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Question

Does a Humean view of ethics explain why we praise altruism in others?

You will learn how a spectatorial, Humean picture of moral judgment can explain why we praise altruism in others even if we are not moved to be altruistic ourselves.

Updated

The short answer

A broadly Humean, spectatorial view says moral judgment exists mainly to evaluate other people, especially to identify who is worth associating with, rather than to guide your own conduct. On this view, praising altruism in others is itself a form of self-interested behavior: it rewards and attracts good associates, which explains why the trait of praising altruism could evolve even if the trait of being altruistic is much harder to explain. This is discussed in a conversation on Hi-Phi Nation featuring the philosopher Kieran Setiya.

Key points

  • A Humean, spectatorial view treats moral judgment as a tool for evaluating others rather than a guide for one's own action.
  • Praising altruism in someone else can be self-interested, since it helps identify good associates and rewards valuable behavior in others.
  • This separates the act of praising a virtue from the act of practicing it, so admiration does not require possession.
  • In a conversation on Hi-Phi Nation, this distinction leads to the conclusion that evolution may explain hypocrisy better than it explains either pure selfishness or genuine altruism.
  • The harder evolutionary puzzle becomes explaining sincere altruistic motivation, not explaining why we praise it in others.

The longer answer

On this view, moral judgment is not primarily a guide for your own conduct. It is a tool for evaluating other people, in particular for figuring out who is good to associate with. Praising an altruistic person is a way of marking them as a valuable ally, partner, or friend, someone worth trusting with cooperation. That act of praise can be entirely self-interested even when the person doing the praising has no intention of behaving altruistically themselves.

This is a live idea in a conversation on Hi-Phi Nation, where the philosopher Kieran Setiya lays out a broadly Humean, spectatorial account of ethical judgment. The point of moral evaluation, on this account, is not to steer your own choices but to size up others: to sort the people around you into those worth associating with and those worth avoiding. Judging altruism favorably in someone else is a way of rewarding a trait you want to see more of in your social world, whether or not you plan to exhibit it yourself.

The common misreading is to assume that praising a virtue and possessing it must go together, that if we did not want to be selfless we could not sincerely admire selflessness in others. The Humean spectatorial view denies this. Admiration is not confession. You can hold altruism in high esteem as a spectator, using it to identify people worth trusting, while your own motivations remain shaped by self-interest. The praise and the practice come apart because they serve different functions: one is social evaluation, the other is personal action.

Building on this distinction, the host of the episode, Barry Lam, draws out a sharper conclusion. If moral judgment evolved to help us pick good associates, and altruistic motivation is costly and hard to explain by natural selection, then evolution may have shaped us to value and praise altruism in others without shaping us to be altruistic ourselves. On this reading, what evolution reliably produced is not selfishness and not selflessness but hypocrisy: creatures who prize a trait in others that they do not consistently practice. The conversation frames the evolutionary puzzle differently as a result. The mystery is not why we praise altruism, since praising it pays off by attracting good associates and rewarding good behavior in others. The mystery is why anyone is ever genuinely altruistic at all, given that the motivation itself is so much harder for natural selection to explain than the judgment.

What changes if you take this seriously is your own confidence in your admiration. It is worth asking, honestly, whether your praise of a generous or self-sacrificing act is a report on your own values or a spectator's judgment about who is worth keeping close. Both can be true at once, and the Humean picture does not require you to give up admiring altruism. It asks you to notice that admiring it and doing it are separable achievements, and that only one of them costs you anything.

A concrete way to test this: the next time you praise someone for an unusually generous act, ask what the praise is doing. Is it recognition of a trait you yourself practice, or is it, at least in part, a signal about who you want on your side. Neither answer is shameful, but only one of them makes you the kind of person you are praising.

Important distinctions

Praising a virtue versus practicing it

The spectatorial view separates two things that are often assumed to travel together: valuing a trait in others and being motivated to display that trait yourself. You can sincerely rank altruism highly as a way of judging who is worth associating with, without that judgment obligating or even inclining you toward altruistic action. Keeping these apart is the whole point of the view.

Explaining the judgment versus explaining the motivation

The conversation distinguishes two evolutionary puzzles that are easy to run together: why creatures would come to value and reward altruism in others, and why creatures would come to actually be altruistic themselves. The first is explained fairly easily by self-interest in choosing good associates. The second is the harder and more mysterious case.

Objections and replies

This makes moral praise sound cynical

If praise of altruism is really about selecting good associates, it can seem like all moral admiration is secretly self-serving, which cheapens the sincerity of praise and makes moral life sound like a strategy for winning.

Reply

The view does not claim every act of praise is consciously calculated. It claims that the trait of praising altruism could have evolved because it serves a self-interested function, which is a claim about origins, not about the sincerity of any particular person's admiration in the moment.

Calling it hypocrisy assumes people never live up to what they praise

Framing the outcome as evolved hypocrisy suggests that praising altruism while not practicing it is the normal human condition, which may understate the real cases of people who do act altruistically at real cost to themselves.

Reply

The conclusion drawn in the conversation is about what evolutionary pressures most reliably produce across a population, not a claim that no individual is ever genuinely altruistic. The puzzle it raises is why genuine altruism exists at all, given how much harder it is to explain than the praise of it.

Related questions

Podcast discussions

Sources

  1. Hi-Phi Nation, The Selfless Kidney Donor Podcast episode, original episode