Egoism and Altruism

 

On Thu, May 11, 2017, 2:12 PM Grant Sterling [ ... ] [stoics] <stoics@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

"Steve and Dave bring up too many issues for me to even start to tackle in the time I have. So I'll settle for:

"Egoism and Altruism:

"The ordinary view (or both people today and people
in ancient times, so far as I can determine it) is as follows:

There are certain things that are good for me to
obtain. There are certain things that are good for other
people to obtain. Sometimes we can cooperate in ways that
will help both of us get what we want, but sometimes we can't.
In such situations, there are two basic moral principles:
1) There are basic moral rules that one must follow
in pursuing one's interest. Don't steal, rape, cheat, etc.
2) One is free to pursue good things for oneself
as long as one is not thereby depriving other people of
significantly _greater_ good things. If you and I are
competing for the championship of the local bridge league,
we are each free to exert all our efforts towards winning
(even though we would thereby deprive the other person of
the spoils of victory). But I must not pursue a bridge
championship if it would mean that you will die.

The "selfish" person insists on getting things for
himself, even:
a) when it will cost other people far more than
the value of what he obtains, and
b) when he must violate the rules to get them.
For example, the really selfish person will
demand immediate repayment for a loan from someone whose
child has just been hospitalized. The truly selfish
person will steal from his neighbor or cheat on his
taxes.

The normal person will pursue his own interests
as long as doing so will not cause substantially greater
loss to others or violate the rules. The normal person
will charge you rent for living in his property, but
won't evict you for non-payment in the middle of a
blizzard. He'll drive a hard bargain in negotiating a
contract, but won't violate the terms of the contract once
it's been made.

The altruistic person will actually sacrifice
his own interests to benefit other people even when the
benefit to others will not be as great as his own sacrifice.
He'll break his back working a second job so that you can
have the latest video game as soon as it comes out rather
than waiting until the price comes down.

On the ordinary point of view, being altruistic
is "nice" but is not morally required. In other words,
morality is divided between:

a) Acts that are _wrong_ (the acts of the selfish
person--seeking benefits for oneself even when it hurts
other people substantially, or breaking the rules of proper
behavior),
b) Acts that are morally permissible, which
satisfy one's duty, and
c) Acts that go above and beyond one's duty--morally
optional but admirable actions.

Basically, a morally good person never (well, hardly
ever) does anything in category 'a', and sometimes does
things in category 'c'. Only saints always or almost always
perform 'c' acts, and it isn't necessary to be a saint in
order to be a good person.

All of this collapses on the Stoic view, because
on the Stoic view it is impossible for there to be a conflict
between what's good for me and what's good for you. The
very basis for the distinction between selfish and altruistic
behavior is undermined. In ordinary morality, stealing your
car would be "selfish"--I would have your car (a good thing
for me), but you would lose your car (a bad thing for you).
This would be wrong, because it violates a moral rule.
But on the Stoic view, only Virtue is good. Since
stealing violates a moral rule (a fundamental "role-duty"
of all humans or citizens is to recognize the property of their
fellow humans or citizens), it is an act of vice, and is
therefore _bad_ for me.

"So like the "selfish" person, the Stoic _always_
seeks his own self-interest, his own good. And like the
"altruistic" person, the Stoic will often sacrifice money,
possessions, or even sometimes life itself to do the right
thing. But unlike both of them, the Stoic isn't making a
hard choice between competing values--the only value is
in doing the right thing."

"People have sometimes criticized Stoicism as a
selfish philosophy, on the grounds that the Stoic seeks
his own self-interest. Others have responded that Stoicism
is altruistic, because the demands of virtue sometimes
require self-sacrifice. Both the criticism and the response
misunderstand Stoic thought."

Regards,
Grant

"PS: Note that this also collapses the idea of "beyond
the call of duty". Because that idea requires there
to be good things to do that require so much sacrifice that
the good person isn't really required to do them. But
there are no such things, on Stoic thought."

Moral Truths are Eternal and Necessary

 

Grant Sterling responded to members of the International Stoic Forum on the question of 'moral facts.'

