What makes a motive selfish? Usually we develop words in order to distinguish between one type of action and another. In other words, without an idea of what it would be for us not to be selfish, the word "selfish" doesn't mean anything. So if you think all actions are really selfish, we would have to have some idea of what it would be unselfish, but then in fact we are never that way. I've never seen a psychological egoist explain what it would be like if we weren't always selfish.
When we call an action selfish, I think what we have in mind is where people do something in their own interest when the interests of others could and should have been considered. Consider someone who hogs the ball and attempts to maximize their own scoring statistics when presumably they could pass the ball and improve their team's chances thereby. Here you have one course of action (hog the ball and shoot when you can) and another course (pass it to help the team) and you choose the selfish action.
If this kind of contrast is present every time we use the word selfish, the it looks like we aren't ever going to come up with a defensible theory that makes all actions "really" selfish. What could that possibly mean?
9 comments:
I think the context of selfish is best understood in knowing its opposite, selfless. At any point the self is considered at all by the self, the self is acting selfishly. So 99% of the time we act selfishly. It's also the same % of time we are sinful.
In response to your last question, all selfishness is "really selfish" because there isn't any other degree once you've broken the selfless mold. It's like saying we're "really not perfect" which is to say we are "not perfect".
I'm reminded of the OT and how 1) the 10 Commandment tablets were broken immediately and 2) how if you break one commandment, you've broken them all.
Remember Wittgenstein on family resemblances. The attempt to find the essence or defining characteristic of "selfish" is probably futile.
See:
Joel Feinberg. "Psychological Egoism." In Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy. 3rd ed. Joel Feinberg, ed. Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1975. 501-512. 505.
I don't think that psychological egoists are committed to the view that all of our actions are selfish. Otherwise, the view would be obviously false, since lots of actions fail to benefit their agents. They claim instead that all of our actions are motivated by fundamentally self-interested desires. Those desires needn't be selfish, and the actions motivated certainly needn't be selfish. The self-interested desires of A are just those that aim to benefit A. It might be a desire for A's own good health or well-being or education, for instance, which certainly needn't be selfish. Basic desires to benefit oneself can even lead one to act in ways that benefit others, if that is in one's long term interests. It might be difficult to tell whether someone is a psychological egoist or not by their actions, which, I suppose, makes the view nice and sinister.
VR: "What makes a motive selfish? Usually we develop words in order to distinguish between one type of action and another. In other words, without an idea of what it would be for us not to be selfish, the word "selfish" doesn't mean anything. ..."
What you're getting at is true of all sorts of words.
What does 'truth' mean? The word can't be defined, though some aspects of what it signifies can be described.
What does 'love' mean? The word can't be defined, though some aspects of what it signifies can be described.
Not everything is reducible to something else; some things are themselves.
VR: "... In other words, without an idea of what it would be for us not to be selfish, the word "selfish" doesn't mean anything. ..."
At the same time, I don't think that's really correct. I don't think we are quite that limited.
Mike Almeida: "... Basic desires to benefit oneself can even lead one to act in ways that benefit others, if that is in one's long term interests. It might be difficult to tell whether someone is a psychological egoist or not by their actions, which, I suppose, makes the view nice and sinister."
Sinister or not, someone who explains all acts in such a mode has set up an explanatory system which, when taken on its own terms, is immune from refutation ... and really, from verification, too: everything and its opposite is explained by The System.
The System may well be true; but how can *we* test it?
Ilíon said,
The System may well be true; but how can *we* test it?
It might not be testable. What follows? I take verificationism as neither a criterion of meaningfulness (for the well-known reasons) nor as a criterion of science. Metaphysics is pretty clearly back. I'd harbored the hope that the verificationists had gone away. . .:)
Mike Almeida: "... Basic desires to benefit oneself can even lead one to act in ways that benefit others, if that is in one's long term interests. It might be difficult to tell whether someone is a psychological egoist or not by their actions, which, I suppose, makes the view nice and sinister."
Ilion: "... someone who explains all acts in such a mode has set up an explanatory system which, when taken on its own terms, is immune from refutation ... and really, from verification, too: everything and its opposite is explained by The System.
The System may well be true; but how can *we* test it?"
Mike Almeida: "It might not be testable. What follows?"
Well, let's see: "everything and its opposite is explained by The System."
Such a System is, at least in part, a ruse to attempt to eliminate human agency by trying to define it out of existence. Such Systems posit (positivists!) that human actions are not acts-of-will, but rather are merely behaviors, and as such are explicable in terms of mechanistic-at-root cause-and-effect chains/webs.
Such a System "explains" all human behavior as the result of materialistic mechanisms. But the posited mechanisms are said to "explain" both 'A' and 'not-A' simultaneously and by the same means.
*Real* mechanisms do not work that way.
Mike Almeida: "Metaphysics is pretty clearly back."
Metaphysics never went away.
The question was never "shall we engage in mataphysics?" Rather, it was "shall we attempt sound metaphysics?"
Mike Almeida: "I take verificationism as neither a criterion of meaningfulness (for the well-known reasons) nor as a criterion of science. ... I'd harbored the hope that the verificationists had gone away. . .:)"
Whatever exactly you may be meaning by the term, I'm fairly certain I'm not it. If you were reading carefully, you might notice that I'm criticising the whole mind-set which (amusingly) calls itself "empirical."
Post a Comment