----------
> From: Mitchell:

> While this may seem to be a good first attempt at looking at obedience, I
> think it is more complicated than that. There are few cases that would be
> absent of causes 1-4 which involve obedience to something. Certainly many
> calls for obedience try to use the concepts of duty and authority, but
> rarely are those the only reason given. I propose that someone come up
> with an example of obedience that is not in some way motivated by self
> interest, real or imagined. The truth is, that while many people claim to
> be motivated by duty, honor, country and the whole bit, all personal
> decisions are motivated by self interest, and choosing to be obedient is
> no different.

The decisive arguments against this view (it’s called psychological egoism) were developed by Joseph Butler and published over two and a half centuries ago (1726!). Since then, there’s been hardly a single philosopher or psychologist who was familiar with and understood the arguments who has adopted the view.

In brief, suppose you have a reasonably definite conception of what self-interest is, such as what contributes to longevity. Plainly, people frequently and knowingly act in ways that reduce or are likely to reduce their lifespans and you don’t even have to look at “duty, honor, country and the whole bit” to find examples. Bad habits like smoking or over-eating will do. True, you can add further conditions to your conception of self-interest, but there will still be exceptions.

It’s no better to substitute something like long-range happiness as your conception of self-interest, because, again, people sometimes knowingly act against (what they believe to be) their own long-range happiness. The person who goes down with a sinking ship rather than take a life-supporter from a child is not acting for his long-range happiness. (I’ll come to unconscious motivations in a minute.) Or, for a more mundane example, you can consider addictions or bad habits again. An addict need not believe that his addiction leads to greater long-term happiness: it’s just that, when given the chance, he cares more about satisfying the immediate urge to (say) smoke or drink or over-eat than about his long-term happiness. (Note that saying that the addict originally acquired the addiction out of a desire for long-term happiness may be true but doesn’t show that he now continues the addictive behavior for that reason. What caused a person to acquire a desire is not necessarily the same as what the object of that desire is.)

I’ll add that it’s just as much of a problem for the psychological egoist to admit that people act in ways that may be consistent with their long-range happiness, but not for the sake of their long-range happiness. Consider this example: You buy life insurance so your loved ones will be provided for after your death. That may well be consistent with your long-term happiness, but what you’re aiming at – if you’re normal – is not your long-term happiness (if that’s understood as a psychological state). What you’re aiming at is that your loved ones actually be provided for. To see that these aren’t the same, suppose that you were offered a “magic pill” for five dollars (as compared to the thousands you will pay in insurance premiums) that would make you sincerely believe that your loved ones would be provided for. If your own long-term happiness is all you’re concerned about, you should take the pill rather than pay the insurance premiums. That way, you get all the psychological benefits of believing your loved ones will be provided for but you save thousands of dollars to spend on other things you find satisfying. If you’re at all normal, though, you’ll reject that offer – which shows that you’re motivated by something other than your own long-term happiness. Even if you’re not normal, other people would reject it – which is just as damaging for the universal thesis of psychological egoism.

If the psychological egoist isn’t going to admit that he has just been refuted by empirical evidence, he has two options: (1) He can adopt a very broad notion of “self-interest” – one that makes his thesis amount to little more than that people do what they do because they want to. That may be true, but it isn’t egoism in any interesting sense. It’s consistent with their wanting to do things for reasons other than their interests. (2) He can appeal to something like unconscious motivations. The problem with that is that, if it’s to be plausible, there’s got to be some independent reason for ascribing the motivations, besides the fact that the motivation “must” be there for the theory to be correct. (That would just be question-begging about whether the theory is correct.) Sometimes, of course, there is independent evidence for an unconscious self-interested motivation. Self-deception really occurs. But also sometimes, there is no independent evidence for the alleged unconscious motivation, and, in some cases, there’s evidence against it.

In light of these facts, a proponent of psychological egoism, if he’s reasonable, will give up his theory. If he treats it as an empirical theory, subject to examination in the light of evidence, the evidence shows that it is false. If he protects his theory from that kind of refutation, he ends up with the uninteresting claim that people’s actions are motivated.