Real life examples of ethical egoism

171

Chapter Four

Myself or Others?

I f there has ever been a moment when you have found yourself engaged in discuss- ing a philosophical theory, your topic may well have been psychological egoism. Per- haps late at night, after a party, the die-hards were gathered out on the patio or in the kitchen, and somebody brought up the subject of selfi shness, claiming that all acts are selfi sh, or as a character put it in a sitcom, “There are no self-less good deeds.” (You’ll fi nd the sitcom episode at the end of this chapter.) Perhaps you wanted to argue against that view but found yourself at a loss for words because the theory seemed to be disturbingly right. All of a sudden, everything seemed selfi sh! Psycho- logical egoism is a theory that haunts us from time to time—most of us don’t want to believe that everything we do is always selfi sh. And, as you’ll see in the course of the chapter, we need not buy into the theory, because it has severe fl aws. Nevertheless, it has been a seductive and persuasive theory since the days of Socrates, and in this chapter we’ll take a closer look at what it entails. We usually assume that moral behavior, or “being ethical,” has to do with not being overly concerned with oneself. In other words, selfi shness is assumed to be an unacceptable attitude. Even among scholars, though, there is disagreement about what constitutes ethical behavior. Since very early in Western intellectual history, the viewpoint that humans aren’t built to look out for other people’s interests has surfaced regularly. Some scholars even hold that proper moral conduct consists of “looking out for number one,” period. Those viewpoints are known as psychological egoism and ethical egoism, respectively. Both psychological egoism and ethical egoism are examples of absolutist theories; they hold that only one code is the norm for ethi- cal behavior. (See Box 4.1 for an explanation of the difference between egoism and egotism. )

Psychological Egoism: What About the Heroes?

You’ll remember our discussion in Chapter 1 about good and evil. On the day of the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus—April 16, 2007—thirty-two students were killed and twenty-one wounded by Seung-Hui Cho, who then killed himself—to date, the worst mass murder in U.S. history. Apparently, Cho, a resident alien stu- dent with noticeable mental health problems, had chosen his victims at random; he had apparently had no particular grudges against or confrontations with any particu- lar person but took out his self-absorbed anger on professors and students who, in his mind, led a more satisfying life than he did, according to the videos he sent to the media in between two shooting sprees. Many more students would have died had it

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172 CHAPTER 4 MYSELF OR OTHERS?

not been for the heroic efforts of their fellow students who barricaded doors to class- rooms with desks and even with their own bodies. But perhaps the story that most of us remember is that of Liviu Librescu, a professor of aeronautical engineering. Originally from Romania, Librescu was a Holocaust survivor who had immigrated to Israel, and then to the United States, and was still teaching at age 76. When Cho tried to force his way into Librescu’s classroom, Librescu blocked the door with his body so that all the students in his class could escape out the window; the last stu- dent leaving saw Librescu shot and killed by the shooter. He gave his life to save his students, knowing full well the scope of evil that human beings can infl ict on one another—and the day of his death, April 16, was Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. And as many have observed, during times of great need there will often be ordinary people standing up and doing extraordinary things to help others. Some- times they live through it, sometimes they perish. During the terrorist attacks of 9/11 police offi cers and fi refi ghters died, going far beyond their professional duties to help others survive. At Ft. Hood in 2010, Army civilian police offi cers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd managed to shoot and disable the gunman Nidal Hasan before more people were killed, and Munley herself was seriously wounded, but recovered. (What hasn’t been extensively publicized is that neither of them had their four-year contracts with the Army renewed.) And on the other side of the world (from an American perspective), in Japan in 2011 more than 300 workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant, admiringly known as the Fukushima 50, elected to stay in the damaged plant, working nonstop in shifts, sometimes standing in radioactive water, trying to prevent an even greater disaster of a meltdown of all three reactors after the earthquake and tsunami, with a near certainty of sooner or later developing health problems related to excess radiation. The news media have used the term “heroes” about such people, and most of us would agree: Risking, and in some cases giving one’s life to save others, especially when one is aware of the danger, is something we generally consider to be heroic and admirable. And that is why the theory of psychological egoism is disturbing for many of us, since it calmly dismisses the act of someone such as Librescu as an expression

The terms egoism and egotism are part of our ev- eryday speech, and people often use them inter- changeably, but do they really mean the same thing? No: Egoists are people who think in terms of their own advantage, generally by disregard- ing the interests of others. Egotists are people who have a very high self-opinion and whose

language often consists of self-praise; praise an egotist for a good result on a test or for looking nice, and you might receive responses such as “Of course I did well—I always do, because I’m very smart” or “Nice? I look great!” An egoist need not fall into this pattern, although he or she might, of course, be an egotist as well.

