Altruistic Ethics Research Articles

Establishing altruistic ethics to use technology for Social Welfare—How Japan manages Web3 and self-sovereign identity in local communities

Technologies of self-sovereign identity (SSI) and Web3 tools that strongly protect individual autonomy, combined with the ethics of Asian altruism, can effectively guide the governance of the emerging cyber civilization. In contrast, governance in Western industrial civilization stresses the pursuit of individual self-interest and struggles to balance the benefits of big tech with the protection of individual dignity and the preservation of the common good. We demonstrate, with reference to a local community in Japan, that SSI is successful in encouraging communal collaboration and well-being while providing individuals with greater control over their personal data. We also show that Web3 tools provide incentives for altruistic behaviors while safeguarding SSI. Integration of SSI and social protection demonstrates the potential for building an information society grounded in altruistic values, honoring individual dignity, and recognizing the government’s role in protecting social welfare. Ultimately, this research unveils how altruistic values can be fostered through SSI and Web3.

Schopenhauer and religion: Translating myth into metaphysics

The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his metaphysical system. His view was that Roman Catholicism, for him the true form of Christianity, shared the pessimism and the focus on suffering of Hinduism and Buddhism, rather than the alleged optimism of Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, excepting the myth of the Fall. For Schopenhauer, this pessimism was evident in the central symbol of Christianity, the figure of the crucified Christ. Schopenhauer put forward his ethic of compassion (and asceticism), aligning him, despite his atheism, with the altruistic ethics of the major world religions. The article also explores the extent to which Schopenhauer’s philosophy as, arguably, a form of panpsychism can be applied to shamanistic and animistic religions. While Schopenhauer translated religious myths into his metaphysical terms – based ultimately on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are) – his understanding of the noumenon as the universal will to life was itself an explanatory myth for an essentially unknowable reality. Therefore, the attempt of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to translate myth into metaphysics in turn contained a myth at its very core. Nonetheless, the article argues that Schopenhauer’s argument may satisfy those dissatisfied with materialism’s shortcomings yet not willing to subscribe to a supernatural order.Contribution: The article applies to shamanism and animism the neglected philosopher Schopenhauer’s method of interpreting religious myths in terms of his metaphysical system, relating this very briefly to current philosophical debates on panpsychism.

The Narratable Self: Adriana Cavarero with Sojourner Truth

This essay engages the work of Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero and her concept of the narratable self. Her relational humanism, rooted in our exposure to others, offers an ontology of uniqueness whose critique of abstraction, masculinism, and identity politics still resonates today where the meaning of a unique “you” is negotiated in embodied exchanges that may offer care or wounds. Cavarero develops an altruistic ethics that cultivates this humanism. I argue that her work should be extended to better capture the political purchase of the narratable self that interacts dynamically and often ambiguously with the “we” of collective politics. Putting her work into conversation with the nineteenth‐century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth, I suggest that Cavarero's work illuminates Truth as a philosopher of the narratable self. Moreover, Truth's work extends Cavarero's concerns with exposure that may do violence or offer care by making explicit the challenges of narration in the context of inequality, especially in terms of race and class. Exposure as an ontological and phenomenological condition then needs to take account of a broader publicity of textual, individual, and collective exposure to others to develop the critical, ethical, and political purchase it offers.

Tibetan Buddhism and the formation of ecological consciousness: a view from Buryatia

Technicization of human and society, active development of technogenic civilization leads to gradual separation from moral values and principles. These values include ideas of unity and harmony of human with nature, with the surrounding environment, and reasonable, moderate attitude towards natural resources. We believe that humanity should move from the industrial to ecological civilization. The foundations of a new ecophilosophy should become holistic principles, representations of philosophy in general and Buddhism in particular. We outlined basic principles and methods for improving personality of altruistic ethics of Mahayana Buddhism that contribute to human understanding of inseparability, interconnection with the world. We focus on the central Buddhist concept – the absence of an individual ‘I’ that is understood as necessity of recognizing oneself as a separate empirical individual. That is confirmed by a translation of the text PrajnaParamitaHridaya Sutra from Tibetan language. The paper analyzes three types of spiritual personality that correspond to three stages of the Path to awakening. Each stage is a step towards the formation of subjectless consciousness, that is, awareness of universal dependence and responsibility for their actions. The paper argues that for ecological consciousness it is important to form an understanding that the main reason for human existence in not the technosphere, not the economy, but the living nature.

Conventional ethics and the United Nations debt relief project

It is often assumed that conventional ethics will contribute positively to economics and business, but here, this judgment will be examined. The conventional ethics of our time is dominated by altruistic philosophy, which has deep roots in religion. Such an idealistic ‘altruistic ethics’ especially emphasizes helping the least advantaged. This principle is contrasted with a more profane ‘reciprocal ethics.’ This term is used for the principle of mutual advantage central to a number of significant philosophers. This latter principle is compatible with the practical norms constituting the morals of the market, while the former implies major adjustment of behavior and policies. Many ethicists consider their field to be ‘applied ethics,’ bringing the concrete rules and practices of the economic sector closer to honored first principles of philosophy. Is it reasonable to expect an influence by the ideas of altruistic ethics to improve the morals and policies of the economy? The process of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative of the United Nations illustrates a probably crucial connection with altruistic ethics. Is this project, supported by religiously inspired groups, a sound way to treat a serious global problem? The disadvantages of this project are discussed and alternatives with better potential are presented. The article suggests that altruistic ethics is a dubious foundation for constructive morality and that its dominance in contemporary philosophy constitutes a major obstacle to a more open-minded analysis and sound policies.

The Aim of Levinas' Altruistic Ethics and Its Implication of Elementary Moral Education

The Aim of Levinas' Altruistic Ethics and Its Implication of Elementary Moral Education

The Moral Value of Animals

As it comes to animal ethics, broad versions of contractualism are often used as a reason for excluding animals from the category of those with moral value in the individualistic sense. Ideas of “reciprocity” and “moral agency” are invoked to show that only those capable of understanding and respecting the value of others may have value themselves. Because of this, possible duties toward animals are often made dependent upon altruism: to pay regard to animals is to act in an other-regarding manner instead of mutual benefit. There are three main versions of altruism in animal ethics. The first one of these is the most traditional, and emphasises benevolence as a source of moral regard. The second concentrates on the notion of value, and claims that animals have value in the individualistic sense despite being incapable of moral agency. The third resists overt theory-dependency, often included in the second version, and concentrates more on the elements of “context” and “identification”. Out of these, a combination of the last two is identified as the most fruitful basis for altruistic animal ethics.

Robin Hood Revisited

Poverty is perpetuated by systemic inequalities of wealth and power in mutually reinforcing relationships with predominant belief systems, such as ethical beliefs about the proper use and distribution of wealth. In unequal societies, moral inhibitions against “theft” take precedence over imperatives for “charity.” Given the opportunity to transfer wealth through theft and charity, there were few Robin Hoods among the subjects in the two studies reported here: They showed an overwhelming tendency not to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Even when the rich would not miss their money and the poor faced death from starvation, property-protecting ethics were applied over altruistic ethics. Various social psychological explanations for these findings are discussed, some of which are experimentally tested.

On Human Altruism: The Discrepancy between Normative and Factual Conclusions

Altruism is a successful meme in many human cultures, i.e. self-sacrifice in various forms is held in high regard. In philosophy, being is often seen as equivalent to being altruistic; selfishness is often pitted against altruism, usually without being specified. In spite of the fact that social behaviour can be divided into more categories than these two, the duality between selfishness and is often retained in normative statements also by evolutionary biologists. Many biologists since Darwin (1871) have discussed ethics in an evolutionary framework, and there are several lines of reasoning. First, in some of the literature the main purpose has been to try to explain the occurrence of various phenomena, from actions to sensibilities to rules and systems (e.g. Darwin 1871, Fisher 1958, Trivers 1971, Wilson 1975, Dawkins 1976, Alexander 1987). There are also authors who, like Huxley (1894), regards ethics, the moral process, as separate and antagonistic to evolution, the cosmic process The purpose of the present article is to investigate the evaluation of made by some influential thinkers in evolutionary biology, and to compare this evaluation with their factual conclusions. Our aim is not to criticize these authors, which we admire for their contribution to the understanding of evolutionary processes, but to scrutinize some normative statements in order to shed light on the influence of conventional altruistic ethics. Our main point in the article is that works contrary to reciprocity/cooperation, and that by promoting altruism, the opportunity for reciprocity to work is impaired. This reasoning is based on the following premises: 1) humans have a built-in capacity to act in a manner, but also a built-in capacity to cheat and to manipulate others (e.g. Trivers 1971, 1985), 2) direct and indirect learning will affect the degree to which individuals cooperate or cheat, and normative values and rules for behaviour are part of that learning. If normative values and rules have no effect on behaviour, normative ethics is truly empty: statements without influence. During the last decades theoretical and empirical work in evolutionary biology has produced a coherent explanation of social behaviour (Hamilton 1964, Williams 1966, Trivers 1971, 1985, Wilson 1975), the main conclusion being that the evolution of apparent is due to the effect, on either or potential reciprocators, of selfish genes (Dawkins 1976). Thus, in the following we define as an act that is costly for an actor, that does not benefit kin, and where there is no reasonable expectation of reciprocation. Thus, we exclude reciprocal altruism and kin altruism from Several writers have noted the confusion around the term altruism, caused by a use of the term in both a broad and a specific sense, as well as the need to make a clear distinction. For instance, Ruse (1989) uses with and without quotation marks to denote in a broad and strict sense, respectively. Less confusing is the use of terms like ascetic altruism (Lopreato 1981) and promiscuous altruism (Hardin 1993) suggested for in the specific sense. As mentioned we have preferred to just call it (cf. Bronstein 1994) and let other subgroups like kin altruism and reciprocal altruism do without the term Reciprocal is a self-contradiction. That way we avoid the problem pointed out by Trivers (1971, p. 35): Models that attempt to explain altruistic behavior in terms of natural selection are models designed to take out of altruism. Some workers have questioned the existence of strict Wilson (1979), for instance, questions the of Mother Theresa this because of her belief in salvation through Christianity and good deeds (pp. 172-173). If human behaviour is viewed from the per-