Who is an egoist? What are interests?



Thanks for your comments, Jeff. I’m not going to go through it point by point, but this seems a good time to make some points that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time.

 

 

 

Who is an Egoist?

 

I have repeatedly said (and argued) that egoism is a mistaken moral theory, but there are philosophers who call their own moral positions versions of egoism with whom I see no need to disagree. At least, I see no need to disagree with them on account of the egoism of their moral positions. Among these are Terry Irwin, a distinguished Aristotelian, Lansing Pollock, a Kantian (and a libertarian), and my friend, Roderick Long.

 

Though there are differences among their positions, they all in some way regard the fact that some action is morally good or morally required as a reason for counting it as part of a person’s self-interest. That is, on their accounts, it is because something is morally good that a person has a self-interested reason to do it.

 

You might call this ‘moralized-interest egoism.’ Though moralized-interest egoists agree that all reasons somehow stem from self-interest, they allow that the interests appealed to may themselves be or count as interests for moral reasons, and the moral reasons themselves do not have to be ultimately explicable in terms of nothing but pre-moral interests.

 

Sometimes, I have thought Rand fit into this group, too, especially in the way she presented some incidents in her novels. Think, for example, of Rearden refusing to steal even when he was painfully hungry.  A position of that type may also be what you are expressing when you say:

 

What’s missing here, it seems to me, is the idea that it’s in our interests – as suggested recently on OWL by Greg Johnson – to have a certain “character.� The point being that is not possible to determine our interests apart [from] an ideal conception of ourselves; we must know what we should be before we can know what we should want. Therefore, we can never measure the true pursuit of self-interest merely in terms of actions or even motivations: we must examine what it is good for a person to be, and by extension what it is good for him to do.

 

Now, I might or might not have objections to the way that is worked out in detail, but I wouldn’t object to it because it is (said to be) a version of egoism.

 

[So, am I “embracing egoism�? Not so fast.]

 

The reason I wouldn’t is that I don’t consider them versions of egoism at all. I’m drawing the line for what counts as egoism in a different place. And my reasons for doing that are not simply arbitrary.

 

First, where I draw the line marks off an important class of positions. To show that’s so, return to the example of Rand. She may have, sometimes, expressed a moralized-interest egoism. However, it is not her official or advertised position. Branden (while he was still in her good graces) wrote: “She does not advocate a single moral principle that cannot be traced back, by an unbroken logical chain, to the demonstrable requirements of man’s survival.� (Who is Ayn Rand, p. 28, quoted from memory)

 

In Rand’s official position, it is interests that come first and moral principles are always validated with regard to interests, where those can be understood independently of any moral principles. Anyone who accepts her official position on the subject (I’m sure some here will say they do, anyhow), would have to reject the idea that there are ultimately any moral conditions on what can count as being part of one’s interests. (The qualifier “ultimately� is important. There might be moral conditions which are themselves explained entirely in terms of non-moralized interests. Or moral conditions which are explained in terms of moral conditions which are explained entirely in terms of non-moralized interests ....)

 

There’s a second reason for being reluctant to classify moralized-interest theories as versions of egoism. To wit, it really doesn’t make a distinction among moral theories at all. Any moral theory can be characterized as a version of moralized-interest egoism. Whatever it requires, you just say is in the agent’s interests because it is morally required. Every utilitarian can agree that there is a moral reason – and therefore a self-interested reason – to promote the general welfare. Every Kantian can agree that there is a moral reason – and therefore a self-interested reason – to do one’s duty. Every Aristotelian can agree that there is a moral reason – and therefore a self-interested reason – to act finely (“Finely� is not really a satisfactory translation of the Greek, ‘kalon,’ one of Aristotle’s key concepts. Maybe ‘moral beauty’ comes closer, but that’s not quite right, either.) Some of the people on this list will recognize that Mill, Kant and Aristotle each did, very nearly, say what I just attributed to holders of their positions.

 

Even Rand’s official theory qualifies – trivially, but it qualifies. Here’s how: She could agree that you have an interest in satisfying any moral conditions there are on the pursuit of (other) interests, but then deny that there are (ultimately) any such moral conditions. Kind of like the way that ‘all the birds in this room are red’ can be true when there aren’t any birds in the room.

 

If every moral theory counts as a version of egoism, you haven’t really said anything about your theory by calling it egoist. That’s why I think there’s room for – and need for – a more restrictive characterization.

 

Anyhow, here’s what I propose. Some will recognize it as a slight modification of a definition I proposed elsewhere. (My view on it hasn’t really changed. It just didn’t occur to me that people who were appealing to Rand might actually be expressing a moralized-interest theory, since I thought it was obvious that was not Rand’s theory. The way in which I qualify it is just meant to make explicit a point which I took to be included in the meaning of “interests�)

 

Egoism holds that, for each agent, what is of ultimate value is his or her own interests, where those can be understood (ultimately) independently of any prior moral conditions on what can count as an interest.

