distinguishing moral nativism from what might be called “altruism nativism.”Here I use “altruism” in the vernacular sense, to denote certain motivations and actionsperformed from those motivations. An altruistic act is one that is done with the ultimate goalof benefiting another. Whether one succeeds in benefiting the other is irrelevant to whetherthe action is altruistic. An act that is done in order to benefit another but only because in providing that benefit one in turn profits oneself, is not an altruistic act. Since altruism in thissense requires the cognitive capacity to conceive of oneself and of others, it (and its contrasting sense of selfishness) can be sensibly ascribed only to cognitively sophisticated creatures. Indeed, humans are the only undisputable case