Psychological and ethical egoism and altruism Flashcards
Why do people behave morally?
motivation, prosocial, antisocial
What is prosocial behavior?
Cooperative, helping
What is psychological egoism?
When all actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest
What is ethical egoism?
When an action is morally right if and only if it maximizes the agent’s self-interest
What is a descriptive claim?
How things happen to be (is)
What is a prescriptive claim?
How things should be (oughT)
What is egoistic behavior?
When an action is ultimately motivated by self interest desires alone (selfish)
What is altruistic behavior?
When an action is ultimately motivated at least in some part, by some other interested desires (selfless)
What is aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis?
When people think that helping is the way of relieving their distress
What is empathy specific reward hypothesis?
People think they will be rewarded for helping
What is empathy specific punishment hypothesis?
People think they will be punished for not helping
What is psychological altruism?
Some actions are ultimately motivated by the interest in (the welfare of) others
The objection from observation (psychological egoism)
- If egoism is true, then no one ever acts in an altruistic way
- People do at least on occasion, act in an altruistic way
- Egoism is false
Argument 1 (psychological egoism)
- All voluntary actions are caused by desires
- If you desire something, then you are interested in that thing
- If you are interested in something, then you desire for that thing is self-interested
- All actions are motivated by self-interest
The argument from absence of evidence (psychological egoism)
- Most of the time people act in an egoistic way
- In the absences of compelling evidence that people sometimes act altruistically, egoism is probably true
- There is no compelling evidence that people ever act altruistically
- Egoism is probably true
What is ethical altruism?
When maximization of an agent’s self interest is neither necessary nor sufficient for the moral rightness of an action
What does it mean to maximize one’s self interest?
To perform the actions which give you the greatest net benefit
The argument from psychological realism (ethical egoism)
- If psychological egoism is true, then all actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest
- If all actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest, then altruistic actions cannot be morally obligatory
- If altruistic actions cannot be morally obligatory, the ethical egoism is true
- Psychological egoism is true
- Ethical egoism is true
The argument from rationality (ethical egoism)
- If you are morally required to do X (X is morally obligatory) then you have good reason to do X
- If you do have good reason to do X, then doing X must promote self interest
- If you are morally required to do X, then doing X must promote self-interest
The objection from paradigm cases (ethical egoism)
- It could maximize one’s self-interest to murder, rape, steal, torture, etc.
- If ethical egoism is true, then an action is morally right if and only if it maximizes the agent’s self-interest
- If ethical egoism is true, then acts of murder, rape, theft, torture, etc. could be morally right
- Murder, rape, theft, torture, etc are morally wrong
- Ethical egoism is false
The objection from rights (ethical egoism)
- If ethical egoism is true, then no one is morally required to respect the rights of others
- Each of us is morally required to respect the rights of others
- Ethical egoism is false
The objection from competing interest (ethical egoism)
- If ethical egoism is correct, then an action is morally required if and only if it maximizes the agent’s self-interest
- The self interest of different agent’s need not be jointly satisfiable
- Ethical egoism sometimes morally requires the impossible
The objection from moral parity (ethical egoism)
- If ethical egoism is true, then each person’s self interest trumps the interest of every other person
- If person x’s self interest trumps the interest of person y, then there must be some morally relevant difference between x and y to justify this difference in priority
- There is no such morally relevant difference
- Ethical egoism is false