Box 4.1 E G O I S M O R E G O T I S M ?

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM: WHAT ABOUT THE HEROES? 173

of fundamentally selfi sh human nature. This means that even the person with the most stellar reputation for unselfi shness must be reevaluated. From Mother Teresa to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Librescu and the students at Virginia Tech, to Offi cers Todd and Munley, the Fukushima workers, and countless other brave people in- cluding local heroes that the world generally will never hear of, all of them are now reclassifi ed as selfi sh, including ourselves, of course. But what could possibly be selfi sh about acts of self-sacrifi ce? Well, says the psychological egoist, since we are all selfi sh, then the motivation might be any one of a number of things: A person who sacrifi ces himself or herself for others might have a wish to become famous, or might want to atone for something he or she had left undone in a previous situation, or might simply want to feel good about himself or herself. Or perhaps it is simply an unconscious urge. Stories about people who have risked and even lost their lives to save others, stories that seem to exemplify selfl essness, are precious to most people, because they show us what we might be capable of. We like to believe that humans have a built- in measure of courage that allows us to rise to the occasion and give up our lives, or at least our comfort, for others. Of course, few people perform heroic deeds with the intent of getting killed, but if they lose their lives in the process, we only seem to admire them more. (There are those who feel that losing one’s life for someone else

At the Ft. Hood massacre in 2010, military psychiatrist Nidal Hasan man- aged to kill thirteen people and wound thirty-two others before he was shot and disabled by Army civilian police offi cers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd. Munley herself was seriously wounded, but she recovered.

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174 CHAPTER 4 MYSELF OR OTHERS?

is stupid, useless, or even morally wrong. Such people may feel more comfortable with the theory of ethical egoism. ) If we ask a person who has performed (and survived) a heroic deed why he or she did it, the answer is almost predictable: “I just had to do it” or, perhaps, “I didn’t think about it, I just did it.” We take such comments as a sign that we are in the presence of a person with extraordinary moral character. But there are other ways of interpreting the words and actions of heroes. The theory of psychological egoism states that whatever it may look like and whatever we may think it is, no human ac- tion is done for any reason other than for the sake of the agent. In short, we are all selfi sh, or at least we are all self-interested. The term psychological egoism is applied to the theory because it is a psycho- logical theory, a theory about how humans behave. A psychological egoist be- lieves that humans are always looking out for themselves in some way or other, and it is impossible for them to behave any other way. As such, psychological egoism is a descriptive theory; it doesn’t make any statements about whether this is a good way to behave. What does it take for a person to be labeled a psycho- logical egoist? It’s not necessary that he or she be a selfi sh person, only that he or she hold to the theory that all people look after themselves. As we see later, it is entirely possible for someone to be kind and caring and still be a psychologi- cal egoist. (See Box 4.2 for an explanation of the difference between selfi sh and self-interested. ) Suppose, though, that someone insists that all people ought to look after themselves. Then he or she is an ethical egoist. We discuss the theory of ethical egoism later in this chapter.

Psychological Egoism: From Glaucon to Hobbes

Chapter 2 featured a section of Plato’s famous book The Republic. The section quoted there is a less well-known discussion about whether going to the theater is a morally worthwhile pastime (and Socrates says it isn’t). In this chapter you’ll encounter a far more famous part of Plato’s Republic, the discussion of what makes a good person and whether all people are, or should be, selfi sh. In Chapter 8 you’ll fi nd a more complete exploration of who Socrates was and what role he played in Plato’s life, but for now we’ll focus on the issue of selfi shness. Socrates is known to us today primarily through Plato’s books, the Dialogues; Socrates never wrote anything himself, and had it not been for Plato’s wanting to keep his teacher’s name alive after Socrates’ death (at the hands of an Athenian jury, found guilty of crimes against the state, literally “corrupting the young and offending the gods”), we might never have known the name Socrates at all. In most of Plato’s books, Socrates has a conversation—a dialogue—with somebody, a friend, a stu- dent, or perhaps an enemy. In The Republic, Socrates and his young followers have been invited to a dinner party at the house of some old friends, and they are engaged in a discussion about morality, selfi shness, and the ideal state, branching off into art theory, gender theory, the nature of reality, and even life after death. In the Primary Readings section you will fi nd an excerpt of that discussion. Plato’s brother Glaucon is trying to make Socrates give some good reasons why it is better to be just than to be unjust. Glaucon insists that all people by nature look after themselves, and whenever

