Document Type

Article

Abstract

We argue that there are two different kinds of altruistic motivation: classical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms at least partly for those organisms’ sake, and nonclassical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms for the sake of the organism providing the help. We then argue that classical psychological altruism is adaptive if the desire to help others is intergenerationally reliable and, thus, need not be learned. Nonclassical psychological altruism is adaptive when the desire to help others is adaptively learnable. This theory opens new avenues for the interdisciplinary study of psychological altruism.

Publication Date

12-1-2018

Publication Title

Philosophy of Science

Volume

85

Issue

5

First Page

1054

Last Page

1064

Comments

© 2018 by Piccinini

DOI

10.1086/699743

Download

Share

COinS