A little more on Self-Interest

My point in the last post was that, given certain circumstances, it can be in your interest to smoke or to not be healthy. What I hoped that this would show is that whatever activity you may do or property you may have the circumstances could be such that doing it or having it would be in or against your self-interest.

You asked in your comment how it could be against one's self interest to live a long healthy live even if that person did not want to, but I think that cases can be imagined where it would not be in that person's interest. Imagine a totalitarian state (like the one you mentioned in your example) where it is also a law that anyone who lives longer than the last great leader is deemed to have "undesirable genes" and so all of these people are painfully put to death along with their descendants. Here it would seem that a long and healthy life is against one's self-interest and is also likely to be something that someone does not want. Another example. Imagine a person who in the prime of his life commits a terrible crime and is, as a result, sentenced to prison for the rest of his life where he is occasionally tortured yet closely monitored my medical professionals so that he will live as long as possible. It would seem to me that a long and healthy life is not in this man's self-interest whereas a quick an painless death would seem as though it is.

My question then is, if these examples are correct, how could it possibly be that a long and healthy life is always in one's self interest? Imagine a war scenario where the fate of a nation rests on a stranded platoon of soldiers who, if they continue to fight will all surely perish, yet they will give the rest of the army enough time to turn the tide of the war and secure their nation's independence. However, they are also offered the chance by the opposing side to surrender and thus live long and healthy lives, yet be subject to a foreign power. Which option is in the interest of the soldiers? Here I think the question is difficult, but again what I think it shows is that a long and healthy life is not obviously in one's interest nor is it always in one's interest.

So then my point is this, no property of an individual or activity in which that individual is engaged is always in that individual's self-interest. If this is true then what can it be that determines self-interest other than the individuals desire to accomplish certain goals? The only thing that does seem to be always in one's self interest is, given the right sort of understanding, desire satisfaction. Of course it would be the satisfaction of every whim, but rather of those desires which are derived from some overarching major desire such as to achieve eudaimonia. On this understanding it would be easy to see why certain properties and actions become or stop being in one's interest because one's circumstances would without doubt have an effect on how one goes about satisfying his desires.

Possibly, one might think that the good is that which determines self-interest. But then an analysis of the good would need to be given which allows for what is good to be relative to the set of circumstances being considered. I don't know if there are any accounts of the good that are likes this.

My question then is this: what other than some sort of desires view could account for the relativity of self-interest? And, if none can be given how could the desire view be opposed?

Smoking and Self-Interest

I think that I have to disagree about your comments on smoking and a person's self-interest. It seems to me that smoking is only against your self-interest if you desire to be healthy and if it is true that smoking is unhealthy. To say that smoking is without exception against one's self-interest (now you did not say "without exception" so maybe I am being unfair here but I think that something along those lines is what you meant) is similar to Foot's thought that deep roots are good for an oak tree and I think that it faces the same problems.

Imagine that in ten years time air pollution becomes such a problem that people are barely able to live past their thirties. However, there is one demographic that is an exception to this grim fate: smokers. The tar build up in one's lungs that is caused by smoking also serves to prevent the harmful toxins in the polluted air from entering one's bloodstream and thus causes the smokers to live longer than the non-smokers. Of course smokers still face the same health problems down the line that they do now, but nevertheless despite these problems they still live longer than non-smokers.

Clearly, in this case smoking would not be bad for you and in fact would seem to be good for you if you wanted to be healthy (or maybe as healthy as possible is what I should say here or maybe just to live as long as possible, regardless I am sure you see what I mean). The point here is that there is nothing intrinsically good or bad about smoking but it is only good or bad it relation to its effect on ones health. Yet, if this is true, then I think that the same can be said of health (i.e. maybe consistently doing the right thing has a negative effect on one's health for example). It is considerations such as these that make me think that one's self-interest can not be understood independently of one's desires.

Desire Fulfillment and Self-Interest

I have been thinking a bit about the difference between acting so as to fulfill a desire vs. acting in one's self-interest. The problem I have been having is that I can not make up my mind as to whether they are the same or not, though I will say that I lean toward thinking that they are different. I lean this way because it would seems that someone who desired to commit suicide who in doing so would fulfill his desire would nonetheless have acted against his self-interest. But then, I could imagine another way of understanding self-interest whereby even suicide would count as acting for it. I think that it may depend on whether self-interest is understood as subjective and is something like the conjunction of an actors goals or if it is understood as objective and is something like that which is 'good' for the actor.

However, it seems to me that both of the options I just gave have some problems. It seems ridiculous to think that acting on any desire at all is acting out of self-interest (what about the desire to help the needy or to sacrifice oneself for an unknown person in need). And, on the other hand, it is very difficult to figure out what is 'good' for the actor let alone why the actor should pursue it if he did not want to (even if we figured out what the good is it would not move someone like Gyges to live differently if he did not want to).

So, I am not sure what to think, though I do have a new idea which may be a good one. My thought is that if we were to take a sort of middle path on the question of what one's self-interest is we may be able to solve the problem. We could accept the subjective view of self-interest but add an objective aspect which would be how strongly one desires certain goals. Thus, one's self-interest is a product of one's own desires but there is an objective criteria for examining whether or not one has acted in his self-interest. Suppose that I have a weak desire to buy a motor boat and a strong desire to buy a car and then suppose that I go off and buy a motor boat. One can say that because I wanted to buy the car more I have acted against my self-interest even though I have fulfilled one of my desires.

I like this conception of self-interest and, if it is accepted, I think that it can help with showing where Gyges goes wrong. We can say that he, like all other human beings, has as his strongest desire the desire to be happy (surely, however, this is something to be debated) (and I mean the Aristotelian or Taylor type version of happiness) and that by acting on his nasty desires he is leaving unfulfilled his greatest desire. Thus, he is not acting for his self-interest but is rather acting against it. What do you think of this?

MacIntyre's rejection of Emotivism

MacIntyre begins his book by tackling the problem posed by emotivism, the idea that there are no moral facts and that moral statements mean nothing more than the expression of the speaker's approval or disapproval of something. He believes that this view has three major problems:

1. Emotivism does not explain what sort of approval it is that is expressed by the pro-attitudes behind moral statements. The emotivist can not say that it is moral approval because this would be circular. It is, as a result, unclear what sort of approval an agent is giving when he deems something morally praiseworthy.

2. There seems to be a difference between saying "I want you to do X." and "Duty requires you to do X." The difference seems to lie in the fact that in the first sentence the relation between the speaker and the actor matters in whether or not a reason has been given for doing X whereas in the second sentence this is not the case. Emotivists, however, have to say that the second sentence is just another way of saying the first sentence because they mean the same thing. Thus, emotivism is stuck with the problem of how to make sense of what seems to be a clear difference between these two sentences which, on the emotivist's theory, must mean the same thing.

3. The final problem with emotivism is that there is a difference between what a sentence means and what it expresses. If I say "Go away!" I may be expressing my anger, yet 'my anger' is not what the sentence means. So it may be true that moral statements express the speakers feelings but that does not mean that moral language just means those feelings.

MacIntrye believes that these three problems for emotivism shows that it is not a problem for morality but rather is only a problem for some moral systems. The one he has in mind for which emotivism is a problem is the one which it was first developed as an objection to: intuitionism. MacIntrye goes on to say that intuitionism turns out to be a moral theory that relies on one's feelings and sentiments and that, therefore, emotivism works as a response to it. However, as has been shown, emotivism does not pose a threat to all moral systems. Nevertheless, emotivism has become ingrained in our culture according to MacIntrye and is accepted not only by most philosophers but by most lay people as well.