Specifically, rational egoism. What’s wrong with placing yourself first? You live one life and that is your own; you do not live the lives of others.
It seems, for the lack of a better word, rational. Natural, normal, right, whatever. I do not like altruism because it’s demeaning to the self.
So, to those who disagree, why? And to everyone, what is your stance on psychological egoism and its relation to altruism?
I think its more of a semantics game than anything else.
The idea of acting in self-interest, is still implied in altruism. The very act of choosing do do a thing means that you desire to do that thing more than not doing that thing - hence the decision to do it. That’s self-interest. Choosing what you most desire to do, even if that thing involves some kind of sacrifice, generosity or benevolence.
Someone can call themselves and “egoist” and be incredibly generous, supportive, self-sacrificing and very involved in working with and given to others in a broader community, because he or she may define such action as doing exactly what he or she wants to do. Or someone could call all of what I just described “altruistic.”
The real issue is the egoist who uses egoism merely as an excuse to be a dick.* I can’t give you an moral or ethical argument as to why someone should not be a self-absorbed asshole, however I can say that in my own experience being one has never lead to the maximization of my own pleasure / happiness, and thus I have gradually come to the conclusion that a generous spirit and investment in positive, mutually giving relationships with others in which I sometimes make sacrifices results in much greater happiness in my life…
Now you can call that whatever you want.
*One thing you’ll quickly discover about me is that, while I have the background for academic intellectual language, I am far more interested in practical philosophy and avoiding obfuscation - including direct language when making a common commonsensical point.
you are right, rational self-interest is indeed the most natural and desirable way of understanding social/political actions and expectations, as well as the “morality” behind these (i.e. the “what ought i to do?” and how best to frame this question, and its possible answers, with regard to social rules and expectations).
those societies which understand and require a rationally self-interested attitude and mode of behavior from its people will always be the most natural, prosperous and enduring, because self-interest is the only way to understand human nature, and the nature of life itself, without resorting to slavery and the use of force from one against another, which is what all other “altruist” or “selfless”, State-first social platforms require.
living things take care of themselves and of that which they care about necessarily or chooses to extend into themselves, such as offspring. life is not required nor expected to sacrifice itself for others beyond itself and its natural motivations and interests. this is how life grows and evolves over time, how life survives. altruistic social organizations are nothing short of a slow suicide, the self-sacrifice of your life, motivations, and power to entities beyond yourself which therefore control you, turning you into their slave. a rationally self-interested social-morality will require that no man makes another a slave, because all men work for themselves first, and for others second and only when it benefits them, when they choose to do so.
What is ‘self’ TTG?
When does helping others not help self?
Well, rational egoism says that acting in one’s self interest is necessary and sufficient for an act to be called rational, meaning if something is rational, then it is egoistic, and if something is egoistic, then it’s rational. One could apply the prisoner’s dilemma as a counter example to the claim of sufficiency by showing an occasion where acting rationally is not in one’s self-interest.
edit: wiki says as much
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_e … 7s_dilemma
I think that choosing what you desire to do and doing something out of self-interest are not the same thing. I may desire to save someone from a burning building despite the fact that I realize, as a matter of rational fact, that doing so may cause great harm to me, and so not be in my self-interest. I simply may have other reasons for doing it which outweigh my self-interested reasons. Just because you desire to do something does not mean that your motivation for doing it is because you think it is in your self-interest.
The ego is a subject without an object… You say you are an individual, self reliant, owing nothing to society; then, I say: What for… For example…What gives you the idea that your life is your life when without the survival and hard work of your ancestors you would have never been??? The life they had from the first, they gave to you…No thanks needed, and no work required??? Society has given you all you know…Can you imagine working from scratch??? No thanks required, or no obligation incured??? The self is just a notion designed to make victims of whole populations, who could then have no heriditary rights or obligations to be concerned with… No social support equals no rights… Why do people club, and clique, and gang, and organize??? Those who support your rights are your community…But no one can defend rights alone… Ask corporations if they are individuals… Those virtual individuals having an eternal life beat the crap out of biological individuals every day… So you tell me; is there some point to altruism??? Not in the least…When people form relationships, or accept the forms they are born with it is to have individual freedom, which can only be achieved after life itself…Those who stand alone die…Look…Our outlaws, and anti heroes from the first have been individuals…They all die before the rest, and pay the ultimate price for living a myth… Even to breed we must form relationships…No one can belong without a sacrifice, and almost always with a sacrifice of self…And it is only right, because the free-est humans have ever been has been within the protection of society… Step outside of society and you are instantly an outlaw and an enemy…The ego is immoral…Morality is community…
Combine A+O and XCZ’s questions and you have a powerful cocktail. There are those who hold the modern conception of the self as being a derived trait as opposed to a foundational one. For those individuals (myself included) rational egoism just doesn’t make sense. If the self is an emergent, as opposed to a foundational, trait, “rational egoism” is a contradiction in terms unless the “ego” contained within that statement is expanded to included society at large, which goes against the common understanding of “ego”.