 

Now, for anyone here who is a moralized-interest theorist, my criticisms of egoism are not directed at your positions. Until I saw the quote from Jeff above – where he says it “is not possible to determine our interests apart [from] an ideal conception of ourselves; we must know what we should be before we can know what we should want� – I didn’t realize that any of the people here might be defending a moralized-interest theory. I have no objection to moralized-interest theorists on the count that their positions are egoist. That’s because, as far as I can see, their positions are not egoist (which is why I object to using that term for it). More precisely, if a moralized-interest theory is a version of egoism, it must be for some reason other than that it instructs agents to act in their interests. What that other reason could be, I confess I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

What are Interests?

 

Some people have suggested that what is behind my objections to egoism is a conception of interests that is “narrow� or “too narrow.� There’s an element of truth in that, but also an element of misunderstanding. (The “too� is a complete misunderstanding. To the extent that I have a narrow conception of interests, it is properly narrow.)

 

Let me begin with the misunderstandings. In a recent post, Roger Bissell referred to my

 

simple failure to recognize that “one’s interests� are not atomistic, hermetic, pinched little concerns, but ~what matters to the whole person~.

 

Here, we may run into a version of what I was talking about above under the heading of a moralized-interest theory. I don’t suppose he means ‘what the person actually cares about’ (does he suppose there’s any extra mileage to be got from ‘whole person’?) because that will allow things that nobody ever takes to be egoistic. However, if ‘what matters to the whole person’ means ‘what properly matters to the whole person,’ then he’s expressing a moralized interest theory – and therefore is not an egoist. There’s no reason, at least none he’s given, for supposing that what matters to the whole person in that sense will be in any recognizable sense egoistic. So, it seems as if he needs something more restrictive than ‘what the person cares about’ and also more restrictive than (just) what the person properly cares about. In other words, if he wants to maintain that the view he’s holding is egoistic, he needs a ‘narrow’ theory of interests, first, so that some things people care about can be dismissed as not really being or being part of their interests and second, so that the reason for dismissing some concerns can be traced back (entirely) to real interests rather than (partly) to the propriety of having those concerns.

 

There’s another kind of misunderstanding involved in the assertion that I have a narrow conception of interests. I have actually, in the past – and with people here on the list – urged that more can be included within the scope of self-interest than they were inclined to.

 

One case in which I did so was the distinction between Narrow and Broad Egoism (in What’s Wrong with Egoism?) Somewhat to my surprise, most of the comments I got indicated that self-described egoists weren’t willing to recognize that Broad Egoism was an intelligibly distinct (but still egoist) position.

 

Here, I’ll take another shot at expressing that distinction, together with a bit of elaboration I didn’t provide earlier.

 

A Narrow Egoist insists that action must be aimed at the service of his interests. If the connection isn’t simple, the egoist must have thought through the rational linkages that explain why the action serves his interests. This seems to be the position Rand held:

 

The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action .... (VOS, p. ix, emphasis added)

 

And

 

[Rationality] means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought .... (VOS, p. 26)

 

Broad Egoism is less intellectualistic, but also has a legitimate claim to be considered egoistic because it also holds that the agent’s interests are what is of ultimate value to the agent. The Broad Egoist does not insist that agents always consciously pursue their own good and always be able to exhibit some kind of deliberative connection between their interests and their actions. He only insists that the agent be able to test his actions and concerns in terms of his interests, and reject them if they don’t measure up.

 

The matter might be put this way. The Narrow Egoist thinks the burden of proof that something is self-interested rests with the claim that some possible action, desire, project, plan or principle does serve his interests. He doesn’t accept it unless the proof is forthcoming. The Broad Egoist conceives herself, in effect, as reasonably well-organized psychologically for the pursuit of her own interests, and therefore, when she finds herself attracted to some option, regards the burden of proof as falling on the other side. The option is deemed acceptable unless there are specific reasons for thinking that it is not.

 

One thing that might keep some from seeing room for the Broad Egoist position is the assumption that rationality requires maximizing (for an egoist, maximizing self-interest). A self-interest maximizer would say you should always select the option that is most in your interests (or one such option if there are ties at the top). If that is required, then anything that doesn’t maximize one’s interests will be ruled out by the Broad Egoist’s test just as much as by the Narrow Egoist’s.

 

I won’t go into depth here, but I think there are good reasons for denying that rationality requires maximizing. The deep reasons have to do with the rigorous formalization of maximizing developed in decision theory. It turns out that maximizing requires of us essentially infinite computational abilities. Since we haven’t got them, it can’t be that rationality requires that we exercise them. (The most interesting alternative, I think, is Simon’s idea of satisficing. It says we can legitimately select an action by using a “stop-rule� that licenses ceasing to search for improvements along the dimension we’re concerned about when we find something that is, by antecedently established criteria, good enough.)

