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Psychological Egoism
Filed under: Essays | April 10th, 2003
Okay you know the drill. This is a paper I turned in today for my Ethics class. It deals with psychological egoism, and if you have any leanings toward this moral theory I’d be interested in hearing your feedback on this. My language is strong in the paper, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t open. I didn’t have as much time to put into the print (PDF) version of the paper this time, but it’s still a nicer way to read it than the HTML below.
Every human action is at its root a selfish act; even acts that are altruistic on the surface are primarily motivated by a deeper selfishness — or so a psychological egoist would say. Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory that rather than suggesting, as ethical or rational egoism does, how people ought to live, suggests how people actually go about their lives. The assumptive nature of the theory introduces a number of possible avenues for refutation, some of which are very compelling.
One of the more common arguments for psychological egoism states that even though on the surface one person’s acts might appear selfish and another person’s acts might appear unselfish, in both cases each person is just doing what they want to do, which is inherently selfish. If S donates money to the poor, then S is donating money because that’s what S wants to do. Of course, if helping others is what S wants to do, that is what would generally be defined as altruism, but for a psychological egoist that doesn’t counteract the fact that S wanted to do it. Some actions could also be said to be done through a sense of duty rather than a desire, such as paying your insurance or having a bad tooth removed, neither of which is an immediately attractive proposition; it’s self-interest, not selfishness. This argument may be countered as still being motivated by larger selfish goals. Anyway a deeper problem should be immediately apparent, as in the course of trying to justify psychological egoism, the theory has been reduced to empty tautology; we have said that the motivation for our actions is what we are motivated to do. This is not terribly meaningful in terms of describing human nature.
A second argument for psychological egoism suggests that people just do what makes them feel good, thereby making all acts selfish. For example, you might help a turtle across a highway because if you didn’t you would be distressed about its well-being crossing the road. So in order to feel good about yourself, you help the turtle cross the road. The problem with this is it sounds like it is describing an unselfish person, one that derives pleasure from helping others. A selfish person most likely wouldn’t have been terribly concerned for the turtle in the first place. Also, if we look to the deeper motivations of the turtle helper’s actions, as the psychological egoists tend to do, and ask why the person derives satisfaction from helping others in general and the turtle specifically, you will most likely run into the conclusion that the person cares about what happens to others. Quite an egoist we have here. This line of argument is in fact a confusion of the object of desire and ancillary results of the consummation of that desire; if once you get married you are extremely satisfied, that does not necessarily suggest that you got married with the desire for that satisfaction in mind, rather the satisfaction is a function of your desire for marriage, and would not exist otherwise.
Psychological egoism is a particularly persuasive theory because at its core it is impossible to empirically prove it wrong. However, it is just as hard to empirically prove it right, or to prove its opposite wrong for that matter, and therein lies its fallacy. Once the premises of psychological egoism are accepted, every action can be interpreted to support it. Like the spouse who you’ve decided is cheating, every action which otherwise may be perfectly innocent is held in question and may be construed in a way that supports your hypothesis but is not true to the action itself. The problem is that psychological egoism rests on the question of moral motivation, which is by definition intrinsically personal and private. Therefore psychological egoism is a closed theory, one that rejects competing theories on its own terms and is non-verifiable and non-falsifiable.1 At most psychological egoism could allow you to describe your own motivation for every action, but it would be shallow to try and reduce the incredible breadth of human motivation down to one for the sake of the simplicity in an inherently flawed theory.
Christine | April 11th, 2003 @ 4:41 pm
Is this just a fancy way of saying “It’s all about me. Me, me, me, ME.”? The world revolves around me, and I know it!
Ok, that’s a bit extreme. In reality, I think this is quite true. People do what they want to do, doing what will benefit them.
Christine | April 11th, 2003 @ 4:42 pm
Hey - what’s that little “0.136″ below the “Say it!” button?
Matt | April 11th, 2003 @ 7:24 pm
That’s how long it took to generate the page. I’m using it for some debugging right now. The problem with psychological egoism isn’t so much that it says that people act selfishly, which few would deny, it says that every action all the time is purely selfish, which is a shallow view of human motivations.
tonie | March 24th, 2004 @ 9:13 pm
I enjoy reading your paper it gave me something to think about. I agree that we sometime act out of our own self interest.maybe its an innate motivation we have
bobbie | April 14th, 2004 @ 9:25 pm
is that a foonote at the end of the paper? if not, what is it?
Lawrence Odoemena | January 14th, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
That was a nice write up! But I still believe in some altruistic actions. There are times we do thing, not for the sake of ourselves, we even get pain from such acts, yet we go ahead to do it for the sake of others.
Dave | February 24th, 2006 @ 12:13 am
I used to be a psychological egoist, but I tend to disagree with it now. Basically your argument simplified is:
S does what he wants
S His wants are in his own best interest.
S Everything S does, he wants.
Notice the similarity between the first premise and the hypothesis. This argument is circular logic.
It’s a well written paper though.
rdobben | January 3rd, 2007 @ 10:04 am
i would like to cite some of your paper. APA style. Is there a title, or just plainly Psychological Egoism??
Matt | January 5th, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
The latter is fine.
mansfield | March 11th, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
i was having a hard time understanding this theory in ethics class. i am glad that i came across your paper, it simplified it for me (thanks), but I do hope that we as humans can prove this theory wrong and that we do things out of the good of our hearts, not just because we can benefit from our good deeds.
DSP | April 25th, 2007 @ 7:11 am
Not a bad paper, but if you dont mind me pointing out a mistake or two, i.. er, will.
In the paragraph that starts “a second argument for…” you seem to confuse (or conflate) “self-interest” and “selfishness”, though i suspect this is more from undiciplined use of language since you point out this difference above.
Any objection to psychological egoism that mentions pleasure felt for any other sake than self-interest is a stawman, it argues against something psychological egoism isnt saying.
Also, the last bit, about the “incredible breadth of human…” is unsupported.
Anyway, thats all, if it helped at all. I do mean this to be a positive criticism, not bashing your paper. Best sticking with stuff like logical fallacy, closed theory, pseudoscientific, and truism when countering psych egoism. Makes it easier and you dont have to get bogged down in their terminology. I
Lacey | November 27th, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
I would just like to say that I know of one action which I find 100 percent unselfish. Prayer. When you pray for the people you love and care about to feel better or be happy, there is nothing in it for you. I pray nightly for my friends which I haven’t seen in years. Their happiness, which I am praying for, does not affect me at all. I am praying solely for their benefit, and I mean that with my whole heart. So, psychological egoism is fale and very flawed.
Nick | March 8th, 2008 @ 7:21 am
@Lacey. Praying for friends is still selfish. People in general like to have positivity around them, which usually means its beneficial to want to have those around you happy. So your desire to make them happy is ultimately still a desire to make yourself happy. Additionally, you want yourself to want other people to be happy, because you have a desire to be what you perceive to be a “good person”. There’s two possible motives right there.
Andy | November 4th, 2008 @ 6:04 am
@Nick
One could argue that you can not pray about others (there for caring about them) just to satisfy your self-interest and also be selfish, right? Because then you care about the self-interest of them also,
Right?