ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
representing these institutions have several self-interested reasons to ensure their own
work receives more points than those of their colleagues. The system is regulated, but
only enough to ensure that illegal activity, such as bribes, blackmail, and so forth,
does not take place.
A system like this will inevitably lead to particular individuals developing methods of
exploitation, including (perhaps) the formation of cooperative groups that give ap-
proval points only to one another, repeatedly giving oneself approval points wherever
one can, paying money to increase one’s output, and so forth.
Workers can behave altruistically or exploit one another. Granting approval points is a
cost: one takes a risk when one grants points to another’s work – particularly that of
an unestablished worker – because it can damage one’s reputation to approve of work
judged by others to be poor quality. It may also damage one’s status to grant approval
points if one’s institution loses out on resources because of one’s generosity. Most
importantly, individual workers may grant approval points only when they expect to
receive many in return: granting approval points – an ostensibly altruistic behavior –
therefore becomes such a complicated enterprise that one must make an exact calcula-
tion before deciding when and why to do so.
If a system described in this example is possible, it follows that under conditions
where “altruism” can be used with sense, deceptive or exploitative behaviors will be
more successful if agents are further removed from one another, and, further, that
practical understanding allows one to exploit a complex system for personal gain. A
researcher, due to greater odds of detection or perhaps more compassion due to prox-
imity, may be less likely to exploit this system – for example, citations in academic
literature – if she is working directly with a junior author, if she worries that her self-
interest will be found out, or if she believes that one ought not to exploit the system.
VI. Possible counterexample
1. “A behavior’s effect necessarily has practical understanding built into it. If I fail to
behave altruistically because I misunderstand conventions, I fail to meet the effect
criterion.”
This use of effect is distinct from that used by biologists, which requires only that a
material cost be incurred by the agent and a material gain be accepted by the recipient.
This objection requires that practical understanding falls under a behavior’s effect,
which only incorporates the arguments made in this paper, rather than falsifies them.
2. “Using the signal view of altruism, one can behave altruistically inadvertently or
because one is forced to. How can this definition be excluded from the objections
made to the biologist’s definition?”
These problems are irrelevant to the signal definition only because the biologist’s def-
inition requires that animals cue one another rather than signal. Cueing does not imply
an associated intention, so an animal might behave altruistically – using the biolo-
gist’s definition – even if others know one intends not to be altruistic. The signal defi-
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