self-interest and the concept of self-sacrifice

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Self-Interest and the Concept of Self-SacrificeAuthor(s): Mark Carl OvervoldSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 105-118Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231134 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume X, Number 1, March 1980

Self-interest and the Concept of Self-sacrifice*

MARK CARL OVERVOLD, University of Texas and Virginia Commonwealth University

I

Owing to a genral dissatisfaction with hedonistic theories of value, a number of recent discussions have sought to identify an agent's self- interest, individual utility, or personal welfare with what the agent most wants to do, all things considered. Two features of these accounts merit special attention for the argument in this paper. First, on such accounts any desire or aversion which persists in the face of complete information is logically relevant to the determination of an agent's self-

I am indebted to Edmund Pincoffs, John Hodson, Ernest Sosa, Tom Carson, Richard Brandt and William Frankena for helpful comments.

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interest. This includes apparently altruistic desires like a desire for another's happiness as well as more narrow and self-regarding desires like a desire to eat a good meal. Second, when the agent finds himself in a situation where he must choose between incompatible desires, his informed preference determines the act which is most in his self-interest. The relative importance of any desire for the determination of an individual's self-interest is determined solely by the strength of that desire relative to the strength of other desires and aversions which persist in the face of complete information. In this paper I argue that not only do such accounts commit us to counter-intuitive results in particular cases, but they also render the concept of self-sacrifice incoherent by making it logically impossible that there are ever genuine instances of self- sacrifice.

For the sake of convenience, my discussion will focus on Richard Brandt's analysis of individual utility in "Rationality, Egoism, and Morality."1 Brandt's discussion represents the most explicit statement of the view to be considered. But the argument has a wider application. When suitably generalized, the argument will apply equally well to Von Wright's account of the good of man in Varieties of Goodness,2 to welfare economists who use indifference curves as a measure of individual utility, and possibly to Rawls, if we extrapolate from his account of primary goods, his use of indifference curves and his account of goodness as rationality in A Theory of Justice. 3

II

In the article cited, Brandt begins by suggesting that we understand the term 'rational action' to refer to the act which an individual

actually would perform at that time if (a) his desires and aversions at the time were what they would be if he had been fully exposed to available information, and if (b) the agent had firmly and vividly in mind, and equally at the

1 Richard Brandt, "Rationality, Egoism, and Morality," Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972), pp. 681-97. Brandt no longer holds this view. For a statement of his

present view see his A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford University Press, 1979), Ch. XIII.

2 G. H. von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (London: Compton Printing, 1972), pp. 107f.

3 John Rawls, A Theory of justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press, 1972), esp. pp. 399f.

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Self-interest and Self-sacrifice

center of attention, all those knowable facts which, if he thought about them, would make a difference to his tendency to act, given his "cleaned-up" desires (as in (a)).4

Essentially, Brandt is using "rational action" to mean fully informed action. Are the acts chosen on the basis of complete information and the

totality of the person's "cleaned-up" desires the same as the acts that are in that individual's self interest? In the article, Brandt suggests that they are, "provided we define the 'utility' of the agent in terms of the in-

tensity of his desire, at the time, for various outcomes, or features of the act itself."5

On such an account, self-interest or personal utility is construed very broadly. Brandt is quite explicit about wanting to include what we would normally regard as altruistic desires in his account of self-interest:

... if I really desire the happiness of my daughter, or the discomfiture of my de-

partment chariman, or some cause or ideal then getting that desire satisfied - , i. e., the occurrence of the event or state of affairs desired - counts as being an enhancement of my utility or welfare ... to an extent corresponding to how

strongly I want that outcome.6

Thus by calling attention to an agent's altruistic or benevolent desires, many apparent cases of self-sacrifice will be in the agent's self-interest, given this account. All that is necessary is that the agent wanted to perform the act, and in choosing the act he did not make any cognitive mistakes.

