Talk:Psychological egoism

message: This gave me a good laugh. Can anyone remove this passage?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.232.73 (talk) 00:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Grenade

message: Someone (67.71.45.148) keeps trying to drastically change stuff on rational egoism in a bad way.  The person seems to think that the view is something it's not. Person, please see any encyclopedia of philosophy entry (e.g. IEP or SEP).  Rational egoism is view that it is rational to be an egoist---i.e. it's rational to be selfish in some sense. The person also seems to think that the view is specific to Ayn Rand. This is misleading. Whatever Rand calls her view exactly is irrelevant to how everyone in the field uses the term "rational egoism". You can note that Rand uses the term in a certain way, but don't make the entire entry on her. If you want to do that, then created the article Rational egoism (Ayn Rand) or something.  - Jaymay (talk) 22:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rational egoism and Ayn Rand 

message: I merged psychological hedonism. See Talk:psychological hedonism for old talk. Sam Spade 22:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea.  Psychological hedonism is just a form of psychological egoism. - Jaymay (talk) 22:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hedonism merger 

message: has anybody considered that will and self-subservience are synonymous? Therefore any willful act is selfish, regardless of extraneous or altruistic motives. This is a perfectly simple, logical argument that can be corroborated via your favorite dictionary, but seems to have no historical value on a factual wikipedia article. What should I do with it?
68.45.69.89 23:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't forget that the decision not to connect is based on a subconscious, though completely illogical feeling that connecting would be painful or dangerous.  Sometimes the subconscious makes decisions contrary to logical thought. AdamBiswanger1 18:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  yo 

message: A (imho) valid argument often pointed out in discussions, is that seemingly altruistic people may be motivated by what one could call an "after life reward". For example a Christian might exhibit altruistic behaviour, because he fears to burn in hell for all eternity if he hadn't.
One will not receive any benefit in life, but one has sufficient believe in "afterlife", where one fears to be punished.
This is especially interesting, because many religions (if not all) try to motivate non-egoistic behaviour by rewards or punishment in afterlife (Sinful Christians go to hell, bad Buddhists are not enlightened). The threat/incentive is similar to the one already pointed out, but even amplified by the fact that you'll be punished for all eternity.
--
I'm sorry, I overread the subclause in the Thomas Hobbes sentence. However, this qualifying statement ensues: "However, there are many acts of apparent altruism that do not immediately appear to admit an account of this kind."
I think this is why I overread it. It is biased and I beg to differ. There are few "big" altruistic actions exhibited by atheists and agnostics. People, who think, that this one is their only life, tend to egoism. This is my own observation of course, but the statement critiqued above is just as empirical.
I also think, that this qualifier should be included in the soldier-example: "In this case, there is simply no time to experience a good feeling for one's actions"
To end the discussion, if the time that you spend lying on the grenade until it explodes is long enough to feel good, we can simply include the qualifier, that he may do so because of a believe in afterlife. One cannot say that soldiers never are religious. But, as pointed out in the Stanford article, he may even have non-religious reasons for example the fame he receives. Such motivation is for example show in the German film Napola, where a youngster who is weary of life anyway, chooses this way of ending his life, because it is the only suicide, which is honoured in the Nazi value system.
These qualifiers contribute to my impresssion, that the example is badly chosen anyway.
--Ruben 16:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  possibility of afterlife reward 

