Theli

Ok. I might be way off here, but are you saying that good deeds are motivated by the feeling of reward afterwards?
I won't argue against the fact that we do feel rewarded by a good deed, and that this is a crucial reason to why we act benevolent. But I don't see how it is a motivation. A cause maybe, but not motivation.
For instance, if I walk by a restaurant and suddenly decides to grab a meal noone would argue that the ultimate cause for me doing so is my need for nutrition, but what motivates my choice is the food's good taste and perhaps smell. My point being that what motivates us is the "way" (in lack of a better word) towards feeling of reward, not the feeling of reward itself.
In the same sense, good deeds may be caused by personal feeling of reward, but it is motivated by whatever happiness it brings others.

Bill Snedden

Hmmm...valid theory, I'm not sure. Although I certainly may have made statements in the past that would have been consistent with PE, I would say now that it is unnecessarily reductive. The determination of causal factors driving human behavior has got to be one of the most complex projects in existence. I simply don't think it can be pinned that easily on any one thing.

Well, Keith has already pointed out that Rand didn't support PE or PH. I wonder, however, how many of us (board denizens, that is) were influenced to adopt EE or RE by reading Rand?

Hmmm...I've not heard any. I would think that they would tend to suffer from the "unfalsifiability" difficulty to which you alluded in one of your replies to Keith.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Keith Russell

Bill:

I certainly came across the idea of rational egoism from reading Rand's works. They gave me a more solid support for ideas I already had, but for which I didn't have a good foundation.

Many people view Objectivism only as a 'cult of personality'. Unfortunately, there are certainly elements of that, but there are also other ways to approach Objectivism as well. Most of Rand's non-fiction writings are rather topical and polemical, and are thus (perhaps too) easily dismissed as something other than 'serious' philosophy.

These shortcomings, admittedly, make it very difficult to properly assess Rand's ideas.

I intend to re-read a great deal of the Rand corpus this year, along with several other thinkers I haven't yet studied. It may be--as some have suggested--that, when I'm finished, I will no longer be able to call myself an Objectivist.

Nonetheless, I will always have a great deal of respect for Ayn Rand. If it weren't for her work, I would most likely never encountered Kant, Plato, Hume, Popper, Wittgenstein, Rousseau, or so many others.

Her popularity is usually viewed with disdain, but I think many people who eventually reject her ideas, would never have discovered the world of ideas at all, were it not for their initial interest in Rand.

i find it somewhat sad that so many seem unwilling to even give her that much credit.

Keith.

Gurdur

1) I don't accept it at all (or Ethical Egoism, or any other varient)

2) Ugh.

3) I'm not aware of any serious arguments - but then I haven't looked all that hard; they may exist (in the same way I may become a millionaire overnight, I suppose).

You've already alluded to non-falsifiability; it aways has been my observation that all arguments for egoism (whatever category) rely on circular arguments; they assume what they wish to prove right at the beginning, then interpret everything as per the assumption, then take that as proving the assumption.

tronvillain

(1) How many people here accept psychological egoism as a valid theory of human behavior?

If we define "the doctrine that all human action is motivated ultimately by one's own self-interest.", then I for one do not. See the rest of my posts in that thread you linked to.

(2) How many of you were influenced to adopt it by reading the writings of Ayn Rand or other Objectivists?

My views are not influenced by Rand or Objectivism in the slightest.

(3) Are there any serious arguments for PE?

As you define it, it is not my position, so obviously I will not argue for it.

bd-from-kg

tronvillain:

Sigh. This is tiresome. But since you insist, let’s do just that.

Referring to one of my examples:

Referring to another of my examples, in which it is clear that most people would choose to save lives rather than receive a hundred dollars even though they will forget having made this choice immediately and won’t know that the lives are being saved:

It hardly seems necessary to comment. This is psychological egoism; these are precisely the arguments that advocates of PE make.

faustuz

I’m am only now getting acquainted with these terms (i.e. as of reading the first post in this thread), and I need a little clarification. So let me see if I have it right here, and correct me if I’m wrong.

Psychological Egotism, as I understand it from your definition, would posit that humans always consciously act in their best interest. If so, this seems patently false and easily refutable (excepting, as others have pointed out here, the difficulty of defining “best interest”).

