Psychological Egoism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Psychological Egoism" (1958) is a paper by Joel Feinberg on psychological egoism. The paper was prepared for the benefit of students at Brown.
Incipit:
- 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 back. 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?”
Summary
Feinberg seeks to refute the philosophical theory of psychological egoism, which in his opinion is fallacious. So far as he can tell, there are four primary arguments for it:
- "Every action of mine is prompted by motives or desires or impulses which are my motives and not somebody else's."
- "[W]hen a person gets what he wants, he characteristically feels pleasure."
- "Often we deceive ourselves into thinking that we desire something fine or noble when what we really want is to be thought well of by others or to be able to congratulate ourselves, or to be able to enjoy the pleasures of a good conscience [...]. Indeed, it is a simple matter to explain away all allegedly unselfish motives [....]" He quotes Lucius F. C. Garvin to this effect: "Once the conviction that selfishness is universal finds root in a person's mind, it is very likely to burgeon out in a thousand corroborating generalizations. It will be discovered that a friendly smile is really only an attempt to win an approving nod from a more or less gullible recording angel; that a charitable deed is, for its performer, only an opportunity to congratulate himself on the good fortune or the cleverness that enables him to be charitable; that a public benefaction is just plain good business advertising. It will emerge that gods are worshipped only because they indulge men's selfish fears, or tastes, or hopes; that the "golden rule" is no more than an eminently sound success formula; that social and political codes are created and subscribed to only because they serve to restrain other men's egoism as much as one's own, morality being only a special sort of "racket" or intrigue using weapons of persuasion in place of bombs and machine guns. Under this interpretation of human nature, the categories of commercialism replace those of disinterested service and the spirit of the horse trader broods over the face of the earth."
- "Psychological egoists often notice that moral education and the inculcation of manners usually utilise what Bentham calls the 'sanctions of pleasure and pain.' Children are made to acquire the civilising virtues only by the method of enticing rewards and painful punishments. Much the same is true of the history of the race. People in general have been inclined to behave well only when it is made plain to them that there is 'something in it for them.' Is it not then highly probable that just such a mechanism of human motivation as Bentham describes must be presupposed by our methods of moral education?"
Feinberg observes that such arguments for psychological egoism are rarely mounted on the basis of empirical proof when, being psychological, they very well ought to. The opening argument he dubs a tautology from which "nothing whatever concerning the nature of my motives or the objective of my desires can possibly follow [...]. It is not the genesis of an action or the origin of its motives which makes it a 'selfish' one, but rather the 'purpose' of the act or the objective of its motives; not where the motive comes from (in voluntary actions it always comes from the agent) but what it aims at determines whether or not it is selfish."
Similarly flawed in Feinberg's opinion is the second argument. Just because all successful endeavour engenders pleasure does not necessarily entail that pleasure is the sole objective of all endeavour. He uses William James's analogy to illustrate this fallacy: although an ocean liner always consumes coal on its trans-Atlantic voyages, it is unlikely that the sole purpose of these voyages is coal consumption.
The third argument, unlike the first two, contains no non sequitur that Feinberg can see. He nevertheless adjudges that such a sweeping generalisation is unlikely to be true.
In the final argument, Feinberg sees a paradox. The only way to achieve happiness, he believes, is to forget about it, but psychological egoists hold that all human endeavour, even that which achieves happiness, is geared towards happiness. Feinberg poses a thought experiment in which a character named Jones is apathetic about all but the pursuit of his own happiness. Because he has no means to achieve that end, however, "[i]t takes little imagination [...] to see that Jones's one desire is bound to be frustrated." To pursue only happiness, then, is to fail utterly to achieve it.
