Ethical theories Essay Example For Students

Ethical theories Essay Psychological Egoism and Ethical EgoismPsychological Egoism Psychological egoism is the claim that people always act selfishly, to foster their own self-interest or happiness. Psychological hedonism is the claim that people always act to attain their own pleasure and avoid pain. Psychological hedonism is also called the pleasure principle. In these notes, Ill give arguments against psychological egoism. However, the same arguments apply against psychological hedonism. Is psychological egoism a fact (a true claim)? If it is true, ethics is in trouble, because most traditional ethical systems demand at least occasional altruism (unselfish behavior). If psychological egoism were true, altruism would not be possible. We would have to explain apparent (what appears as) altruism as self-interest. For example, we wouldnt say Mother Teresa is altruistic; wed say that shes self-interested. Shes using the poor to attain her own long-term spiritual goals. In fact, people who think psychological egoism is true (such as Thomas Hobbes and Ayn Rand) often use it as a premise in an argument to deny the validity of traditional ethics altogether: 1. (Psychological egoism): People always and invariably act to foster their own self-interest. 2. Traditional ethical systems demand at least occasional altruism (non-self-interested behavior). 3. In demanding altruism, traditional ethical systems are demanding the impossible. (They might as well demand that people fly.) 4. Any ethical systems that demands the impossible is silly and stupid. 5. Traditional ethical systems are silly and stupid. 6. We should adopt a more realistic system, ethical egoism, which demands that we pursue self-interest. But psychological egoism is a surprisingly weak claim. If it is false, then the above argument against ethics is unsound. Here are some reasons not to take psychological egoism seriously. Critique #1: Psychological egoism is not true, on face value, in a simple, naive sense. That is, its easy to think of counterexamples cases that falsify the generalization that all human acts are selfish, i.e., cases of people acting unselfishly. It certainly appears that people sometimes act in ways that are not in accord with their own interests: the soldier who falls on the grenade to save his buddies, the person who runs into the busy street to save a child about to be run over, etc. Psychological egoism is only true if you adopt what Rachels calls the strategy of redefining motives. That is, you insist on claiming that people are really acting selfishly even when they appear to be acting unselfishly. But this strategy has two problems. First, if all human actions are self-interested, then self-interested actions become, by definition, identical with actions. That is, these two expressions denote exactly the same set of actions, and thus are substitutable for each other. It then becomes impossible to disprove the claim that all human actions are self-interested, because the claim, after substitution, becomes a vacuous tautology: All human actions are human actions. Try to imagine what it would take to disprove the claim that all human actions are self-interested. The claim would be definitely disproved if we could come up with one human action that wasnt self-interested, i.e., a counterexample. But if by definition all human actions are self-interested, there can be no possible counterexample. If there are no possible counterexamples, then the claim all human acts are self-interested is not falsifiable. If the claim is not falsifiable, then according to the verificationist criterion, the claim is meaningless. So the claim all human acts are self-interested is either tautologous (true by definition, and therefore uninteresting, like All circles are round) or unfalsifiable (and therefore meaningless). Besides, even if the egoist still insists on claiming that all human acts are self-interested, the egoist must deal with the puzzling fact that some acts appear to be non-self-interested. Now the anti-egoist could say, Okay, I still think you egoists are wrong to say there are no unselfish acts. But even if there arent any, your position is no threat to ethics. There are still the self-interested selfish acts and the self-interested acts that appear to be unselfish. Saying all human acts are self-interested doesnt make that empirical distinction go away. And that empirical distinction is where ethics can start. Well grant for the sake of argument that all human acts are self-interested, and then simply say that ethics sometimes demands that people perform those self-interested but seemingly unselfish acts. The claim that all human acts are self-interested is no problem, as long as some acts appear altruistic. And they do. My Worst Relationship Essay5. Its not clear how an ethical egoist would act as a moral advisor or moral judge in cases where the egoists happiness is involved. Suppose I am an ethical egoist, so I believe that everyone ought to act for his/her own benefit. Say Terry wants to have sex with you, and youre thinking about it, but youre not really sure its a good idea, so you and Terry discuss it. Suppose Terry knows it would be better for you if you didnt sleep with Terry; but Terry also thinks it would be in Terrys interest if you did. Now you ask Terry what you should do. What answer does Terry give, supposing Terry is an ethical egoist? Remember Terrys view is that everyone ought to act to benefit him/herself. Does Terry give you the advice that benefits you or the advice that benefits Terry? 6. Some writers say ethical egoism is ultimately inconsistent. To be inconsistent is to be guilty of self-contradiction. So the argument against egoism is that ethical egoists must ultimately c ontradict themselves. Since self-contradiction is a big problem in logic, showing that someone is guilty of it is an excellent refutation technique. To show that egoists are guilty of self-contradiction, the argument is: suppose everyone were consistently selfish (selfish all the time), and, as often happens in life, some misfortune arises and the egoist now needs the unselfish help of another. If everyone is a consistent egoist, the egoist wont get the help he needs. So in the interests of self-interest, an egoist must reject egoism, at least sometimes; in other words, the egoist must be inconsistent. The egoist really doesnt want everyone to be selfish all the time, because ethical egoism, if adopted universally, would lead to undesirable social consequences. 7. Interestingly, in Egoism and Moral Skepticism, James Rachels argues that ethical egoism is not inconsistent. You can explore that interesting argument yourself. According to Rachels, the best argument against ethical egoism is its unacceptable arbitrariness. The egoist arbitrarily assumes his interests come before those of other people. But as a matter of fact, no one p erson matters that much more than others. Egoism is like racism. Racism assumes that the interests of one race count more than the interests of others, for no good reason (i.e., arbitrarily). Likewise, egoism assumes that the interests of one person count more than the interests of others, for no good reason. How Egoism Might be True Suppose there is some deep sense in which doing what is in your interest happens to be exactly the same as doing whats in the interests of others, such that if you consistently and conscientiously sought your own genuine interest, youd automatically foster the interests of others. Plato thinks this is what would happen in a well-run state. If you believe this and you want to call this ethical egoism, you can, but its now ethical egoism of a much deeper sort. (You could see it as a kind of egoism because youre acting for your own happiness, but its not egoism at all in another sense, because youre happy only if your loved ones interests are fulfilled.) T his deep egoism would also be true if seeking the good of others were, as a matter of fact, the major and most gratifying source of happiness for people. Is it? Note that this question (What makes people happiest?) appears to be empirical, and thus resolvable one way or the other using ordinary methods of observation and experiment. Do you think its really an empirical matter? If it is, what are the facts?