European Journal of Philosophy 19 (1):39–58 (2011)
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Abstract |
Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person's intentional actions are ultimately self-interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some of a person's intentional actions are not ultimately self-interested, since some are ultimately other-regarding in some sense. C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists have argued that experiments provide support for a theory called the "empathy-altruism hypothesis" that entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations of the data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson’s conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson's purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson‘s claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism.
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Keywords | egoism altruism empathy |
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DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2009.00379.x |
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References found in this work BETA
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior.Elliot Sober & David Sloan Wilson - 1998 - Harvard University Press.
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior.Paul E. Griffiths - 2002 - Mind 111 (441):178-182.
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Citations of this work BETA
Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches.John Doris & Stephen Stich - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Egoism, Empathy, and Self-Other Merging.Joshua May - 2011 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (s1):25-39.
Generosity: A Preliminary Account of a Surprisingly Neglected Virtue.Christian B. Miller - 2018 - Metaphilosophy 49 (3):216-245.
View all 8 citations / Add more citations
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