Greg Detre
Thursday, 19 April, 2001
Jeremy Watkins, Hertford
Ethics I
In order for morality to have the force and value that we would most like it to, it needs to be self-justifying. That is, it should be inherently and clearly correct to anyone who takes the care to consdier it, and universal in its applicability. Certainly, these have been the ideals of most of the major system-builders of morality in Western philosophy. Kantian ethics provides perhaps the archetypal moral system: based on reason, it is intended toe xert an irresistible force upon any rational being to live according to its principles, which are broad enough to cover the breadth of human (and non-human rational beings�) existence.
I intend to use �ethics� in the wider sense proposed by Williams, to mean not just my moral code of right and wrong, but everything about how I live my life.
�[Following] the requirements of morality� could mean simply behaving as a moral man might, or believing and living according to the values of morality. The first case asks much less of the amoralist, for he can remain an egoist while still behaving morally. In order to understand what is meant by egoism, it is worth outlining its various forms.
�Egoism� in common parlance is usually taken to mean some selfish act or behaviour, where a person has prioiritised their own self-interest above others more than is considered morally right. If I eat one more piece of chocolate than my share, I have been egoistical in this sense, and morally wrong. I can be chastised, because it is assumed that I could have acted otherwise, and implicitly, that I should have.
The most extreme form o fegoism is termed �psychological egoism�. Most famously outlined by Hobbes (Essay on human nature � �every man�s end is some good to himself�), it rather cynically sees every action as guided purely by one�s perceived self-interest. Necessarily, this view needs refining, since there are far more cases where we seem to act against our highest self-interest than cases where we act exactly in line with it. Psychological egoism allows that we can deceive ourselves as to our self-interest, and evcen be mistaken, and that different people�s priorities are reflected in long- or short-term views of self-interest. Ultimately though, everything I do, I do because it advances or promotes what I want to happen. There are a few salient arguments against this that need considering in order to make psychological egoism seem at all plausible. Firstly, one could point to examples of outstanding self-sacrifice, such as the WWI soldiers who would jump on grenades to save their comrades. In such cases, the psychological egoist might reply that he values honour, reputation or the after-life most highly in his life, and so to act in this way is in his self-interest. This argument can very quickly lead to the paradoxical position: if a psychological egoist were to say that he avlues the well-being of his loved ones most highly, then would he not be acting in his self-interest if he were to commit suicide so that they could claim his life-insurance, for instance? In the case of charity workers or a man who dives into a river to save a baby, we can look to an indoctrinated and irrational sense of guilt, which is eased by such stereotypically moral actions. The evolutionary argument, in its simplest form, states that we have evolved to act in a self-interested way, and since altruism is so clearly maladaptive, is beyond our ability. This argument can be dismissed relatively readily with a few simple examples from game theory, where it becomes clear that a group of self-interested agents are actually acting in their own respective self-interests if they band together, and perform seemingly altruistic acts for each other. In the simple case of the Prisoners� Dilemma, all that has to be required is that the number of games to be played is indeterminate, and cooperation becomes the optimum strategy. In most such situations, they all stand a better chance of survival than if they were to act in a crudely egoistic manner.