The claim that a person can enhance his welfare by acting on altruistic desires is not new. But the rationale offered in the present case is distinctive. Whereas a hedonist might point to the feelings of satisfac- tion a person experiences as a result of having his altruistic desires satisfied as the reason for saying the act enhances one's welfare, Bran- dt's gloss of "getting a desire satisfied" as "the occurrence of the event or state of affairs desired" suggests that this is not the reason he would offer. All that matters is that the agent gets what he wants (or what he most wants). This is sufficient for saying that the agent has enhanced his welfare. How the agent later feels about having his desire satisfied and

anything else which may happen to him as a result of acting on the altruistic desire is immaterial, unless the knowledge of these further

consequences would have changed his actual choice.

4 Brandt, p. 682

5 Brandt, pp. 684-85.

6 Brandt, p. 686

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iviarK t^ari wervoiu

We can highlight the oddity of this claim if we focus on cases where

acting on an altruistic desire brings about the death of the agent. Sup- pose a man wants more than anything else that his four sons attend a very expensive private college. He is not a rich man. The closest thing to a tangible asset he possesses is a huge life insurance policy. After

carefully considering his options, he resolves to kill himself, making it look like an accident. He does so, and four years later his eldest son

begins college. Eventually all four sons complete their education and

enjoy very happy and rewarding lives. Did the man enhance his own personal welfare by killing himself? His act accomplished everything he hoped it would. He knew what he was doing at the time of the act, but still chose to perform it. On Brandt's account of self-interest, we would have to say that the man had acted in his self-interest. But surely such a claim is counter-intuitive. In this case the man gets what he wanted only long after his death, and it is hard to see how anything which happens after one no longer exists can contribute to one's self-interest. If we assume that the man's loss of life constituted a grave personal loss, then it appears that on balance the man has acted contrary to his self-interest, despite the fact that his act was the act he most wanted to perform, all things considered. The general point of the example should be clear. Note, however, that the cases need not be as extreme as those which require the death of the agent. Thus, instead of a life insurance poicy, suppose that the man in the first example has a large policy which insures him against accidental injury. Realizing the consequences, he in- tentionally injures himself in order to provide for his son's education. The rest of his life is filled with great pain, and if he were the only person affected, he would choose to end it all in suicide. But since he must remain alive to collect the insurance, he makes every effort to preserve his life until all of his sons have completed their education. Has the father enhanced his personal welfare by doing what he most wanted to do, all things considered? Surely not, despite the fact that in this case the father is still alive when his greatest desire is satisfied.

The point is not that it is impossible for such acts to be in the agent's self-interest. Obviously we could fill in the details in such a way as to make it plausible to claim that they were. Perhaps the agent would be wracked with guilt for the rest of his life if he acted otherwise. He may already be suffering from a painful disease. But without these additional details, the claim is implausible. Merely pointing out that the agent knew what he was doing when he chose to perform the act is not sufficient to dispel the initial oddness of the claim. This suggests that important features of our concept of self-interest have been left out in Brandt's account.

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III

The cases considered in the previous section are part of a larger class of cases which are usually referred to as acts of self-sacrifice. Presumably, our reason for saying the acts of the hypothetical father involved self-sacrifice is that the acts appear to have brought about a significant loss of welfare for the agent. But the loss of personal welfare alone is not a sufficient condition for an act to be an act of self-sacrifice. In this section I propose to sketch an analysis of the concept of self- sacrifice. The final section will trace the implications of this analysis for Brandt's account of the concept of self-interest or personal utility.

Let me begin with what should be obvious. First, for an act to be an act of self-sacrifice, (1) the loss must be anticipated. The loss cannot be simply the result of a blunder. If the agent has no idea that his act is likely to bring him harm, I doubt that we would want to describe it as an act of self-sacrifice. Also, (2) the act must be voluntary.7 Self-sacrifice is something which must be self-inflicted. There must be an element of choice such that the individual chooses to perform an act which he expects to bring a loss.