Psychological Hedonism is always acting in a way that will maximize happiness. Is it correct to assume that this may not be conscious? Also, would postulating that humans always act to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, whether consciously or not, compatible with Psychological Hedonism? If so, I think it is pretty much a good description of the human condition and can be used to explain human altruism.

Now that I’ve made an appeal to get my definitions in order, let me lay down what I actually believe. I do believe that humans basically act to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. I think this can be used to describe almost everything we do, even if we do so unconsciously. I think all higher animals have done this, and it seems that many experiments have been done changing behavior of various animals (including humans) by applying rewards and punishments. It also seems that pleasure and pain are mechanisms inserted by evolution to make sure that actions performed by individuals are generally consistent with the actions most likely to preserve their genes across generations. We feel pain when things happen that would cause us to loose blood and possibly die, so we avoid doing things that will cause us to loose blood. We feel pleasure when we have sex, which comes in extremely handy with regards to propagating our genes across generations. We feel pain when we are hungry, but pleasure when we eat, and so this motivates us not to starve which would be extremely deleterious to propagating our genes across generations. We feel pain (guilt) when we murder all the members of our tribe because we need the members of our tribe to also live in order to propagate our genes across generations. We feel pain (guilt) when we abandon the member of the opposite sex with whom we have exchanged genes because that member of the opposite sex requires our assistance in keeping the exchanged genes alive in the generation into which they have been deposited.

I don’t think we have any reason for doing these things other than to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain, even if we don’t realize that that is why we are doing them. I don’t think that, without pleasure and pain, we would do these thing at all because I (being an atheist) don’t perceive any mechanism for a universal morality. Therefore our morals must be the product an internal will, much like eating is the product of an internal will. Of course this internal will is not perfect. We make mistakes and do things that cause us pain. However, that does not mean that we intended to cause ourselves pain with these actions. I believe that we are pretty much incapable of doing so. It’s just that we don’t always know (either at the conscious or subconscious level) a priori the ends of our actions. I don’t, however, see any possibility for the motivation of our actions other than the goal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.

Well, that’s what I think. I’ll leave it to others to apply the correct label. Oh and, BTW, I have not read Ayn Rand or the Objectivists (although I think I probably should).

beyelzu

i do believe in ee and re. and i have been influenced by ayn rand. i believe that she makes alot of sense. and i feel that she is dismissed by others often because of just how people think that objectivism is monstrous or cruel.

bd-from-kg

Tani:

I totally fail to follow you here. Rationality is “defined by the process” only in the sense that it is a characteristic that the process might or might not have. If I choose to eat a prime rib with a baked potato smothered in sour cream in spite of the fact that the doctor has told me that I had better lose weight, I am being irrational (assuming that I believe the doctor and want to live, in the best possible health, for as long as possible). What’s more, I know that this is an irrational choice. So if I make it, I’m “choosing to be irrational” (tonight at least). Conversely, if I choose instead to have a low-cal (but reasonably tasty) meal, I’m choosing to be rational.

In this context “all possible worlds” is short for “all logically possible worlds”. Empirical theories are supposed to differentiate this world from other logically possible worlds. Obviously the theory that a certain natural law holds isn’t meant to differentiate this world from others in which it holds. But if an alleged empirical theory holds in all logically possible worlds it has no content.

For example, suppose that someone proposes to use the word “want” in such a way that a person wants to do X (all things considered) if and only if he does X. Suppose that he then argues that all acts are self-interested on the grounds that everyone always wants to do whatever it is that he actually does, and when it’s objected that that’s not what normally meant by calling an act self-interested, he replies that that’s what he means by self-interested. At this point his assertion has ceased to have any factual content, because it would be true in any logically possible world – which is to say that it’s a tautology.

By the way, have you heard of capital letters? They're a new invention designed to improve readability.

Paddy

I have not had time to read many of the posts on this thread so I hope this comment is relevant and 'original'.

Consistent with our underestanding and experience, don't we often act in ways that are beneficial for others (altruistic), even if our actions are ephemerally uncomfortable for both ourselves and the other party? If this is the case then we recieve suffering and disquiet, to an extent, and not pleasant feelings about ourselves as a result of our altruism. This seems like "true altruism" to me.



Paddy