Psychological
Egoism and Ethical
Egoism Sandra LaFave
Psychological
Egoism
Psychological egoism is the claim that people
always act selfishly, to
foster their own self-interest or happiness. Psychological hedonism
is the claim that people always act to attain their own pleasure and avoid
pain. Psychological hedonism is also called the “pleasure
principle.”
In these notes,
I’ll give arguments
against psychological egoism. However, the same arguments apply against
psychological hedonism. Is psychological
egoism a fact (a
true claim)? If it is true, ethics is in trouble, because most
traditional ethical systems demand at least occasional altruism
(unselfish behavior). If psychological egoism were true, altruism would
not be possible. We would have to explain apparent (what appears
as) altruism as self-interest. For example, we wouldn’t say Mother Teresa
is altruistic; we’d say that she’s self-interested. She’s using the poor
to attain her own long-term spiritual goals. In fact, people
who think psychological
egoism is true (such as Thomas Hobbes and Ayn Rand) often use it as a
premise in an argument to deny the validity of traditional ethics
altogether: 1. (Psychological
egoism): People always
and invariably act to foster their own self-interest. 2.
Traditional ethical systems demand at least occasional
altruism (non-self-interested behavior). 3. In
demanding altruism, traditional ethical systems are
demanding the impossible. (They might as well demand that people fly.)
4. Any ethical
systems that demands the
impossible is silly and stupid. 5. Traditional
ethical systems are silly
and stupid. 6. We should
adopt a more realistic
system, ethical egoism, which demands that we pursue
self-interest. But
psychological egoism is a
surprisingly weak claim. If it is false, then the above argument against
ethics is unsound. Here are some reasons not to take psychological egoism
seriously. Critique #1:
Psychological egoism is not
true, on face value, in a simple, naive sense. That is, it's easy to think
of counterexamples — cases that falsify the generalization that all human
acts are selfish, i.e., cases of people acting unselfishly. It certainly
appears that people sometimes act in ways that are not in accord with
their own interests: the soldier who falls on the grenade to save his
buddies, the person who runs into the busy street to save a child about to
be run over, etc. Psychological egoism is only true if you adopt what
Rachels calls the strategy of redefining motives. That is, you
insist on claiming that people are “really” acting selfishly even when
they appear to be acting unselfishly. But this strategy
has two problems.
First, if all human actions are self-interested, then
“self-interested actions” become, by definition, identical with “actions”.
That is, these two expressions denote exactly the same set of actions, and
thus are substitutable for each other. It then becomes impossible to
disprove the claim that all human actions are self-interested, because the
claim, after substitution, becomes a vacuous tautology: “All human actions
are human actions.” Try to imagine
what it would take to
disprove the claim that all human actions are self-interested. The claim
would be definitely disproved if we could come up with one human action
that wasn't self-interested, i.e., a counterexample. But if by definition
all human actions are self-interested, there can be no possible
counterexample. If there are no possible counterexamples, then the claim
“all human acts are self-interested” is not falsifiable. If the claim is
not falsifiable, then according to the verificationist criterion, the
claim is meaningless. So the claim “all
human acts are
self-interested” is either tautologous (true by definition, and therefore
uninteresting, like “All circles are round”) or unfalsifiable (and
therefore meaningless). Besides, even if
the egoist still insists
on claiming that all human acts are self-interested, the egoist must deal
with the puzzling fact that some acts appear to be
non-self-interested. Now the anti-egoist could say, “Okay, I still think
you egoists are wrong to say there are no unselfish acts. But even if
there aren’t any, your position is no threat to ethics. There are still
the self-interested selfish acts and the self-interested acts that appear
to be unselfish. Saying all human acts are self-interested doesn't make
that empirical distinction go away. And that empirical distinction is
where ethics can start. We’ll grant for the sake of argument that all
human acts are self-interested, and then simply say that ethics sometimes
demands that people perform those self-interested but seemingly unselfish
acts.” The claim that all human acts are self-interested is no problem, as
long as some acts appear altruistic. And they do. Critique #2:
Self-interest and interest
in the welfare of others aren't necessarily incompatible. One might be
perfectly self-interested and look out for the interests of others
— e.g., a shopkeeper who never cheats his customers simply because he
knows honesty is good for business. Critique #3:
Psychological egoism relies
on an oversimplified conception of human motives. Of course it is true
that we often get satisfaction or good feelings from acting unselfishly.
But it is not necessarily true that we perform unselfish acts solely for
the sake of that satisfaction. P1 commits a fallacy — assuming that given
two events E1 and E2, E2 occurring after E1, that E2 was the intended
result of E1. But everyone knows the following argument is not valid; it’s
a kind of post hoc fallacy: P1: E2 happens
after E1 C: E2 is the
intended result of E1. Suppose, for
example, that you are a
soldier and you save your friend's life in combat, and you also happen to
receive a medal for that. Call E2 your receiving the medal, E1 your act of
saving your friend's life. It does not follow from the fact that you
received the medal (or self-satisfaction, or good feelings, or whatever)
after saving your friend's life that your intention in saving him
was to get the medal. Similarly, it doesn't follow that if you get some
good feelings or self-satisfaction after saving your friend's life that
you saved his life in order to get those good feelings. You didn’t
save your friend in order to feel good; rather, you feel good because you
saved your friend. Another
example: you see your child run
into a busy street. A car is driving very fast toward the child. You see
that you can save the child’s life if you run out into the street and grab
the child in your arms. Realizing this, do you now stop and calculate how
much happiness you’ll receive if you save the child? Do you say to
yourself, “Gee, it would make me feel really good to save my child. So I
guess I’ll do it!” No. You feel good after saving the child because you
saved the child. You didn’t save the child in order to feel
good. In general, you
feel good when you get
things you already value. You don’t derive the value of
something by estimating how good you’d feel if you had it. Its goodness
doesn’t come from that; rather, your good feelings about having it
come from the fact that you think it’s good, independently of whether you
have it.