 

[Here’s a fanciful example to illustrate one problem with maximizing. It’s not the only problem or even, in my judgment, the main one, but it’s a cute story. Suppose you’re going to live forever (goody!). And suppose you have a bottle of Everbetter wine. Everbetter wine gets better the longer it remains unopened. In fact, it gets better so fast that every day, it’s more than enough better to compensate you for having waited another day. But then, maximizing would tell you never to drink it! You’d never get to taste how good it is at all if you thought you had to maximize. Someone who didn’t think maximizing is a rational requirement would end up better off because some day he’d open and drink it – even though he knows it will be better – more than enough better to compensate him for having waited another day – the next day.]

 

Anyhow, that’s as much as I want to say directly on Broad Egoism except to point out a further application. For a Broad Egoist at least, it’s going to be possible to allow that an egoist can care about things other than her own interests for their own sakes. That is, she will be able to care about (say) the welfare of (at least some) others or the success of some cause without cashing that out in terms of the payoff to her own interests in doing so. To see this, what needs to be realized is that caring about something or pursuing it for its own sake does not mean the same as pursuing it “no matter what.� It can be true both that I pursue something for its own sake and also that, under certain conditions, I would give up pursuing it. If I care about your welfare for its own sake, then I don’t demand of the actions I take to promote it that there be some further reason of a different kind for those actions. However, that’s consistent with saying that if I found the concern for your welfare incompatible with my interests, I’d give it up. As long as the concern is sensitive to considerations of self-interest, so that the agent would give it up if she found it to conflict with her interests, then there is an intelligible sense in which she still takes her own interests to be of ultimate value. They can over-ride but not be over-ridden by other considerations.

 

What I’ve said so far in this section is about ways in which my position has been misunderstood. I’m willing to let considerably more count as self-interested behavior than just what is “obviously� self-interested. I suspect that some of what I would so count is more than many egoists would. However, I also said there was an element of truth in the assertion that I have a narrow conception of interests, and that’s what I’d like to explore now.

 

Any account of interests that is going to let a lot of non-obvious things count as self-interested needs to have a certain sort of structure, in order for it to be plausible to regard it as a version of egoism. In essentials, it needs to have some conception of core or basic values (elsewhere, I’ve called this a list), and the other things that are allowed as self-interested will have to be allowed on the basis of those core values. It could be that they are derived from the core values or it could be that they are merely allowed by the core values (or maybe something stronger than “allowed� but weaker than “derived from�).

 

What about the core values themselves (or the core value itself, if there’s only one)? For those, I think three further conditions are needed – if it is to be an egoist position we’re talking about. First, there’s a content condition. What is included among the core values will need to be obviously plausible to count as part of one’s interests. It’s not much more than a word-game to call your view egoist if, say, it allows you to count Mother Teresa’s concern for Calcutta’s poor as possibly among her “egoistic� core values. Reasonable candidates for inclusion among an egoist’s core values might include things like health, longevity, happiness, and wealth. (If it isn’t obviously plausible that the core values really are matters of self-interest, then some argument will be needed to the effect that they are. And how will that argument proceed except by tying them to something that it is plausible, without further argument, to regard as self-interested?) Second, if there is more than one thing among the core values, some kind of principle for weighting or combining them will be needed as well. That will also have to be among the core values (and therefore will need to be obviously plausible to regard as a self-interested principle.) Third, the list of core values needs to be short. There are two reasons for this. One is just that the more items there are on the list, the more difficult it is to see how to combine them so as to reach decisions about what to do. The longer you make the list, the less useful it will be. That’s a pragmatic problem with long lists. There’s also a theoretical problem. Egoism is interesting to the extent that it tells you what to do on the basis of a limited set of assumptions. By making the list longer and more detailed as to what counts as being among your core values, you make the position less interesting. The more that is settled by the core values, the less there is outside the core values that you can argue is supported by your egoistic commitments. (There’s the further problem that by making the list longer, you’re likely to violate the content condition – it will cease to be true for each item on the list that it is obviously plausible to count it as a part of one’s interests.)

 

The above is, in outline, the sense in which I think an egoist needs – for the sake of the coherence of his position – to have a narrow conception of his interests. His conception of his basic or core interests must, first, not be moralized, second, must not have many members, and third, must include only things that it is obviously plausible to regard as matters that are in his interests. If any of those conditions is not met, there’s no good reason for calling him an egoist.



Rob
_____
Rob Bass
rhbass@gmail.com
http://oocities.com/amosapient

 

Comments? I'd love to hear.