The final condition is more difficult to formulate. We must be able to distinguish genuine cases of self-sacrifice from cases of "cutting one's losses." Such cases include: a person having to abandon some of his business ventures to avoid losing them all, or a man who must undergo a painful operation to remain healthy. These cases resemble instances of self-sacrifice in that due to the circumstances, the agent is forced to choose among his desires for incompatible things. His situation forces him to give up pursuits which he values very highly, or to undergo an operation which he finds extremely aversive and would prefer to avoid if he could. Just as the father in the previous examples must choose between the education of his children and his own life or health, things we can assume he wants very much, and which would be compatible in other circumstances, so the businessman must choose between his venture in real estate and his factory, assuming he cannot keep both. Or he may have to choose between his health and his career. Despite the similarities, however, we want to be able to distinguish genuine cases of self-sacrifice from cases of cutting one's losses. While we may speak of sacrifice in the latter cases, the sacrifice will be one of one's health for one's career, or the sacrifice of an important business venture for the sake of one's other business interests. It will not be a self-sacrifice. This is so despite the fact that the individual is forced to give up something he

7 Cf. H. J. Paton, The Good Will (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1 927), p. 390.

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wants very much and in this sense may be said to have suffered a loss. Notice too that the difference in these cases cannot be simply that when faced with a choice between incompatible desires, the individual chooses to safeguard the things he wants most. Presumably this can be said of the father as well. He chooses to give up his life or health because he wants the education of his sons more and cannot have both.

We are reluctant to include cases of cutting one's losses as instances of self-sacrifice because in such cases the individual is trying to salvage as much as he can for himself in light of his unfortunate circumstances.

Although he suffers a loss, it is a loss which he cannot avoid. In cutting his losses he seeks to minimize an inevitable loss, and thus does not

voluntarily forgo a net gain he might otherwise have had. But we must be careful. For he could have taken the loss elsewhere, and in that sense, the area of his loss is subject to voluntary choice. Furthermore, for the father, some loss is inevitable as well. Presumably, had he chosen to forgo the education of his sons, he would have felt sad or

guilty for a time, a form of loss. The important question is whether the

personal loss of welfare in forgoing his son's education would have been as great as the personal loss of his life or health. It is our conviction that this was not the case that leads us to treat the father's act as a case of genuine self-sacrifice rather than a case of cutting one's losses. We feel that if he had chosen otherwise, his personal loss of welfare would not have been as great. For the man who is cutting his losses, on the other hand, his purpose is to minimize his personal loss, and for that reason, as long as he is successful, there is no smaller loss which he could have suffered instead which he has chosen to forgo.

Thus for self-sacrifice, we are interested in how the agent has done for himself relative to a standard of the best he could have done for himself.lf the act which maximizes a person's welfare, given his situation, is the act which is in his self-interest, then we can express this condition by saying that if an act is to be a case of self-sacrifice, then (3) the act must be contrary to the agent's self-interest. This allows us to distinguish genuine acts of self-sacrifice from those which are better described as

cutting one's losses. As it stands, condition (3) requires an actual loss of welfare for the

agent. It is not sufficient if the agent merely performs an act he expects to produce a loss of welfare for himself. The loss must actually be suffered for the act to be an act of self-sacrifice. This requirement may seem counter-intuitive. If an individual risks his life for the sake of another, is this not enough to make his act an act of self-sacrifice, even if he is lucky enough not to lose his life? On reflection, however, I doubt that we should include such cases as acts of self-sacrifice. Suppose that

during a war a person performs a dangerous act to save the lives of his

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comrades. He recognizes the risks, but willingly performs the act for the sake of his comrades. Thus he meets all of the conditions for self- sacrifice except condition (3). But if he escapes unharmed, and as a result of his heroism, becomes rich, famous, and lives a very happy and rewarding life, it is hard to see how he has actually sacrificed himself. The missing element in this case is any loss of welfare. There is nothing which the agent has actually sacrificed. If anything, he appears to have benefitted greatly from his act. We can say that he was willing to sacrifice himself for others, and this alone can provide justification for

treating his act as virtuous and worthy of praise. But without a loss of welfare, the act fails to be a genuine instance of self-sacrifice.

One problem remains with condition (3). As it stands, condition (3) is too weak, for the performance of any act which is contrary to the

agent's self-interest satisfies (3). Condition (1) requires only that the harmful consequences of the act be anticipated. Thus a person could meet both of these conditions even if he were unaware of any alternative which would be more in his self-interest. As stated, (3) requires only that there be an alternative which would be more in the agent's self-interest; but it does not require that the agent be aware of the alternative.

