Here I'll explain a few arguments and why they don't make sense to me (my stories and logic are taken, many times word for word, from "The Elements of Moral Philosophy" by James Rachels):
The story of Raoul Wallenberg
quote:
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman who could have stayed safely at home, spent the closing days of World War II in Budapest. Wallenberg had volunteered to be sent there as part of Sweden's diplomatic mission after he heard reports about Hitler's "Final solution to the Jewish problem." Once there, he successfully pressured the Hungarian government to stop the deportations to the concentration camps. When the Hungarian government was replaced by a Nazi puppet regime, and the deportations resumed, Wallenberg issued "Swedish Protective Passes" to thousands of Jews, insisting that they all had connections with Sweden and were under the protection of this government. He helped many individuals find places to hide. When they were rounded up, Wallenberg would stand between them and the Nazis, telling the Germans that they would have to shoot him first. At the very end of the war, when everything was chaos and the other diplomats were fleeing, Wallenberg stayed behind. He is credited with saving as many as 120,000 lives. When the war was over, he disappeared, and for a long time no one knew what had happened to him. Now it is believed that he was killed, not by the Germans but by the Soviet occupation forces.
Argument: We do what we most want to do.Raoul Wallenberg was actually doing what he wanted to do. If he went to Budapest, and no one coerced him, it shows that he wanted to go there more than he wanted to stay home. His action is dictated by his own desires, and therefore should not be praised for unselfishness.
Refutation 1:This depends on the idea that people never voluntarily do anything except what they want to do.There is a difference between what we
want to do and what we
ought to do. For example, someone may do something because she promised to do it, and thus feels obligated, even though she does not want to do it. It is sometimes suggested that in such cases we do the action because, after all, we want to keep our promises. However, that is not true. If I have promised to do something but I do not want to do it, then it is simply false to say that I want to keep my promise.
Refutation 2: Even if we were to concede, for the sake of argument, that we act on our strongest desires, the theory does not take holdIf Wallenberg went to Budapest because he
wanted to, then he
wanted to help other people, even at great risk to himself. However, this is precisely what makes him unselfish. What else could unselfishness be, if not wanting to help others, even at the cost to oneself? Remember that for a theory such as Psychological Egoism to have any meaning, it must not be irrefutable, meaning there must be some conceivable scenario or situation that could refute it.
Abraham Lincoln's argument
quote:
Mr. Lincoln once remarked to a fellow-passenger on an old-time mud coach that all men were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His fellow-passenger was antagonizing this position when they were passing over a corduroy bridge that spanned a slough. As they crossed this bridge they espied an old razor-backed sow on the bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had got into the slough and were in danger of drowning. As the old coach began to climb the hill, Mr. Lincoln called out, "Driver, can't you stop just a moment?" Then Mr. Lincoln jumped out, ran back, and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and water and placed them on the bank. When he returned, his companion remarked: "Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode?" "Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don't you see?"
Argument: We do what makes us feel good.So-called unselfish actions produce a sense of self-satisfaction in the person who does them. The real point in acting unselfishly is to produce this feeling.
Refutation: This argument falls is vulnerable to the same sorts of objections as the previous one.Isn't the unselfish person precisely the one who does derive satisfaction from helping others, and the selfish person is the one who does not? Why would it make you feel good to contribute money to a homeless shelter, when you could spend it on yourself instead? The answer must be, at least in part, that you are the kind of person that you are the kind of person who cares about what happens to other people.
InfallibilityIf a hypothesis purports to say something factual about the world, then there must be some imaginable conditions that could verity it and some that could conceivably refute it. Otherwise, it is meaningless.
An example of a refutation to the "We do what makes us feel good" rebuttal would be that good deeds make us feel good not because we care about other people, but because we can later flaunt our good nature. This would imply that if we were unable to boast our unselfish behavior, we would have no reason to be unselfish. Predictably, I don't believe this for many reasons, especially because of martyrs.
Edited by jmrozi1, : I was bound to make a spelling mistake somewhere with a post this big...
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