message: I would submit the suggestion that this article deserves a complete re-write. Not only does it appear to rather biased on several points (for example, its presentation of the "grenade-hugging soldier" example and lack of any refutation), but it fails to address some of the most fundamental tenets of psychological egoism. It fails to even mention, for instance, the arguments of those such as Elliott Sober and his comments regarding immediate pleasure versus greatest eventual pleasure.
By this, of course, I simply mean that it seems perfectly logical to note that the soldier would not hurl his body over the grenade if it was not what he wanted to do, i.e. if it would not give him either immediate pleasure or perceived eventual pleasure. This has already been mentioned by other commentators on this talk page, and should certainly be worked into the article.
Basically, what I'm attempting to communicate is that the article needs to explore the corresponding relationship between a Want and a Pleasure. No one would argue against the fact that people always do what they want, whether they believe it or not. And, derivitively, there is essentially no difference between Want and Desire - one need only reference virtually any dictionary to see this. Desire is, of course, inseparably linked to Pleasure (I would submit even synonymous with pleasure), and likewise, therefore, is Want.
The end result is this: because we ultimately all do what we want (excepting some fantastic example of futuristic technology allowing one person to control the brain functions of another, which is highly irrelevant to this article), we ultimately all do whatever will give us pleasure. Therein lies the core tenet of psychological egoism, or more specifically, psychological hedonism.
I submit that such a tenet is absolutely vital to any discussion of psychological egoism, and should be worked into the article with proper research and references. From my understanding, while it is not necessarily a falsifiable premise, there is certainly plenty of evidence to demonstrate its veracity. 
- Kwub 16:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The debate is precisely over whether all desires are aimed at pleasure, over whether desire is inseparably linked to pleasure. It is a trivial statement that everyone always does what they desire, where desire is defined as any motivational feature within an agent that leads to action. However it is not trivial whether there are desires which are not ultimately aimed at producing desired inner states. I think that the experience machine thought experiment shows that there are such desires, ones which are ultimately aimed at the external world. --Herman88 14:10, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complete Rewrite 

message: An examination of the arguments for and against psychological egoism can be found in Unto Others (1998), by Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Sober and Wilson ultimately argue that the psychological evidence and philosophical arguments are inconclusive on this debate, yet evolutionary theory provides good evidence that psychological egoism is false.
I've never heard of this evidence evolutionary theory provides for the falsity of psychological egoism... who put this here? I myself am an egoist but I want to see this evidence. After all I'd much rather know the truth that delude myself in ideology, but as I said I have serious doubts about this dubious claim. Even if it was true and in citation form, I think it's not all that much in encyclopedia format.
Just some observations...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.176.17.159 (talk) 01:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The person who posted the bit about Sober and Wilson is right. But the person didn't say that evolutionary theory proves that psychological egoism is false.  They said that that's what Sober and Wilson claim.  And that's true.  See their book. I've added a reference and clarified the wording. - Jaymay (talk) 22:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolutionary Theory proves Psychological Egoism False? 

message: People [...] jump on the grenade simply because a similar action in the past resulted in a good - 1. "good" what? 2. one wouldn't jump on the going-to-blow-up-grenade more than one more time, so the part "similar action in the past" doesn't make sense. 89.146.65.233 (talk) 22:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: Myself being an egoist can think of a good interpretation of the phrase "People still sit or jump on the grenade simply because a similar action in the past resulted in a good." If I had seen a this action in the past of someone that after doing so had been regarded as a hero and I would like to become one as well, I would think that his/hers actions resulted in something good for him/her. Probably I would fantasize of doing the same and eventually actually jumping on a grenade in order to pursuit my ultimate goal. Of course  I think it has to be rewritten though, 'cause it does sounds funny. (English is not my native language, that's up to you fellows)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.148.8.157 (talk) 22:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The grenade issue 

message: Your response supporting this statement is essentially already a part of the paragraph when it is stated, "one's contemplated or reactionary expectation of this is the main factor in the decision." Certainly a person can be motivated by posthumous fame or accolade, there are innumerable accounts of self sacrifice undoubtedly this factors in many. The problem I have with this statement is the direct comparison made to dog training. If we want to say that a soldier can be mentally trained to act in ways that are contrary to his own "good(feelings)" then lets simply say that. Odin1 (talk) 05:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  grenade issue response 

message: Whoever decided to add the little caveat on Nietzsche needs to do their homework. "ego" and "ism", and certainly the conjunction of the two, is something Nietzsche would never attach his name to.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.115.100.102 (talk) 06:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nietzsche 

