dr_who@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/15/83)
Musically: It's imposssssibllllle, ask an egoist to love it's just
imposssibllllle ...
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And now, time to be serious. Part of my inspiration for advancing the view
that egoism is not compatible with caring at a fundamental level about
others comes from an article I read a long time ago, and just recently
photocopied. See Laurence Thomas, "Ethical Egoism and Psychological
Dispositions," *American Philosophical Quarterly*, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan.
1980, pp. 73-78. If anybody could get the chance to read it (just about any
university library should have it), please do -- it will help to understand
where I'm coming from. Unfortunately, Thomas says that a consistent egoist
is willing to exploit others -- which is true, but which Tom Craver won't
accept. However, I believe that the argument could be recast in terms of
willingness to abandon others; and Tom has never argued that abandoning
people violates their rights. Among the people that a consistent egoist
must be willing to abandon are his friends. I will try to justify this
statement, indirectly, below.
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From Tom Craver, on my car-vs-operation example:
Your assumption that it would be possible for the man to buy the car
with no affect on their relationship seems invalid. The wife might
resent it, and even if she did not, her pain would prevent her from
living and loving fully. A loving husband is not going get as much
pleasure from his wife if she is in pain.
First of all, it's quite easy to think up cases where the wife wouldn't
resent it. She might not know about the money, or she might be so overly
humble as to think that your car really was more important. In the latter
case, you might actually have to argue with her in order to get her to
accept the decision to buy the operation. And that might be more trouble
than the satisfaction of knowing that you were doing it out of love. As far
as living and loving fully, I think that these can be done if one is in
"moderate pain", as I specified; in fact, if your wife was the quiet and
uncomplaining type, you might never hear about it again. Or try "mild pain"
instead of "moderate pain", if you think that's too much.
Of course, if you are correct, and the man would *truly* be happier
with a car, I would say that he does not really love his wife that
much.
And I would say that you are jumping to that conclusion. I think you
mistake desires for long-term happiness; and that you are correct to think
that if he really does love his wife that much, he would feel better *at the
time* if he helped her. However, that is because of a desire, and acting
out of desire is not always the best way to achieve long-term happiness! It
is a mistake to conclude, from the fact that he would feel better at the
time, that his overall long-term happiness would be higher.
Let me recount one of my own experiences, and hope that you will understand
why. I was playing basketball when I stepped on Adam's foot. The strange
thing was, it didn't hurt his foot, it hurt mine -- I did something fierce
to a tendon or muscle. As I suffered considerably, I thought to myself,
"well, at least I hurt my own foot and not Adam's; I would feel guilty about
that, since *I* caused the injury." But then I realized that that guilt
would go away quickly; whereas this pain would stay for hours or days (and
each second seemed that long). It was a dramatic illustration of the fact
that one's overall long-run happiness is not always promoted by acting on
feelings of love or friendship -- even though the friendship is quite
genuine and balanced.
I also realized that, had I been given the chance to choose hurting Adam's
foot instead of mine, I would not have taken it. This is in spite of the
fact -- and it is a fact -- that *I* (not Adam, of course) would have been
better off if I had had and taken that option. It was a dramatic
illustration of the fact that I was not selfish: I cared (still do) about
Adam's welfare, not merely as a means to my own, but for its own sake -- his
own sake -- at a fundamental level.
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Now let me calm down some, and answer this...
You are also making the same mistake I did, confusing "reason" and
purpose - since you seem to be talking about purposes in that sentence.
If I might reword it - "The purpose in my loving is the benefits to
THAT PERSON as well as myself." If that is what you mean, I disagree.
The purpose of loving is to get the pleasures of loving and of being
loved.
You're right about that mistake, and your rewording is correct. Naturally I
disagree with your last sentence here, which I take it is descriptive,
including descriptive of me -- see above.
Self-benefit is the proper purpose *exactly because it is the only real
one*. ...It is true that, in descriptive terms, all humans are selfish
...
Again, on your latter sentence here, see above. I claim not to be selfish.
I assume you acknowledge the rule of thumb that I know better than others,
usually, what my purposes are. So I ask you to give your readers a good
reason to doubt my report (and similar reports by others) about what my
motivations are. As for the former sentence: even if it were true that the
only real purpose is self-benefit, it would not follow that it is the proper
one. We all could have wrong (immoral) purposes -- it's logically possible.
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You go on to say "one can do something simply because it is the best
thing to do in the situation... best, full stop". Best on what basis?
How do you judge if not in relation to *some* human being?! (This gets
us back to the question of values without a valuer, which I see as
impossible.)
This is somewhat unrelated to my impossibility thesis, but I'll take it up
here to save another note. I judge bestness in relation to *all* human (and
other sentient) beings. Again, I use the summation of individual welfares,
which you have yet to criticize (probably because, I have yet to make
clear). In the case of intrinsic value, which may or may not be what you
mean by "basis", I maintain that some things (e.g., pleasure) are valuable
per se; one need not consider the "relation" of pleasure "to some human" --
if there is such a relation -- to see that it is good. Pleasure is good
because of the nature of the experience alone.
--Paul Torek, U of MD College Park