No Need to Thank Me,

I Did It for Myself

Joshua Yi

Essay II

October 30th, 2014

Are Humans Selfish By Nature?

You are driving down the 8 East after a fun-filled weekend spent with your friends and

family in your home town of Mexicali. You fail to realize your fuel tank is low on gasoline and

to your misfortune your car ceases to run; to make matters even worse, there is absolutely no

sign of human civilization in sight. It’s 2am, the streets are unlit, and your cellular device fails to

acquire a signal – you’re tired, cold and just want to get to the comfort of your warm, tranquil

bed. After waiting around anxiously for 20 (or so) minutes you see a dim light in your rear view

mirror. Joyously, you spring out of your car to wave down the approaching vehicle, ever so

hopeful that whomever is gracious enough to stop to assist you. To your relief, the vehicle slows

down and comes to a stop at your rear. With gratitude you approach the driver and praise him of

his selfless act of altruism. The driver looks back at you and with a curious gesture on his face

responds: “Please, there is no need to thank me. I’m not really doing this for you; I’m doing this

so I can ultimately feel better about myself.” You respond to this remark with a confused look

on your face, but the thought of a glorious slumber in your warm bed is too prevalent so you

brush off the statement and just go with it. The driver proceeds to take you to the nearest gas

station, then back to your car. You fill up your car, relieved that this mess is finally over. What

did the driver mean with that questionable remark? How could it be that the driver’s initial

intentions were motivated not by the desire to do good to you, but motivated by a self-interested

desire to manifest positive feelings within himself, when ultimately the driver had to sacrifice his

time in the middle of a cold night to a complete stranger? Odd as it may seem, this idea makes

complete sense to someone who holds the position of psychological egoism. Psychological

egoism is the notion that peoples’ motivations are exclusively driven by self-interest rather than

altruistic ones. I argue that psychological egoism is rooted in speculative assumptions that are

ultimately unfalsifiable, therefore discounting its validity as a theory.

The idea of psychological egoism has been around for quite some time now. It’s

beginnings in Western Philosophy can be dated back loosely to Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE)

and his theory of causes. He claimed that everything in the universe has a fundamental sense of

becoming, or telos (end/goal). For humans he claimed that our telos is the pursuit of happiness.

It can be assumed that the actions required to pursue happiness will always be self-serving. In

more recent times, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) formed a more modern argument for

psychological egoism.

“For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary, and

all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which if men see they shall

be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of

mutual help. (Leviathan Ch.25 pg.47)

Hobbes clearly is in full support of psychological egoism. He stems this support from Aristotle’s

positions when he says “the object (telos) is to every man his own good.” He then takes it one

step further by saying that when people realize man’s object is in his own good, people cannot

begin to trust one another or desire to do good to others. When initially pondering on the remarks

of Hobbes, it appears that there are all too many seemingly empirical verifications for his

position. For one, the prevalent economic system of the world today is capitalism. This is a

system that promotes hostile, cut-throat competition of people against each other. To drive this

point even further, communism, the directly-opposing economic system to capitalism that

ideologically promotes the unity of the state and its peoples, was and is currently corrupted by

mans’ self-interest acquisitions for more political influence and power. Given this

uncomfortable yet true fact, how can one come to say that there exists man-made actions that are

rooted not in self-interest, but in altruism?

On a cold winter afternoon on January 2nd, 2007, New Yorker Wesley Autrey was

accompanied by his two daughters in a subway station when a young man unexpectedly broke

out into a violent seizure. The seizure somehow managed to get the young man to stumble off the

platform and down into the ditch of the tracks. To his misfortune, a train happened to be arriving

at the station, putting the seizure victim’s life at risk. Instinctively, with his two daughters

watching, Autrey dove down into the tracks and secured the seizure victim’s body in a drainage

trench between the tracks out of harm’s way. To everyone’s disbelief, both Autrey and the

seizure victim walked away from the incident unharmed. Following the incident Autrey became

a national hero and was dubbed “Subway Superman.” He received numerous donations and

gifts, and made a multitude of appearances on a variety of television programs. What initially

motivated Autery to perform such an insane, life-risking act for a complete stranger with his two

daughters watching anxiously nearby?! On the account of psychological egoism his motivations

for performing that act were rooted in self-interest. Perhaps he was motivated by the positive,

self-affirming feelings he would receive after performing the act. Maybe Autrey is an adrenalin

junkie and was looking to get a hit of adrenalin into his blood stream. Or most cynically of all,

maybe Autrey was thinking of all the monetary gain and national praise and attention he could

potentially (and did) receive. Are all of these explanations plausible? Yes. But are we able to

validate a single explanation to his motivations on empirical grounds? Regretfully no. This is

where the problem arises out of psychological egoism.

Again, psychological egoism is the notion that peoples’ motivations are exclusively

driven by self-interest rather than altruistic ones. Given this definition, someone who supports

the idea of psychological egoism can effectively say that all actions of people who have existed,

who exist presently, and who will exist in the future are exclusively driven by self-interest. We

are unable to justly validate Autrey’s motivations on any empirical basis. Similarity, the

psychological egoist is also unable to validate this claim on all of humanity’s motivations as

well. To put is simply, the position that psychological egoism holds is an unfalsifiable one. This

effectively invalidates the theory of psychological egoism. On the flip side, again, because we

will never be able to know the initial motivations of all people, that means we are also unable to

verify whether some actions are altruistically motivated. It seems then that this position is an

unfalsifiable one as well. If both contrasting positions are both unfalsifiable, is it possible that

one position holds more merit than the other? Yes, I believe so! When the psychological egoist

claims all of humanity’s motivations to be only self-serving, he makes a simple, over-generalized

assumption, brushing all of humanity under one stroke. Of the infinite number of actions that

have happened, are currently happening, and will happen, it only takes one altruistically

motivated action by a single person to completely discount psychological egoism. Despite the

inability to empirically study this, it seems exceedingly plausible that the likelihood of at least

one (or more) altruistically motivated action has, is, or will occur.