Psychological egoism is the view that everyone always acts selfishly. It describes human nature as being wholly self-centered and self-motivated. Psychological egoism is different from ethical egoism in their “direction of fit” to the world. Psychological ego-ism is a factual theory. It aims to fit the world. In the world is not how psychological ego-ism says it is because someone acts unselfishly, then something is wrong with psycho-logical egoism. In my opinion this argument is completely wrong and unsound. According to James Rachel, an author of “Elements of Moral Philosophy,” there two main arguments exist against psychological egoism. The first argument can be formulated as such:
1) Everyone always does what they most want to do.
2) If everyone always does what they most want to do, they act selfishly
3) Everyone always acts selfishly. Opponents claim that psychological egoism renders ethics useless. There two cri-ticisms of this argument. First criticism is on premise one: “It is not the case that everyone always does what they most want to do because sometimes people do what they are obligated to do. They are either forced to do it because someone makes them or they do it because they seek the end result of it, such as a visit to the dentist entails.” (J. Rachels p. 70) In his book “Elements of Moral Philosophy” Rachel gives great examples to support this criti-cism: “the soldier who falls on the grenade to save his buddies, the person who runs into the busy street to save a child about to be run over, etc.” (J. Rachels p.70 ) The second criticism of this argument is of premise two. In saying that everyone acts selfishly when they do what they want to do, selfishness is considered to be equal in all cases. Rachel says “Self-interest and interest in the welfare of others aren't necessarily incompatible. One might be perfectly self-interested and look out for the interests of oth-ers - e.g., a shopkeeper who never cheats his customers simply because he knows honesty is good for business.” (J. Rachels p. 74) One can conclude from this that it is the object of the want that should be considered when determining the selfishness of an act. The second argument for psychological egoism is formulated like this:
1) Everyone always does what they most want to do.
2) If are does what one wants to do, ones gets satisfaction.
3) If one gets satisfaction from doing what they want to do, then satisfaction is one’s only goal
4) If satisfaction is one’s only goal, one acts selfishly.
5) Everyone always acts selfishly. The major criticism of this argument lays in premise three, its “factual premise” as James Rachel calls it in his book. Opponents of this argument and Rachel being one of them, imply that it is wrong to say that satisfaction is one’s only goal because satisfaction doesn’t even have to be a goal. Satisfaction is the presumable state that results from ob-taining a goal. Thus premise three is wrong. One can say that you can make satisfaction your goal if you will feel bad if you don’t do something, but this is not always the case. Satisfaction can result from something else. And it is also incorrect to say that one makes satisfaction his goal then chooses his desires to fulfill the satisfaction. (J. Rachels p. 82) The second criticism is in premise four. Rachels proposes to change the premise, making it less problematic by saying that satisfaction is “ones’ primary goal” instead of “one’s only goal.” But if you have two goals at the same time, one selfish and one unsel-fish (satisfaction and helping others) then this premise is false. In conclusion, one should believe in psychological egoism because neither of the arguments of it hold to be true.