Hence, unless some change is made, we will be forced to include as

genuine acts of self-sacrifice, cases in which, of the alternatives actually considered, the agent performs the act which he believes to be most in his self-interest, i.e. cases in which the agent is seeking to minimize what he believes to be an inevitable loss of welfare for himself. As long as his act is voluntary, he anticipates the loss (that is, he correctly believes he will be injured), and actually suffers a loss of welfare (due in this case to an overlooked alternative), his act will count as a genuine case of self-

sacrifice, given our present account. But we must be careful in reformulating condition (3). One possibility

would be to require in addition to (3) that the agent realize that he is ac-

ting contrary to his self-interest. This would require that at the time of the act, the agent be aware of some other alternative which he believes to be more in his self-interest. But this requires the agent to do too much

conceptualizing about his self-interest. Minimally, it would require that the agent have the thought at the time of the act that he was acting con-

trary to his self-interest. But people do not always weigh alternatives

specifically in terms of whether or not they will enhance their welfare. Even in cases where one does enhance one's welfare, for example by eating a balanced diet, one is rarely moved to act by the conscious

thought that eating correctly will enhance one's welfare. Instead, one

normally decides to eat because of the pleasant prospect of a juicy steak, fresh vegetables, cold water, etc., without there being any conscious calculation of one's self-interest. The situation is similar in cases of self-sacrifice. For a person to perform an act of self-sacrifice, he need

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not have any conscious thoughts about alternatives in terms of his self- interest. He need not think of his self-interest at all. Presumably, if one were strongly altruistic, thoughts of one's welfare would not play a prominent role in one's decision making because it would not be a major concern. Conscious thoughts formulated in terms of one's self- interest are not required.

The following condition represents an improvement in that it does not require conscious thoughts about one's self-interest:

(3') There must be at least one other alternative open to the agent at the time of the act which is such that (a) the agent has an accurate assessment of the actual features or outcomes of the alternative which are relevant to his self-interest and (b) the alternative is such that it would have been more in the agent's self-interest than the act he actually did perform.

Notice that (a) requires only true belief, not knowledge. Condition (b) is

strong enough so that (3') as a whole implies (3). But (3') does not

require that the agent assess his alternative in terms of his self-interest. All that is required is that the agent be aware of an alternative which would be more in his self-interest than the act he chooses to perform, and that he have true beliefs about the actual consequences of that alternative. Since the agent must be aware of the harmful consequences of the act he does perform to meet condition (1), given (3') it must be the case that for at least two of the alternatives considered, the agent realized what his choice involved, but still preferred the act which involved a net loss of personal welfare. Thus (3') insures that the net loss is

voluntarily suffered, and hence, (3') avoids the problems with (3). It is

impossible for a person trying to cut his losses to satisfy condition (3') due to ignorance of his alternatives, since he must knowingly pass up an alternative which would be more in his self-interest.

Although (3') is an improvement over (3), it may be too strong to capture the nature of self-sacrifice. The difficulty stems from the requirement of true beliefs about an alternative which would be more in the agent's self-interest. What is required for a person to have an accurate assessment of the consequences of such an alternative? Must he have true beliefs about every detail relevant to his self-interest? This seems too strong. Suppose a man gives up his life to save a friend. He believes he has another alternative which would save his life and produce only minor injuries. If instead he not only would escape death, but escape unharmed, we still may want to treat it as a case of self- sacrifice. If the further knowledge that the agent would not even suffer minor injuries would not have changed his choice, that seems sufficient

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for the act to be an act of self-sacrifice, for he did voluntarily pass up an alternative which he correctly believed would save his own life. And this alone would have made the alternative more in his self-interest than the act he actually did perform.

Demanding a perfect forecast of all of the consequences that attend an alternative course of action would have the practical effect of

eliminating all purported instances of self-sacrifice since it is doubtful that anyone ever has such a perfect and detailed forecast for any course of action. But if we stop short of demanding a perfect forecast, it is difficult to know where to draw the line. Perhaps it is better to try another approach.

