Psychological
Egoism
University of San Diego
4/9/2015
Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Director, The Values Institute
(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Two Types of Egoism

Two types of egoism:
– Psychological egoism
• Asserts that as a matter of fact we do always act
selfishly
• Purely descriptive
– Ethical egoism
• Maintains that we should always act selfishly

Our concern here is with psychological
egoism
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Overview


Part One. Analyzing the
psychological egoist’s claim
Part Two. Reconceptualizing
psychological egoism
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Part One.
Analyzing the psychological egoist’s claim


The psychological
egoist claims that
people always act
selfishly or in their
own self-interest.
One of the earlier
advocates of this view
was Thomas Hobbes,
who saw life as
“…nasty, brutish, and
short.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
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Psychological Egoism:
A Common and Widespread Belief

Folk psychology
– There is a widespread belief that people are
just out for themselves
– Social Darwinism: everyone is just trying to
survive.

Social sciences
– Economics: rational agent theory

Foreign policy
– Belief that other nations will always act solely
in terms of self-interest
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Psychological Egoism

What exactly does the psychological egoist maintain? Two
possible interpretations:
– #1: We act selfishly, or
– #2: We act in our self-interest

In addition, we need to clarify:
– Genuine or apparent self-interest? If we act out of selfinterest, is it genuine self-interest or only apparent selfinterest?
– Maximizing or non-maximizing? Are we saying that we
always seek to maximize self-interest, or simply that selfinterest is always part of the picture
– Exclusive or non-exclusive? Are we saying that we act only
out of selfishness, or that selfishness is always one of our
motives?
– Causally determined? Are we saying that human beings are
causally determined to act this way or that we choose to do
so?
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Distinguishing
Selfishness & Self-Interest

There is a fundamental ambiguity at the
heart of psychological egoism.
– #1: We act selfishly, or
– #2: We act in our self-interest

We can distinguish these in the following
way:
– #1: A claim about our motives
– #2: A claim about the objective consequences
of our actions
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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What does it mean to be selfish?

If we are selfish, do we
only do things that are
in our genuine selfinterest?
– What about the chain
smoker? Is this person
acting out of genuine
self-interest?
– In fact, the smoker may
be acting selfishly (doing
what he wants without
regard to others) but not
self-interestedly (doing
what will ultimately
benefit him).
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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What does it mean to be selfish?

If we are selfish, do we
only do things are we
believe are in our selfinterest?
– What about those who
believe that sometimes
they act altruistically?
– Does anyone truly believe
Mother Theresa was
completely selfish?

Think of the actions of
parents. Don’t parents
sometimes act for the sake
of their children, even
when it is against their
narrow self-interest to do
so?
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Two Main Versions of Psychological
Egoism
There are two ways in which the psychological egoist's claim
may be interpreted:
 #1: We act selfishly
– If the psychological egoist is saying that we act selfishly, then
how do we explain apparently altruistic people like Mother
Theresa? Two possible answers:
• People are unconsciously selfish. But what do we mean by
unconscious intentions? This devolves into a second claim.
• People are unconsciously self-interested. Without realizing it, our
actions are self-interested. This leads to interpretation #2

#2: We act in our self-interest
– If the psychological egoist is saying that we act in our selfinterest, then how do we explain the fact that people
sometimes do self-destructive things?
– We could draw a distinction between genuine and apparent
self-interest, but:
• It is obviously false that people in fact always act in their own genuine selfinterest (the smoker)
• If people are said to act in their apparent self-interest, this then becomes a
claim about intentions (apparent to whom?), and this is then subject to all
the objections about the claim that we act selfishly.
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Psychological Egoism as an
Unfalsifiable Hypothesis

Is psychological
egoism an
unfalsifiable
hypothesis?
– Karl Popper first
formulated this notion
to distinguish science
from non-science
– Apparently very
powerful
– Actually not empirical:
no counter-instances
Karl Popper (1902-1994)
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Motives and Consequences


Psychological egoists, as we have seen in
the preceding analysis, often confuse
motives and consequences
The fact that we may get something back
as a result of a particular action does not
entail that we did the action in order to get
something back.
– We may experience great rewards in love, but
that doesn’t mean we do it solely or even
primarily in order to obtain those rewards.
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Further Ambiguities

Ambiguity #1: Do we act exclusively out of selfishness?
–
–
–
–

Exclusive vs. Non-exclusive psychological egoism.
If we act selfishly all the time, how could we prove this?
If we act selfishly only part of the time, this is true but uninteresting
What counts as counter-evidence?
Ambiguity #2: Do we act to maximize self-interest or simply to
increase it?
– Maximizing vs. Non-maximizing psychological egoism.
– Maximizing psychological egoism seems interesting but false
– Non-maximizing psychological egoism may be true but uninteresting.

Ambiguity #3: Are we causally determined to act this way or do we
choose to do so?
– If this is a causal claim, it is presumably about consequences. Yet
this causal claim (that in fact people always act [solely] in ways that
promote their self-interest) seems empirically false.
– If this is not a causal claim, then it implies that people freely choose to
act this way. But how do we explain the counter-evidence of people’s
claims about their own intentions and motivations?

Ambiguity #4: Is there really such a sharp division between selfinterest and the interests of others, especially the interests of
those we love?
– Psychological egoism is founded on an Enlightenment view of the
autonomy self.
– In reality, this strict separation is misleading, as we will now see.
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Part Two.
Re-conceptualizing Psychological Egoism


Psychological egoism rests on
ambiguities and false dichotomies,
as we have seen.
We need to re-conceptualize this
area to understand what is true and
what is false in psychological
egoism.
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 1
The standard view of human motivation embedded in
discussions of psychological egoism sees egoism and
altruism as opposite poles of a single scale:
Human Motivation
Egoism
Altruism
The premise is that an increase in egoism automatically
results in a decrease in altruism, and vice versa.
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 2
Instead of seeing this one a single scale, we can see egoism
and altruism as two independent axes:
Conceptualizing the issue in
this way allows some
actions to be done both for
the sake of others and for
one’s own sake, and avoids
falling into a false
dichotomy between altruism
and egoism.
However, an additional
distinction remains to be
draw.
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High
Altruism
4
1
Low
Egoism
High
Egoism
3
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Low
Altruism
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 3
In addition to having two independent axes, we must
distinguish between the intentions of actions and their
consequences. Thus we get two graphs:
Intentions
Consequences
Strongly intended to help others
High beneficial To others
Not
intended
to benefit
self
4
1
3
2
4
Strongly
intended
to benefit
self
Highly
harmful
to self
Strongly intended to harm others
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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1
2
Highly
beneficial
to self
Highly harmful to others
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 4
This double grid suggests that any given
action can be ranked according to both:
– Intentions
– Consequences
And that, for each of these two issues, each
act can be ranked along two independent
axes, concern/consequences for self and
concern/consequences for other.
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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Conclusion


Given the preceding grid for understand
human behavior, we can see that
psychological egoism gains its apparent
plausibility by trading on ambiguities
(selfishness vs. self-interest) and false
dichotomies (self-interest vs. altruism).
As we have seen, we can accept
psychological egoism as a partial truth
and see recognize that there is more to
human behavior than selfishness.
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(c) Lawrence M. Hinman
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