Psychological egoism

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For other forms of egoism, see Egoism.

Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It can be contrasted both with ethical egoism, which is the view that the individual always ought to be motivated by self-interest and disregard the interests of the community, and rational egoism, which asserts that the rational thing to do in all situations is that which furthers the actor's interests the most. Psychological egoism is controversial, since many see it as an over-simplified interpretation of behavior, and it cannot rule out altruism without being contradicted by evidence. Rather, it claims that when sane people choose to help others, it is because of the personal benefits they themselves obtain or expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from doing so.

The most prominent form of psychological egoism is psychological hedonism, the view that the ultimate motive for all voluntary human action is the desire to experience pleasure or to avoid pain. Many of the discussions of psychological egoism focus on this variety, as does this entry, for the sake of simplicity. The two are not the same, however: one can hold that all actions are ultimately motivated by considerations of self-interest, without thinking that all agents conceive of their self-interest in terms of feelings of pleasure and pain. A possible (though controversial) example of somebody holding such a view would be Aristotle, who asserts that the ultimate aim of all actions is the agent's eudaimonia, or happiness, but who denies that all people think that happiness consists solely in pleasure and the absence of pain.

1 The problem of apparent altruism
2 Criticism
3 See also
4 References and further reading
5 External links

[edit] The problem of apparent altruism

Psychological egoism seems at first inconsistent, because many acts that appear to be altruistic are common and well known (e.g. self-sacrifice, gratuitous help). One possible response is to claim that the apparent altruism conceals conscious self-interest. For example, apparently gratuitous help might be explained by the expectation of subsequent reciprocation, by the desire to gain respect or reputation (which may be expected to yield subsequent benefits), or by the expectation of a reward in a putative afterlife. This explanation appears to be close to the view of Thomas Hobbes. However, there are many acts of apparent altruism that do not immediately appear to admit an account of this kind.

The proponents of psychological egoism nevertheless consider that these acts are in their essence selfish, because the real motive of these actions is that they bring some benefit to the person who accomplishes them. This "something" is generally referred to as good feeling, and it includes such things as:

Satisfaction of a desire to comply with a given moral code
Feeling of power, by making notable changes in one's environment
The expectation of reciprocal beneficial action
Pride and self-worth

[edit] Criticism

Critics of psychological egoism often reject it on the grounds that it is non-falsifiable; in other words, it is designed in such a way as to be impossible to prove or disprove, because psychological egoists claim that apparent acts of altruism are simply the acts of individuals seeking a good feeling or following social incentives to be seen to be altruistic (also providing a "good feeling"). Since this good feeling is impossible, or at least implausible to detect, let alone measure, it is impossible to prove that all people experience it every time they perform altruistic acts.

But even accepting the theory of the universal good feeling, it is difficult to explain, for example, the actions of a soldier who sacrifices his life by jumping on a grenade in order to save his comrades. In this case, there is simply no time to experience a good feeling for one's actions, though a psychological egoist may argue that the soldier experiences good feeling in knowing that he is sacrificing his life to ensure the survival of his comrades, or that the action was entirely reflexive. Psychological egoists argue that although actions might not effectively cause pleasure or avoidance of pain, one's contemplated or reactionary expectation of this is the sole factor of the decision.

There is also a problem in that the theory claims that we cannot know our own motives, so that even if we think we are doing something altruistically, we will be wrong. However, given the individual's privileged access to their own mind, it is wrong to argue that the psychological egoist can know another individual's motives more accurately than the individual themself.

Finally, psychological egoism has also been accused of using circular logic: "If a person willingly performs an act, that means he derives personal enjoyment from it; therefore, people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment". In particular, seemingly altruistic acts must be performed because people derive enjoyment from them, and are therefore, in reality, egoistic. This statement is circular because its conclusion is identical to its hypothesis (it assumes that people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment, and concludes that people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment). This objection was made by William Hazlitt^[1] and Thomas Macaulay [1] in the 19th century, and has been restated many times since then. An earlier version of the same objection was made by Joseph Butler in 1726.

One especially searching examination of the arguments for and against psychological egoism may be found in Unto Others (1998), by Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson.