心理利他行为是指人们在没有任何期望补偿的同时，也会有自我激励来增加其他的幸福和福利的现象，英语论文范文，甚至是在他们自身的福利代价上。相反，心理利己主义是指人们往往以增加自己的幸福和福利，不管他人，甚至不惜牺牲他人。本文讲述心理利己与利他是描述性的科学。 Psychological altruism refers to the phenomena that people are self-motivated to increase other happiness and welfare without any expectation of any compensation from others, and even at the cost of their own welfare and benefits. In contrast, psychological egoism refers to the phenomena that people tend to increase their own happiness and welfare regardless of other people’s welfare and happiness, and even at the expense of other people’s. Both psychological egoism and altruism are descriptive science.
However, ethical altruism and egoism are two schools of moral doctrine. While ethical altruism contends that people have responsibility to act altruistically regardless of their motivations, ethical egoism postulates that people should act egoistically, whatever their motivations are.
To have more insights in these two doctrines, introducing the doctrine of Utilitarianism might help. Utilitarianism claims that every individual’s welfare and happiness counts as equal share and then people should act in a way that increase the largest amount of happiness of the largest amount of people. In another word, Utilitarianism emphasizes the principle of impartiality, which is definitely an important dimension of morality. However, while ethical altruism stresses so much on the happiness of others that it claims that the happiness of the actor counts nothing, ethical egoism goes too far to stress the happiness of the actor that it claims that others’ happiness does not count.
Then, what are grounds for these two doctrines? Actually, they might base on the same ground: Utilitarianism. For ethical altruism, if every act in the interest of others, the society as a whole will produce the largest amount of interests or happiness. For instance, if the rich help the poor, however the formers wealth are leveled down, the happiness of the society as a whole would be the greatest. For ethical egoism, everyone is the best judge of their own benefit, if everyone acts in their own interests, the society as a whole would produce the largest amount of interests. In this sense, both ethical altruism and ethical egoism can be reduced to utilitarianism: they are just two different strategies for utilitarians to generate the largest amount of happiness of the society. What they diverge is the empirical judgment of whether selfishness or selflessness will produce the largest amount of social interests. However, these too extremes might be counter-intuitive. For ethical altruism, people A should act in the interests of B, and B should act in A’s interests. However, in some cases it would be ineffective to act in each other’s interests, since people do not even know each other’s interests. In addition, people are not innately altruistic, to demand people to act always in the interests of other people, and even at the cost of themselves, is demanding too much on human nature. In morality, “shouldness” means “capacity”. Ethical egoism is not free from criticisms, either. According to this doctrine, individual A should act solely in his own interests and B should act exclusively in his own interests. However, in rarity of resources, this doctrine will require them to fight for food in order to survive. Therefore, this solution is really counter-intuitive, since the essence of morality is to coordinate conflicts between individuals and to make people live peacefully with each other.
Therefore, if ethical egoism and ethical altruism fail to provide a systematic and convincing framework of morality are there any absolute and comprehensive moral codes? Ethical codes in religious literature claims that their moral code are handed down by God and are thus absolute. However, in our modern world, the belief in God has disappeared and people find no rational foundation to validate the existence of God, no to mention the absolute code laid down by God and revealed in religious literature. In addition, anthropologists have discovered that religious literatures was written by human saints in different period of time, how could these codes be absolute if we agree that human saint’s reason is fallible?
In addition, our empirical experiences have witnessed that fact that moral principles, even those which are prima facie self-evident, when apply to different conditions, subjects to controversy. Therefore, there is no completely self-evident principle, either.
Therefore, the above exploration shows that in moral theory, it is nearly impossible to present a comprehensive and irrefutable system of morality. What moralists should do is to recognize the limitation of human reason and the possibility of moral dilemmas. The effort to provide a universal and comprehensive moral doctrine is trying to eliminate moral dilemmas eternal in human society. In our moral life, we should be kind of “Contextualism”. In some contexts we resort to utility, in some other cases we appeal to the concept of right, in some other conditions we apply the principle of impartiality or fairness, however unsatisfied we are with these results. |
