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Campbell's Refutation of Egoism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Eric Mack
Eric Mack*
Affiliation:
Eisenhower College
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Extract

In “A Short Refutation of Ethical Egoism,” Richmond Campbell purports to refute “the view that everyone ought (morally) to do what benefits him the most in a given situation.” This is the theory which is “sometimes called impersonal ethical egoism (IEE)” [249). Campbell takes the following proposition as fundamental to his refutation of IEE.

I. If an agent ought to do something in a given situation and another agent ought to do something in the same situation, then it is not logically impossible for them to do these things in that situation [250].

Granted proposition I, Campbell's refutation would require only:

II. There is a situation S where an agent M would benefit most from doing X and another agent N would benefit most from doing what would prevent M from doing X [251].

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , June 1974 , pp. 659 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume II, Number 2, December 1972, pp. 249–254. All page citations in the text are to Campbell's paper.

2 Even if we knew that there was one person M such that a performance of the combination of actions X and Y was in his self-interest, we should not infer that M morally ought to do X and Y. For the performance of X and Y which is in M's interest may be N's (or N's and O's) performance of X and Y. In such a case, there is a sense in which the performance of X and Y is morally valuable, viz., a performance by N (or N and O) has moral value (egoistic utility) for M. But it would be at least misleading to infer that X and Y ought to be done. Done by whom?

3 Campbell's only example of a hypothetical use of “ought” is, “M ought to win the race if he wants the prize.” This use is non-moral. Does this suggest that I have exaggerated in claiming that according to ‘Campbell all teleologically justified uses of “ought” are non-moral?’ I think not. Campbell tells us (249) that proposition I is a Kantian principle. In saying that, for Campbell, all teleological uses of “ought” are non-moral uses, I am merely ascribing to him the fundamental Kantian contention in ethics, that all teleologically justified imperatives are hypothetical and nonmoral.

4 A more interesting criticism of lEE is the claim that, given lEE, the only moral reasons are statements about egoistic utility. On this claim see my “Egoism and Rights,” The Personalist, Winter 1973, pp. 5–33.