Alice Bachini enters the fray on the issue of altruism.
I don’t think that we need to define doing good things for other people for no clear personal gain as altruism. It just seems the rational way to go about things sometimes. Good things cause general improvement in all sorts of ways we can’t necessarily demonstrate or define, and knowing this is enough reason for doing them. If we don’t want to do them, then there must be a reason for that. But if we do want to, then presumably our egotistical desire is based on some sensible understanding of how things are. Preferences aren’t arbitrary things, they are based on reasoning to begin with (some of it inherited, or inexplicit, or too deep or fast for us to be consciously aware of it at the time).
On the other hand, irrational desires like the urge to murder someone or to chop off your own hands, are damaging precisely because they are irrational. So the fact that people’s preferences aren’t always necessarily good does not mean that they should not operate on the basis of egotism; it just means they should get more rational before doing things.
Basically, good things make sense and are morally beneficial, including me having a delicious burger for my lunch. Whereas bad things are irrational and morally detrimental. So I can’t see any need for altrusim at all. However, it can be very bad, if it means acting in a way that is contrary to one’s egotistical preferences, because a better thing exists. This is to reason out why we don’t feel like doing what we think we ought to do. Then we can change our preferences and do good things autonomously. Individual freedom is a good thing to seek out.
Alice Bachini
