Let’s begin by noting (1) the thesis of psychological egoism and (2) some other theories that it will be useful to explore by way of analogy with psychological egoism.
| theory | thesis |
| psychological egoism | Every human action is motivated by self-interest. |
| psychological altruism | Every human action is motivated by concern for others. |
| hospital-experiment theory | All the patients in here are mentally ill. |
| cheese-centric theory | Everything in the world, when you dig deep enough, is made of cheese. |
| seven-centric theory | People act only in ways that they believe have some special connection with the number seven. |
Let’s start by taking a look at two different ways in which a proponent of the hospital-experiment theory might deal with purported counter-examples to that theory’s thesis (offered, of course, by opponents of the theory):
| theory | hospital-experiment theory | |
| thesis | All the patients in here are mentally ill. | |
| possible purported counter-example | Alan: “Here’s a guy in this hospital, Mike, who seems pretty healthy. He wakes up feeling all right, has an appetite for a good breakfast, spends some time reading and doing chores and talking with the other patients, has a good lunch, plays some Ms. Pac-Man in the hospital’s somewhat-outdated video-game room, plays some basketball outside, has a good dinner, watches some TV, goes to bed, and sleeps soundly.” | |
| an example of one way of responding to the counter-example | Brianna: “O.k., I see what you mean. Maybe not all the patients in here are mentally ill. I’d like to do some further examination, but unless some evidence of mental illness shows up in my further examination of Mike, then I’ll have to concede that not all the patients in here are mentally ill.” | This way of responding to
counter-examples makes the theory (circle one): testable / untestable |
| an example of the other way of responding to the counter-example | Chris: “Actually, Mike’s behavior is perfectly consistent with the claim that all the patients in here are mentally ill. Mike’s behavior exhibits what I call “denial of reality.” Mike is actually mentally ill, but he’s trying to deny it by behaving as if he’s not. I see this all the time and always chalk it up to denial of reality.” | This way of responding to
counter-examples makes the theory (circle one): testable / untestable |
Now let’s construct a similar table for the cheese-centric theory:
| theory | cheese-centric theory | |
| thesis | Everything in the world, when you dig deep enough, is made of cheese. | |
| possible purported counter-example | Diane: “Here’s this book, Fun With Hypnosis: The Complete How-To Guide, and I’ve examined it pretty closely. It has pretty thin pages, and I’m pretty sure none of them is made of cheese. I’ve also dissolved the covers in an acid bath in my basement, and I’m pretty sure they were cheese-less, too.” | |
| an example of one way of responding to the counter-example | Ernie: “Well, you may have done your best to find the cheese of which the book is ultimately made, but you just didn’t break the book down into its smallest parts. When certain kinds of cheese are made into paper, the presence of cheese can’t be detected with the naked eye. If you don’t find cheese in a physical object such as a book, that’s because you haven’t looked hard enough, not because it’s not there.” | This way of responding to
counter-examples makes the theory (circle one): testable / untestable |
| an example of the other way of responding to the counter-example | Fiona: “Hmm . . . well, o.k., so maybe not everything in the world is made of cheese. I’d like to get a copy of the book and examine it for myself, but you just might be onto something. This might be a thing that is not, in fact, made of cheese.” | This way of responding to
counter-examples makes the theory (circle one): testable / untestable |
Here’s a similar (also incomplete) table for the seven-centric theory:
| theory | seven-centric theory | |
| thesis | People act only in ways that they believe have some special connection with the number seven. | |
| possible purported counter-example | George: “This morning I had a piece of toast and some orange juice for breakfast. I can honesty report that the number seven never crossed my mind.” | |
| an example of one way of responding to the counter-example | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory untestable. | |
| an example of the other way of responding to the counter-example | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory testable. | |
Here are quotations that go in the two empty boxes. For each quotation, put its number in the box where it belongs.
Finally, let’s look at similar table for psychological egoism:
| theory | psychological egoism | |
| thesis | Every human action is motivated by self-interest. | |
| possible purported counter-example | Jane: “Last night my friends and I saw someone with a flat tire and we stopped and helped the person fix it, even though it kept us from what we had planned to do and even though it was pretty cold outside. We didn’t know the person, nor do we expect to have any contact with that person in the future.” | |
| an example of one way of responding to the counter-example | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory testable. | |
| an example of the other way of responding to the counter-example | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory untestable. | |
Again, here are quotations that go in the two empty boxes; for each, put its number in the right box.
Now, just as an additional exercise, you should be able to write quotations to complete the following table for psychological altruism, using the strategy of reinterpreting motives in reverse (where every apparently self-interested action is reinterpreted so that it is consistent with the thesis of psychological altruism).
| theory | psychological altruism | |
| thesis | Every human action is motivated by concern for others. | |
| possible purported counter-example |
1 |
|
| an example of one way of responding to the counter-example | 2 | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory testable. |
| an example of the other way of responding to the counter-example | 3 | This way of responding to counter-examples makes the theory untestable. |
1. Matt:
2. Nancy:
3. Opie:
The whole point of all this, of course, is to get you to be able to distinguish between two things:
And the point of appreciating this distinction is to be able to distinguish between (1) theories that are defended in ways that make them false and (2) theories that are defended in ways that keep them from being false, but render them trivial. So, we can group the theories-with-strategies-of-responding-to-counter-examples in the following way (where each name represents a theory joined with the particular way of responding to counter-examples attributed to that name, above):
| true and non-trivial | true but trivial | false |
| Chris, Ernie, Igor, Laura, Opie | Brianna, Fiona, Helen, Kyle, Nancy |
None of the five theories appear to be true in any interesting (i.e., non-trivial) way. That is why the left-hand box is empty. For each theory, a proponent can respond to counter-examples in a way that concedes that it might be false (Brianna, Fiona, etc.), or in a way that saves the theory from being false, but at the cost of rendering it trivial (Chris, Ernie, etc.). So each theory (with some defensive strategy or another) is represented in the second box and in the third one.
In some sense, defending a theory in a way that makes it untestable and, thus, trivial, does more harm than good, since people who defend their theories in that kind of way have nothing interesting to tell us, and conversations with such people are pointless and frustrating. Imagine, for example, having a conversation with someone like Chris, or Ernie, or Igor, or Laura, or Opie. They have an answer for everything, in a pretty unsatisfying kind of way. At least Brianna, Fiona, Helen, Kyle, and Nancy make some kind of sense, even if their theories turn out to be false, when tested. For at least they allow their theories to be tested!
And the final point, then, is that the strategy of reinterpreting motives may at first appear to be a fool-proof way of defending psychological egoism against all possible counter-examples, but is actually an example of saving a theory from falsity at the (possibly greater) cost of rendering it trivial.