message: It seems that Psychological hedonism was at one time merged with Psychological egoism, then un-merged again later.  We should try to reach consensus on whether this topic deserves its own article.  Currently the "Psychological hedonism" article is a stub with no citations and minimal content.  I think there is not much material which applies to psychological hedonism which does not apply to psychological egoism in general, other than the definition of the term.  Hence, I recommend merging it back into this article, but want to establish consensus before doing so. Augurar (talk) 17:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hedonism merger (again) 

message: Since this is a start article, I want to add more information about psychological hedonism. Here is an outline of what I am planning on adding. I want to relate this topic more to psychology not just philosophy.
1. First expand the two sentences on psychological hedonism and give it more breadth in the opening section. I would also put more references to psychological hedonism throughout the article.
2. I would like to discuss Jeremy Bentham contributions to psychological hedonism. Specifically, his use of the ideas of of both motivational and normative hedonism and classification of what is pleasure and pain.
3. Discuss of how psychological hedonism feeds into the idea of the pleasure principle in Psychoanalysis and any other psychological perspectives that borrow from psychological hedonism.
4. Discuss Cognitive/Behavioral perspective on psychological hedonism from the modern era including studies with new models and experiments involving pain and pleasure.
5. Make the Debate section more fair and balanced instead of just discussing criticism.
6. Clean up the Criticism section and make it more objective, and also add more modern critiques of the issue.
Here is link to what I have done so far in my sandbox (link)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericmknapp (talk • contribs) 18:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential new edits 

message: Psychological egoism seems to use a definition of altruism that's impossible to satisfy. It seems to posit altruism as some magical thing that is not satisfied by any possible conscious or unconscious intent. It seems to imply that altruism can only be "real" if it does not coincide with any other goal of a being, making it impossible for any being to ever be altruistic (no being can act without some reward function in its brain or circuitry being satisfied), or at the very least it keeps moving the goalposts whenever there is a coinciding other goal: psychological egoism will always maintain that that other goal was the "true" motivation of the being all along, which makes psychological egoism unfalsifiable and circular.
Altruism as it is seen by psychological egoism is a fantasy as much as free will and good and evil are. They simply have no meaning except in the human mind, there is no divine "true" or "real" meaning to it. Looking for such divine meaning is a perfectly normal human emotion but it should not be passed off as science or serious philosophy.
Also, who decided that in an argument one gets to trace back a motivation as far as one needs to win the argument? If you say a person helping out a stranger is "really" motivated by some ancient evolutionary instinct then you should be consisted and always trace any motivation back to evolutionary instincts. You can't just shop between direct motivation and evolutionary instincts whenever it suits you (btw, either view is ok, you just have to be consistent and use a different word for the other view). 99% of "philosophy" comes down to people not being precise and/or consistent in their definitions, creating bogus arguments/conflicts.
Anyway, I'm sure some academic with credentials must have made the above arguments at some point and the article is not complete without them.
195.169.213.92 (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impossible standard for altruism 

message: This article purports that psychological egoism and hedonistic egoism are not the same thing, that the latter is a form of the former, but it fails to give any examples of actions that would fall under psychological egoism without also falling under hedonistic egoism.  If hedonistic egoism were to define pain and pleasure very strictly, I could see a distinction, but this piece claims that "Psychological hedonists tend to construe 'pleasure' very broadly, so as to include all positive feelings or experiences, such as joy, satisfaction, ecstasy, contentment, bliss, and so forth.  Likewise, 'pain' is typically understood so as to include all negative feelings or experiences, such as aches, discomfort, fear, guilt, anxiousness, regret, and so forth."But maybe that article is wrong.  After all, this article, in describing the difference, merely says that "Psychological hedonism restricts the range of self-interested motivations to only pleasure and the avoidance of pain" and does not go on to define those terms in the broad manner of the first article.So, is there a difference, and if so, what is it?allixpeeke 10:44, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the difference between psychological egoism and hedonistic egoism? 

message: Why is there no mention of C. Daniel Barton's study that claimed to falsify egoism? It is mentioned in both the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries for Psychological Egoism.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.38.75.60 (talk) 08:40, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Barton & Empirical Experimentation