On 7/25/16 8:45 AM, Steve Marquis [ ... ] [stoics] wrote:

>
>
> Mark-
>
> Believe me I understand the questions you are raising. Any logical
> construct no matter how sophisticated cannot justify the truth value of
> the starting premises internally. Let's give Grant a chance to catch up
> and give his usual well thought out response.
>
> Live well,
> Steve

All:

I have been busy for some time, and I am leaving
town for vacation (weather permitting) tomorrow, but
here's a short (for me!) answer. At times I'll just
point off in the direction of a side issue--some of those
side issues are critically important and generate thousands
of pages of concepts on their own, but I don't have time to
tackle everything....

First, we must make the distinction between the
foundation of certain principles and the source of our
knowledge of those principles. I may learn the principles
of quantum physics from a textbook, but the textbook author
doesn't _make them true_ by publishing them. By the same
token, there's an enormous difference between the theory
that God creates moral facts and the theory that God teaches
us moral facts. (Of course, you may think God does both.)
Those are two totally different things. {I, personally, think
that God is responsible for having planted within us the
fundamental principles of morality, but I don't think God
creates moral facts. But "how do we learn about moral facts"
is one of the issues I will not tackle here...except to point
out that the Stoics clearly think there is no problem here--
that is, they take it for granted that all humans who are
capable of rational thought are capable of knowing all the
moral facts they need to know.}

So I will confine myself, for now, to the
issue of the origin of the moral facts themselves.
(I will also make no effort to address those who
hold that there are no such things as moral facts
at all, or that "moral" facts are really just non-moral
facts of some sort by a different name. I don't think
either view is compatible with any form of Stoicism at
all, although advocates of the latter have at least made
an effort to try it.)

Rather than attack the issue directly, I want
to mention one more crucial side-issue first. The
natural tendency of people who like to engage in _thinking_
is to continue drilling any problem down to infinity.

Why should I go to the store?
-Because you promised to go.
But why should I keep my promises?
-Because if you don't, then people will be upset with you.
Why should I try not to upset people?
-Because...
Why should I....

Etc, ad infinitum. As I suggested, some people
don't like to think, and don't like to question anything,
and so "Go to the store and get X" is sufficient for them.
But thinking people, seeing how often people issue totally
unjustified commands, demand an explanation for the command,
and an explanation for the explanation, etc.
But at some point this becomes irrational. At
some point you must arrive at a source of justification
for commands that is self-fulfilling. If no source of
action is self-justifying, then the infinite regress is
insoluble for theists, atheists, Stoics, non-Stoics, etc.
So the real question is "what sort of thing justifies
a binding requirement for action?"

The simplest solution is to say "God's
will". But the apparent simplicity of this response
turns out to be illusory. Because any version of this
theory immediately confronts the "Euthyphro problem".
(Feel free to look this up if you want more detail.)
Actually, it's really the "Euthyphro problem_s_"--
I should write a paper some day on all the problems
connected with this issue. But today I'll only mention
two (closely related) points:

1) Does God have good reason for making moral
facts the way He does, rather than some other way?
If you say "no", then it is unclear how those
moral facts can be binding on anyone. If there is no
good reason to forbid rape rather than to command it,
then why should the fact that God has arbitrarily chosen
to forbid it make that authoritative for anyone else?
Of course, maybe this god will punish anyone who defies
his arbitrary choices, but that's not a foundation of
_morality_--"do this because otherwise I'll hit you with
a hammer" may convince me to do it, but will never convince
me that doing it is inherently good.
But if you say "yes", then it seems that the
rules of morality are already rationally required before
God wills them at all, and so we need to ask "what makes
them rationally binding?", and that was the question that
"God's will" was supposed to be answering....

2) Unless we antecedently recognize God as being
good, we will have no reason to recognize his commands
as being the course of moral authority. But, again, this
means that God's goodness must precede his will.

