4.1 Ethical Egoism: Is Morality all about Self-Interest? (Ayn Rand and More)

This is the next video in the Mysterious Morality Series/Course in Ethics. I briefly present ethical egoism, which is the idea that morality is all about self-interest. I then offer some textbook criticisms.
0: Introduction & Definitions
2:32 Problem 1 (Contradicts your core moral beliefs)
4:07 Problem 2 (Posterity)
5:20 Problem 3 (Equivocation on Self)
6:25 Problem 4 (Buddhist No Self)
7:15 Problem 5 (True Love)
8:15 Problem 6 (Arbitrary/Deepest)
10:40 Conclusion (& a subtle issue 11:13)

I have a longer discussion of ethical egoism in another video. The main problem that arises in these discussions is the equivocation fallacy in which we inflate the meaning of self or "self interest" and the shifting between p egoism and e egoism. These discussions touch on everything...

[roostercogburn]

A pacifist, should not be giving a lecture on ethical egoism, because he does not mention, self respect, courage drive and will. He is conflating egoism with predation, and only conflicting with altruism, left out "ethical" part, which means leadership not following. Ethical egoism has nothing to do with rape, which is mentioned 20 times.

[crimsoncrimsoned]

A part of this ethic which was forgotten in the critics section is the idea of long term gain
For example if I were to commit a genocide, the long term outcome of that would also take influence on whether or not I should do it as I would most likely be caught or shunned for the rest of my life l, and if everyone hated me for a genocide, it would also be then unlikely that I would be able to have them help me if I needed it in future

[BokononistMethod]

To paraphrase Ayn Rand, what would it mean to love without self-interest? It would mean for example, that a person tells their romantic partner, "I do not take my own personal concern as my primary reason for my love, but rather I love you for your own good (not my own.)" Does that sound like the optimal standard of love? Paraphrasing from Miss Rand again, 'To say I love you, one must first learn to say the I.' Relationships are profoundly selfish, and this is best personified in the fictional works written by Ayn Rand.

[TheAce]

I beleive self interest can be explained by a sort of prisoner's dilemma with certain in-built emotional and stimuli responses that are amoral in themselves.
If it were such that these responses could be removed or reasoned away entirely so as to cooperated with an objectively self interested decision, that act would be self interested. However, becsuse these instinctive reactions cannot be totally negated, the objectively most self interested action becomes to refrain from that act. Following this it wouldn't be immoral for a psychopath to act according to his nature if he'd correctly reasoned it to be in his self interest. He isnt responsible for his psychopathy.
These in built drives are fallible in ways not concurrent with morality becsuse they're subject to amoral conditions BUT they do factor into moral decisions enough to sway them. A moral egoist who is irrationally afraid of wide spaces could swap a mansion for a small apartment out of genuine self interest.

[mintee]

I disagree with your analysis in multiple ways. I think ethical egoism can be defended from your critiques, though admittedly it would involve subjects beyond philosophy to explain it (but are things that shouldn't be hard to understand). Interesting though that I didn't know such a philosophy formally existed before this.

[mjkofron]

I subscribe to ethical egoism. I appreciate the critique here but you and I do not share the same understanding of what ethical and egoism actually is.

[TheAce]

One of last thought being that humans being creatures of habbit might account for one off events in which breaking from a prudent self interested principle has it's normal consequence removed. Deviating from the useful habit might generally outweigh the benefit of doing the self interested act itself. This would mean that effectively, even while derived on a case by case basis, the most self interested act in a situation is generally to uphold the prudent self interested principle. Especially given that unforseen consequences to antisocial behaviour are so common a habbit to avoid them seems strongly in one's self interest.

[Akuryoutaisan]

You can be a consistent ethical egoist if you believe in karma and have a natural strong sense of guilt. Then things like rape, murder and genocide are never in your interest, because you believe life will punish you for them, and because committing them would make you feel guilty. So you naturally avoid doing them to feel better.

[Bolidoo]

I disagree, I think that we could explain all your criticisms by recognizing that people are sometimes irrational and emotional.

For example, If I was a parent, I could care about my children simply because the sole idea of imagining them suffering brings me feelings of discomfort. Hence it is in my best interest to help them, even taking into account a time when I am not around anymore.

Another example, imagining people smiling and happy brings me pleasure, hence doing volunteering work to make the world a happier place makes sense within this framework.

In fact, just doing small favors to people can give you both a significant amount of both short-term pleasure, when you do them, and long-term pleasure, it will help you socialize, which is one of the most pleasurable activities there are in this life.

Furthermore, I think that your argument about love actually favors my position. Love is all about very strong, and often irrational, feelings. When we are moved by such irrational urges that come within ourselves, how can one argue that this behavior is moral? For example, we can imagine someone in love that engages in immoral behavior to protect his love interest. In this case, how can we argue that this behavior is grounded in morality? Clearly, such a person is trying to satisfy urges that come from within himself with complete disregard for whether his actions are OK or not, hence such behavior is self-interested.

[venomverse]

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends
of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to
others nor sacrificing others to himself.

[erwingunther]

You know, what if a self-interest is benign because someone has a good soul ? What if someone is only love and empathy, then what ? It’s about the kind of self-interest someone got.

