Philosophy Exam 2: Famine Relief and Psychological and Ethical Egoism

Psychological Egoism

The ultimate goal or purpose of each person’s actions is his or her own self-interest; telling you how people actually are

Ethical Egoism

The ultimate goal or purpose of each person’s actions ought to be the pursuit of his or her own self-interest; telling you how to live your life

What is Self-Interest?

Pleasure (and the avoidance of pain)

Altruistic Actions

Benefitting someone else or their own self-interest regardless of whether it benefits yourself or not (donating to famine relief anonymously)

Sometimes, pleasure can be a byproduct, not the reason for why you do something

Psychological Egoism and Altruistic Actions

If you believe in psychological egoism, then there are no altruistic actions

Ethical Egoism and Altruistic Actions

People should never do altruistic actions, they are wrong

Relationship of Psych Egoism and Ethical

Both are independent of the other; you can accept both or reject both—> could accept one and not the other

Universal Claim of Psych Egoism; How to refute?

About every human being and all of their actions; the way to refute is one person doing something altruistic

Can you help others and be moral with Psych Egoism?

Yes. You can still help others while serving your own self-interest. If accepting ethical egoism too, it’s morally right to not do those helpful things altruistically

If psych egoism is true, why do we have a moral code and why do we perform moral actions, sometimes at the expense of our immediate pleasure and gratification?

In our self-interest to have a moral code; better to do these things with moral code in mind to avoid chaos & anarchy (Glaucon believes in this)

Glaucon’s Argument for Psych Egoism

Ring of Gyges

Find an invisible ring and uses it to seduce the king’s wife, plot to kill the king, kill the king, and become the next king.

Without oversight of society, we’d commit just about anything we’d want to (if no punishment was threatened).

Refute against Gyges example; 2

It’s unclear whether people would do the same exact thing.

The person who finds it does only good things (altruistic purposes)

Contemporary Argument for Psych Egoism

When a person gets what he wants, he characteristically feels pleasure. What we really want is our own pleasure and we pursue other things only as a means

Feinberg’s Criticism of Contemp. Argument (Argument from Feelings)

Driving a car and there’s exhaust so the purpose is to create exhaust. This is not the main purpose; exhaust is a byproduct of driving the car.

Objections to Psychological Egoism; 3

Extreme Heroism, Extreme Hatred, Objection from Love

Extreme Heroism; Reasons for doing this Egoistically

Jumping on a grenade to save other people

Avoid guilt/remorse, Fame, Avoid a worse death, Avoid worse casualties, Avoid more misery, Better rewards in afterlife

Extreme Hatred; Egoistic Reasons; Feinberg’s reason

Revenge on someone who is mean to your friend or you

Receiving pleasure by beating someone up

Feinberg would say the byproduct is pleasure not the goal (goal is to seek justice for that extreme hatred)

Objection from Love

3 parts

1) If psych egoism is true, then there would never be any genuine caring and love

2) There is genuine caring and love

3) Therefore, psych egoism is false

What is our ordinary moral outlook not? Give an example

Ethical egoism. Our self-interest will conflict with what is morally something we should or shouldn’t do. 

Ex. Not killing a lover even if he or she will expose you to your spouse and you easily can get rid of that person for good without getting caught

If ethical egoism goes against what we morally want to do, who is right?

The laws might prevent certain kinds of ethical egoism; society would say morality is right while someone individually might wish to pursue self-interest

Glaucon’s Argument for Ethical Egoism; 2 types

a) Double-Blessed Life

b) Doubly-Wretched Life

Doubly-Blessed Life

Someone is self-interested in private, but to the public they seem perfectly moral (Tiger Woods)

Doubly-Wretched Life

Someone’s life is perfectly moral in private, but the public perceives them as immoral (Someone put in prison even though they did nothing wrong)

What is the best life?

One of private self interest while the public believes you’re doing moral behaviors.

Objection to Doubly-Blessed Life being the best? 2

Our consciences would cause us great pain and anguish when we tried to do actions in private that conflict with our morals

A person believing in ethical egoism always pursuing his/her own self-interests would be missing out on some of the greatest parts of life (could not experience loving relationships). Life wouldn’t be THAT great after all

Argument for Ethical Egoism

4 parts

1) We are reasonably well informed about what is in our own self interest

2) We are not as well positioned to know about what is best for other people

3) Furthermore, helping other people is a form of “offensive intrusion” and can rob people of their “dignity and self respect”

4) Therefore, we ought to promote only our own self interest

What would Rachel’s objection be to this argument?

Rejects premise 3; no good because offensive intrusion does not always rob people of their dignity and respect.

Pulling someone out of a car wreck, they’d want you to help them

What happens if you remove premise 3?

