Psychological Egoism

1 Morality and self-interest

Morality is an apparently demanding business. At least on some occasions what we are required to do by morality is not what we want to do or judge to be in or own best interests. In particular, morality requires that I take seriously the claims of other beings, not only those beings like my family and friends and my cat, whom I happen to quite like, whom I want to help and not to harm, but beings that I might have no particular affection for at all. No wonder then that the denial that there are or could be any such demands is a fairly popular one. In the next two sessions we will look at other arguments which seek to undermine those parts of common-sense morality which apparently require that we lay aside self-interest: the argument from psychological egoism and the argument from ethical egoism.

2 Psychological Egoism

The argument I want to look at today is the argument from psychological egoism. The argument, which takes various forms, appears very simple. The basic idea is that people are only ever really motivated by selfish desires, that the only goal one is capable of pursuing is one's own self interest. Thus if morality requires us to act in unselfish ways then it simply comes into head-on conflict with a basic immutable fact of human nature: that we are essentially selfish beings. Sometimes people may appear to act for the sake of others, but in reality they are really just promoting the interests of others purely as a means to furthering their own self-interest.

Here are three arguments which reconstruct some fairly popular ideas associated with psychological egoism. The first two arguments are a priori, and seek to establish that we are selfish simply on the basis of a consideration of the nature of action and motivation. The third is a posteriori, relying on the theory of evolution.

Argument 1 The argument from pleasure

Premise 1

Whenever you get what you want you derive satisfaction.

therefore

(*) Whenever you do anything you are doing it in order to experience the satisfaction you derive from getting what you want.
Premise 2

If you do something in order to derive satisfaction from it, you are motivated solely by self-interest.

therefore (from (*) and 2):

Whenever you do anything you are motivated solely by self-interest.

Argument 2 The argument from motivation and desire

Premise 1
Every action of mine has to be something I bring about and I can do that only if I am, all things considered, favorable to it: that is I want to do it.

Premise 2

If, when I act, I am doing something I want to do, then I am seeking the satisfaction of that want.

therefore

Whenever I act I am always and necessarily seeking my own satisfaction.

3 Desires: satisfaction and fulfillment

These two argument trade on an ambiguity in the notion of the satisfaction of desire.

We begin by noting that every desire is directed at some state of affairs. If I want to eat a chocolate ice-cream, the state of affairs at which my desire is directed is Graham eats chocolate ice-cream. That is the state of affairs that I want. Suppose that state of affairs comes about: Graham does eat a chocolate ice-cream. Then my want has been fulfilled. I got what I wanted. Since eating chocolate ice-cream is something that usually gives me a bit of a buzz, the fulfillment of that desire also produces satisfaction - the pleasant release from nagging desires that fulfillment usually brings about. But such satisfaction is different from fulfillment. A desire can be fulfilled without being satisfied and a desire can be satisfied with being fulfilled. (Note: I am introducing this terminology to make a distinction. I do not claim that this is what the words really mean in common language. Users of the terms generally conflate these two meanings.)

3.1 Fulfillment without Satisfaction

3.2 Satisfaction without Fulfillment

Suppose what I really want is that my funeral be a huge affair, attended by lots of friends, who will all say nice things about me. I spend many an hour dwelling fondly on this possibility, or fretting about the possibility of a bleak unattended funeral at which the few attendees just go through the motions. But I am not going to leave this to chance. I rush around getting commitments from all my friends that they attend. And I force them to promise that they will say some nice things about me. They make these promises, or at least go through the verbal motions, but they think I am weird and they have no intention of keeping them. Indeed, I alienate every one of my friends with this frenetic pestering of them. However I am totally fooled by their verbal agreements. I sit back fully confident that my desire will be appropriately fulfilled on the day in question, and I derive immense satisfaction from that confidence. Then one day I am run over by a bus. My funeral turns out just the way I had feared. My lifelong desire was not fulfilled, but I gained all the satisfaction of release from it upon coming to believe that it would be fulfilled.

3.3 The Lesson

Take the second argument. What an act is aimed at is the fulfillment of the desire that motivates it. Satisfaction typically accompanies fulfillment, but not necessarily as we have seen. The two arguments conflate satisfaction with fulfillment. If I want to save a stranger from drowning, say, and that desire motivates me to swim to his rescue, then what I am aiming at is the state of affairs in which the stranger is saved from drowning. I am not aiming at my own satisfaction. Of course, if I pull it off, then I might also experience satisfaction, but that does not show that that was what I was aiming at. So the second premise of the second argument is true if "satisfaction" really means fulfillment. But then the conclusion is false since it is clear that "my own satisfaction" really does mean satisfaction. The argument turns on an equivocation in the notion of satisfaction.

Similar remarks apply to the first argument. Premise 1 is true only in the sense of fulfillment. If "satisfaction" is taken to mean satisfaction then the first premise is just false and the argument is unsound. Furthermore the subsidiary conclusion (*) simply does not follow from premise 1 in any case. Even if I am satisfied when I get what I want, it does not follow that I was acting in order to get that satisfying buzz.

4 An evolutionary argument

Suppose one accepts the evolutionary account of our existence. Evolution obviously hardwires in certain traits, and it does so, presumably, because they are good for our survival. Now compulsive altruists will be continually sacrificing themselves for the good of others. So compulsive altruism will not have a very high survival value. By contrast, those beings that are looking out for number one will have a much better survival rate. So egoism, rather than altruism, seems to be what evolution would program into all beings. Evolution thus supports the thesis that we are basically motivated by our own self-interest.

This argument looks more promising than the two previous arguments. Admittedly it relies on the theory of evolution, and so is only as good as that theory is (that is: pretty damn good!). But is it valid? Would evolution necessarily throw up egoistically motivated beings?

Here we must be careful. The Psychological Egoist says that we are always and everywhere motivated by pure self-interest. The thesis is thus false if there is just one case somewhere in the history of the universe in which someone acts from some motive other than pure self-interest. The denial of Psychological egoism is thus not the doctrine that we are all, always and everywhere, motivated by the desire to help others. It is the doctrine that sometime, somewhere, someone is motivated by the desire to help others. It is not that altruism is always our motive for acting, but rather that it is possible for it to be a motive for acting, and that sometimes it is in fact the motive.

The question to answer now is this: would evolution ever favor the survival of creatures who sometimes act altruistically. The answer is: YES. Self-sacrifice can be good for survival. Not, of course, for the survival of the individual altruistic organism, but for the survival of the genes that it is carrying. Thus motherhood is a very risky business for any individual, and involves grave dangers and sacrifices. Motherhood clearly involves acting altruistically. Further, it is hard to deny that the altruistic desires on which mothers (of our species and others) act are genetically programmed. That mothers have these altruistic desires is clearly a good evolutionary strategy for a species, or for a bunch of genes. Altruistic mothers have a better chance of passing on their genes to offspring than totally selfish mothers who have no desire to sacrifice themselves for their offspring. So the argument from evolution is just unsound. A degree of altruism may be good for survival - for the survival of a genetic package - and thus may well be promoted by the evolutionary process.

5 Conclusion

The arguments for psychological egoism are rather weak. It may well be possible for people to act in ways that are not purely self interested, as morality apparently requires. Next time we will look at another challenge to commonsense morality from egoism - the challenge of Ethical Egoism.