Psychological Egoism:
The view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even when they appear to act for others.
Psychological Altruism:
The belief that humans can act with genuine concern for others’ well-being, without selfish motives.
Egoist:
A person who acts primarily out of self-interest.
Altruist:
A person who acts primarily to help others, sometimes at a cost to themselves.
Selfless:
Acting without regard for one’s own benefit or gain.
YOU ARE SAVING A BABY
The altruist uses the extreme situation in a mercenary way to convince themselves that people are selfless. If altruism is false then to use somebody dying while saving others to make it look good and believable is reprehensible.
The extreme situation drives it home that we are not fully free to do what we want so we feel overpowered by it and thus go along with it and give our life for another. There is a sense of escape. You want out and you want to be as big as the threat and you do that by aligning with it.
Saving a random baby from a fire gives lessons about how suspect human morality is.
A house is burning fiercely and the baby is trapped inside. You know that if you get in you are unlikely to get out alive and will suffer severe burns and a life of horror if you survive at all. You burst in to get the baby.
If egoism is true, you will not act to help unless something tells you there could be something in it for yourself. If it is 99% for the baby and you need the 1% of self-interest to act what then? It may be only 1% but it is important to you. That shows how much this is about you and you are in denial if you call yourself an altruist.
Whether you succeed in saving the baby or not, your act will be admired. Why do you admire your act? Why do others admire it? It is because you feel strongly about helping the baby. You will not be admired if you made yourself do it though you didn’t want to.
It is not your fault, at that moment in time, if you are not inclined to help. You don’t have time to think and feel better about it.
People say you should be praised for acting.
Should you be praised more for acting against your inclination?
The answer is yes for it means you have a bigger struggle than those who want to do it in order to do the right thing.
Will you be praised as much for it as you would be if you wanted to do it? No. People will not suggest that wanting to do good matters than doing the good. They will not equate good done because you want to as just good. Good by definition does not care what you want. Right is right.
Doing good and wanting to is two goods not one. Which then would be the main thing for them? The good. The wanting is in second place.
Those who praise you for wanting to help are in fact wronging you. They treat you as an emotion more than a person. They care more about the emotional inclination to help the baby than the baby. If you care about the baby they indirectly then judge you for caring. People can seem good and have very poor values.
You don’t want the baby to be in pain or die. What if you want to think of yourself as good and that leads to the desire to help the baby? It seems that a self-centred motive leads to an other-regarding motive. But how other-regarding is the other motive? If you were really that caring you would put the other regarding motive first. You would just care because of the baby if you really cared. You are still giving a mixed message. You make it both about you and the baby. It is more about you for you have to care about yourself before you get any interest in helping the baby.
OBJECTION
To argue that a man who risks his arm to get food for a starving family is being as self-interested as one who risks his arm to fill his coffers seems very incorrect.
We need to see this clearly for we all feel an impulse to evaluate this by the results. He is not made unselfish just because a family is fed.
Wanting to do something for another means the wanting is yours and you suffer not doing what you want so it is about you. Your intention is to fulfil yourself by using another. This reasoning is said to be a tautology. “John wants to help x and wanting makes it self-centred therefore John is self-centred.” But that is not a tautology or a circular argument at all.
First it makes sense. The solution to the alleged circularity is that your wanting and intention are an extension of who you are and reflect you. They are you.
Second it is true that wanting is you having to fulfil the side of our nature that does not want to be alone.
Third if you want a reward of 100 dollars, you want just the same. Wanting is wanting whether it is for another person to be okay or wanting a 100 dollars.
The object of the want makes no difference. An eye is an eye no matter what it sees.
Whatever action we perform we understand and experience it as self-regarding as in responding to our will. In other words, there is something self-regarding about doing your will. Your will is your will regardless of whether you are acting to benefit yourself or another person. Your sight is your sight whether you look in the mirror or at another person. Same idea.
FINALLY
The extreme examples cannot tell us if the human race in general is altruistic. Nor do they prove that the acting individuals are altruistic. The examples show that altruism is suspect. There is no proof that everybody being into egoism all the time is an error. That in itself does not mean that it is false. It means that it might be true. It means we have the right to assume egoism is the norm and encourage others to. If psychological egoism is wrong then why do we need extreme examples to refute it such as a soldier blowing himself up to save the life of another person?
The examples are sledgehammers - believe he was a hero and not seeking something for himself or you are bad person and a cynic and slandering a good man. That such bullying is present says the refuters have something to hide.
If altruism really describes what human nature is like, then why do you need extreme examples to prove it? The answer is because you are trying to convince yourself that you and others really can be and are altruistic. You don't truly believe they are. The examples at best might show we are altruistic in extreme situations but that does not mean we are ever altruistic any other time. Big altruistic acts might only prove that we are altruistic in big things. But we could have nothing but egoistic motivation for all the other things we do. A man who won't steal a hundred pounds might steal a pound.