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM: FROM GLAUCON TO HOBBES 175

we can get away with something, we will do it, regardless of how unjust it may be to others. Unfortunately, we may receive the same treatment from others, which is highly unpleasant, so for the sake of peace and security we agree to treat one another decently—not because we want to, but because we are playing it safe. Morality is just a result of our looking out for ourselves. (See Box 4.3 for an explanation of psycho- logical egoism in terms of “ought implies can.”) What Glaucon is suggesting here about the origin of society is a fi rst in Western thought. His theory is an example of what has become known as a social contract theory, a type of theory that became particularly infl uential much later, in the eigh- teenth century. A social contract theory assumes that humans used to live in a pre social setting (without rules, regulations, or cooperation) and then, for various reasons, got together and agreed on setting up a society. Generally, social contract theories assume that humans decide to build a society with rules (1) for the sake of the common good or (2) for the sake of self-protection. Glaucon’s theory belongs

Psychological egoism is generally described as a theory which states that everyone is selfi sh at all times. But what does the word selfi sh mean? Some psychological egoists (people who believe everyone is selfi sh) sometimes emphasize that there is nothing bad or morally defi cient about being selfi sh; all it means, they say, is that we are “self-ish,” we are focused on our own survival, which doesn’t necessarily imply that we are dis- regarding other people’s interests. However, we use the word in a different sense in our every- day language. According to Webster’s dictionary, selfi sh means “devoted unduly to self; infl uenced by a view to private advantage,” so if we con- cede that Webster’s refl ects the common use of the word, we can’t deny that selfi sh is a morally disparaging term; it isn’t value-neutral, and it certainly isn’t a compliment. Sometimes psychological egoists use the term selfi sh, and sometimes the term used is self- interested. There is no consensus among psycho- logical egoists about which term to use. It makes quite a difference which term you choose, but in the end, it may not make the theory of psy- chological egoism any more plausible. If you say (1), “All acts are selfi sh,” you imply that all of us are always looking for self-gratifi cation and have

no feeling for the interests of others. However, if you say (2), “All acts are self-interested,” you imply that all of us are always thinking about what is best for us. Is statement 1 true? It may be true that we are always looking out for our- selves in some way, but it is certainly not true that we are always looking for self-gratifi cation; many a moment in a lifetime is spent agoniz- ing over doing what we want versus doing what we ought to do, and often we end up choosing duty over desire. So what if the psychological egoist says, “Doing my duty is better in the long run for me, even if I don’t feel like doing it, so I guess I’m self- interested” (statement 2)? But is statement 2 true? Many philosophers over the years have gleefully pointed out that it isn’t—we are hardly concerned with what is good for us, at least not all the time. Many people smoke, drink to excess, and take drugs even though they know it is not in their own best interest. So couldn’t psychological egoism state that “all acts are either selfi sh or self-interested”? It could, but it generally doesn’t; part of the ap- peal of psychological egoism is that it is a very simple theory, and putting a dichotomy (an either-or) into the theory makes it much more complicated.

Box 4.2 S E L F I S H V E R S U S S E L F - I N T E R E S T E D

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176 CHAPTER 4 MYSELF OR OTHERS?

to the second category because he claims (for the sake of argument) that humans primarily look after themselves. To illustrate his point, Glaucon tells the story of a man called Gyges, a shepherd in ancient Lydia. Gyges was caught in a storm and an earthquake, which left a large hole in the ground. He explored the chasm and found a hollow bronze horse with the corpse of a giant inside. The giant was wearing only a gold ring on his fi nger. Gyges took the ring and left and later, wearing the ring, attended a meeting of shepherds. During the meeting Gyges happened to twist the ring, and he realized from the reac- tion of the other shepherds that he had become invisible. Twisting the ring back, he reappeared. Realizing the advantages gained by being invisible, Gyges arranged to be one of the elected messengers who report to the king about his sheep. Gyges went to town, seduced the queen, and conspired with her to kill the king. He then took over the kingdom, sired a dynasty, and became the ancestor of King Croesus. Glaucon’s question is, Suppose we had two such rings? Let us imagine giving one to a decent person and one to a scoundrel. We know that the scoundrel will abuse the ring for personal gain, but how about the decent person? To Glaucon it is the same thing; their human natures are identical. Decent persons will do “unjust” things just as quickly as scoundrels if they know they can get away with it; furthermore, if they don’t take advantage of such situations, they are just stupid. In the end, who will be happier, the unjust person who schemes and gets away with everything or the just person who never tries to get away with anything but is so good that people think there must be something wrong with him? Why, the unjust person, of course. This little story may be the fi rst in the literary tradition to explore a theme that has remained popular to this day—and that may be one reason it seems timeless, but it could also be that the moral problem it represents hasn’t changed, either. Ara- bian Nights is full of stories about invisibility cloaks, magic rings, and owners making