Ethical Egoism
Hobbes argued
that psychological egoism
implies ethical egoism. In other words, Hobbes claimed that the
following argument is sound: P1:
(Psychological egoism or hedonism):
People always and invariably act as to foster their own self-interest, in
accordance with self-love, or the “pleasure principle,” etc. C: (Ethical
egoism): People should
always act so as to foster their own interests. Ethical egoism
has never been a
mainstream view in ethics. Here are some counterarguments: 1.
The ethical egoist conclusion
(“people should always act so as to benefit themselves”) not only does not
follow from psychological egoism (the premise) but is actually
inconsistent with it! The ethical egoist thinks we should pursue
self-interest because we can’t help but do so. But if we must
pursue self-interest, as the premise states, then what’s the point of
saying we should? If psychological egoism is true, we can’t
act any other way. In other words, ethical egoism only makes sense if
psychological egoism is false, i.e., if we have a genuine choice.
2.
The premise of the argument
(psychological egoism or hedonism) is highly questionable, for the reasons
given in the first part of this handout. If you reject psychological
egoism, then the argument for ethical egoism is unsound because its
premise is false. 3.
Ethical egoists think that
people will be happiest if they look out for themselves and not concern
themselves with others But is this where true human happiness lies? Many
other writers — e.g., Erich Fromm, John Stuart Mill, and most major world
religions — claim that as a matter of fact, people who systematically
disregard the interests of others are not as happy as people who maintain
caring relationships. So, for example, selfish Mr. Burns on The
Simpsons isn’t – can’t be – be as happy as Marge Simpson. 4.
Ethical egoists such as Ayn
Rand often talk as though there’s a conflict between my happiness
and the happiness of others. This seems just false. The happiness of
others is not inconsistent with my happiness; in fact, the happiness or
well-being of others might be a necessary component of my happiness.
Happiness is not a zero-sum game: it’s not like there’s only so much
happiness to go around, so that if I get some, somebody else loses some!
This is what’s wrong with Harry Browne’s “big red ball” argument. It’s
clearly a dubious analogy. 5.
It's not clear how an ethical egoist would act as a moral
advisor or moral judge in cases where the egoist's happiness is involved.
Suppose I am an ethical egoist, so I believe that everyone ought to act
for his/her own benefit. Say Terry wants to have sex with you, and you’re
thinking about it, but you're not really sure it's a good idea, so you and
Terry discuss it. Suppose Terry knows it would be better for you if you
didn't sleep with Terry; but Terry also thinks it would be in Terry’s
interest if you did. Now you ask Terry what you should do. What answer
does Terry give, supposing Terry is an ethical egoist? Remember Terry’s
view is that everyone ought to act to benefit him/herself. Does Terry give
you the advice that benefits you or the advice that benefits Terry?
6.
Some writers say ethical
egoism is ultimately inconsistent. To be inconsistent is to be guilty of
self-contradiction. So the argument against egoism is that ethical egoists
must ultimately contradict themselves. Since self-contradiction is a big
problem in logic, showing that someone is guilty of it is an excellent
refutation technique. To show that
egoists are guilty of
self-contradiction, the argument is: suppose everyone were consistently
selfish (selfish all the time), and, as often happens in life, some
misfortune arises and the egoist now needs the unselfish help of another.
If everyone is a consistent egoist, the egoist won’t get the help he
needs. So in the interests of self-interest, an egoist must reject egoism,
at least sometimes; in other words, the egoist must be inconsistent. The
egoist really doesn’t want everyone to be selfish all the time,
because ethical egoism, if adopted universally, would lead to undesirable
social consequences. Interestingly, in “Egoism and
Moral Skepticism,” James Rachels argues that ethical egoism is not
inconsistent. You can explore that interesting argument yourself. 7.
According to Rachels, the best argument against ethical egoism is its
unacceptable arbitrariness. The egoist arbitrarily assumes his
interests come before those of other people. But as a matter of fact, no
one person matters that much more than others. Egoism is like racism.
Racism assumes that the interests of one race count more than the
interests of others, for no good reason (i.e., arbitrarily). Likewise,
egoism assumes that the interests of one person count more than the
interests of others, for no good reason.
How Egoism Might be True
This “deep”
egoism would also be true if
seeking the good of others were, as a matter of fact, the major and most
gratifying source of happiness for people. Is it? Note that this question
(“What makes people happiest?”) appears to be empirical, and thus
resolvable one way or the other using ordinary methods of observation and
experiment. Do you think it's really an empirical matter? If it is, what
are the
facts?
Thomas Hobbes
gives a version of psychological egoism in
Leviathan; so does Thrasymachus, a character in Plato's Republic
(Plato has Socrates disagree with him). Both Hobbes and
Thrasymachus think that psychological egoism is true: that humans are, at
best, indifferent to everything except what directly benefits them.
Thus, we must re-think our views about what’s moral. Hobbes and
Thrasymachus urge a “new” normative ethics, which states that it is
morally right to pursue self-interest and wrong not to. This view
is called ethical egoism.
Suppose there is
some “deep” sense in which doing what is in your
interest happens to be exactly the same as doing what's in the interests
of others, such that if you consistently and conscientiously sought your
own genuine interest, you'd automatically foster the interests of others.
Plato thinks this is what would happen in a well-run state. If you
believe this and you want to call this ethical egoism, you can, but it’s
now ethical egoism of a much deeper sort. (You could see it as a kind of
egoism because you’re acting for your own happiness, but it’s not egoism
at all in another sense, because you’re happy only if your loved ones’
interests are fulfilled.)
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