Sunday, March 27, 2016

The Skeptics to the Utilitarian, and Your Life

Are we, as humans, driven only by psychological egoism? Bentham had claimed that psychological egoism is natural and universal (Chapter 12-3b) meaning we are mainly interested in our own welfare first and foremost. To me, this question is rather loaded with a lot of variables that make it a bit difficult to find a simple answer to.
Going back to the basic statement, before diving in depth into society aspects of it, I’ll share my own thoughts to answer the question I posed at the beginning. People seek pleasure for themselves with minimum pain, is what many philosophers have come to believe. To a degree I think that that statement is true. We do tend to make decisions, whether subconsciously or not, that benefit us. Though I don’t believe we are completely driven by our own psychological egoism. There are people in this world who will sacrifice their own pleasure, take on the pain, to better someone else’s life.
As a mother, I no longer think about what is best for me. My children come first and my decisions are to maximize their pleasure with minimal pain. It can’t be mainly about my desires and not theirs because then I would fail as a parent. No, in my mind, as I’m sure it is for many other parents, the pleasure of our children comes before our own no matter the expense to us it is. As a partner in a serious relationship, it is not purely about what benefits me. Though I guess in the long run, things could perhaps benefit me and I cannot consciously see it. Such as my partner is thinking about joining the military and I can currently only see the pain that will bring me, however I will be there every step of the way to support my significant other because it will cause more pleasure for him than his current situation.

From the standpoint of a society, psychological egoism is quite a bit different. There are a lot more aspects that go into it. In chapter 12-3b it lists a couple of examples of situations where the benefit to yourself is more than just the immediate benefit or harm. The one particular example that stuck out to me is that one may no longer want to pay taxes that support the school system because either they don’t have children that attend public schools, or their children are already through with school. So, those people only see that the taxes paying for the school as negatively impacting themselves and wanting to get rid of it. However, they do not realize that without the taxes that go into the schools, there will be less jobs, less children being educated, which will result in more people needing to be on welfare and welfare is taken out of everyone’s taxes. So, when it come to the society point of egoism, there are a lot more aspects to consider if something is going to bring more pleasure than pain to each individual. Also, when it comes to the society standpoint, you working toward improving the society, you must think more about the good for a larger amount of people than just a small amount, hedonism.