The Nature of Action

And altruism, and freedom.

Last time, I said I’d come back with something a little more concrete than the abstract metaphysics I’ve started with. Specifically, I wanted to talk about what capitalism actually is and isn’t and how it causes the problems it does. In order to do that properly, though, we first have to discuss something else: the relationship between an action and its actor. This is important because capitalism will turn out to be the collective action of a particular actor, and in order to understand the action, we must understand how it flows necessarily from the actor, how, in some sense, action and actor are the same self-different thing. To change the action of capitalism, we’ll have to change its actor, but first we must understand how this connection between the two works.

Here is the claim I’m making about action: any action anyone ever takes is meant to advance their own interests as they understand them. That is, there is always a straight line of necessity from the actor’s concept of themselves and their interests to whichever action they believe will best advance those interests. In this way, who an agent is and how they act are one.

Many people may wish to immediately reject this argument because it would mean that there is no such thing as either altruism or free will as those concepts are typically understood. There is no altruism because, as I said, absolutely every action anyone takes is meant to advance their own interests. There is no free will because there is no way to interrupt the flow from actor to action; once you see what you should do to advance your interests as you understand them, there is nothing else that you will do.

I should say now that I do believe in altruism and freedom, but in a different sense than how I’ve just portrayed them, so please don’t think I’m arguing that the world is or should be full of psychopathic automatons. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be. I’m highlighting the denial of what I take to be the common understanding of these terms because they obscure not only the real nature of action (and, indeed, of what it means to be an actor), but also what real altruism and freedom actually are.

The best way I can think of to make this argument is to explore how people who would deny it, i.e. those who would argue for altruism or free will, would contradict themselves by doing so. Let’s say that there is such a thing as altruism as it’s typically understood, which I take to mean that I could act in a way that is utterly contrary to my own interests so long as it was for the greater good. But wouldn’t service to the greater good then become my interest? Wouldn’t service to the greater good become my reason for action?

But what do interests have to do with reasons? Can’t I have a reason to do something that doesn’t serve my own interests? Isn’t that what the altruist is arguing in the first place? I think this confusion stems from a narrow understanding of the term “interests” that presupposes that an individual can only act either for the greater good or for their personal interests. In fact, though, reasons can only be reasons if they correspond to the interests of the actor. This is because there is no way for something to be a reason for me to act unless it is a reason, for me, to act. I am not acting because someone else has received some sort of motivation, or because there is some free-floating moral imperative that doesn’t somehow touch me personally. I can only have a reason for action when I am personally interested in the outcome of the action, but this doesn’t mean that those interests necessarily have anything to do with my well being as an individual. 

This is obvious in the paradigmatic example of an altruistic act: self-sacrifice. If I am going to sacrifice my own life to save another, it would be preposterous to think that I would do so for no reason (unless I have a death wish, in which case that’s my reason), or that I haven’t judged saving that other person to be preferable to saving myself. If I didn’t judge that it was preferable for me to die than the other person, why on earth would I choose as I did? This is all to say that, despite losing my life, it was somehow in my interest to do so. I think this is actually what mystifies people: how can something possibly be in a person’s interest if they die as a result? The answer to this question can be found in the expanded sense of the meaning of altruism, which I’ll come back to later.

Now let’s consider the notion of free will as it’s usually understood, which I take to mean the ability to make any physically possible choice at any given time. So, for example, if there is nothing preventing me from choosing either vanilla or chocolate ice cream, then I am free to choose either. But why would I choose one or the other, that is, what reasons do I have? If I have no reasons, then I am choosing at random, or I’m insane - neither of which, I suspect, the free will advocate would accept as a meaningful account of freedom. But let’s say that I love vanilla ice cream and hate chocolate ice cream - that is, I have a reason to choose vanilla and a reason not to choose chocolate. All other things being equal (I’m not, say, trying to prove a free will denialist wrong), in what scenario would I possibly choose chocolate? If there is no such scenario, how free was I, actually, to choose chocolate? We might say that I was free because my preferences and therefore my reasons were my own and no one else’s, but how free was I to change those preferences? Are we free to choose our desires, or who we are? Again, I think this freedom is possible, but only in the same way that real altruism is possible.

It’s so important to understand the straight line between the self-concept of the actor, their understanding of what their interests are, and the actions they take because it shifts the sphere within which change can take place from the realm of actions per se to the realm of self-understanding. Misunderstanding the nature of action, believing that it is somehow separate from the actor, causes us to focus too much on the actions themselves, on the particular means we use to accomplish our ends, on questions of how we do the things we do. But if we want to change those ends, which is what we need if we’re going to do anything about capitalism and its attendant crises, we need to be asking questions about who we are and why we do the things we do. So long as what I understand to be my reasons for action stay the same, so will my actions; at best, I may develop new means to achieve my ends, which has been the story of modern science and technology. But if my reasons change, if my concept of who I am and what’s good for me changes, then not only my means will change, but my ends will as well. 

It is also within this realm of self-understanding that real altruism and freedom lie, because it is only through the expansion of one’s self-concept that either of these are possible. It is only because I am part of something greater than myself that I would willingly sacrifice myself because, in that sense, “I” have not perished. What we call altruism is not actually self-lessness, but a self-fullness that incorporates more than one’s individual identity. Just so, if I understand myself to be a solitary individual alone in a hostile world, I will want vastly different things than if I understand myself to be at home in a world that is an extension of myself. Not only would my desires change, but my understanding of what “I” am capable of would radically change. In a world which is an extension of myself, “I” would become truly unlimited, because anything which would limit me would be nothing other than myself. This is real freedom: the freedom of the infinite.

Next time, I’ll talk about capitalism and the self-concept that produces it. Thanks for reading.