The argument becomes better but then 1 and 2 become problematic in themselves. e.g. 1—drugs aren’t good for you long term

Select Objections to Ethical Egoism: 3

Conflict Resolution, Absurd Consequences, Arbitrariness Objection

Conflict Resolution

When two or more people are pursuing the same thing, ethical egoism does not provide a way of resolving it. 

e.g. Obligations contradict ethical egoism since it’s in both of their self-interests to kill the other. Not one is more right than the other

Absurd Consequences

The button example where you can save the entirety of Europe by pressing a button (you shouldn’t press it as long as there is a small personal cost) and nothing to gain by it. This leads to absurdity

e.g. Watching a football game over saving millions of lives (you miss the game and gain nothing by saving lives). Could only press the button by preventing yourself from feeling guilt, having fame, economic benefit

Arbitrariness Objection

What makes me so special that my interests are above that of others? This is arbitrary; all that should matter is pursuing and producing pleasure; our lives would have to change dramatically

How is crimes and misdemeanors relevant to Relativism/Objectivism?

Moral Objectivism Characters — Rabbi Ben, Judah’s father

Moral Relativism Characters — Jack, Judah’s Aunt (Nazi comment “If they’d won, we’d have very different moral code)

What is Judah’s moral type?

He switches between Objectivism and Relativism. He ends in relativism at the end (starts with it as well) and becomes an objectivist around the middle when he starts remembering his father’s words.

Crimes and Misdemeanors connections to egoism/altruism?

Egoism — Jack, Lester

Altruism — Cliff (working on movies w/o fame), Rabbi Ben

Who lives the doubly-blessed life?

JudahW

Who lives the doubly-wretched life?

Cliff

The Shallow Pond

You came across a child drowning in a pond with no one around. Can choose to go knee-deep to save the child. Obviously you’d save.

Connected to real-life children & you can choose to save “drowning” children

Singer’s Strong Principle

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral important we morally should do itS

Singer’s Weaker Principle

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we should morally do it

Implications; 7

Amount to give, relevance of distance, relevance of other people, families versus strangers, career options, entertainment, philosophy

Amount to Give

Give away up until a point where others would have to help you

Keep money for basic needs, give away disposable income (extra money)

Relevance of Distance

Irrelevant; no matter the distance, Singer believes you should help regardless

Relevance of Other Peopl

Just because other people aren’t doing it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t; you’re not off the hook

Families versus Strangers

Doesn’t matter, should save regardless of relation (you’ll obviously choose family over strangers if given a choice)

Career Options

Says you should drop out of college and do a retail job or a job with PeaceCorp (somewhere that needs you the most or where you’ll be giving the most people help); you could also stay and graduate and end up making more money than college costed (giving more money in the longrun)

Entertainment

If you have no time for entertainment, you’ll eventually burn out and won’t make as much money in the longrun; can have baseline entertainment but not frivolous expenses (yachts, 2nd house)

Philosophy

By teaching philosophy, promoting/encouraging more people to donate their disposable income as well which gives those people that need help more help than you could’ve given just alone

The Bugatti Example

Same as shallow pond; given the choice to save a child on the train tracks or switch the lever which’ll hit your bugatti that can give you comfortable money for the rest of your life if sold in good condition; morally, the life is worth more than a bugatti

Problem with donating all of our disposable income (and Singer’s problem with this)

If we equalize money, there’d be no more need/motivation to help other people (Singer would say this could never practically happen)

The Population Explosion Objection

If we prevent lots of children from dying now, they’ll only contribute to being more children in need down the road

Singer’s Response to the Population Explosion Objection (2)

Donate to population control organizations

If a country refuses to take the necessary steps to slow the rate of population growth, we shouldn’t give it aid

Unger’s Response to Population Explosion Objection

Spend the parts of donations on infrastructure

Give an example of a place where infrastructure is worked on

Kerala, India — Family plans are made so they only have as many children as they are able to sustain in their society

Thoughts on the Kerala example or other infrastructure related countries?

Donate wisely to places that have higher survival rates; Kerala is confident in their children not dying because of the infrastructure while other parts need to have many children to have confidence even one will survive

Donate to the place where the most lives will be saved and won’t create more issues with children dying or having problems down the road.

Objection to Singer?

Singer demands too much. His own objection is that if too much is expected of us, we likely won’t do it; must ask us to do something realistic

Singer’s Response to his own Objection:

If other people are doing this (donating their disposable income), it wouldn’t be considered unrealistic because it’ll have been normalized; no reason not to do it if other people are already

Would we really comply with a moral code which doesn’t allow us to make special purchases on our family members?

Probably not. If a family member needed medical attention & they couldn’t afford it but you could, you would likely pay for their immediate medical attention. It cannot be justified according to Singer (who did this for his mother) but that doesn’t mean this philosophy is false. Just means that some things can’t be justified but it doesn’t mean you can’t put it into practice (likely not putting all disposable income away for those specific emergencies).