Joel Feinberg

1. Joel Feinberg Psychological Egoism

2. The Doctrine of Psychological Egoism • The doctrine of psychological egoism maintains that the only thing anyone is capable of desiring or pursuing as an end in itself is his or her own self-interest. • Psychological egoism does not deny that people sometimes desire that others be better off. However, they account for this phenomenon by maintaining that one can pursue the happiness of others only if the individual believes that it is a means to their own happiness as an end. • Psychological egoism denies the possibility of altruistic action. What appears altruistic must ultimately satisfy self-interest.

3. The nature of psychological egoism • Psychological egoism is not a normative theory. It is an account of what is the case psychologically. It is a moral psychological account of the individual human agent in the human condition. • It is not a normative account in the sense that it tells us what ought to be the case. It for example, does not maintain that we ought only to pursue what is in our self-interest. Rather, it maintains that by default that is all we can pursue. • Psychological Egoism is to be distinguished from Ethical Egoism, which maintains that we ought to pursue that which is only in our self interest even if we can pursue that which is not in our interest.

4. A Critical Consideration of Psychological Egoism • Suppose that an agent ought to do only that which he can do. So, that we can infer from the fact that one cannot do action A, that one is not obligated to do action A. • Consider the following argument: • Psychological egoism maintains that a person B cannot help another person C if no self-interest on B’s part would be served by helping C. • If B cannot help C when no self-interest of B’s would be served, then B is not obligated to help C when no self interest is served. • Imagine a case, call it drowning, in which C is drowning and B can easily save C, but that no interest of B’s would be served. • In drowning B is not obligated to help C, since he cannot, and what he cannot do he is not obligated to do.

5. The upshot • It may be possible to maintain that psychological egoism is not a normative account of what humans ought to do. • However, it would be a mistake to think that it has no normative implications. • If we maintain the principle of “ought implies can” we are forced to accept the idea that if an agent cannot do action A, then the agent is not obligated to do A. • Psychological egoism has implications for normative ethics via the principle of ought implies can.

6. Psychological Egoistic Hedonism • It is possible to give more than one account of psychological egoism. • This is possible in virtue of the various ways in which one can define ‘self interest’, ‘ultimate motive’, or ‘egoistic concern’. • One classical account is given by Bentham, and it maintains that pleasure is the only final human end, and all humans seek it. • Psychological Egoistic Hedonism maintains that the only human motive is to attain or prolong human pleasure, and avoid or cut short human pain.

7. Support for Psychological Egoistic Hedonism • All actions of an agent stem from their motives and not someone else. For example, even if I save a drowning person, my motive for helping that person must have come from me and not them. For nothing other than my motives can drive me to action. • We get pleasure when ever we get what we want. Thus, pleasure is the ultimate end of all human action. • Self-deception block us from seeing that our real motives are selfish rather than noble. • Moral education is taught through the use of pleasure and pain as a means to modify behavior.

8. Critique: Character of the Arguments • Arguments for psychological egoism must be empirical. The question of whether or not humans can be moved by a motive other than their own cannot be determined by logical argumentation alone.(2) does not logically follow from (1). • Every voluntary action is promoted by a motive of the agent. • Every voluntary action is promoted by a special motive of the agent, which is selfish in character. In general, an informative statement about what actually motivates humans cannot be derived from a trivial statement. Synthetic statements cannot be derived from analytic statements. One cannot learn that John is a bachelor merely from the fact that bachelors are unmarried males.

9. Critique: The Pleasure Argument • Suppose the psychological egoist argues as follows: • In every case in which a person gets what they want they feel pleasure. • So, pleasure is the ultimate end every person seeks. • One could respond by pointing out that there is a fallacy. • We cannot in general infer from the fact that two things are coincident in time (getting what you want and feeling pleasure) that the latter is the motive for all action. • There could be some other motive for all action, and pleasure is simply a by-product.

10. The Case of Lincoln Mr. Lincoln once remarked to a fellow passenger on an old time mud coach that all men were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His fellow-passenger was antagonizing this position when they were passing over a corduroy bridge that spanned a slough. As they crossed this bridge they espied an old razor-backed sow on the bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had got into the slough and were in danger of drowning. As the old coach began to climb the hill, Mr. Lincoln called out, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” Then Mr. Lincoln jumped out, ran back and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and water and placed them on the bank. When he returned, his companion remarked: “Now Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode? “Why, bless your soul Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see.

11. Feinberg’s analysis of the passage • Feinberg says “If Lincoln had cared not a whit for the welfare of the little pigs and their “suffering” mother, but only for his own “peace of mind,” It would be difficult to explain how he could have derived pleasure from helping them. The very fact that he did feel satisfaction as a result of helping the pigs presupposes that he had a pre-existing desire for something other than his own happiness. Then when that desire was satisfied, Lincoln of course derived pleasure. The object of Lincoln’s desire was not pleasure; rather pleasure was the consequence of his pre-existing desire for something else. • Question: Is this the best analysis of the Lincoln case?

12. Critique of Self-Deception • The psychological egoist attempts the following argument: • The many cases in which a person believes that the motive for their action is a desire that is not selfish can be explained by the universal phenomenon of self-deception. • Self-deception, in the sense relevant here, occurs when a person believes their motive for action to be other than a selfish one for some reason that would make them think better of themselves. • So, psychological egoism is not refuted by the presence of individuals that maintain that they believe their desire to be other than selfish. Q: What is the evidence for the claim that everyone is self-deceived about their motives?

13. The paradox of hedonism • The paradox of hedonism rests on the empirical fact that often times the best way to pursue happiness or pleasure is by not pursuing it directly or by thinking about it. • In some instances it is even said that concentration or focusing on getting pleasure is the easiest way to fail to attain it. One must in a sense let pleasure creep up on them in a moment where their mind is focused on something else. • The consequences of the paradox of hedonism for psychological egoism is simply that it would seem that the best way to achieve pleasure is to not directly desire it, but to let it come about as a by-product of desiring something else.

14. The problem of the correlative I • Many words come in pairs: good-bad, left-right, mental-physical. • In order to understand the meaning of one of the terms we at least have to be able to understand the meaning of its correlate. • It might actually be the case that one correlate is never satisfied, but it at least has to be theoretically possible. • For example, even if it turns out that there are no mental states that are non-physical, we can still understand what the possibility of a non-physical mental state would amount to.

15. The problem of the correlative II • The psychological egoist recognizes that ‘selfish’ and ‘unselfish’ are correlated. However, he goes on to argue that all actions are motivated by selfish desires, thus leaving the class of unselfish desires empty. • Now it could empirically turn out that no actions are unselfish. However, the psychological egoist cannot redefine what ‘selfish’ and ‘unselfish’ mean so as to make it inconceivable that any agent can have unselfish desires. • However, this is precisely what happens when the account of human agency is that all actions are done for selfish reasons, and the definition is so closely associated with human motivation.