PHLA11H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Relativism, Moral Skepticism, Subjectivism
Document Summary
The doctrine that the only thing anyone is capable of desiring or pursuing ultimately (as an end in itself) is his own self-interest. (feinberg, p. 80) If that"s right, psychological egoism poses a challenge to morality: If it is humanly impossible to do anything other than what you think is in your own self-interest, then it doesn"t make sense to say that you ought to do anything else. You get pleasure from it, so it"s selfish. P1) whenever one gets what one us trying to achieve in acting, one feels pleasure. Therefore, c) whenever one acts, one is really pursuing one"s own pleasure. Not only is the presence of pleasure (satisfaction) as by-product of an action no proof that the action was selfish; in some special cases it provides rather conclusive proof that the action was unselfish. (p. 83) Passenger: now abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode? . Lincoln: that was the very essence of selfishness.
