Against the self-administered punishment hypothesis, Batson found that making high-empathy subjects believe they would feel less guilt from not helping by letting them believe that few others had volunteered to help did not reduce helping.
One might quibble with some of the details. Perhaps subjects did not believe that the easy ways of stopping the painful experience Batson provided, such as leaving the viewing room, would stop it. For an account of an experiment done in reply, favouring Batson, see Stich, Doris and Roedder , as well as Batson — Perhaps a Batson-proof egoistic hypothesis could be offered: say that subjects believe that the only way of stopping the pain or avoiding self-punishment is by helping though whether subjects have this belief might be tested for on its own.
For further discussion of Batson, see May a and Slote Second, Elliot Sober and David Wilson argue that evolutionary theory supports altruism. Parental care might also be explained on altruistic grounds: the parent has a non-instrumental desire that the child do well. Lastly, parental care might be explained by a combination of these mechanisms.
Sober and Wilson argue that more reliable care would be provided by the altruistic or combination mechanisms. Given the importance of parental care, this is a reason for thinking that natural selection would have favoured one of these mechanisms.
This argument has drawbacks. Natural selection does not always provide back-up mechanisms I have but one liver. Natural selection sometimes has my desires caused by affect that is produced by a belief rather than directly by the belief my desire to run away from danger is often caused by my fear, rather than by the mere belief that there is danger.
And in these cases, as in the case of the imperfectly correlated pain and bodily injury, there seems usually to be enough affect. The altruistic hypothesis also has some of the same problems: for example, just as there might not be enough pain, the non-instrumental desire that the child do well might not be strong enough to defeat other desires.
Indeed, without an estimate of how strong this desire is, there is no reason to think the egoistic hypothesis is less reliable. It may have more points at which it can go wrong, but produce more care than a direct but weak altruistic mechanism. For many of these worries, and others, see Stich, Doris and Roedder Even if evolutionary arguments can be met, however, psychological egoism faces the problems noted earlier. Predominant egoism is not troubled by the soldier counter-example, since it allows exceptions; it is not trivial; and it seems empirically plausible.
For other weakened positions, see LaFollette and Mercer Ethical egoism claims that I morally ought to perform some action if and only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest. There are possibilities other than maximization. One might, for example, claim that one ought to achieve a certain level of welfare, but that there is no requirement to achieve more.
Ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts, such as rules or character traits. Since these variants are uncommon, and the arguments for and against them are largely the same as those concerning the standard version, I set them aside. One issue concerns how much ethical egoism differs in content from standard moral theories.
It might appear that it differs a great deal. After all, moral theories such as Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality require that an agent give weight to the interests of others.
They sometimes require uncompensated sacrifices, particularly when the loss to the agent is small and the gain to others is large. Say the cost to me of saving a drowning person is getting my shirtsleeve wet. Ethical egoists can reply, however, that egoism generates many of the same duties to others. The argument runs as follows. Each person needs the cooperation of others to obtain goods such as defense or friendship.
If I act as if I give no weight to others, others will not cooperate with me. If, say, I break my promises whenever it is in my direct self-interest to do so, others will not accept my promises, and may even attack me.
I do best, then, by acting as if others have weight provided they act as if I have weight in return. It is unlikely that this argument proves that ethical egoism generates all of the standard duties to others. For the argument depends on the ability of others to cooperate with me or attack me should I fail to cooperate. In dealings with others who lack these abilities, the egoist has no reason to cooperate.
The duties to others found in standard moral theories are not conditional in this way. I do not, for example, escape a duty to save a drowning person, when I can easily do so, just because the drowning person or anyone watching happens never to be able to offer fruitful cooperation or retaliation.
First, the ethical egoist will rank as most important duties that bring her the highest payoff. Standard moral theories determine importance at least in part by considering the payoff to those helped. What brings the highest payoff to me is not necessarily what brings the highest payoff to those helped. I might, for example, profit more from helping the local Opera society refurbish its hall than I would from giving to famine relief in Africa, but standard moral theories would rank famine relief as more important than Opera hall improvements.
Second, the cooperation argument cannot be extended to justify extremely large sacrifices, such as the soldier falling on the grenade, that standard moral theories rank either as most important or supererogatory. The cooperation argument depends on a short-term loss such as keeping a promise that it is inconvenient to keep being recompensed by a long-term gain such as being trusted in future promises.
An ethical egoist might reply by taking the cooperation argument further. Perhaps I cannot get the benefits of cooperation without converting to some non-egoist moral theory.
That is, it is not enough that I act as if others have weight; I must really give them weight. I could still count as an egoist, in the sense that I have adopted the non-egoist theory on egoist grounds. One problem is that it seems unlikely that I can get the benefits of cooperation only by conversion. Provided I act as if others have weight for long enough, others will take me as giving them weight, and so cooperate, whether I really give them weight or not.
