File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 648


Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 11:39:53  +0100
From: "John McWilliams" <jhm29-AT-cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: PLC: Arguing for Altruism


--On Wed, Nov 12, 1997 10:52 am "Ludvig Hertzberg" <ludvig-AT-mail.film.su.se>
wrote: 

> I, like many, also used to think along the lines of 'every act is
> motivated by egoistic concerns', when I first began to think critically
> and cynically about things. Nowadays, I have a hard time taking that
> statement seriously. Whenever I meet somebody confessing to that view, I
> ask them if 
> 
> 1) they can even conceive of an act as altruistic according to their
> definition. If they maintain that they cannot, that every act by
> definition, as it were, is egoistic, I ask them what use they think we
> have for the concept of altruism. I remind them that we do speak of
> coldness and warmth, even though one could argue that the temperature is
> always warm by some standards - there's always atomic activity, which by
> a certain definition is what we understand by warmth (although when it's
> minus 100 degrees, the warmth there is is rather minor, to put it that
> way.) 
> 
> And 2), I ask them if they if they do not perceive egoism and altruism
> in some way value-laden concepts. Surely, it loses its force (its sense
> even) to accuse somebody of being egoistic if all acts are so by
> definition. Ask them to think of instances when we in fact describe acts
> in those terms, and I'm sure they'll see that we don't mean by altruism
> that we think such an act is totally devoid of self-interest, but rather
> something quite other - along the lines that there is something
> admirable about the action, given the conditions under which it was
> 'acted', the motives being how we perceive them.
> 
> Hope this can be of some help for your thoughts.
> 
> Ludvig Hertzberg
> 		- Dept of Cinema Studies, U of Stockholm, Sweden

This is the sort of wonderfully clear philosophical argument that I love...
(and it's put me right on this matter) more please Ludvig!

John

            John McWilliams
            Cambridge




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