#10640 - Egoism And Altruism - Ethics

Egoism & Altruism

Ethics – Mackie

• “In the narrow sense, a morality is a system of a particular sort of constraints on conduct – ones whose central task is to protect the interests of persons other than the agent and which present themselves to an agent as checks on his natural inclinations or spontaneous tendencies to act.” – moral scepticism

• “A morality in the broad sense would be a general, all-inclusive theory of conduct: the morality to which someone subscribed would be whatever body of principles he allowed ultimately to guide or determine his choices of action.”

• “The function of morality is primarily to counteract this limitation of men’s sympathies.” (As well as limited resources)

  • “We can decide what the content of morality must be by inquiring how this can best be done.”

  • Hobbes tries to do this in his theory of state.

  • Justice, according to Hobbes, “is an artificial virtue, it is not something of which we would have any natural, instinctive, tendency to approve, but a device which is beneficial because of certain contingent features of the human condition.”

• Hume claims that it is in everyone’s long-term interests to obey the rules that make society and cooperation possible – the only human weakness is to prefer smaller immediate benefits to greater but more distant ones.

  • Doesn’t point out the free-rider problem as Hobbes does.

• “Hobbes does not allow for the development of what we might call secondary instinct in favour of morality.” But Hume does.

• Can do a game-theoretic analysis: take the prisoner’s dilemma – in order to reach the efficient outcome rather than the Nash equilibrium one needs a kind of restraint for each player which assures the other that they will perform a certain action. Morality serves as a metaphorical/psychological binding in these situations.

  • If you look at repeated games rather than single-shot ones, there can be learning/a convention can be established – as long as probability of defection < 0.5, it will work.

  • Seems to show “that the rational calculation of long-term self-interest is not sufficient in itself to lead men to make mutually beneficial agreements, or, once made, to keep them.” But doesn’t it show the opposite of this? That we need to move beyond rationality?

• On Hobbes’ sovereign: “It is indeed hard to see how such a construction could be brought into existence by the operation of selfish motives, however rationally directed; but it is not so hard to see how once in existence it could be maintained by such motives alone.”

• “Even if we took the most optimistic view possible, and assumed that in general men’s consciences have been appropriately moulded by evolutionary forces, the best we could hope for is that they should lay down principles which have been useful.”

• NB Mackie is a moral error theorist i.e. he claims that all moral claims are false and we have good reason to believe that this is so.

• Moral sceptics merely hold that we are unjustified in holding any moral proposition.

The Elements of Moral Philosophy – J. Rachels

• “[M]oral judgements must be backed by good reasons; and…morality requires the impartial consideration of each individual’s interests.”

• “Morality is, first and foremost, a matter of consulting reason: The morally right thing to do, in any circumstance, is determined by what there are the best reasons for doing.”

• Requirement of impartiality: each individual’s interests are equally important. A proscription against arbitrariness in dealing with people.

• “Morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason – that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing – while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual who will be affected by one’s conduct.”

  • Philosophers disagree not about this minimal conception but about how it should be expanded in order to achieve a fully satisfying account.

• Ethical Egoism: each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively.

• You can’t argue for Ethical Egoism via the claim that altruism is self-defeating, since the reasons provided call upon claims that certain behaviours will be better for everyone, which contradicts Ethical Egoism.

• Ayn Rand thinks altruism leads to a denial of the value of the individual.

  • DQ: “If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, his first concern is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.”

  • Also metaphysical basis for egoism – only type of ethics that takes seriously the reality of the individual person.

  • But seems to assume we have only 2 choices – could find a compromise.

• Some argue Ethical Egoism is compatible with commonsense morality, e.g. duty not to harm others, not to lie, etc.

  • “At best, it shows only that mostly it is to one’s advantage to avoid harming others.”

  • Nothing in the argument supports the claim that self-interest is the only (or even most basic) reason why one should e.g. give money to starving people.

• There is the arg that egoism can’t handle conflicts of interest, but this only detracts from it if it is plausible that an adequate morality must provide solutions for conflicts of interest.

• Also egoism sometimes claimed to be logically inconsistent – can in some situations prescribe both an action and its opposite as morally correct, because of different points of view. But this only works if one assumes that it is wrong to prevent someone else from doing his or her duty.

• Finally, sometimes seen to be unacceptably arbitrary, just as racism is.

  • There is no relevant difference between ourselves and others and so cannot justify only attending to our own needs.

‘Internal and external reasons’ – Bernard Williams

• 2 possible interpretations of sentences of the form ‘A has a reason to x’.

  • Internal: ‘A has some motive which will be served or furthered by his x-ing’ and if not, then the sentence turns out false.

  • External: There is no condition – “the reason-sentence will not be falsified by the absence of an appropriate motive.”

• Where S is the agent’s ‘subjective motivational set’, “An internal reason statement is falsified by the absence of some appropriate element from S.”

• “If there are reasons for action, it must be that people sometimes act for those reasons, and if they do, their reasons must figure in some correct explanation of their action (it does not follow that they must figure in all correct explanations of their action).”

• “A member of S, D, will not give A a reason for x-ing if either the existence of D is dependent on false beliefs, or A’s belief in the relevance of x-ng of D is false.”

• So:

  • A may falsely believe an internal reason statement about himself

  • A may not know some true internal reason statement about himself

    • May be ignorant of some fact s.t. if he did know it he would be disposed to x, or

    • May be ignorant of some element in S (though this would only provide a reason for x-ing if x-ing is rationally related to D.

• S is quite dynamic, changes with deliberation.

• “If an agent really is uninterested in pursuing what he needs; and this is not the product of false belief; and he could not reach any such motive from motives he has by the kind of deliberative processes we have discussed; then I think we do have to say that in the internal sense he indeed has no reason to pursue these things.”

• “There is an essential indeterminacy in what can be counted a rational deliberative process.”

Nichomachean Ethics – Aristotle

• “Every art, and every science reduced to a teachable form, and in like manner ever action and moral choice, aims, it is thought, at some good: for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the Chief Good is, “that which all things aim at.””

  • “Surely then, even with reference to actual life and conduct, the knowledge of it must have great weight; and like archers, with a mark in view, we shall be more likely to hit upon what is right.”

• Happiness “is the highest of all the goods which are the objects of action.”

• 3 lines of life: sensual enjoyment, life in society and contemplation – each suggests different definitions of happiness.

• “[I]f there is some one End of all things which are and may be done, this must be the Good proposed by doing, or if more than one, then these.”

• “[H]appiness we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further”, therefore it is the absolutely final’ Good.”

• “Now in the case of the multitude of men then things which they individually esteem pleasant clash, because they are not such by nature, whereas to the lovers of nobleness those things are pleasant which are such by nature: but the actions in accordance with virtue are of this kind, so that they are pleasant both to the individuals and also in themselves.”

• “[A] man is not a good man at all who feels no pleasure in noble actions.”

‘Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent’ – B. Hooker

• 3 categories of theories of individual welfare:

  • Hedonism: how beneficial something is to us is entirely a matter of how much pleasure (/reduction of pain) we get from it.

  • Desire fulfilment theory: the best life for us is whichever one involves the maximum fulfilment of desire.

  • List theory: how beneficial some things are to us is not just a matter of how much pleasure we get from them or how much they fulfil our desire, but is objectively so.

• Hedonism: “Being moral is not what constitutes the benefit to you; instead, the benefit to you is constituted by whatever pleasure you get as a result of your moral behaviour.”

• DF theory “takes into account the number of desires that get fulfilled, the relative importance to you of your various...