Sometimes a philosophical text will state that “ought implies can.” In the civil code of the Roman Empire (27B.C.E.–395C.E.), this principle was clearly stated, and Roman citi- zens knew that impossibilium nulla est obligatio ( nobody has a duty to do what is not possi- ble). Many philosophical and legal schools of thought today are still based on that idea, and one of these is psychological egoism. “Ought implies can” means that we can’t have an ob- ligation (ought) to do something unless it is actually possible for us to do it (can). I can’t make it a moral obligation for you to go out and help disaster victims yourself if you don’t

have the time or the money to travel, but I might try to make you feel morally obligated to help by donating a buck or two. I can’t make it a moral obligation for you to take home a pet from the pound if you are allergic to animals (but I might insist that you have an obligation to help in other ways). You can’t tell me that I ought to be unselfi sh if in fact I was born self- ish and can’t be any other way because it is part of my human nature. This is the point that psychological egoism wants to make: It is irra- tional to keep wanting humans to look out for one another when, as a matter of fact, we aren’t built that way.

Box 4.3 “ O U G H T I M P L I E S C A N ”

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM: FROM GLAUCON TO HOBBES 177

creative uses of them, sometimes to gain a personal advantage and sometimes to spy on and vanquish the bad guys; in 1897 H. G. Wells wrote The Invisible Man, which has been made into a movie numerous times and inspired other movies. J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954–6) features an invisibility ring. Usually the moral problem stated is, If you could become invisible, what would you do? Would you still be a morally decent or even halfway decent person? Or would you use your power selfi shly if you knew you could get away with it? Harry Potter may have his magic cloak, but most of us don’t. Interestingly, in cases where people have been under the impression that they enjoy total anonymity, such as in the days of extensive illegal downloading of music from the Internet, few of those people seemed to have any qualms about breaking the law—which plays right into Glaucon’s hands. But does that mean that everyone would react the same way, with a cloak of anonymity? Let us return to Lord of the Rings for a while. Here we have an invisibility ring, like Gyges’— and yet there are important differences: Gyges fi nds a ring that gives him powers; he uses them to his own advantage and ends up becoming the ancestor of an illustrious royal family. Many people would say, Good for him! But Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s trilogy is of a different make: The people (of all species) who are tempted by the ring are marked for life, and the purpose of the entire quest of the ring is to destroy it, rather than use it. The invisibility given by Tolkien’s ring is not one that allows much

If an invisibility ring can provide a per- fect outlet for selfi shness, will we all grab the chance, as Plato’s brother Glaucon speculates, or will we fi ght temptation? Will we even all be tempted? In The Lord of the Rings (trilogy, 2001–3), Frodo volunteers to take the Ring of power to Mount Doom and destroy it; but even Frodo, goodhearted as he is, is tempted by the Ring’s power, and within his small person a great battle is being fought.

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178 CHAPTER 4 MYSELF OR OTHERS?

anonymity, either, because the bearer is visible to Sauron’s forces and Sauron him- self. Frodo does his utmost to fi ght the temptation to use the ring and see the quest through, having seen what happens to one’s soul if one allows oneself to be absorbed by the ring’s evil: One becomes like Gollum, who used to be a hobbit-like creature, a halfl ing (see the illustration in Chapter 1). Interestingly, the person who is the least tempted to use the ring is Frodo’s friend and helper, Samwise Gamgee. With few exceptions, the invisible person in books and fi lms succumbs to temp- tation and meets a terrible end, as punishment for having a weak or evil character. So most invisible-person stories are didactic stories (see Chapter 2), designed to teach a moral lesson: If you let your selfi sh nature rule, you will surely be punished—if not by others, then by fate. But, as my students have pointed out on several occasions, there is a category of stories that serve as an exception: stories in which invisibility is used not for evil or for gain but for good. Superheroes who have invisibility powers (such as Fantastic Four and Mystery Men ) are not in the same category as the human whose soul is corrupted by being invisible—they suffer no doubt, they are not cor- rupted by power, and they are fi xated on their goal, to do good for humanity. But then again, that’s what makes them superheroes and what separates them from us. And as such, they’re simply not as interesting, morally, as the hero who has his or her moments of weakness and doubt. So what is the lesson of Glaucon’s story? Is he seriously implying that it is foolish and unnatural to be good if you can get away with being bad? No; he is acting as the devil’s advocate to make Socrates defend justice as something that is good in itself. However, Glaucon does imply that what he is de- scribing is, in fact, the opinion of most people. He may have been right; a good two thousand years later Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) agreed with Glaucon’s theory of self-interest on all three counts: (1) Humans choose to live in a society with rules be- cause they are concerned with their own safety and for no other reason; (2) humans are by nature self-interested, and any show of concern for others hides a true concern for ourselves; (3) we would be fools if we didn’t look after ourselves. (We return to this point in the next section; you will fi nd Hobbes’s theory in the Primary Readings at the end of this chapter and his view of the selfi sh basis for pity in Box 4.4.) Surely we all can remember events in our lives that show that we don’t always act out of self-interest. You may remember the time you helped your best friend move across town. The time you sat up all night preparing your brother’s taxes. The

