as single scalar values, and construct a three-dimensional altruism space.¹ This space will open up new empirical questions about how the space can be filled and why particular regions are, or are expected to be, empty.