[qcdnelj]

It’s in your self interest to agree with the moral principles of everyone around you.

[No_Avail]

To quibble on an item that's partly off-topic: Attending to one's own interests is a matter of prudence, not morality. I don't believe that prudential goods ultimately collapse into moral goods, barring obvious interpersonal spillover and similar curveballs resulting from one's imprudence. If the badness of wronging oneself belonged to the same axiological category as the badness of wronging others, a person who wrongs himself twice as often as he wrongs others would presumably feel considerably less guilt for wronging others as he would for wronging himself as often as he does. Not only do ordinary people not feel this way, but my understanding is that philosophers generally deny that there are any reasons that lend support for feeling this way. But if you've seen philosophers making a compelling case to the contrary, I'd be interested in their works. (I dwell on these problems because so much in value theory turns on the connection or disconnection between these two categories of basic goods)

More to the topic: Are you aware of any philosophers who argue for ethical egoism on the basis of a non-zero probability of solipsism and/or idealism being true? That would be the only approach to ethical egoism with any credibility in my view (and not much credibility, even then, as I don't put much stock in solipsism).

[AslanW]

This video is a gross mischaracterization of both ethical egoism as well as ethics as a whole.

To say that morality only enters the picture when actions of one impact the other is generally an argument heard from constructivists. Try getting a Kantian deontologist to agree with that statement, or any of the classical Greek ethical theories post-socrates for that matter.

Passing constructivism off as the definition of morality is a very weak criticism of ethical egoism, and a horrible description of what morality actually is.

When it comes to friendship, why would you be friends with someone who doesn't reciprocate in any way for the help you give them? Is that really a friend? Most rational people would not keep self-sacrificing for a so-called friend that gives them nothing in return, and even fewer would call such a relationship a true friendship.

I might write more later as I'm sure I've forgotten at least one or two other issues I had with this video. I'll probably watch it again, in which case I'll make an edit.

[ezraaklil]

can you please spell out the name of the reference book u suggested?

[Kenji]

Which political ideology/philosophy would fit best with ethical egoism?

[fountainovaphilosopher]

There are several things that do not click with me in this collection of criticisms, which I'll try to address (in forward, pardon if my English isn't grammatically correct)

To tackle the first problem, I first have got to refer to your distinction of primary and secondary prescriptive statement. As I understood, a primary prescriptive statement is a prescriptive statement that rests on no other prescriptive and descriptive statement, while secondary ~ are those that do.

Now I have to ask a fundamental question: do we believe primary statements to answer which of the secondary statements are correct, or do we choose them according to our beliefs of truthfulness of the secondary statements, so that it has consistency?

Because whenever someone proposes a statement of nature "X entails Y, but Y is wrong, so X must be wrong" (assuming X does entail Y, which often isn't the case in my humble opinion, even in most or all the examples listed in the video) the response will vary from what your answer is to the previous question. If the only reason we seek for a good normative morality is for it to be consistent with our a priori beliefs about some secondary descriptive statements, then any criticism of that sort is welcome but such thought process seems redundant and, well, at best it could create a pattern to follow. But if you think we first got to create a good normative theory to solve every other blunder of pragmatic morality, then, really, those questions posit no problem so the answer is "if X entails Y and I believe X and I also strive to have an honest approach to ethics, then I should believe Y as well". Basically, this posits little to no problem.

Problem 2 is just a subset of problem 1 so I already addressed it, and problem 3 is unclear to me but it seems that it is not a problem to those who believe in honest and true ethical egoism, since they do not make equivocations.

Problem 4 is interesting but really I can't address a problem that relies on an unfounded claim. If it were true that the self is an illusion, then it would posit a problem, but I'm fairly certain it does not. Awareness of the self is an incorrigible proposition, and most of us take honest incorrigible propositions as true. Like "I see red" or "I hear music". If they are honest, why would they be false?

Problem 5 again doesn't really have merit to me and it sounds more like a critique of Psychological egoism then Ethical egoism.

Now problem 6: I see where you're coming from as I'm a utilitarian and I have tried disproving EE once and for all by claiming it's arbitrary in the same fashion as discrimination. But really, Ayn Rand would and did say the same thing to us utilitarians: that moral consideration of others is arbitrary. And what wins here? See, you can't tell because the concept of arbitrary, even if we understand its meaning and definition, it seems like we can't use it to see which one wins here because so much of this "arbitrary" talk resides on intuition.
A good reasoning of an ethical egoist would be: well what do you do while playing a board game with other people? You don't look out for them, you look out for yourself. It's a strong analogy and should be noted. If I ever prove to myself that this analogy is immaculately sound, I might as well turn into an Ethical Egoist. To me, after that, there'd be no buts.

Anyway, great video, and I'm honestly super glad that someone else out there cares for ethics like I do. I'll be sure to watch your other videos.

[shammahgaellorag]

Hello everyone, i have a question. What is the difference between personal ethical egoism and individual ethical egoism. Thank you.

[doaa]

you will miss some of the best things in life including truths if you are alwsys self interested. isn't it in your self interest to not be self interested?

i love that

[JohnnyJohnstonÖ]

“It would be cheating them” bro fuck em, rondo’s mean nothing to me