Psychological Egoism
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...
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