In many situations, others will neither have the ability to see my true motivation nor care about it. Another problem is that conversion can be costly. I might be required by my non-egoist morality to make a sacrifice for which I cannot be compensated or pass up a gain so large that passing it up will not be compensated for. Since I have converted from egoism, I can no longer reject making the sacrifice or passing up the gain on the ground that it will not pay. It is safer, and seemingly feasible, to remain an egoist while cooperating in most cases.
If so, ethical egoism and standard moralities will diverge in some cases. For discussion of the cooperation argument, see Frank ; Gauthier ch. There is another way to try to show that ethical egoism and standard moral theories do not differ much. One might hold one particular objective theory of self-interest, according to which my welfare lies in possessing the virtues required by standard moral theories. This requires an argument to show that this particular objective theory gives the right account of self-interest.
It also faces a worry for any objective theory: objective theories seem implausible as accounts of welfare. I may have a duty to help others, and the world might be better if I helped others, but it does not follow that I am better off by helping others. For a more optimistic verdict on this strategy, noting its roots in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the British Idealists, see Brink and Of course the divergence between ethical egoism and standard moral theories need not bother an ethical egoist.
An ethical egoist sees egoism as superior to other moral theories. Whether it is superior depends on the strength of the arguments for it. Two arguments are popular. First, one might argue for a moral theory, as one argues for a scientific theory, by showing that it best fits the evidence. In the case of moral theories, the evidence is usually taken to be our most confident common-sense moral judgments. Egoism fits many of these, such as the requirements of cooperation in ordinary cases. It fits some judgments better than utilitarianism does.
For example, it allows one to keep some good, such as a job, for oneself, even if giving the good to someone else would help him slightly more, and it captures the intuition that I need not let others exploit me. The problem is that, as the discussion of the cooperation argument shows, it also fails to fit some of the confident moral judgments we make. Second, one might argue for a moral theory by showing that it is dictated by non-moral considerations -- in particular, by facts about motivation.
It is commonly held that moral judgments must be practical, or capable of motivating those who make them. If psychological egoism were true, this would restrict moral judgments to those made by egoism. Other moral judgments would be excluded since it would be impossible to motivate anyone to follow them. One problem with this argument is that psychological egoism seems false. Replacing psychological with predominant egoism loses the key claim that it is impossible to motivate anyone to make an uncompensated sacrifice.
The ethical egoist might reply that, if predominant egoism is true, ethical egoism may require less deviation from our ordinary actions than any standard moral theory. But fit with motivation is hardly decisive; any normative theory, including ethical egoism, is intended to guide and criticize our choices, rather than simply endorse whatever we do. When I make an imprudent choice, this does not count against ethical egoism, and in favor of a theory recommending imprudence.
The argument has other problems. One could deny that morality must be practical in the required sense. Perhaps morality need not be practical at all: we do not always withdraw moral judgments when we learn that the agent could not be motivated to follow them. Or perhaps moral judgments must be capable of motivating not just anyone, but only idealized versions of ourselves, free from say irrationality. In this case, it is insufficient to describe how we are motivated; what is relevant is a description of how we would be motivated were we rational.
Finally, if I do not believe that some action is ultimately in my self-interest, it follows from psychological egoism that I cannot aim to do it. But say I am wrong: the action is in my self-interest.
Ethical egoism then says that it is right for me to do something I cannot aim to do. It violates practicality just as any other moral theory does. So far a number of arguments for ethical egoism have been considered. There are a number of standard arguments against it. Moore argued that ethical egoism is self-contradictory. If I am an egoist, I hold that I ought to maximize my good.
I deny that others ought to maximize my good they should maximize their own goods. I cannot possess the goodness. They tend to like the divine command theory, with a few absolutists thrown in for spice. But by the time they are juniors, most of them have become relativists. The home town crowd often blames this change on professors, but it is more a matter of exposure to the pluralistic mini-society of college. The freshmen see that there are many people who disagree about one detail or another of their childhood moral codes, yet appear to be decent people, or at least have not been struck down by thunderbolts.
So, being decent folk, they begin to emphasize tolerance for the variety of moralities they see, and relativism seems to be the best format for this tolerance. But not everything is as innocuous as sexual preferences.
There are people whose moral codes say we must sacrifice chickens to the Gods, or we must convert the non-believers, or we must burn witches at the stake, or we must destroy the infidel What do we do then with our kind tolerance? A sophisticated relativist would respond, however, by pointing out that this tolerance business really has no place in a relativistic moral theory -- that tolerance is itself a moral value that one may or may not adhere to!
No logical problems here. As you can see, though, relativism does take a risk. Relativism can become moral nihilism in the same way that divine command can become absolutism. Nevertheless, relativism is the moral theory followed by the majority of people in the hard sciences, including the more experimental, physiological side of psychology. The third main category of moral theory is moral realism. Moral realism says that good and bad, right and wrong, exist in some fashion in this world, and independently of things like social customs, beliefs, or opinions.
On the other hand, moral realism does not propose something as simple as a list of commandments delivered directly from God! Moral realism is the middle ground between the theological theories and moral relativism, and is the most common approach of philosophers. But, as is usually the case with the middle ground, that is not an easy position to take.
