Topics Ethics

Question Aren't all actions selfish? Even those that are technically considered "selfless" and for the benefit of others are always done for some reason that is justified because of the benefit to oneself. For example, if I choose to rescue a child from a burning building with the risk of myself dying, I still perform the action because it makes ME feel good, or I feel that it is the morally right thing to do. Therefore, isn't it impossible to perform a truly selfless act, because the reasons for performing an action are always MY reasons? The selfless monk who goes on a fast is actually selfish because he wants something and performs the action to get it, shouldn't whether it benefits someone else be irrelevant? Is there any way to be truly selfless?

Accepted:
June 25, 2011

Comments

Just because an action makes you feel good it does not follow that you performed the action to attain that good feeling. If I buy lunch for someone who is hungry and it happens that I feel a burst of good will and fellow feeling afterwards, the feeling was not the goal of my action. I would have done it even if I felt depressed after doing it. It is, however, true that we can never be sure of what our motives are, and that are actions are usually overdetermined, that is, the fruit of more than one cause.

The view you find attractive is usually called psychological egoism. It says that agents always act to promote their own interests and that self-interest is always one's ultimate motive. You mention two kinds of reasons for accepting this doctrine: that we always act on our own desires and that when we help others we do so to get the satisfaction of doing so. Let's look at these arguments separately.

One reason that is sometimes given for accepting psychological egoism is that agents are always and necessarily trying to satisfy themselves when they act. Each of us has his own ideas about what is important in life, and these ideas shape our desires. When we act, we attempt to satisfy our desires. In this way, each of us always does what he wants. Even when we don’t like the way things turn out, it’s still true that we acted in the way that we wanted to at that time. This argument starts with a truism – that we always act on our own desires. It goes on to a substantive conclusion about the nature or content of human motivation – that we always act to benefit ourselves. We might reconstruct it as follows.

1. An agent always acts on her own desires.

2. Hence, an agent always acts to satisfy herself.

3. Hence, an agent always acts so as to benefit herself.

The argument illicitly moves from a truism about the ownership of desires to a substantive thesis about the content of desires. The fallacy can be hard to spot, because of a potential equivocation in (2). (2) can be understood in two ways.

(2a) Hence, an agent always acts to satisfy her desires, whatever they are.

(2b) Hence, an agent always acts so as to cause herself satisfaction or pleasure.

On the one hand, we can read (2) as (2a). We can see how (2a) might follow from (1), but (3) will not follow from (2a). The fact that the agent acts on her own desires, to satisfy them, tells us nothing about their content. On the other hand, we could read (2) as (2b). (2b) has the virtue of providing much better support for (3). Unfortunately, (2b) clearly does not follow from (1). This analysis leads to a familiar dilemma. The argument only seems valid and sound because of a tacit equivocation. The inference from (1) to (2a) looks good, and the inference from (2b) to (3) looks good. But for the argument to be valid, the premises must have the same sense throughout. There’s no one interpretation of (2) that makes both inferences valid. Where we locate the gap between the ownership and content of desires depends on how we understand (2). But whichever way we understand it, there is a gap that cannot be bridged.

Another argument for psychological egoism appeals to the fact that people enjoy doing what they want. This is true not only of the person with obviously self-regarding concerns but also of people with apparently other-regarding concerns. We might try to reconstruct this argument as follows.

1. Everyone acts on his own desires.

2. Hence, everyone does what he wants to.

3. Everyone expects to get pleasure from doing what he wants to.

4. Hence, everyone acts so as to experience pleasure.

Is this argument sound? We might question whether (3) is really true. We might not always expect to get pleasure from doing things that we desire to do. The more important problem with the argument is the inference from (3) to (4). We may anticipate being pleased with accomplishing what we set out to do without it being true that this pleasure is the reason we do it. Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) considered a similar defense of psychological egoism and claimed that it rests on a fallacy.

That all particular appetites and passions are toward external things themselves, distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is manifested from hence -- that there could not be this pleasure were it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion; there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than another, from eating food more than swallowing a stone, if there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than another [Sermons xi 6].

Butler is making two related points here, I think. First, he’s claiming that the pleasure one gets from doing what one wants presupposes desires for things other than pleasure, on which one’s pleasure in satisfying the desire is then consequential. Butler’s other point is that it is a fallacy to suppose that we aim at the pleasure that we expect to accompany the satisfaction of our desires. The pleasure in getting x (P1) is predicated on the prior desire for x (D1); the desire is not predicated on that pleasure. And even if the anticipation of P1 produces a new desire for x (D2), that gives no reason to think that the original desire for x (D1) is predicated on the expectation of pleasure.

Exposure of this fallacy does not imply that psychological hedonism is false. Rather, it undermines one common source of support for that doctrine. The real argument against psychological egoism is that when psychological egoism is stripped of fallacious defenses, it will just seem implausible. Life is replete with examples of people choosing courses of action for the sake of ideals despite the expectation of securing the lesser pleasure or benefit. This is true whether the ideals are noble (personal sacrifices for the sake of justice, duty, friendship, family) and when they may not be (the miser's self-destructive obsession with money or the Mafioso's self-destructive obsession with revenge).  