Quinn On Ethical 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 ...

A comparative study on ethical egoism and psychological egoism

Egoism is considered as one of the common ethical trends. On egoism, one should act in such a manner that provides the most charities and utilties. Egoism appears in two fields of ethics and psychology. These two types of egoism differ in some aspects and resemble in some others. In this paper, two fields of egoism have been studied with a critic-analytical approach. Further, the proof by love ...

Ix. Ethical Egoism and Psychological Dispositions

IN their endeavors to show that ethical egoism is an unacceptable moral theory, moral philosophers have tended to argue that either (a) the theory is internally inconsistent, (b) an ethical egoist is committed to a form of solipsism, or (c) the theory cannot, properly speaking, be considered a moral theory.l It would seem, though, that such arguments have not been particularly persuasive. Howev...

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...