The following principle avoids the objections to both (3) and (3'):

(3") There must be at least one other alternative open to the agent at the time of the act which is such that (a) if the consequences of the alternative act had been as the agent expected them to be, then the alternative act would have been more in the

agent's self-interest than the act he actually did perform, and (b) if the agent had chosen to perform the alternative act, then he would have acted more in his self-interest, objectively, than the act he actually did perform.

Notice that (3") is strong enough to render (3) unnecessary, since any act which satisfies (b) of (3") will always satisfy (3). But (3") restricts our attention to the alternatives which the agent actually considers, and thus, unlike (3), (3") insures that the agent voluntarily rejects an alternative which would be more in his self-interest.

Thus, (3") is sufficient to guarantee that the agent has voluntarily suffered a net loss of welfare, and hence, is the final condition we need in our characterization of self-sacrifice. Unlike (3'), (3") does not require that the agent have true beliefs about the alternative, and thus obviates the need to specify what would constitute "an accurate assessment" of the consequences.

Our discussion has produced the following account of self-sacrifice. An act is a genuine act of self-sacrifice if and only if:

I. the loss of welfare is expected or anticipated (This is a condition on belief and not an epistemic condition.),

II. the act is voluntary, and

III. there is at least one other alternative open to the agent at the time of the act which is such that (a) if the consequences of the

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alternative had been as the agent expected them to be, then the alternative would have been more in the agent's self-interest than the act he actually did perform, and (b) if the agent had chosen to perform the alternative act, then his act would have been more in his self-interest, objectively, than the act which he actually did perform.8

IV

At last we are ready to return to our discussion of the concept of self- interest. If we combine the account of self-sacrifice developed in this paper with Brandt's proposed analysis of self-interest or personal welfare, we obtain the surprising result that not only are there never actual cases of self-sacrifice, due perhaps to the facts of human psychology, but it is logically impossible that there ever be a genuine case of self-sacrifice if both of these accounts are correct. The difficulty arises because of condition (III), a condition we found essential to distinguish cases of self-sacrifice from those which are simply a matter of cutting one's losses. Stated simply, and perhaps somewhat misleadingly, the problem is as follows: any act which satisfies the first two conditions of self-sacrifice (i.e., the loss is anticipated, and the act is voluntary) would thereby satisfy Brandt's definition of "self-interest".9

8 Condition (III) is probably still too weak in that it allows minor or trivial losses of welfare to count as instances of self-sacrifice. Presumably the term "self-sacrifice" is reserved for cases where the loss suffered is very great. A thorough specification of the nature of self-sacrifice ideally should include some specification of the degree of loss required. The weaker condition, however, is all that is needed for the present argument.

9 "Voluntary" can be taken as equivalent to "what the agent most wants" for present purposes, and since the loss must be anticipated, the agent must at least be informed about the feature which we might suppose to be most crucial for his choice, if he were to act otherwise. It might be objected that people do not always act from inclination (wants or desires), but sometimes act out of a sense of duty. In such cases, the objector continues, it is incorrect to conclude that since the act was voluntary, the agent must have wanted to perform it more than any other alternative which he considered at the time. He may have acted from duty rather than desire. But this objection reads my use of "want" and "desire" more narrowly than intended. "Want" and "desire" are to be taken broadly enough so that any motivational factor whatever is included. In the case of someone who acts out of a sense of duty, one can say on the broad construction of "want" that he wanted to do his duty. In any case, I think that Brandt's discussion does employ the broad use of the term, and thus the objection stands.

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Thus, if Brandt's account of self-interest is accepted as what we need for "self-interest" in condition (III), then anything which meets the first two conditions of self-sacrifice would thereby fail to satisfy condition (III), and it becomes logically impossible that any action simultaneously satisfy all of conditions (I), (II), and (III), and hence it is conceptually im-

possible that there ever be a genuine case of self-sacrifice.

