Egoism's Plausibility

Is Egoism Plausible?

Reasoning as an egoist I will probably reject plagiarism because the act is probably not in my long-term best interests. Egoism is a useful ethical theory in that it provides clear answers to ethical questions and has a powerful response to anyone who asks, Why should I be moral? I should be moral because being moral will get me what I want. This line of reasoning may seem helpful for making personal decisions about which lab to join or whether to cheat.

Nonetheless, as an ethical theory, egoism seems implausible when compared to commonsense morality. Commonsense morality holds that from an ethical point of view, other people’s interests count as well as our own in figuring out what we ought to do. The central problem in ethics can be characterized as figuring out how to balance our own interests against the interests of others.

Egoism claims that the interests of others have no intrinsic value and should carry no weight in figuring out what it is rational right to do or how a person ought to live. According to egoism, we should be concerned with the interests of others only to the extent that such a concern is an instrument or means for advancing our own interests – for example, because of the benefits we each receive from an effective scheme of cooperation, the benefits we get from having a reputation for caring for others, or the pleasure received (or guilt avoided) from doing something good for other people.

Let us try to formulate a principle (some might call this a simple theory) of ethics based on egoism.

EE: An act is right if and only if, among the feasible alternatives, it best promotes the agent’s own interests.

Since this principle challenges commonsense morality, we will place that the burden of proof on the defender of EE to show that it is a reasonable principle. Why would anyone accept EE as a principle of ethics?

To answer this question, we must compare EE with a similar principle with which it is often confused.

PE: Each person acts always to promote her own happiness or maximize her own pleasure.

Some people believe that PE and EE are equivalent, but this is a mistake. PE is an empirical or psychological claim about how people do behave. EE is a normative or ethical claim about how people ought to behave. (Thus, EE for “ethical egoism” and PE for “psychological egoism.”)

PE and EE are not equivalent, but they may be related. If PE is true, and if we accept the assumption that “ought implies can” (i.e., that ethics cannot require us to do things that it is impossible for us to do – including things that are logically impossible, physically impossible, or psychologically impossible), then we would have a good reason to accept EE. This is probably the strongest argument in favor of EE. Essentially, it says that we are all egoists by nature, so ethics cannot expect us to behave in ways that are contrary to human nature.

Thus, we need to examine PE. Is it a plausible claim? PE says that people never act on motives other than self-interest. This means that people are never fully (or primarily) motivated to act out of love or sympathy for another person or out of a sense of duty. Think about it: Nobody is ever motivated to act out of concern or love for anyone else; Nobody is ever motivated to act out of sense of duty. Such claims seem obviously false and counter to ordinary experience. Why would anybody believe them?

PE might seem more attractive by pointing out that whenever anyone acts freely, without coercion, he does what he most wants to do. Suppose I voluntarily help another person in need. It must be the case that my desire to help that other person is at that time my strongest desire. And if I satisfy my strongest desire, then aren’t I acting to promote my own happiness after all? Isn’t happiness (in part) just the satisfaction of my desires?

There is a lot of confusion contained in this line of reasoning. It may be true that whenever anyone acts voluntarily, she does what she most wants to do, but this is not identical to promoting her happiness or pleasure. The truth in this claim may be stated as follows:

TE: Each person always acts to satisfy his or her strongest desire.

TE (for “tautological egoism”) may be true, but it is a trivial or non-interesting truth, which means that it cannot be used to support a substantial psychological claim. TE says only that when anyone acts, she does whatever she most wants to do. This is trivial because it is tantamount to a definition of action; it doesn’t say whether the objects of her desires are always her own interests rather than sometimes being a concern for the interests of others, a sense of duty, or some other altruistic aim. PE is an interesting claim, because it says that the object of any person’s aims or desires is always that person’s own happiness or wellbeing. If we have any reason to believe that PE is true, it would have to be based on something other than an appeal to TE.

A defender of PE might at this point claim that when we act for the sake of another person, or when we act from a sense of duty, our true motivation is the pleasure we get from doing what we believe to be the right thing to do. We feel good when we think we’ve acted altruistically or dutifully, and this “halo effect” is the true motivation of our acting. It is really self-interest that motivates us in the end. The defender of PE might add that we may also be trying to avoid guilt that we would expect to feel if we fail to do what we believe to be our duty or fail to act out of sympathy for another being.

There are two things to say in response to this kind of argument.

First, we can acknowledge that it is natural to feel pleasure or satisfaction in response to doing what we believe to be right, e.g., helping a stranger in need or acting honorably in difficult circumstances. And it is natural to feel guilt or shame when we fail to do what we believe to be right. But isn’t this evidence that what we believe to be right and wrong is not what EE claims to be right and wrong? It seems odd and is not at all obvious that we would experience satisfaction or guilt in response to acting or failing to act in ways that aim to increase our own happiness. So rather than providing a foundation for EE, this argument in defense of PE, somewhat ironically, seems to undermine the plausibility of EE, or else it suggests that the typical human agent is psychologically confused.

Second, a bit of reflection should lead us to conclude that this defense of PE is simply highly implausible. I cannot prove conclusively that this defense of PE is wrong: it is not logically incoherent or anything like that. But just a bit of reflection should convince us that it is implausible. Think about routine, simple acts of kindness or unremarkable acts in response to a sense of duty. You write a thank you note for a gift received; you hold a door open for an elderly man; you cut short your coffee break in order to return to your lab because you promised a colleague you would meet her at a certain time; you stay up late, although you are exhausted, to make a Birthday cake for a good friend; etc. PE claims that in each of these (and in all other) cases, your real or actual motivation is your own happiness or pleasure. It is far more plausible to believe that in many such cases, the actor will not feel pleasure at all. These acts might more naturally seem a bit of a burden.

If sincere proponents of PE deny that people are ever motivated in these altruistic or dutiful ways, then they need to provide evidence for this claim. We know of no such evidence. Rather, we think the defenders of PE (and there are many of them) are in the grip of a psychological or ethical theory that causes them to leave common sense behind. In the absence of better arguments, we should reject PE. And if we do not accept the truth of PE, then the idea that EE might nevertheless be defended as a correct ethical theory is even more implausible.

This page written by Douglas MacLean.