Now more subtle theologians say that it is not
God's _will_ which is the source of morality, but God's
_nature_. But this only seems to solve the problems
above. Really, they remain--especially the second.
Granted that God thinks and acts a certain way due to his
Nature, this is only binding on _me_ if I recognize
God's Nature as being intrinsically good. Suppose that
I believed in Zeus...I mean the Zeus of Greek mythology,
not the perfected Zeus of Greek philosophy. Zeus the
lustful, deceitful, scheming, sometimes short-sighted
super-human. You will get nowhere with me if you say
"Zeus lusts after married women, and deceives them in
order to get them to commit adultery with him. Zeus'
"Nature" is the source of morality. Ergo, it is morally
obligatory that you try to trick a married woman into
your bed."

So let's approach this from a new direction.
Suppose that there are moral facts. Could they have
been different than they are? The "God's will" theory
suggests that the answer is "yes"--if God had willed
that rape was "right", it would have been right. Even
the "God's Nature" theory doesn't deny this--it seems
to say that if God's Nature had been different, then
morality would have been different.
I'll lay my cards on the table. I think that
if morality is contingent, the problem of justification
is insoluble. I have never seen an adequate answer to
the question "why should I make any effort to follow the
moral rules you have described?" which is based on a
set of moral rules that were contingent. In other
words, once you accept the question "on what are moral
rules (moral facts, moral truth, whatever) based?", then
you are doomed. If God commands me to act in a certain way,
I'll take myself to be obligated to do so only if I am convinced
that this command is consistent with the rules of morality
that exist independently of that command. If you tell
me that God tells the truth (or lies), I will feel bound
to tell the truth (or lie) only if I think it is consistent
with the independently-existing rules of morality. If you
say "humans evolved in such a way that they think they
should act in a certain way" or "acting in such a way is
the way that will preserve the human species or spread your
genes to future generations" I will take myself to be bound
to act that way only if it is required by the rules of morality
that exist over and above the evolutionary process. Etc.

So my view is that moral rules are necessary.
Not "Necessary but arbitrary", "necessary through and
through". To take my favorite example: If I make a
promise to do X, then I acquire an (all-other-things-equal)
obligation to do X. But _why_? I think the question is
misguided. Anyone who says "why should making a promise
carry with it any obligation at all to carry out the
promise?" has not actually understood what a promise is in
the first place. Anyone who actually understands what a promise
_is_ will immediately see that it carries with it this moral
force. Anyone who truly recognizes what "life" is will
immediately understand that _ceteris paribus_ it is more
rational to preserve it than terminate it.

So I think that "Virtue is the perfection of Reason",
and that "Reason" includes recognition and proper use of
moral as well as non-moral facts. But these facts are not
created by Reason, or by Virtue, or by God. They are not
created by anything at all. To create something implies that
it did not exist before--moral truths are eternal and necessary.
If you want to say that they exist as part of God's own eternal
and necessary Nature, that's fine with me, as long as you
understand that they are self-justifying. They're not binding
_because_ they're part of God's Nature. They're binding because
that's what moral facts are. We've hit bedrock, and drilling
deeper is both impossible and unnecessary.

[I think the same about logical truths and mathematical
truths. Asking "_Why_ does 1+1=2", on my view, is idiotic.
If you understand "1", "2", and the concept of addition,
you'll see that there's nothing else that "1+1" could possibly
be, and no reason to want any further justification. Asking
"Just because 'if p, then q' is true, and 'p' is true, why
should 'q' be true?" is idiotic. If you ask it (and my students
sometimes ask it), then you haven't really understood "If p,
then q".]

So I think an atheist can be a Stoic, if the atheist
is prepared to accept the existence of eternal, necessary
moral truths. Most atheists I know of won't in fact do that,
because they're hard-core materialistic empiricists who
reject anything that cannot be sensed. But there's nothing in
atheism itself that forbids accepting such a thing. [Sometimes
even Dawkins flirts with such an idea.] Whether the atheist
can reject the heart of Stoic ethics but hold on to enough
other Stoic doctrines (the theory of the emotions, for example)
to be called a "Stoic" is more debatable. Becker, for example,
seems to me to be too far from the core of Stoicism to be a
real Stoic, but that's a difficult call and I wouldn't hold
it against someone (as some people on this List) who thinks that
he's still "in". He thinks so, after all, and he's no idiot.

