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I have found Graham Marshall's original question about the admissibility 
of altruism into the "mainstream" economist's concept of "self-interest" 
in my accumulated e-mail after a long holiday. I would like to offer an 
answer that I didn't find in the many strands of the responses to his 
question. 
 
When I was a graduate student in the early 1980's, we learned in the first 
year micro core that if individual preferences included the consumption of 
others that the mathematical conditions required for the existence of a 
competitive equilibrium were violated. I susppose that I proved this for 
myself in a problem set...I certainly remember it in the lectures. 
 
Now, this does not prove anything about what any economist does actually 
believe, or should believe, but I do believe that the lesson we were 
assumed to take away from that class was that "mainstream" economists 
should always assume that preferences are only over the agent's OWN 
consumption.  
 
I will avoid entering the many strands generated by Graham Marshall's 
question about what mainstream economics is, etc. My story bears on these, 
I think, but I will let the story stand on it's own. I would like to add 
that I recall my instructor in my first field course in resource and 
environmental economics, Alan Randall, telling us that there was a special 
issue of JPE in which the heavy weights (I remember Arrow's name, I think) 
had tried to talk about altruism and economic theory. I don't have my 
notes ready to hand, so I can't offer a date, but it would be the late 
60's or early 70's. Randall's conclusion was that none of the contributors 
could make heads or tails of the idea of altruism. Randall has a great 
knowledge of the contemporary literature on questions like Graham 
Marshall's and a quick note to him (sorry, I don't have an e-mail 
address) would be a great place to pick up some "authoritative" 
references. 
 
         
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