Psychological Egoism

As humans, all of our actions are motivated by beliefs and satisfaction. We take actions that we believe will satisfy our desires. For example, I drink water to satisfy my thirst, and I believe it will do so. Psychological egoists say that we are always motivated to satisfy our self-interest. Even the motivations behind actions that we take seemingly for others' interests and welfare are to satisfy our own welfare. Whether it is to maximize our desires or to avoid suffering, we subconsciously or consciously always pursue our self-interest.

Let's say that I saw a starving and cold child and helped them. It seems that this action was altruistic and motivated to serve that child's welfare. However, psychological egoists would say that my motivation is still not altruistic. When I saw that child, I felt sad and disturbed, and I believed that helping him would help me avoid this feeling, so to minimize my disturbance, I chose to help the child. The things that we think we do because of our morality or altruism are simply driven by either wanting to escape punishment, wanting a reward, avoiding suffering, or feeling better about ourselves.

You might ask, how can psychological egoism explain extreme altruistic behaviors such as someone sacrificing their life to save others? Let's say that a mother sacrificed her own life to save her child, how can we still claim that her motivation was about her own self-interest? However, psychological egoists could still claim the same thing in this scenario. The mother knew she would not be able to live with the pain she had to bear if she chose otherwise, so she chose to sacrifice herself to minimize her suffering.

Of course, there are many objections to psychological egoism. One of the most popular objections points out how it is immune to any refutation, meaning that it is unfalsifiable. For any empirical theory to be credible, it needs to be falsifiable. Whatever objection you make, psychological egoists can always counter it with self-interest. All the answers you find to our motivations can be traced back to being selfish; hence, they are not falsifiable. In addition, many biological studies suggest we are capable of altruism. Therefore, while psychological egoism is still controversial, it is not accepted by many philosophers.