One last thing. Although the doctrine of moral
facts is, I think, crucial to Stoicism, and although I have
argued here that moral facts are necessary (and non-arbitrary)
truths, some distinctively Stoic ideas are contingent. It
is contingently true, for example, that emotions are caused
by false value beliefs.

Regards,
Grant

Stoicism, the Gods, and External Control

 

This is an email message to the International Stoic Forum from Grant Sterling in response to a message from Gich Jones which is reproduced below.

G:

    If the Gods do not control the outcomes of our actions, then

they cannot rule the universe well and justly, and we cannot be

sure that the outcomes which actually occur are well-chosen, and

we will then reasonably be distressed when seemingly bad things

happen.  Hence, we cannot have eudaimonia if the gods do not control

everything that happens.

    But you should not say that the gods "assisted" the bank robber, as

if they merely give help to people in order to achieve their goals.

The gods decide if the best outcome for the universe is for the

bank to be robbed, the drowning child to be saved, etc.,  or not.  If it

is for the best, they make it happen.  If it isn't for the best, they make

something else happen.  The would-be bank robber or child-saver

is helpless.  The bank robber and the gods are not a team who jointly

produce an outcome--the bank robber wills to rob the bank, based on

his own (badly irrational) thoughts and desires.  The gods produce the

robbing of the bank (or not) based on their own goals, exemplifying

perfect reason.  If those results happen to fit the outcome the robber

desired, that doesn't mean that they have endorsed his irrational willing,

just as if the would-be child-rescuer fails it doesn't mean that the gods

have rejected his (possibly reasonable) willing.  The gods possess all

sorts of knowledge that we don't possess, and so they may have good reason

to bring about X even if we, given our limited understanding, have reason to

will not-X. 

    But you are puzzled as to why the gods would make humans with free will,

when they will need to intervene in response.  (By the way, the gods control

everything outside our will, so they control the tides and the orbiting of the

planets and so on.  It's not just the outcome of our actions that they control.)

The classic answer is the oft-repeated Stoic story of the dog and cart.  The

dog must go wherever the cart goes--it has no control whatsoever about its

destination.  But the dog does have the freedom to choose whether to go

willingly and happily, or to be dragged and miserable.  So, too, with us--the outcomes

are out of our control, but our eudaimonia is totally within our control.  And

that's an excellent arrangement--if our eudaimonia rested in externals, and externals

are out of our control, then no-one could attain eudaimonia except by colossally

good luck.  If eudaimonia rested in externals, and we were given control of externals,

then given our limited information we would make externals occur in conflicting and

inferior ways.  Instead, our eudaimonia is entirely in our control, and the world is

entirely in the control of the all-knowing and perfectly virtuous gods.

    Regards,

            GCS

On 1/12/22 7:31 AM, Gich Jones wrote:

Hello Grant,

I should not have introduced the magistrate into the discussion, it's not important for the point I was trying to make. I'll try again:

>>> Yes, I should use my will in ways that strive to "create the conditions" for some outcomes (the "preferred indifferents") to come about. But the gods decide whether they actually do come about--that's in their control, not mine.

This is your personal belief system, it's not in Epictetus.

You're saying that whether we hit the target or not depends completely on "the gods". So if a bank robber sets out to rob a bank and succeeds [he hit his target] this was because the gods assisted him. If a burglar decides to burgle a house and succeeds [he hit his target] this was because the gods assisted him. If a man tries to save a drowning child and fails [he did not hit his target] this was because the gods opposed him. Etc.

This constantly intervening God of yours makes no sense. I believe God is rational and had a reason, a purpose, for creating humankind. If, as a result of his creation, he found himself intervening in every second of the lives of each of the six billion people on earth as you describe, what could possibly be the reason for the creation?

