Egoism Flashcards
Ethical Egoism
**Ethical egoism holds that only acting in your own self-interest is good. **Ethical egoists
argue that what makes an act good for an agent is that it is in their own self-interest. The
famous ethical egoist Ayn Rand said ‘the achievement of his own happiness is man’s
highest moral purpose’.
Psychological egoism
Psychological egoists would say that all human actions are always done for selfish reasons and nothing else is possible. This theory is descriptive rather than normative because it doesn’t tell us what’s right and wrong or what we should do, it describes what the world is like.
Psychological egoism
psychological egoism, which suggests all actions are ultimately self-interested. However, “self-interest” is ambiguous. Helping others, studying, or being kind could be seen as serving one’s interests by providing satisfaction, avoiding guilt, or securing reciprocal benefits. The theory claims beneath stated motivations, self-interest fundamentally drives human behavior.
Argument for Psychological egoism
- All choices that we make are, by definition, free choices
- We always choose is the thing that we most want to do in the situation that we are in
- If we always choose the thing that we most want to do we are always acting in our own
self-interest
crit for psychological egoism
we regularly do things that we don’t want to do. For example we go to the dentist or complete long, boring essays about psychological egoism.
Counter crit for psychological egoism
However the psychological egoist would reply that you are doing these things out of self-interest, just self-interest over a longer term. For example I want to have teeth that don’t hurt so I will suffer the dentist for my long term self-interest.
Strong crit for psychological egoism
Let’s imagine a person
called Jasmine jumping in front of a car to stop it hitting a group of children, and another person: Jeremy pushing a fat stranger in front of a car to stop it hitting his wife. If psychological egoism is correct both these acts are equally self-interested. DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT by some desire to be good
Another strong crit
psychological
A second strong criticism comes from Palmer who points out that psychological egoists have misunderstood the relationship between what we want and the happiness we get, when we get what we want.
We think like this: I want a pie I eat a pie I am happy. I want (comes first) a pie then I get what I want then I’m happy.
We don’t think like this: I want to be happy so I’ll eat a pie I am happy
Argument for Ethical egoism
we all know our own self-interest better than anyone else, so rather than helping anyone else we should focus exclusively on our own happiness. If we all do this it works out in society’s best interest.
Another argument for ethical egoism
The only thing that we are powerfully sure of is the reality of our own individuality. Our own understanding of our own needs and desires. It is the only only thing that we can be truly certain of. What people call altruism is the sacrifice of your own needs to others. So we should ignore any demand to be altruistic and take our own individuality seriously and be full ethical egoists.
By ayn rand
Ethical egoism crit
The problem is that Ayn Rand presents our options as being a choice between sacrificing ourselves or being an ethical egoist, when sometimes we might sacrifice a little for another good, and at other times what’s in our interest might also be good. Presenting all of life as it’s a choice between living in acknowledgement of our individuality and sacrificing our individuality to help the weak, is just a caricature of how we actually live.
Another crit (similar to psychological)
it is a mistake to assume that because we benefit from an act, that this is the reason for the act.
