This house believes ethical egoism is false

Good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on when you are reading this debate. Today we shall be discussing the topic of ethical egoism. To restate, my position, I claim ethical egoism is false. Ethical egoism is the position that the only thing of moral value is your own personal self-interest, and a fortiori nothing else is of moral value. I shall argue this is false. Note I am not required to present an alternative to ethical egoism, but instead an argument against its cogency. I shall present in fact two arguments: one from Professor Hepburn which I shall call the diary argument, and another similar argument which I shall call the constructivist predicate. Firstly, however, I shall state the difference between Smithian ethics and an ethical egoism. Smithian ethics can be summarised in the famed quotation: "It is not [from] the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest"[1]. Smithian ethics is what I shall call the idea that, by promoting our own self-interest, we can as a consequence benefit the whole. This is a claim that says, by pursuing our own self-interest, we are promoting the general welfare. Therefore, men like Adam Smith support the ethical value of general equity or general welfare, and not egoism. They value self-interest bceause it is a means to the general good, and not because they value self-interest in itself. This distinction is important when we talk about ethical egoism, as I come to my first argument against it. Consider an individual who is writing a manifesto, who jots down that they shall only value what is in their interest. In Hepburn's words: "If I simply assert, as a personal manifesto (or, indeed, write it secretly in my diary), "I am going to pursue my own fulfilment only, and I understand morality precisely as a means to that" - then I achieve consistency - but express no public moral theory."[2] In other words, while the ethical egoist is claiming that they are supposedly going after a moral value, instead they are just pursuing self-interest, and self-interest is not a moral value any more than the taste of bubblegum. The pursuit of self-interest is acting without morality, and not able to be justified as a moral factor in its own right. My second argument, the constructivist predicate, reinforces this point. To paraphrase a position held similar to Gilbert Harman, I propose a football relativism, or a game/contract constructivism is the apt description of how ethical language is used. This football relativism is the idea that morality emulates football. There are different rules about how people play the sport, but there is still a right or wrong way to play football - it is wrong for example to pick up the ball and run it between two posts into the back of a net past the goalkeeper, then protest at getting a card. Similarly, it is wrong to punch another player in the mouth when playing football. However, the key factor here is that what is right and wrong depends on the relationship between two people. Suppose there was only one person on the planet, and they had no way of creating more people, in a world that is in all other ways the same as ours. They would not be morally wrong if they tried to rob a bank, nor would they be praised for building a hospital. Ethics is a social evaluator. If what is considered when we evaluate our acts is only our self-interest, then we are not evaluating our acts socially. Therefore, when we evaluate our acts based only on self-interest, then we are not acting within ethics. As ethical egoism is the claim that self-interest is the only moral value, ethical egoism is therefore false. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to YYW's opening pitch. 1 - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 2 - Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (section: altruism and egoism on page 221)