Gich

[in haste]

Exercises in support of the Discipline of Desire

"In A Handbook for New Stoics, renowned philosopher Massimo Pigliucci and seasoned practitioner Gregory Lopez provide 52 week-by-week lessons to help us apply timeless Stoic teachings in modern life" (backcover).

Below are references to the 17 exercises of Part 1, "The Discipline of Desire," each with Pigliucci's and Lopez's headings and their selections of text from the ancient Stoics (here alternately translated).


"1. Discover what's really in your control, and what's not"

"Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office" (Epictetus, Encheiridion, 1.1; Oldfather).


"2. Focus on what is completely in your control"

"Remember that the promise of desire is the attainment of what you desire, that of aversion is not to fall into what is avoided, and that he who fails in his desire is unfortunate, while he who falls into what he would avoid experiences misfortune. If, then, you avoid only what is unnatural among those things which are under your control, you will fall into none of the things which you avoid; but if you try to avoid disease, or death, or poverty, you will experience misfortune. Withdraw, therefore, your aversion from all the matters that are not under our control, and transfer it to what is unnatural among those which are under our control" (Epictetus, Encheiridion, 2.1--2; Oldfather).


"3. Take an outside view"

"What the will of nature is may be learned from a consideration of the points in which we do not differ from one another. For example, when some other person's slave-boy breaks his drinking-cup, you are instantly ready to say, "That's one of the things which happen." Rest assured, then, that when your own drinking-cup gets broken, you ought to behave in the same way that you do when the other man's cup is broken. Apply now the same principle to the matters of greater importance. Some other person's child or wife has died; no one but would say, "Such is the fate of man." Yet when a man's own child dies, immediately the cry is, "Alas! Woe is me!" But we ​ought to remember how we feel when we hear of the same misfortune befalling others" (Epictetus, Encheiridion, 26; Oldfather).


"4. Take another's perspective"

"When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion [judgment] about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry. For either thou thyself thinkest the same thing to be good that he does or another thing of the same kind. It is thy duty then to pardon him. But if thou dost not think [judge] such things to be good or evil, thou wilt more readily be well disposed to him who is in error" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.26; G. Long).


"5. Strengthen yourself through minor physical hardship"

"Now there are two kinds of training, one which is appropriate for the soul alone, and the other which is common to both soul and body. We use the training common to both when we discipline ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, meager rations, hard beds, avoidance of pleasures, and patience under suffering.

"For by these things and others like them the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardship, sturdy and ready for any task; the soul too is strengthened since it is trained for courage by patience under hardship and for self-control by abstinence from pleasures" (Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 4--5; Cora E. Lutz).


"6. Premeditation of future adversity"

 "If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes. To the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives "comes in a new and sudden form," and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty. This is proved by the fact that men endure with greater courage, when they have once become accustomed to them, the things which they had at first regarded as hardships. Hence, the wise man accustoms himself to coming trouble, lightening by long reflection the evils which others lighten by long endurance. We sometimes hear the inexperienced say: "I knew that this was in store for me." But the wise man knows that all things are in store for him. Whatever happens, he says: "I knew it"" (Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 76.35--36; Gummere).


"7. Take a (much) broader perspective"

"Thou canst remove out of the way many useless things among those which disturb thee, for they lie entirely in thy opinion [judgment]; and thou wilt then gain for thyself ample space by comprehending the whole universe in thy mind, and by contemplating the eternity of time, and observing the rapid change of every several thing, how short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9,32; G. Long).


"8. Meditate on nature and the cosmos"

"The Pythagoreans bid us in the morning look to the heavens that we may be reminded of those bodies which continually do the same things and in the same manner perform their work, and also be reminded of their purity and nudity. For there is no veil over a star" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.27; G. Long).


"9. Be careful about what you call 'good' and 'bad'"

"True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue: and what will this virtue bid you do? Not to think anything bad or good which is connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness" (Seneca, Of a Happy Life, 16; Stewart).


