At Loggerheads about the Man of the Log Cabin

It is not unusual in philosophy to find oneself in an irresolvable debate with a colleague. (This has become all too common among the general populace in the political sphere as well these days.) This may only reflect the very nature of philosophy as the home of “perennial problems” that never get definitively decided. Nevertheless it can be emotionally jolting to discover such intransigence in an interlocutor, whom one would normally consider to be the height of informed intelligence. How could a person trained in logic and benefitting from an extensive liberal arts education fail to grasp the cogency of your argument and the fallaciousness of their own? This is the puzzlement, indeed astonishment that confounds both the disputants … at least if one or both are not simply arrogant and only expect anyone who disagrees with them to be an idiot.

My most recent experience of this sort concerns the issue of egoism: specifically, whether human beings are essential selfish. While that may seem to be more a question of psychology than philosophy, it is highly relevant to ethics, since the prospects for a genuinely moral concern for others would seem to hinge on whether human beings are even capable of such a thing. Most ethicists reject the thesis that human beings are incorrigibly selfish, or even egoistical. Note: The latter differs from the former in involving the rational pursuit of one’s own interests, rather than merely short-sighted grasping of whatever one wants. The defender of egoism makes much of the idea that the rational pursuit of self-interest must certainly involve a great deal of attention to the desires and interests and welfare of others, and indeed solicitousness on others’ behalf … but only because this is the most effective means of obtaining one’s own best interests in the long run.

That last point is the thrust of a 2017 article by William Irwin.[1] I quite agree with it. But this is a case of the phenomenon I’ve just been talking about, since Irwin and I are nevertheless at loggerheads about the thesis of psychological egoism itself. I reject it as adamantly as Irwin embraces it, and we both believe we have the arguments on our side. While I would have to write an article even longer than Irwin’s to lay out my objections to it, I thought it would be beneficial to highlight the phenomenon in its most exquisite form, whereby we both adduce the same evidence in support of our opposing views.

The evidence in question is a story about Lincoln. Irwin relates it as follows:

In the midst of defending psychological egoism in discussion on a coach, Lincoln asked the driver to stop so that he could rescue some pigs. When his discussion partner suggested that Lincoln’s actions disproved his theory, Lincoln responded that the truth was quite the opposite, that he took the action for himself. Lincoln reportedly said, “I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”[2] 

I had been using this story as the textbook author intended, namely, to refute psychological egoism. Irwin uses it to support psychological egoism. At face value, the story supports it. So how could it be seen as refuting it? Here is how Harris puts it: 

            Mr. Lincoln’s argument is based on a misconception. If he had not cared for the pigs’ welfare, he could not have derived pleasure from helping them. Had he not had a prior desire for something other than his own happiness, he would not have experienced satisfaction from helping them.[3] 

            I accept Harris’s analysis fully. Irwin gives full airing to this sort of objection, but proceeds to dismantle it in a way that I find utterly fallacious if not simply question begging. In a nutshell, Irwin considers the fact that we can only do something if we want to do it the ultimate proof of psychological egoism. But as Irwin himself acknowledges, this is more an analytic truth than a psychological one. I (and probably Harris) would then argue that “want” has both usages, the one tautological and the other substantive; and a tautological truth does not establish a psychological one. So to use the analytic truth that we can only do what we want to do to ground psychological egoism is to commit a fallacy of equivocation. 

            What is question begging about the argument is that it further presumes that to want something is to want something for one’s own benefit. Irwin asserts this over and over and over again in the article. Between the assertions Irwin offers much argumentation that I totally agree with, but then, time and again, he repeats the assertion as if it therefore followed (i.e., logically), whereas I experience it as a non sequitur. As I said, I would have to write an article even longer than his to spell all this out, so I simply invite you, the reader, to scrutinize his article for yourself. 

            But back to the exquisite case. The way I would explain Irwin’s mistake is even prior to any fallacious inferences from it. I see Irwin as erring in his reading of the story. I see his reading as lacking in literary subtlety and biographical context. First of all, the story is probably apocryphal. This says to me that it is part of the Lincoln hagiography. And one thing American children are (or were? … and maybe only in the North?) told about Lincoln is that he was an ideal person, who was not only honest but also modest and caring. Furthermore, as one learns from more grown-up reading, Lincoln was known for having had a sly sense of humor.           

            Put that all together and the intent of the story is clear. Lincoln is being portrayed as someone who cares not only about enslaved human beings but even about animals, and furthermore is so modest that, when praised for his virtue, discounts it with an obviously absurd account of his motives. 

Q.E.D.


[1] “Psychological Egoism and Self-Interest,” Reason Papers 39, no. 2 (Winter 2017): 69-89.

[2] Irwin cites Rachels (2003) and Feinberg (1999). It so happens that I had been using this example for years in my teaching from a textbook by Harris (1986), who cites Feinberg (1985), who was quoting from the Springfield (Illinois) Monitor.

[3] C. E. W. Harris, Jr., Applying Moral Theories (Wadsworth, 1986), p. 62.

Popular posts from this blog

The Singer Diet

Copyright (c) 2007 by Joel Marks Published as “Book makes case for thinking about what we eat” in the New Haven Register , May 16, 2007, page A6 America’s slaughterhouses kill 10 billion animals every year. Think about that. That is what philosopher Peter Singer asks us to do in his new book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Rodale, 2006). Co-authored by former farm boy Jim Mason, this book demands a strong stomach to read. It is not often that a philosophy book informs you that an important “factor relative to global warming concerns cows burping and farting” (page 206). By the same token, you are not likely to learn from the typical book on animal husbandry that our treatment of nonhuman animals for food rivals anything in Dante’s vision of hell. It is important that we expose ourselves to this kind of shock treatment. It is a morally necessary antidote to the deceptive depiction of wholesome livestock lives foisted upon us by the food industry. Nevertheless Singer and M
Read more

Vivisection and Ethics: cutting to the quick

Published in AV Magazine , vol. 117, no. 4 , pp. 2-3, fall 2009 issue [January 2010] The central contradiction of vivisection is that animals are used for research precisely because of their similarities to humans, and yet by that very use they are implicitly denied a place in the moral community. Somehow our commonality of physiology and sentience is deemed to be a completely separate matter from our respective rights, including the most basic right simply to be let alone. Procedures that ethical researchers would never think to perform on human beings are, in consequence, routinely performed on other animals. The very condition of being an animal that is used for experimentation would be ruled out for a human being, since at a minimum it involves involuntary confinement and isolation. Beyond this, countless animals are subjected to invasive practices, including the most invasive of all: manipulation of their very nature by being bred specifically for experimental purposes. Thus, vi
Read more

Turning the Tables: We Matter Because We Are Animals

by Joel Marks Published in Philosophy Now , Issue No. 67, May/June 2008, p. 37. Recent times have seen an ever-increasing interest in our similarity to other great apes and ultimately to all other animals. While sometimes this research has been motivated by sheer interest, it also forms a backdrop to a heightening moral concern about other animals. Following the same logic as earlier efforts (mainly philosophical) to establish human uniqueness by distinguishing us from other animals (for example, Aristotle took us to be the rational animal, and Descartes highlighted our language ability), this new research program seeks to establish the opposite thesis of the moral considerability of other animals by demonstrating their similarity to us. Sometimes the similarity is found at the genetic level, where human and animal genomes turn out to be much more like than different. At other times the similarity is found at the everyday level, such as the sentience, emotions, and even cognitive a
Read more