Are We Only In It For Ourselves Analysis

Are We Only In It for Ourselves
The ethical egoism theory is described by the book as, “...actions are morally right just because they best promote one’s self-interest.” (Landau, 2010, p. 105). This differs from the view that the psychological egoism is which says, “...Which tells us that there is only one thing that motivates human beings: self-interest.” (Landau, 2010, p. 89). Both ethical or psychological egoism talk about a person’s self-interest, however they differ because one is you are morally obligated to help others and the other says that people will only help others if they chose to. Author Joshua May did a great job explaining the claim, “Roughly, psychological egoists claim that all of a person’s intentional actions are ultimately self-interested or selfish in some sense; …show more content…
In the book by Shafer it explained, “In order to refute psychological egoism, you must provide examples in which a person intends to do something, even though she wasn’t trying to benefit herself.” (Landau, 2010, p. 92). This tells me that we have 3 different ways to categorize people, ones that help others because they feel obligated to, and those that choose to help others because they will benefit from it, and finally those that simply help others because they want to without any kind of benefit from it. Our third category Sober and Wilson describe them as, “They then define psychological altruism as the view that ‘people sometimes care about the welfare of others as an end in itself.” (Sober & Wilson, 1998, p. 228). Someone who is considered altruistic is someone who is willing to offer their help to people in need without expectation of receiving anything in return, they simply enjoy assisting