Thomas: Chapter 2

In this chapter, Thomas attempts to build the foundations of altruism in biology. The essence of his argument is that love is a form of altruism and that given the sort of species that we are love is essential to our survival. An infant would never grow to maturity were it not for parental love. He quickly dispatches the thought that any altruism based in biology is really masked self-interest by saying 1) that a person acting altruistically toward his child does not first think "does this act help preserve/strengthen the future of my genetic material" but rather only thinks "does this act help my child" and 2) it makes no sense to say that altruistic acts towards non-family members are in any way meant to or in anyway do ensure the future of ones genes. Furthermore, he claims that there is a clear difference between what we desire to do and what biology disposes us to do (I found this to be very interesting). Biology may dispose us to have altruistic feelings towards an infant that is crying but that does not say what we desire to do. We may desire to act on those feelings or not to. Moreover, supposing that we do desire to help the child we may be glad that we have the disposition to feel as we do towards it. (Another example, a smoker may desire to quit and as a result lament urges to smoke whereas a sky diver may desire to jump out of planes with a parachute and as a result be glad that he has the urge to thrill seek.) The point is that it is our desires that matter when it comes to moral motivation and that our biological constitution does not determine our desires as they can be in line with it or against it. Thomas also makes the point that there is a difference between doing something that benefits you and doing something that benefits you because it benefits you. This means that altruistic acts may benefit the actor in some way or another but this does not mean the acts were not altruistic. Thus claiming that there is a biological basis of altruism is not a self-defeating claim.

Thomas then goes on to talk about the importance of parental love in morality. This is a case where people (parents) make enormous sacrifices for the well-being of other people (their children). What is especially important here is that parents love their children with no strings attached so to speak. They care only for the well-being of the child and this is not tied to any particular trait the child has. It is this unconditional love, Thomas argues, that provides a child with psychological security; it knows that it will always be accepted and loved by those on whom it depends entirely. This accounts for the child's reciprocation of that love. What is also important here is that this love and concern for another's well being can not be explained away as self-interested from a biological point of view because it also exists between parents who have adopted and their adopted child. The point that Thomas is trying to make is that our biology has endowed us with altruistic sentiments/feelings (i.e. parental love) and that, as these sentiments are essentially moral sentiments, biology can clearly be seen to be a part of the basis of morality and not just the basis for our self-interestedness (i.e. survival instinct).

Thomas goes on to say that once these moral sentiments are established, we can at least see that people are not inherently only self-interested beings. Given this, we can see the beginnings of how altruistic sentiments can spread to include other people as well. What is important to note here, however, is that thus far Thomas has not claimed to find the basis of morality or ground it in any substantial way. All he has tried to show at this point is that moral/altruistic sentiments are not contrary to our biological make up or intrinsic nature; biology does not show that we are just self-interested. It is this fact that Thomas takes to be part of the basis for morality as it shows that human beings have the capacity for moral/altruisitc sentiments and therefore motivations.