Psychological egoism
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Psychological egoism is the view that we are always motivated by self-interest, even in seeming acts of altruism.
Psychological egoism should be contrasted well with ethical egoism, which is the view that we always ought to be motivated by self-interest and disregard the interests of the community.
Max Stirner is known for holding a psychological egoism view of the human psyche.
Some versions of psychological egoism are resistant to easy falsification by empirical evidence, because they claim that apparent acts of selflessness are simply the acts of individuals seeking a "warm fuzzy glow" or following social incentives to be seen to be altruistic.
But very strong arguments can be made from thought experiment to suggest that at least some individuals are very genuinely altruistic. Thought experiments can rule out forms of selfishness which could not be controlled for in an ordinary psychological experiment. These arguments make psychological egoism extremely difficult to defend.
There are two common arguments against psychological egoism. The first is that the distinction between altruistically and selfishly motivated actions is an essential one, and that the concept of egoism (and altruism) must take into account the motivation of a person in order to have a meaningful usage.
The stronger argument against psychological egoism is that it fails to distinguish between actions that are in fact beneficial or harmful to an individual. For example, a drug addict might enjoy the immediate effect of his actions, while he is in fact destroying his life. (This kind of evaluation requires an objective moral standard to determine whether an action is beneficial or harmful to one's life.)
Another criticism is that psychological egoism amounts to the tautology, "You can only most want that which you most want" and is therefore vacuous.
See also
External links
- Egoism (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/egoism.htm) in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Egoism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/) in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy