Moral Theory by Timmons Mark;

Author:Timmons, Mark; [Timmons, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

We also need to distinguish ultimate or fundamental motives for action from nonultimate or instrumental motives. You might be motivated to study hard in your philosophy course in order to get a good grade. So, for instance, suppose the prospect of getting a good grade motivates you to go to the library on Friday evening when your friends are out having fun. When your friends ask you why you aren’t coming out with them, you give your reason—that you need to study to earn a good grade, your motive being to get a good grade in the course. But of course, if you are like most people, there is some further aim or goal you have that explains why you are motivated to get a good grade. Perhaps it’s because good grades are needed to get into a high-powered graduate program. Here, what we should say is that your aim of getting a good grade (which motivates you to study) is based on a more fundamental aim you have, namely to get into a high-powered graduate program. The latter aim is more fundamental for you than is the former aim. The dispute between psychological egoists and their opponents (who think that people can be and sometimes are altruistically motivated) is over a person’s ultimate motives. What the psychological egoist claims is that everyone (whether they realize this or not) has but one ultimate, fundamental aim in life which is what really motivates them to do what they do, namely, to promote one’s self-interest, to be as happy in life as possible. Moreover, this is not supposed to be true for most of the people most of the time, but it is supposed to be universally true owing, as Feinberg remarks, to a psychological law of behavior. In other words, according to psychological egoism:

PE Any action a human agent deliberately performs always has as its ultimate motivation that agent’s self-interest.

In short, according to PE, you always do what you believe (or somehow sense) will be in your self-interest, and this is something you can’t help: you necessarily act in ways in order to promote your own well-being.

A number of important comments about PE should be kept in mind as we go.

First, psychological egoism should be distinguished from psychological hedonism—a species of psychological egoism according to which human agents are always ultimately motivated by what they believe will result in one’s having pleasurable experiences and/or minimizing one’s having painful experiences. The first two of the above bulleted examples of egoistic motivation are not concerned with the agent’s pleasure or pain. The psychological egoist (who is not committed to psychological hedonism) allows that ultimate egoistic motives can include desires for such things as power, money, and personal glory.

Second, PE does not claim that everyone always goes around thinking about how they can promote their own self-interest. Sometimes, of course, we make choices after thinking about what would be in one’s self-interest, as when someone agrees to undergo surgery or stick to a diet because she thinks it will be best for her to do so.

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