Sentimental fools: a critique of Amartya Sen’s notion of commitment

Khalil, Elias L.

doi:10.1016/s0167-2681(99)00060-8

“…One may or may not want to give money to the victims of floods in a far-away country. But one is obligated to pay for the local fire department (Khalil 1999;Fehr & Gächter 2000).…”

Section: Toward a Better Understanding Of Prosocial Behavior: The Rolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altruism and selfishness

Rachlin

¹

2002

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Many situations in human life present choices between (a) narrowly preferred particular alternatives and (b) narrowly less preferred (or aversive) particular alternatives that nevertheless form part of highly preferred abstract behavioral patterns. Such alternatives characterize problems of self-control. For example, at any given moment, a person may accept alcoholic drinks yet also prefer being sober to being drunk over the next few days. Other situations present choices between (a) alternatives beneficial to an individual and (b) alternatives that are less beneficial (or harmful) to the individual that would nevertheless be beneficial if chosen by many individuals. Such alternatives characterize problems of social cooperation; choices of the latter alternative are generally considered to be altruistic. Altruism, like self-control, is a valuable temporally-extended pattern of behavior. Like self-control, altruism may be learned and maintained over an individual's lifetime. It needs no special inherited mechanism. Individual acts of altruism, each of which may be of no benefit (or of possible harm) to the actor, may nevertheless be beneficial when repeated over time. However, because each selfish decision is individually preferred to each altruistic decision, people can benefit from altruistic behavior only when they are committed to an altruistic pattern of acts and refuse to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

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“…In fact, natural sélection cannot explain the origin of sympathy; it can only explain its diffusion given that it exists. The inclination to invoke natural sélection as soon as one appeais to the reievance of biology with respect to behavior probably stems from the misidentification of organization (physiology) with evolutionary diffusion (evolutionary biology) (see passim Boyd & Noble, (1993) ;Rosen, (1991); Khalil, (1999)).…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If one advances the principle of sympathy to explain voluntary acts of altruism à la Smith, one would spare himself the need to introduce the ques tion of commitment via Sen ((1977), (1985); cf. Khalil (1999)) and Frankfurt (1971). In fact, one would not need to invoke the multiple-self framework à la Etzioni ((1986) ;see Sen, (1980Sen, ( /1981) as well.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Adam Smith and Three Theories of Altruism

Khalil

¹

2001

Recherches Économiques De Louvain

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“…But one is obligated to pay for the local fire department (Khalil 1999;Fehr & Gächter 2000). Who is the other player?…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal mechanisms that implicate the self enlighten the egoism-altruism debate

Sedikides

¹

,

Gregg

²

2002

Behav Brain Sci

0

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Many situations in human life present choices between (a) narrowly preferred particular alternatives and (b) narrowly less preferred (or aversive) particular alternatives that nevertheless form part of highly preferred abstract behavioral patterns. Such alternatives characterize problems of self-control. For example, at any given moment, a person may accept alcoholic drinks yet also prefer being sober to being drunk over the next few days. Other situations present choices between (a) alternatives beneficial to an individual and (b) alternatives that are less beneficial (or harmful) to the individual that would nevertheless be beneficial if chosen by many individuals. Such alternatives characterize problems of social cooperation; choices of the latter alternative are generally considered to be altruistic. Altruism, like self-control, is a valuable temporally-extended pattern of behavior. Like self-control, altruism may be learned and maintained over an individual's lifetime. It needs no special inherited mechanism. Individual acts of altruism, each of which may be of no benefit (or of possible harm) to the actor, may nevertheless be beneficial when repeated over time. However, because each selfish decision is individually preferred to each altruistic decision, people can benefit from altruistic behavior only when they are committed to an altruistic pattern of acts and refuse to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

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Sentimental fools: a critique of Amartya Sen’s notion of commitment

Cited by 15 publications

References 23 publications

Altruism and selfishness

Altruism and selfishness

Adam Smith and Three Theories of Altruism

Internal mechanisms that implicate the self enlighten the egoism-altruism debate

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