Question

n 500 words or more (no less), explain the difference between psychological egoism and enlightened ethical egoism.

You may use examples, but you will still need to include a full scholarly definition of each, with commentary. You may use any scholarly source other than a dictionary, to include online video lectures. You may use Wikipedia as a starting point, but be aware that Wikipedia is not a scholarly source and therefore can never be quoted in your paper. You will need to include inline citations in your essay (last name, date, pg#) and must cite any sources in the reference list of your essay. If you include an inline citation, there must be a corresponding entry in the reference list and vice versa.

***Your reference list does not need to include all the items on your annotated bibliography, and should only include those it

Answer 1

Egoism can be descriptive or a normative position. Ppsychological egoism, the most famous descriptive position, claims that each person has but one ultimate aim: hett own welfare. This allows for the action that fails to maximize perceived selfi-interest, but rules out the sort of behaviour psychological egoists like to target-such as altruistic behaviour or motivation by thoughts of duty alone.

It allows for weakness of will, since in weakness of will cases I am still aiming at my own welfare; I am weak in that I do not act as I aim. And it allows for aiming at things other than one’s welfare, such as helping others, where these things are a means to one’s welfare.

Psychological egoism is supported by our frequent observation of self-interested behavior. Apparently altruistic action is often revealed to be self-interested. And we typically motivate people by appealing to their self-interest (through, for example, punishments and rewards).

A common objection to psychological egoism, made famously by Joseph Butler, is that I must desire things other than my own welfare in order to get welfare. Say I derive welfare from playing hockey. Unless I desired, for its own sake, to play hockey, I would not derive welfare from playing. Or say I derive welfare from helping others. Unless I desired, for its own sake, that others do well, I would not derive welfare from helping them. Welfare results from my action, but cannot be the only aim of my action.

2. Ethical Egoism

Ethical egoism claims that I morally ought to perform some action if and only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest. (There are possibilities other than maximization. One might, for example, claim that one ought to achieve a certain level of welfare, but that there is no requirement to achieve more. Ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts, such as rules or character traits. Since these variants are uncommon, and the arguments for and against them are largely the same as those concerning the standard version, I set them aside.)

It is unlikely that this argument proves that ethical egoism generates all of the standard duties to others. For the argument depends on the ability of others to cooperate with me or attack me should I fail to cooperate. In dealings with others who lack these abilities, the egoist has no reason to cooperate. The duties to others found in standard moral theories are not conditional in this way. I do not, for example, escape a duty to save a drowning person, when I can easily do so, just because the drowning person (or anyone watching) happens never to be able to offer fruitful cooperation or retaliation.

So far a number of arguments for ethical egoism have been considered. There are a number of standard arguments against it.

G. E. Moore argued that ethical egoism is self-contradictory. If I am an egoist, I hold that I ought to maximize my good. I deny that others ought to maximize my good (they should maximize their own goods). But to say that x is “my good” is just to say that my possessing x is good. (I cannot possess the goodness.) If my possession of x is good, then I must hold that others ought to maximize my possession of it. I both deny and am committed to affirming that others ought to maximize my good. (Sometimes Moore suggests instead that “my good” be glossed as “x is good and x is mine.” This does not yield the contradiction above, since it does not claim that my possession of x is good. But it yields a different contradiction: if x is good, everyone ought to maximize it wherever it appears; egoists hold that I ought to maximize x only when it appears in me.)

Conclusion

Prospects for psychological egoism are dim. Even if some version escapes recent empirical arguments, there seems little reason, once the traditional philosophical confusions have been noted, for thinking it is true. At best it is a logical possibility, like some forms of scepticism.

Ethical egoists do best by defending rational egoism instead.

Rational egoism faces objections from arbitrariness, Nagel, Parfit, and evolutionary debunking. These worries are not decisive. Given this, and given the historical popularity of rational egoism, one might conclude that it must be taken seriously. But there is at least reason to doubt the historical record. Some philosophers stressed the connection beween moral action and self-interest because they were concerned with motivation. It does not follow that self-interest is for them a normative standard. And many philosophers may have espoused rational egoism while thinking that God ensured that acting morally maximized one’s self-interest. (Some were keen to stress that virtue must pay in order to give God a role.) Once this belief is dropped, it is not so clear what they would have said (Shaver 1999 ch. 4).

Reference list entry: Shaver, Robert, "Egoism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/egoism/>.

Note: Do not include the following in the answer it's only for further reference - https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=egoism