[Revised entry by John Doris, Stephen Stich, Lachlan Walmsley, and Armin Schulz on March 31, 2025.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Many philosophers, along with some biologists and social scientists, have maintained that altruism is a crucial component of morality, and that people often do behave altruistically. Other philosophers, along with some biologists and social scientists, have claimed that facts about human psychology, or about the evolutionary processes that have shaped human psychology, indicate that no human behavior is genuinely altruistic. Part of this disagreement can be traced to the fact that both philosophers and scientists use the term “altruism”…

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