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Psychological Egoism

Abstract:  Psychological egoism, the view that people act solely in their own interest, is defined and shown not to be a meaningful ethical philosophy. Psychological egoism is distinguished from ethical egoism.

“is” verses “ought,”
“fact” verses “value,” and
“descriptive” verses “normative.”

1. Psychological egoism is the empirical doctrine that the determining motive of every voluntary action is a desire for one's own welfare.
   
   This descriptive claim holds that acting in one's own interest is not necessarily acting selfishly (q.v., below), but the welfare or other persons of significance only in so far as it affects one's own interest.
   
   On this view, even though all actions are regarded as self-interested actions, the egoist readily points out that people usually try to conceal the determining motives for their actions because such concealment is usually in their self-interest.
   
   
   1. Psychological egoism is a descriptive theory resulting from observations from human behavior. As such, it can only be a true empirical theory if there are no exceptions. In science, a purported law only needs one disconfirming instance to disprove it.
      
      
   2. Psychological egoism makes no claim as to how one should act. That all persons seek their self-interest on this theory is a purported fact, and this belief is viewed by the psychological egoist as nonmoral and behaviorally verifiable.
      
      
      
2. Ethical egoism is the normative or prescriptive doctrine that each individual should seek as an end only that individual's own welfare. The idea here is that an individual's own welfare is the only thing that is ultimately valuable for that individual.
   
   
   
   1. Ethical egoism does not claim that all persons, in fact, seek their own self-interest; ethical egoism only claims that we should or ought seek our self-interest, even though all persons might not do so.
      
      
   2. If ethical egoism is to be regarded as a theory, it must be universalized to hold for all persons.
      
      

1. Actions in self-interest are not necessarily selfish actions
   
   For example, it is in your self-interest to obey the law, to exercise, and to be educated, but no one would claim that it is selfish for you to do so.
   
   
2. Actions in self-interest and actions for the interest of others are not exclusive categories of action.
   
   That is, it is false that every action is done from either self-interest or other-regarding motives. Some people smoke or eat too much, and these actions are not clearly in either category of actions.
   
   
3. Actions in self-interest are not necessarily incompatible with the interest of others.
   
   For example, it is in your self-interest for everyone to be happy.
   
   Cf., Adam Smith's notion of the “invisible hand” as a version of rational psychological egoism:

   “The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants; and thus, without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.”
   
   [Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London: A. Strahan et al., 1792), 466.]

   Note, as well, if you are to help others, you must first be in a position to do so. I.e., in many instances, you have to help yourself first to obtain the resources and the knowledge of how to help others in ways that are appreciated and needed.
   
   

1. Psychological egoism as an empirical theory commits the fallacy of hasty generalization or converse accident. The descriptive psychological law that all persons act from the motive of self-interest is false because there are many disconfirming instances.
   
   Here are five situations which falsify the theory of psychological egoism.
   
   
   
   1. Many people choose and continue injurious habits such as smoking, worrying, or of other kinds of self-defeating behaviors.
      
      
   2. Many people do their duty when their self-interest lies elsewhere. Many people will help someone in need without thinking of self-gain. Many people will follow religious precepts without seeking personal benefit.
      
      
   3. Many people will react in such a manner that their action is done for the “heck of it.” I.e., their are actions done precisely because the actions are not in their self-interest. It is sometimes said we “cut off our nose to spite our face” when we are ineffectually self-destructive.
      
      
      The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky writes:

      “And what if it so happens that a man's advantage, sometimes, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous.
      
      [Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground trans. Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Random House,1993), Pt. VII.]

      Overwhelming depressive and anxious distress can lead to self-harm and self-injury.
      
      
   4. Some people will intentionally act against their self-interest in order to act in accordance with their conscience. They do what's right even though they know they will not personally benefit from the action.
      
      
   5. Almost everyone will act against their short-term self-interest in order to obtain a greater long-term self interest. Students will stay up all night to complete a term paper in anticipation of an grade which is in their long-term interest, even though the short-term effects are disadvantageous (loss of sleep, lack of attention in class, altered circadian cycle, and so forth).
      
      
      
2. If psychological egoism is claimed to have no disconfirming instances on the basis of how the term is defined, then this claim turns out to be a nonempirical claim — i.e. it's tautologous reasoning.
   
   
   
   1. By the way psychological egoism is defined, all possible counter-examples to the view have been ruled out in advance. Consider the following example of how this comes about:

      Suppose a soldier falls on a grenade in order to save the lives of his tactical unit. The psychological egoist would have to say that this action must have been in the dead soldier's interest, or, otherwise, the soldier would not sacrificed his life.
      
      How can the action of killing oneself be in one's own interest? We would have to conclude something like the soldier believed sacrificing his life was in his own interest. Perhaps his dying was preferable to his having to live the rest of his life with regret. Or perhaps he did so because he knew he would be thought of as a hero and be remembered as such.

      Notice how no matter what kind of action is set forth as a possible exception to the generalization, we can always rationalize that the action was a self-interested one.
      
      
   2. Hence, because there is no empirical test to confirm an action not in self-interest, the claim is empty of factual content. The class “self-interested actions” is said to be extensionally isomorphic with the class of actions. In other words, the claim that all actions are self-interested actions (i.e., the claim of psychological egoism) is logically equivalent to the claim that “All actions are actions.”
      
      
   3. Since any possible counter-example is assimilated to “self-interested actions" (even self-defeating behaviors, q.v, the Dostoevsky quotation above from Notes from Underground) the claim of the psychological egoist is trivial. For “self-interested actions” to be a meaningful class of actions, we would have to know what kind of actions aren't self-interested actions.
      
      

1. In the most selfish act we can always rationalize an altruistic motive. E.g., littering can be viewed as done as a public service in order to help unskilled workers keep their jobs.
   
   
2. Pari passu with psychological egoism, if we can't find the altruistic motive in all actions, it is claimed we just haven't thought deeply enough.
   
   
   

“A contradiction to my theory of dreams produced by another of my women patients (the cleverest of all my dreamers) was resolved … namely that the nonfulfillment of one wish meant the fulfillment of another. One day I had been explaining to her that dreams are fulfillments of wishes. Next day she brought me a dream in which she was traveling down with her mother-in-law to the place in the country where they were to spend their holidays together. Now I knew that she had violently rebelled against the idea of spending the summer near her mother-in-law and that a few days earlier she had successfully avoided the propinquity she dreaded by engaging rooms in a far distant resort. And now her dream had undone the solution she had wished for; was not this the sharpest contradiction of my theory that in dreams wishes are fulfilled? No doubt; and it was only necessary to follow the dreams logical consequence in order to arrive at its interpretation.  The dream showed that I was wrong.  Thus it was her wish that I might be wrong, and her dream showed that wish fulfilled.”

[Sigmund Freud, The Interpretations of Dreams (New York: Avon, 1966), 185 (italics original).]

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