What is wrong with egoism? It is a contradiction in terms, it doesn’t make sense man, that is what is wrong with egoism.
Ego is simply Greek for I… Who says there is no I??? I don’t… Rather, the I is part of a relationship, many in fact, but for the point of this thread, with society, community, or humanity… We have an individual consciousness, but not an individual life…My life is the life of a maggot…Only time and generations separate us from our common origin…And if we hope to survive we have to learn to sacrifice a little ego to pass our lives on with even the slimest hope of having it be able to pass life on again…Life is precarious, and people ought to educate themselves if they do not have good common sense enough to realize that those who are successful in the game of reproduction and survival are those who work with others having that survival as a common goal… Forming relationships, which always means giving up a certain sense of self for the long range survival of self requires a balanced perspective and freedom of thought that dead end ideologies like individualism do not serve in the least…Individualism justifies waste of resources and stupidity, but it also justifies a great denial of rights and obligations to the group… The conception of the self is nothing new…The conception of the self as sinequanon for society is new… Society could be better off without the individual as conceived…
I think this debate would eventually lead to the question “what is benifit?” as the awnser would lead to various conclusion on egoism. When we look at humans there are certainly situations where you would find two humans making opposite choices, that is one chooses to do something and the other chooses not to do it even when to them the individual doing of the action would result in the same consequence. That shows their hierachy of desires and values are different. Now is each acting in her benifit. The thing is I could define this sentence in any way I want. So that leads to the more important question, what leads us to different conclusions on what benifit means. And what our the “typical” reations people have to these conclusions.
Well lets look at one.
Benifit (1)
This is where the individual believes it’s imposible not to act in their own interest. But there are different variables of what this could mean. (a) One is where the individual assumes you can only act in “egocnetic” selfcentered ways. If we look carefully this is not true. There are many people not acting in egocentric way such as giving their time to charitity or sacrifing their lives. (b) Then there are those who again believe you can only act in your self interest but believe this can be done by acting in what Society calls selfless ways. Such as making time for others, etc.
The question is what is making these two types of self interested beliveing people believe you can only act for your benifit? I’d say such people see that people only follow their desires and therefore are always acting in their “sense” of benifit. But there are other people who see things this way but dont have the reaction of becoming either of the two types where you believe you can only act in your interest.
Other people have a different reaction to this they see people as always following their desires as not acting in their benifit. Why beacuse the way such people see it is that their desired corrospond to the benifit of the masses. For whatever reasons like the others for their beliefs these people see this as cancelling out self-interest. I am one of these type of people. The big question is what our the differnet emotional reactions for seeing the same thing, that is that people always follow their hierachy of desires.
As I said i’m the last type of person. As I believe I can act in the interest of the masses in a way that may sacrifice some of my other interests and even if I have to sacrifice my life. I have a different hierachy of values. I bassically believe I can be good!
This is a double post so this might be deleted so I’m sorry if it is. It’s just a thought occured to me on what some people end up saying when they say people are naturally selfish. If that were so if we really valued this thing called the “self” why do some people choose to sacrafice it. That shows the self is not the highest desire and that some people have desires higher then that. Sure people always follow their desires but the self is not necissarily the highist desire. Therefore how is this selfish, are desires can even be based on others desires.
Hey Mick… The question rest upon how one defines the self…Most primitive people knew that the ones who protected them and gave them life, and were of the same mother as themselves were as themselves, and so a scrifice of self for community was the highest virtue… That is why so many primitives convert so easily to Christianity…Christ is a natural hero…What he did was what they all would do, give up life for community…Their attitude is reflected in the behavior of bees, or ants, or mole rats, or wolves…It is not individual survival that matters, but ultimate survival; the survival of ones genes, which is more important than the survival of a single individual… People do not think about it; but to have their individual lives disconnected from all others that they actually suffer more for the paltry lives they are less able to defend…They know loneliness to have a feedom only a little less limited…And they suffer guilt, as well they should because everyone knows the simple pleasures we keep to ourselves for ourselves are denied to all others… The individual is a criminal, and as a criminal, is an anti hero…
Of course, that’s where it gets messy. One man’s “self-absorbed asshole” is another man’s “self-confident achiever.”
The problem with this question is that it implies that egoism is something that can be right or wrong. Egoism is a fact, and applying quality judgments to it is an error.
