During Kant’s days, altruism was distinguished from duty and loyalty. It still is today. It comes to no surprise that for evolutionary theorists, altruism is at least biologically impossible, and anyway, even if an organism shows signs of altruism that is well masked selfishness. The evolutionary scientists say that if altruistic organisms emerge, they would lose the competition for survival and they would become extinct. From this point view, this trait is a chimera as there are only two ways that an organism engages in altruistic behavior: help one's own offspring, and/or other close kin. So much for altruism.
Let alone the acute sensation that we are becoming the victims of a fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, the problem is either vaster or in fact, way simpler than we thought it was (once again, Occam’s razor could be applicable - entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity). Now, the problem could become more facile, as soon as we agree on how: 1) we define altruism and 2) if consciousness is required when comes to it. In fact, there might be no problem whatsoever, just various options that, in the end, do not even contradict each other, just complete. However, the rigidness of the biological-evolutionary based view just falls short under the fallacy of the general rule, where all chairs have four legs, failing to bring into discussion the rocking chairs, for instance (I know for a fact that my grandfather had three legged chairs).
For biologists, an organism behaves altruistically if the behavior reduces its own fitness while increasing the fitness of one or more other organisms. From this perspective we can count a few organisms, like yeast, a monocellular organism, which exhibits altruistic behavior. Margaret Jack (2007, Harvard Science Review) showed the origin of a gene for altruism in the budding yeast where each cell secretes the enzyme that is then shared by the whole population.
However, cellular altruism is not always accurate, let alone true. A study made by Sohei Kondo (1998, International Journal of Radiation Biology) claims that cell suicide, programmed death and apoptosis are terms used for the same type of active cell death. Apoptosis is the process of programmed cell death that may occur in multicellular organism and which confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For instance, apoptosis is responsible for killing infected cells, cancerous cells and cells that are in the wrong place during development. C. Gourley (2006, Molecular Microbiology) claimed that apoptosis has been observed as a kind of altruistic suicide in colonies of yeast under stress. In animals, radiation hormesis (the stimulating effect of small doses of substances which in larger doses are inhibitory) results from altruistic cell death and this hypothesis can explain the hormetic effect of low doses of radiation on the immune system in mice. In contrast, in plants, radiation hormesis seems to be mainly due to non-altruistic cell death.
From this perspective, an organism can be altruistic without possessing consciousness. But that is rather simplistic, isn’t it? However, the generalization from yeast to human psyche is a bit cherry pickinglish, as it rather points at individual cases that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a momentous slice of related cases that may contradict that position.
Now, altruism apparently leads to helping behavior and it is biologically possible for organisms to have the ultimate desires to help their kin, and to help non-kin with whom they engage in reciprocal altruism. Yet, in the case of yeast, the concept of “desire”- the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state- or even “close kin benefit” is out of the question. So, at which point can we transpose the issue of altruism from “biology” to “psychology”? J.P. Rushton (2007) demonstrated that altruism is a heritable trait in a study that showed that identical twins had a higher correlation of altruism than fraternal twins. Additionally, if aggressiveness, depression and jealousy can be accepted as genetically necessary because it helped humans survive, so can altruism, which ultimately is not simply a socialized behavior based on an individual’s guilt or a masked form of selfishness close kin, but a genetic trait.
C. Sripada (apud John Doris, 2002) has emphasized that the ultimate desire for the welfare of others could spring from another direction than kin selection or reciprocal altruism (you scratch my back, I scratch yours, in a 50% ratio). Similarly, Daniel Batson rather defines altruism as the creation of an emotional response (empathy) to the distress of another person. Some even push the theory further claiming that we help others but not to avoid another person’s distress (imagine when you interfere if you see a woman getting raped) but to avoid your own distress for being a silent witness to such mishap. So ultimately, when a Good Samaritan does interfere to prevent a crime, he does so as a coping mechanism of further personal distress (more so to get the Helper’s High).
In folk mentality, altruism is synonymous to: sympathy, compassion, tenderness, empathy and manages to escape the narrowness of the biological definition, where altruism is just an instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or spread of that individual's genes.
Rather, we would replace it with how it was originally coined by Auguste Comte as amity, compassion, generosity, goodwill, humanity, kindheartedness, kindness, sympathy, beneficence, benevolence, charity, magnanimity, philanthropy, selflessness, self-sacrifice, and unselfishness. Etymologically speaking the word comes from the old French “autrui” meaning “other people” and is an unselfish regard for the welfare of others; and if evolutionists want to prove altruism is another form of selfishness, they might just have to coin a term of their own.
Now, the question that rises is this: do those Amnesty International and Greenpeace volunteers exhibit altruistic behavior to avoid personal distress, to preserve their genes, or they coldly calculate the zero-sum relations before allowing themselves to be killed (see the case of Rainbow Warrior or those who sign letters for Freedom of Speech on behalf other people, who live in countries where this right is banned)? I am aware that is a twisted egoistic possibility, which is rather based on self protection of one’s sensibility rather than the protection of an outsider not at all close to kin.
Now, another aspect of the altruism would be the morality of the deed itself. If I prevent a crime from being done, and I altruistically interfere (not thinking to offspring or next to kin or reciprocity), I might do so out of a self-punishment motivation or a self-reward? So my snap decision is a selfish not wanting to live with the guilt one, which leads to what an outsider might perceive an altruistic action. So what does ultimately give value to altruism: self-perception or the collective perception? In one of the philosophy tales, when speaking of Kant’s morality, it is said that a shopkeeper had the opportunity to give the wrong change to a customer (to cheat on him). Yet, he gives the right change instead. Now, the motivation for which he gave back the right change was the fear that gossip about his manners as a businessman would be spread in the market and he might lose his business. Fearing bankruptcy, he instead acts moral. Now, the value of his act is not moral, as his motivation was not moral. Rather, the shopkeeper gave the right change out of anxiety and self-punishment more than moral inclination.
Morally speaking, a person that commits an altruist fact based on the decision that on a long term they might suffer from remorse, anxiety and regret gives no genuine altruistic value to the deed. In the end, altruism should not only be a talk about gene replicating easiness, close to kin reciprocity, empathy, helper’s high or remorse, even if the organism that shows traits of altruism is metazoan or not. Altruism cannot be brought into discussion, unless we speak of an ulterior motive which has to be intrinsically conscious, so we can make it morally worthy. Self-awareness is a condition to be entitled to your own merkwelt and the thalamo-cortical physiological support for awareness is not sufficient to call ourselves "aware". If merkwelt involves thoughts, perceptions, emotions and ultimately motivation, it is rather obvious that altruism depends on our particular consciousness, more than our desire to simply perpetuate in a zero-sum exchange system.
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