Psychological Egoism

Thanks for the extremely well worded arguments YYW, a couple of your sentences caused my brain to hurt in a way that reminded me of reading Machiavelli or Nietzsche. Anyways, I will be starting by refuting my opponent's points, and then provide a few of my own.'ALTRUISTIC' ACTIVITY"Altruistic behavior is behavior that is disinterested and selfless insofar as it is done solely out of concern for the well-being of others."This is very important to note. When was the last time that you did something 'good' and didn't feel anything? It's impossible to separate the doing of good deeds and pleasing your own self. At the end of the day, doing something 'good', makes you feel good, and so your motivation is the good feeling you get. If you could be motivated to do something 'good' that doesn't make you feel good, why has that never happened? Quite simply, because it can't happen. Anyways, the ebola doctors.My opponent uses the example of doctors who are treating an extremely contagious and fatal disease as proof that people can act without being motivated by feeling good. I don't think this proves that. Imagine you're one of those doctors. You are clearly very aware of the suffering of these people. You feel that you can play a part in making things better. Wouldn't that make you feel good, give you a sense of purpose in life? Again, I ask the readers, when was the last time you did a good deed without feeling good about it? All this example shows is that the doctors would feel A) Very fulfilled by taking this courageous path, and B) Very guilty if they chose to ignore the suffering they could help stop.Next, we have the jump on a grenade example.Well this falls under the same kind of line of thought as that I expressed with the doctors. If you're this soldier, you've had values of honor, brotherhood, and sacrifice etched into your mind as positive things. I've never been in combat, but I'm told the kind of bond one makes with people they've been under fire with is one of the strongest bonds in the world. There is a level of understanding and respect for each man that most of us will never know. So the grenade is on the ground, and it threatens the lives of your buddies. Given the kind of mindset I just expressed, can't we see that a soldier would want to save his friends? The important word there is 'want'. He wants to jump on the grenade. He wants to die for a higher concept, that of brotherhood. What does the word 'want' imply? Wanting for something is to be lacking in satisfaction. To satisfy yourself, you must get what you want. This soldier wanted to satisfy his urge to save his friends, to meet the kind of qualities that he has been taught are good. So when we back out and look at the big picture, we can see that the soldier didn't act in a disinterested manner as my opponent would suggest, but rather he knew, whether consciously or subconsciously, that he would feel good about sacrificing himself for his friends.SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS"..Bastion found that "increased empathy leads to increasing helping behavior..""I don't see why this is evidence against me. Increased empathy increases the good feelings you'd get from helping, and increases the guilt you'd feel by not helping."While psychological egoists claimed that increased empathy might result in a feeling of unpleasantness that the desire to ameliorate would compel individuals to help others, Bastion found that giving high empathy individuals an easy way out did not reduce their desire to help." If these are high empathy individuals, I would imagine that they would feel guilty taking the easy way out, if the 'easy way out' means giving them some kind of excuse for not helping. If it means telling them that they aren't actually needed, it is still reasonable to conclude that they would still get a sense of self-satisfaction out of helping, being such high empathy people that they are. I will defend this a little more as I go on."Likewise, while psychological egoists claimed that subjects only were motivated to help as a means to escape punishment or social sanction from others which might be incurred by not helping, Bastion's findings rule this an impossibility because even when he told high empathy individuals that their particular work would be kept a secret, their desire to help was not reduced." Two things about this one. First, these people still could've been concerned with what Bastion might think of them if they decided not to help. Secondly, the fact that the work would be secret would not diminish the urge to help if you're a high empathy person who gets satisfaction from being a part of the solution. "He reached this conclusion by telling high-empathy individuals that others had volunteered to do the help needed, meaning that their specific help was not necessary. But, this did not reduce the desire to help, which showed that the self punishment hypothesis is invalid."I may be restating myself here, but the fact that they need not have felt guilty not helping does not mean they wouldn't have wanted to help anyways. It may not be rational to feel good about doing good deeds that technically aren't necessary, but a high empathy person might be so emotionally invested that this logic does not affect the fact that they'd get good feeling from helping anyways. They could've volunteered anyways so they wouldn't have felt useless. I think it's reasonable to assume that we've all done this at some point. Your help isn't necessary, but you want to have a sense of purpose, so you join in anyways. DESIRE TO FULFILL DESIRE TO HELPThis is a point I wanted to add, and it's one that I was dancing around during my discussion of the soldier smothering the live grenade. My opponent is suggesting that there are some people out there, who, in some instances, have the motivation to act that is based on the want to help others, and not the want to make oneself feel better. 'I want to help these people.' Let's just say that's the statement of motivation from one of these people.Notice it doesn't say, 'I want to feel good and I know helping these people will make me feel good.'However, the fact that there is a self-generated want to help people shown in the first statement, shows that there is still a desire that YOU have that will make YOU feel good by having it accomplished. You will help the people because you want to, and acting in a manner that gets us what we want is selfish. Therefore, even if your want is to help people, the fact that you are acting to satisfy a want means you are acting in your interests, so even then, your act can be considered, at its deepest level, to be self-centered.Thanks for reading.