No; they are all essholes because they can only see themselves and lose sight of their relationship with society, family, community, and deliberatly so… We survive together…We advance together; we achieve together… Those people who think they deserve all do nothing for what they take…All those people carrying pictures of Ayn Rand in their wallets really ought to leave us all behind… They would find they would all starve without real people to feed on…The best of us; the most able genius only builds upon the past while taking life from his own age… There is nothing we do alone except take undeserved credit and reward… It is not a qualitative judgement as such that sees egoism as stupid, and pointless, and unfair to society…It is the most obvious observation when one knows enough of life, and of history to see the pain it causes… Give enough people that prhilosophy, of the individual, and society falls to pieces, and the individuals to survive become slaves…
No they don’t. People that grasp that all human activity is driven by the ego just know that the only reason they stay aware of these things is for egotistical reasons. The definition of a cooperative relationship is one where both parties happen to share the same egotistical goal. Cooperation can’t exist without ego.
So? The only reason anybody wants somebody else to survive or achieve is because that person happens to be helping the first achieve some egotistical goal. Nobody cares about anybody else inherently. That’s the fact of egoism.
We all try to take as much as we can with as little effort as possible.
Ayn Rand didn’t invent this. It’s at the core of every major religion and philosophy
“Real” people do the same thing. They just aren’t as good at it. Either that or they’re unaware of their true motivations.
So? What does that have to do with egoism? I’ll tell you what: Ego is what drives these geniuses to “build upon the past while taking life from his own age.”
No, we take undeserved credit and reward in groups as well.
Yes it is. That’s the definition of qualitative judgment.
Regardless of whether they have that philosophy or not, ego is the motivation of their (and everybody’s) actions. Ego is the motivation of anti-egoistical philosophies. The reason you posted this response was to satiate your ego.
The self is not the body. The self is mostly your value judgments, i.e., your definition of right and wrong. Most people assume the self is the body because our instincts put immense pressure on us to value the preservation of our body, but it’s not absolute. You act out of altruism because you imagine yourself suffering the pain the other person is in, and so act to alleviate that pain. But it’s the imagined pain that you’re in which motivates your act to alleviate. That’s why we “care” more about people/beings that we see as similar to ourselves. If I say “I like you,” that really means “I see myself as like you.” It’s easier for us to imagine pain when it’s a being similar to us. We care when our dog dies because our dog is domesticated and so it’s behavior is similar to our own. We couldn’t give a shit about stepping on ants, though, because ants are so vastly different that we can’t imagine ourselves feeling their pain.
I think you may be confusing psychological egoism with ethical egoism. PE is a psychological theory which says that everybody, whatever the appearances, acts in his own self-interest all the time. PE is not an ethical theory. It does not say anything about what is right or wrong, or what people should do or should not do. It talks only about what people do, in fact, do. They always act in their own self-interest.
But, ethical egoism is not a psychological theory, it is an ethical theory about what is right or wrong, and about what people should or shouldn’t do. And not about what they in fact do, or do not do. EE say that everyone ought to act in his own self-interest, whether, or not, he does do so. EE egoism says that it is right to act in your own self-interest, and it is wrong not to do so. In fact, EE assumes that PE is not true. For it would not be necessary to say that everyone ought to act in his own self-interest, if it was already true that they do act in their own self-interest.
It is important to distinguish between the two similar sounding, but very different theories, since they are theories about two very different things.
When people were most ethical they were not generally ethical but ethical to their own, and hateful to all others…With those they were ethical with, they were ethical to the death…If we are not used to seeing such ethical attachment to humanity it is because our conception of the self has changed…They could not conceive of an individual identity… They saw clearly as many of us do not, that we get both our identity, and our life from our group…They were all like so many soldiers of a unit, with an esprit de corp that would never quit, only, instead of surrounded by enemies, they were surrounded by animals, proto humans…Instead of thinking of themselves individually as the only reality, they thought of their group as the only reality; and they were correct…
Once anyone thinks of themselves as individuals as conceived by modern philosophy, they are victim on one end, and criminal on the other… Whether they know it or not, rights do not just happen, but result from the support of the group…If we are all cut off from the group we have only our own individual force to protect us… So we find that those people most cut off are the soonest to form cliques, gangs, or tribes…The support of rights makes communities… What is the black community??? What is the gay community??? It is the group that supports rights for blacks or gays…
Why can’t you apply “quality judgments” or ethical judgments to facts? The Holocaust was a fact. And it was awful. Wasn’t it?
What’s wrong with egoism? Depends on the question. As a personal course of action, it’s wrong because it violates the moral system of whomever you’re asking to judge it. So, the Utilitarian says that egoism is wrong because (basically) it isn’t utilitarianism. Presented as an explanation for moral behavior (Re: Hobbes), it’s wrong because it doesn’t account for the fullness of the human experience.