Consider the following which we would normally regard as a central case of self-sacrifice: During a war, a man is ordered to carry out an

operation which he knows will cause the death of many innocent vic- tims. He correctly believes that he has only two viable alternatives: carry out the order and be rewarded for his efforts with fame and promotion, or refuse, and as a result lose his own life. Given a week to decide, he

carefully considers these options, and finally refuses and as a result is executed. Since he knew he would lose his life, but still chose to perform the act, he meets the first two conditions of self-sacrifice. But did he actually suffer a loss of welfare? Ordinarily, we would treat his loss of life as sufficient for saying that there was a net loss of welfare, and hence that he had acted contrary to his self-interest. We can strengthen the claim if we add that the man correctly believed that although he would be bothered by guilt for awhile if he carried out the orders he would

eventually get over it and live a happy and rewarding life. But if we ac-

cept Brandt's account of self-interest, the same features that satisfied the first two conditions of self-sacrifice force us to conclude that he acted in

his self-interest, and hence failed to meet condition (III). For since he did have an accurate assessment of his alternatives and still did most want to

refuse, his act is the act he most wanted to perform, all things con-

sidered, and thus on Brandt's view, he acted in his self-interest.

In general, in all cases where the agent has a realistic assessment of his alternatives, the act he actually chooses to perform, will be the same as the act which he most wants to perform, all things considered, and thus he cannot be acting contrary to his self-interest on Brandt's account. Thus it becomes conceptually impossible for an individual who

knows what he is doing to perform a genuine act of self-sacrifice. If, for

the moment, we focus only on the part of condition (III) that requires that the individual act contrary to his self-interest, i.e. (1Mb), then given Brandt's analysis of self-interest, for a person to perform a genuine act of

self-sacrifice, he must necessarily be ignorant of some feature of his

situation which, had he been aware of it, would have led him to make a different choice.

The oddity of this result needs to be emphasized. The claim is not

simply that as a matter of fact only people who do not know what they

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are doing perform acts of self-sacrifice. If Brandt's account of self- interest is combined with our account of self-sacrifice (ignoring Ilia), we are committed to the view that it is part of our concept of self-sacrifice that the person must be acting in ignorance. But if anything deserves to be called self-sacrifice, the clearest cases are those in which the agent knows full well what he is giving up, but still chooses to perform the act. The acceptance of Brandt's characterization of self-interest precludes the possibility of informed sacrifice, and in doing so threatens the concept of self-sacrifice with a fundamental incoherence.

Thus far, the argument has required only part of condition (III), i.e., (1Mb). If this were all that is needed, then, given Brandt's account of self- interest, it would be possible for an act to simultaneously meet conditions (I), (II), and (1Mb). The possibility of some genuine instances of self-sacrifice arises due to the difference between the epistemic condition employed in Brandt's account of self-interest and the condition on belief, rather than knowledge, in the account of self-sacrifice. All that is required for self-sacrifice is that the agent believe the loss is likely to occur. But this is consistent with his being ignorant of some of the other outcomes of his various alternatives. Thus, if there is a difference between the agent's actual choice and the choice he would have made if he had been fully informed, it cannot be because he was not aware of the loss he actually suffers. Perhaps the most obvious source of a difference would be ignorance of some other alternative open to the agent at the time of the act which was such that if he had thought of it and realized what it involved, he would have chosen to perform this act instead of the act he actually did perform.

We saw in the previous section, however, that (3), or (1Mb), alone is insufficient to give us what we need for analysis of self-sacrifice. If we employ all of (III) in place of (3), the cases mentioned above are excluded, and there can never be genuine instances of self-sacrifice on Brandt's analysis of self-interest. For an act to satisfy (III), it is not sufficient for an act to be contrary to an agent's self-interest. The agent must also reject an alternative which would have been more in his self- interest than the act he did perform, had the agent's beliefs about the consequences of the alternative been correct. But no act could meet this condition if we identify the agent's self-interest with what he most wants to do, all things considered. Given this identification, a person cannot choose to perform an act contrary to his self-interest unless he is mistaken about some of the consequences. But (Ilia) requires that the agent make precisely such a choice. The possibility of being mistaken about the consequences of the alternative is precluded, since in this case the alternative is defined as the act which would have the con-

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sequences the agent believes it to have. In the case of the act performed, if the act is to meet (I), the harmful consequences must have been anticipated, so while the agent may lack knowledge of some of the consequences, he does choose on the basis of true beliefs about the most important consequences of the act he actually performs. Thus of the two acts mentioned in (Ilia), the agent chooses on the basis of true beliefs, and the act he actually does perform is the one (of the two) which he most wants to perform, all things considered. Thus if we accepted the identification of the agent's self-interest with what he most wants to do, all things considered, we would be forced to conclude that the act actually performed was more in the agent's self-interest than the

rejected alternative, and thus it is impossible that there ever be an alternative which could meet the requirements of the alternative mentioned in (Ilia).