As the name indicates, these theories view morality as coming out of our capacity to think. Just like rationalist epistemology, the most basic form of rational moral truth is the one that is self-evident.
This is the theory of intuitionism , which is best exemplified by the modern British philosopher G. Just like rationalistic epistemology, we can deduce from intuitions with formal logic.
In other words, we can think our way to various moral principles. Kant promotes such an approach in what is known as formalism. A particularly popular form of rationalist morality is called contractarianism. Rousseau is responsible for the title and the basic idea: He suggested that, once upon a time, humanity was in a state of savage anarchy. Each person felt free to do whatever they needed to do to get what they wanted. However, the fact that everyone else was doing the same meant that no-one was really free at all.
So, says Rousseau, our ancestors got together, sat down, and thought this through -- at least metaphorically. More literally, certain ways of dealing with anarchy evolved over thousands of years. But the principle is the same: We each agree to give up some of our freedom to take whatever we want, in order that we all can get what we need.
Consider the issue of immigration. When this is justified on moral grounds, the appeal is general and humanitarian in nature. It is said that because immigrants are equally human beings, their interests deserve equal consideration, whether they are citizens or not, whether they arrived legally or not. Conservatives, on the other hand, reject this appeal on the grounds that a nation has special obligations to its citizens.
It is said that the tax dollars and legal protections of a nation our owed to its citizens but not to non-citizens. Actually, the typical conservative does not think that there are no natural duties to others.
A traditional doctrine associated with conservative politics is that we have a natural duty not to harm others, but we have no natural duty to help others.
Liberals agree that we have a natural duty not to harm others. But they insist that we also have a duty to help, when conditions allow. They tend to see the distinction between acting to harm and failing to help as morally arbitrary. Exercise: Think about how the distinction between natural duties to others and duties of association applies to political positions on the following other issues:.
In any sort of individual competition, it is right for everyone to do their best in order to win. In life, there are limited resources available with which people can pursue their interests.
Therefore, life is one big individual competition for resources. Therefore, it is right for each person to act only in his or her own self interest Ethical Egoism. There are multiple problems with this argument, including both questionable premises and questionable inferences. As an exercise, try to identify them. Each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs and we know how to pursue them.
In contrast, we know far less about the wants and needs of others and how to pursue them. Therefore, we are much better at pursuing our own interests than the interests of others. To put if more forcefully: Pursuing the interests of others is an inefficient way of satisfying wants and needs and is prone to error.
Thus, we will all be better off if we refrain from pursuing the interests of others. In other words, we will all be better off if we act Egoistically. Therefore, each of us should adopt the policy of Egoism and pursue our own interests exclusively. There are two problems with this argument. First, it is false that we will all be better off if we act Egoistically.
Some of us will be better off, and some of us will be worse off. This is obvious once it is realized that some will be advantaged by victimizing others. Why should we accept a policy that requires victimization just because people will be better off on the average? Moreover, it is arguable that the amended premise is also false it can be argued that Egoism would lead to anarchy, large scale starvation, slavery, etc.
The second problem with the argument is that it depends on a principle that runs counter to Egoism. If we adopt a policy because it would make us all better off , then we are adopting it in order to promote the general welfare, and not because it furthers our own interests. The conclusion of the argument says that we should act Egoistically, but the premises of the argument suggest that we should think in terms of the betterment of all.
The argument supports Egoism in the sense that it purports to give us a reason to act Egoistically. But the reason it gives us is decidedly un-Egoistic. If Egoism is understood as the theory that what makes an action right is that it promotes the interests of the actor, then the argument is not compatible with Egoism.
Altruism — sacrificing our own interests to promote the interests of others — involves forcing our own conception of what is good on another person.
Our actions are then essentially compared to the social norms and then deemed right or wrong. It may or may not be right, but we jump to the conclusion that it is wrong because of what we were told and observed growing up. That inference results in a hasty generalization and results in a fallacy within the speech, which can work in persuading some, but can also turn off a certain audience.
In that case, that fallacy. People who fit in one of these three categories often believe that they have earned the privileges and that if other people worked for it, they could also share those privileges. They are simply given to you if you are born into any of the dominant groups, which you have no control over.
Finally, attaining absolute perfection will be physically impossible due to the power of Tribulation, something Joseph Strorm and his following are too naive to comprehend. The people of Waknuk may fear the Devil, but are sometimes unable to notice the imitations it sends to taunt humanity. The thought-shape children are a prime example of this. Though they seemed to pass their initial inspections with flying colours, earning them a certificate of normalcy, they later began to exhibit traits that went against the image of God.
A single story is dangerous because it gives an incomplete perspective on an event and only half of the truth, causing people to form a discriminatory response, whereas, multiple stories complete the entire picture and provide many perspectives.
Moral relativism is choosing morality based on the opinions and numbers of people relating to their cultures, society and opinions. Cultural relativism is the principle from gaining respect from different cultures. France and Saudi should both respect cultures and not find it offensiveness or rudeness of disrespect. People have been raised from different cultures and value everything differently.
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