Average Utilitarianism Implies Solipsistic Egoism

Egoism, Psychological Egoism and Ethical Egoism

Egoism The term “egoism” is ordinarily used to mean “exclusive concern with satisfying one’s own desires, getting what one wants.” Dictionaries tend to support this. They call “egoism”, for instance, “1. selfishness; self-interest. 2. conceit.” The term “egotist” is often a substitute, although it’s defined differently, for example, as “excessive reference to oneself.” The ego is the self. But ...

Psychological Egoism

Impatience as Intertemporal Egoism

We build on a philosophical account of personal identity (Parfit, 1984) which argues that the degree of concern one has for one’s future self may be scaled by the degree of “psychological connectedness”—overlap in properties such as beliefs, values, and ideals—held between one’s current and future self. We pose participants with tradeoffs between consuming a benefit in the near future versus co...

Employee Spinoffs and the Solipsistic Entrepreneur

A team of managers engaged in production using technology x, is considering switching to technology y. The value of y is learned slowly over time, but constraints on the ability of individual managers to communicate their beliefs allow disagreements to emerge among team members. Managers who develop sufficiently strong disagreements with their colleagues choose to form new companies to implemen...

Utilitarianism and Personal Identity