"10. Act the opposite"

"These are voices which you ought to shun just as Ulysses did; he would not sail past them until he was lashed to the mast. They are no less potent; they lure men from country, parents, friends, and virtuous ways; and by a hope that, if not base, is ill-starred, they wreck them upon a life of baseness. How much better to follow a straight course and attain a goal where the words "pleasant" and "honourable" have the same meaning![3] This end will be possible for us if we understand that there are two classes of objects which either attract us or repel us. We are attracted by such things as riches, pleasures, beauty, ambition, and other such coaxing and pleasing objects; we are repelled by toil, death, pain, disgrace, or lives of greater frugality. We ought therefore to train ourselves so that we may avoid a fear of the one or a desire for the other. Let us fight in the opposite fashion: let us retreat from the objects that allure, and rouse ourselves to meet the objects that attack" (Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 123.12--13; Gummere).


"11. Moderate at mealtime"

"Thus the oftener we are tempted by pleasure in eating, the more dangers there are involved. And indeed at each meal there is not one hazard for going wrong, but many. First of all, the man who eats more than he ought do is wrong, and the man who eats in undue haste no less, and also the man who wallows in the pickles and sauces, and the man who prefers the sweeter foods to the more healthful ones, and the man who does not serve food of the same kind or amount to his guests as to himself.[1] There is still another wrong in connection with eating, when we indulge in it at an unseasonable time, and although there is something else we ought to do, we put it aside in order to eat" (Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 18.B4; Cora E. Lutz).


"12. Put temptations out of sight"

"Just as he who tries to be rid of an old love must avoid every reminder of the person once held dear (for nothing grows again so easily as love), similarly, he who would lay aside his desire for all the things which he used to crave so passionately, must turn away both eyes and ears from the objects which he has abandoned. The emotions soon return to the attack; 4. at every turn they will notice before their eyes an object worth their attention. There is no evil that does not offer inducements. Avarice promises money; luxury, a varied assortment of pleasures; ambition, a purple robe and applause, and the influence which results from applause, and all that influence can do" (Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 69.3--4; Gummere).


"13. Start practicing minimalism"

"How far happier is he who is indebted to no man for anything except for what he can deprive himself of with the greatest ease! Since we, however, have not such strength of mind as this, we ought at any rate to diminish the extent of our property, in order to be less exposed to the assaults of fortune: those men whose bodies can be within the shelter of their armour, are more fitted for war than those whose huge size everywhere extends beyond it, and exposes them to wounds: the best amount of property to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty, and which yet is not far removed from it" (Seneca, Of Peace of Mind, 8; Stewart).


"14. Evaluate your goals"

"The next point to these will be to take care that we do not labour for what is vain, or labour in vain: that is to say, neither to desire what we are not able to obtain, nor yet, having obtained our desire too late, and after much toil to discover the folly of our wishes: in other words, that our labour may not be without result, and that the result may not be unworthy of our labour: for as a rule sadness arises from one of these two things, either from want of success or from being ashamed of having succeeded" (Seneca, Of Peace of Mind, 12; Stewart).


"15. Remind yourself of impermanence"

"With everything which entertains you, is useful, or of which you are fond, remember to say to yourself, beginning with the very least things, "What is its nature?" If you are fond of a jug, say, "I am fond of a jug"; for when it is broken you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your own child or wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be disturbed" (Epictetus, Encheiridion, 3; Oldfather).


"16. Comtemplate death, and how to live"

""It is difficult, however," you say, "to bring the mind to a point where it can scorn life." But do you not see what trifling reasons impel men to scorn life? One hangs himself before the door of his mistress; another hurls himself from the house-top that he may no longer be compelled to bear the taunts of a bad-tempered master; a third, to be saved from arrest after running away, drives a sword into his vitals. Do you not suppose that virtue will be as efficacious as excessive fear? No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing. Rehearse this thought every day, that you may be able to depart from life contentedly; for many men clutch and cling to life, even as those who are carried down a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks" (Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 4.4--5; Gummere).


"17. Meditate on others' virtue"

"When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth. For nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues, when they are exhibited in the morals of those who live with us and present them before us" (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.48; G. Long).

A Handbook for New Stoics