I'm frequently struck that philosophers studying 'moral psychology' never cite (and it seems to me never even read) moral psychology. Maybe they cite Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Greene - that is moral psychology - but never psychology that bears on morality. I'm probably wrong about this because I haven't read that widely, but this impression has so far been confirmed by everything that I have read, including the otherwise excellent Aspiration by Agnes Callard. In this blog post I want to talk about a particular branch of psychology - the conception of motivation put forward by self-determination theory - and its relevance to moral philosophy, notably to notions of 'self interest' vs 'altruism'.
My understanding of altruism in moral philosophy is that it is defined as a 'selfless' act. I suppose the closest I can think of is jumping on a grenade to protect your squad mates. In sociobiology it is defined instead as an other-regarding act, which to me makes way more sense. Perhaps my understanding of the definition in philosophy is wrong, but having done a degree in ethics, it took me a long time to wrap my head around the way sociobiologists used the term, so I think either my understanding is correct (or my philosophy degree was crap but given it was at ANU this seems unlikely).
The notion of a 'selfless' act is nonsensical. Any act performed by an individual must emanate from their 'self' in some way unless they are mechanically or mentally controlled. You could put them in a remote-controlled exo-suit for example, and move their body around, or you could mind-control them like Kilgrave from Jessica Jones and make them do what you want. In both cases it is you who are acting, not them. In order for me to do something (which seems inherent to moral responsibility) I need to be acting, but then my acts must come from my self; there can be no selflessness. I suspect that this notion of selflessness emanates from the outmoded distinction between instinctive selfishness and rational altruism. Until very recently, there was a conceit against instinct and intuition in philosophy and towards rationality. Conscious, reasoned actions were considered superior eo ipso, and goodness was considered the triumph of reason over base instinct. A range of empirical results in neuroscience and moral psychology bury this attitude, in my opinion. I will list only 2. People with brain injuries that prevent them from using their intuition make terrible decisions, rationally, socially, and morally speaking; and studies of moral dumbfounding suggest that reason merely rationalises instinct. The 'self' is a unity of instinct and reason - it is not just the conscious, autobiographical self - and any account of altruism must engage with this. Someone who jumps on a grenade does so in a self-interested but other-regarding way. If there was no interest, there would be no motivation and thus, no action.
What we need then is a sophisticated account of moral motivation. Self-determination theory (SDT) from psychological science is very helpful here, and not just because it has a lot of empirical evidence to back up most of its claims. SDT proposes a spectrum of motivation running from extrinsic at one end to intrinsic at the other. Intrinsically motivated activities are undertaken ‘for their own sake’. They are commonly though not always innate – some of are simply predisposed towards music, for example. Activities so motivated are ‘self-determined’. At the other end of the spectrum, activities undertaken due to duress are ‘controlled’ and rely on extrinsic motivation. Such activities are performed not for reasons inherent to the activity but to avoid the duress. Similarly, ‘introjected’ motivation involves ‘self-regulation’, which uses willpower to prosecute some activity in order to acquire contingent rewards. A common example is performing boring tasks in order to secure parental approval. Moving a step closer to intrinsic motivation is ‘identification’, this is where the individual comes to value a behaviour but does not (yet) possess intrinsic motivation for it. For example, many budding social scientists discover that they need to be quite competent at statistics in order to engage in scientific enterprise. They consequently identify with statistical competence, but motivation to study statistics may be hard to come by initially as what they are interested in is social phenomena, not mathematics. As their competence grows, maths becomes easier and, crucially, they are able to apply their new statistical skills to social science endeavours, their motivation will become ‘integrated’. There is where behaviours activities are motivationally associated with or linked to other intrinsically motivated behaviours. In this case, statistics becomes linked to social science. This integration makes motivation easier.
The most important form of motivation for making sense of morality is identification and the associated notion of 'self-regulation'. Consider someone who wants to be a high flying lawyer but also thinks they need to be a present parent. Due to the time demands of the former, these two goals are substantially incompatible (of course there are exceptions, like Amy Coney Barrett). Assume further that this person's legal career is intrinsically motivated. Now they employ self-regulation to override their intrinsic motivation to go to the office in order to spend time with their kids.
There is a tendency among ethicists to think this isn't good enough - people should be intrinsically motivated to be moral. I think that's too strong - identification reflects a determined effort to be more moral. That is morally commendable. It is also possible for identified behaviours to become integrated over time. For example, you might identify with donating to charity and consequently associate with other people who also like to give to charity. It turns out that you like these people and you become friends and do charitable stuff together. Now your charity is associated with socialising with people you like, which is intrinsically motivated for you. So now your identified motivation for charity has become integrated through its connection to intrinsically motivated activities. This is how the 'giving weeks' of the effective altruism movement work, and how most religions and churches promote reciprocal altruism. There is also some debate among SDT theorists regarding whether identified behaviours can become fully intrinsic over time. In the seminal work of Ryan and Deci (2000), the answer is no. I am inclined to disagree, in part because of my own transition from identifying with lying less to being, today, intrinsically motivated to radical honesty. In any case, research remains ongoing.
People can, of course, be intrinsically motivated to altruistic behaviour. Such people are represented in evolutionary game theory by the notion of 'super-cooperators'. These people always cooperate first in games where cooperate and defect are both options. They also tend to 'take hits' where someone in the group needs to pay a cost in order for the group to prosper (e.g. jumping on a grenade). Finally, they tend to be altruistic punishers - they are willing to take pain to punish people who do not cooperate, thereby bringing about more cooperation in the long run at personal cost. Super-cooperators are not a mathematical fiction - they are a small but influential minority in empirical studies. Indeed, humanity would not flourish as it does were it not for their existence.
That said, I don't think we should say that only supercooperators are moral. The injunction to 'do the right thing' implies, to me at least, self-regulation rather than self-determination. People who are intrinsically motivated towards altruism should be culturally celebrated, but so should people who apply willpower to do the right thing and thereby bring about cooperative social equilibria. Some people who are altruistically punished for defecting in public goods games double down on their selfishness and start to revenge punish supercooperators. This is common in places where the family is the dominant unit of cooperation (e.g. Sicily) and is devastating for bringing about large scale cooperation. So someone who doesn't go for revenge and instead swaps to cooperation should be at least applauded if not commended.
For anyone interested in a longer treatment of these ideas, Besser-Jones' Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well is quite excellent. Alexios Arvanitis also does good work in this space, notably "Autonomy and Morality: A Self Determination Theory Discussion of Ethics" in New Ideas in Psychology.
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