The upshot of the argument is that if we identify an agent's self- interest with what he most wants to do, all things considered, it becomes logically impossible that there ever be a genuine instance of self-sacrifice, since no act can simultaneously satisfy conditions (I), (II), and (III) of self-sacrifice. It could be that no adequate account of self- interest can be found which will allow us to speak coherently about self- sacrifice. If so, our talk of self-sacrifice will have to be given up. But to do so would certainly be to pay a price, since many have thought that much of what is admirable and praiseworthy in the moral life involves

self-sacrifice, or at least a willingness to sacrifice one's own welfare for the sake of others. Thus, if we could find an account of self-interest which avoided these problems, that it will allow us to speak coherently of self-sacrifice is certainly a powerful reason for preferring such an account to one which renders all talk of self-sacrifice incoherent.10

10 In fact, there are a number of things we might do to avoid the problem. Let me

briefly sketch two alternatives. One possibility would be to return to a hedonistic

account of self-interest. If self-interest consists wholly in obtaining pleasure and

avoiding pain for the agent, then self-sacifice can be defined as a voluntary act

which the agent correctly believes to be less than optimific from the point of

view of his own expectable pleasure. However, insofar as there are things other

than pleasure which have intrinsic value (knowledge, power, achievements,

etc.), it is natural to suppose that attaining them enhances an individual's wel-

fare or contributes to his self-interest. Thus a hedonistic account of self-interest

will be no more plausible than hedonism as a general theory of value.

The account I favor restricts our concept of self-interest so that the satis-

faction of only some of the agent's desires and aversions is logically relevant to

the determination of the agent's self-interest. Specifically, an act is in the agent's self-interest if and only if it is the act which the agent would most want to perform if he were (a) fully aware of all the features and outcomes of the alternative

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acts open to him at the time and (b) his choice were motivated only by his rational desires and aversions for features and outcomes of the act which are such that the proposition asserting that the agent exists at Ms a logically necessary condition of the proposition asserting that the feature or outcome obtains at t. On this account the only outcomes or features of acts which are logically relevant to the determination of an agent's self-interest are those in which the agent is an essential constituent. All such outcomes or features directly concern the

agent, and insofar as he wants some of them to obtain, having such desires satisfied would be relevant to determining what was in the agent's self-interest. The features excluded, on the other hand, are such that they can obtain whether or not the agent exists at all, and thus would appear to be logically irrelevant to a determination of the agent's self-interest. It may very well be the case that the

agent's welfare will be affected by such features, but if so, it will be due to causal factors which make such features necessary if the agent is to be

happy, successful, miserable, etc. But when this is the case, the agent will have desires and aversions for these additional consequences of the act which do sa-

tisfy the proposed restriction, and it is in virtue of such desires and aversions that the question of which act is in the agent's self-interest will be determined.

It should be clear that the proposed restriction enables us to speak coher-

ently about self-sacrifice. Since some of the agent's desires are eliminated from the determination of his self-interest, it is at least possible that what he most wants to do, all things considered, is not the same as the act which is in his self- interest. A person could voluntarily and knowingly pass up an alternative which would have been more in his self-interest in order to perform another act which he knows will cost him great personal loss. We can explain the person's choice

by calling attention to his desire for the welfare of others, to see justice done, etc. But since such desires do not figure in the determination of the agent's self-interest, it is entirely possible that had such desires not been present, he would have chosen another act. If so, then that act was the act that was most in his self-interest, and in knowingly and voluntarily passing it up, the agent has

performed an act of self-sacrifice.

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self-interest and the concept of self-sacrifice

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