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was one of the fi rst modern materialists, claiming that all of human psychology con- sists of the attraction and repulsion of physical particles. As such, the natural human approach to life is one of self-preservation, and the natural life of humans outside the regulations of society (the state of nature) is for Hobbes a fi lthy and frightening war of everyone against everyone.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM: FROM GLAUCON TO HOBBES 179

Hobbes believed humans feel pity for others in distress because they fear the same may hap- pen to themselves. We identify with the pain of others, and that makes us afraid for ourselves. Therefore, helping others may be a way to ward off bad events. In actual fact we have no pity for others for their sake—only for our own. (He is not the fi rst thinker to have expressed that opinion; Aristotle said approximately the same thing but without implying that we are selfi sh to the bone.) Hobbes was one of the fi rst mod- ern Western philosophers to ponder human psychology, and we might say that he put his fi nger on a sore spot. Sometimes we do sympa- thize with others because we imagine how awful it would be if the same thing were to happen to us. What exactly does Hobbes mean when he says we identify with others? It seems that we ask ourselves, If this happened to me, how would I feel? That does not necessarily lead to concern for ourselves but, rather, leads to a concern for others, precisely because we know how they feel. Furthermore, isn’t it possible to feel pity for someone or something with which you don’t identify so easily? We certainly can feel pity for someone of the other gender or someone of an- other race or culture, even if what happens to them wouldn’t happen to us. But how about feeling pity for dolphins caught in gill nets? for animals caught in traps? for pets used in lab experiments? In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, rescue parties consisting of locals as well as vol- unteers from all over the nation (including some of my students from San Diego) ventured into the contaminated areas of New Orleans to help not only stranded humans but also their pets. Some people were critical of the effort, pointing out that when resources are limited, we must help our fellow human beings fi rst and let the pets fend for themselves. But the pet rescuers responded with the following arguments: First, the humans were also being rescued; second,

it would matter greatly to most refugees who thought their pets were lost to be reunited with them, and thus the rescue effort would raise their morale and improve their well-being; and, last, whether the pets had been lost or deliberately left behind, they, too, experience fear and suf- fering, and are worthy of moral consideration. In effect, a huge effort was mounted to rescue pets whose owners didn’t come forward, and these pets were shipped around the country to rescue shelters, where many found new homes. Did the pet rescuers wish to save these pets because they didn’t want to be stranded in fi lthy fl oodwaters themselves, facing a death by drowning or star- vation, as Hobbes would say? Maybe so, but it is also likely that it was a simple case of empathy extending beyond human feelings, toward non- human creatures. When the pictures and videos of the tsunami in Japan 2011 became available, one video in particular went “viral”: a dog lead- ing rescuers to another severely injured dog. Many were gratifi ed to read in a blog message that likewise became known all over the world that a pet store owner and animal welfare activist had rescued both dogs. The story tells us that, for one thing, it seems possible that a dog would care about another dog, and for another, that we have no problem extending our empathy to both dogs. And it hardly speaks for a fundamentally selfi sh human nature, anymore than the upcoming story of Abraham Lincoln saving the piglets does. In a broad sense, perhaps we do identify with other creatures when their lives are in danger and feel that we ward off our own demise by saving their lives. In the fi nal analysis, though, that idea is rather far-fetched, because if Hobbes is right and we fear “contamination” from the misery of others, wouldn’t we rather turn our backs on them and fl ee rather than expose our- selves to their suffering? Given that we don’t, perhaps there are forces at work other than self- ishness. An easier explanation is that we simply, on occasion, care for the well-being of others.