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Dec. 21, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:52
2285 Self Interest as a Rational Virtue?
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
So, on the last Sunday show, I had a great conversation with a very smart and engaging fellow about UPB, and he brought up the question of whether rational self-interest could be universally preferable behavior.
And we had a brief discussion of it in light of the larger argument, but I'd like to share some more thoughts on it, and of course, if this fine fellow wants to call back in again, please do.
It's a great chat.
Lots of good feedback on it, and thanks again.
So, rational self-interest.
A very interesting phrase.
And the rational part, I don't have much of a problem with.
I can live with that.
That seems good.
The interest part is a little bit more ambiguous, but it's the self part that I think is the big challenge to this formulation.
So, let me put forward a proposition that I think is fairly rational and verifiable.
Which is that if virtue remains in a significant minority, then it is actually toxic to the individual.
It's like a virus.
You cough and everybody gets better.
But if you're the only one who's sick, you die.
So, for instance, in the Dark Ages, if you were an atheist, you were not long for this world, usually, and you certainly would not get a chance to reproduce, your books would not be published, you would not have any real chance to share your thoughts or to breed your thoughts through your children.
You'd be ostracized, you'd be out of the sexual, I guess back then, the sexual Russian roulette of, who are you going to have children with?
The Socratic argument, as paraphrased by Nietzsche, which is reason equals virtue equals happiness.
I'm fine with reason equals virtue.
I think that's a good formulation.
Virtue equals happiness?
That's kind of tough.
That's kind of tough.
I think that, you know, if, as Socrates seemed to half believe in an afterlife, reason equals virtue equals happiness, I think, works if you have the capacity to receive your just reward for virtue in an afterlife, but given that there is no afterlife, reason equals virtue equals happiness, hmm, I don't know.
I don't know that that's so thoroughly defensible, because that's to say that happiness It's only dependent upon virtue.
And that just doesn't seem to be true.
There's lots of people who are happy who are not virtuous.
And you could argue, well, that's not real happiness and so on.
But unfortunately, you would be arguing against biology.
So the happy joy juice of endorphins are released in monkeys, and we assume other primates like people, when they climb higher up in a pecking order hierarchy, like in a win-lose hierarchy.
So when you gain power, Over your fellow bipedal apes, then you receive a shot of happiness, a shot of well-being, a shot of joy.
Now, you become addicted to that and you have to sort of maintain that power, but obviously people who get power like power, they pursue power, they get power, they achieve power, and they like to stay in power.
So, You could argue, of course, that people who are political leaders are not really pursuing their rational self-interest in a truly universal and virtuous way and so on, but you're arguing against biology.
It's like saying to someone, you don't enjoy an orgasm.
I mean, you shouldn't enjoy an orgasm, but you're arguing against biology.
You should like broccoli more than chocolate.
Well, you're kind of arguing against biology.
Happiness is not merely an abstract state of mind that arises out of a peaceful, belly-rubbing, buddhistic joy of conformity with universal ideals, peace, virtue, love, and oneness.
Happiness is...
is Cimmerian.
Conan.
The greatest joy is to slay your enemies and hear the lamentations of their women.
Well, of course, to say this, there is joy in...
Inflicting agony.
For masochists, there is joy in receiving agony.
Say, well, that's not real joy.
That's not real happiness.
But then you have a platonic form of happiness that is outside the biology.
And I think that that's really tough.
You shouldn't enjoy masturbation.
Well, that's going against the biology of the situation.
Social approval.
It gives happiness.
Social disapproval causes pain.
It activates very similar, if not the same, pain centers as physical pain.
So to say that you can achieve happiness in the face of widespread social disapproval is...
Kind of tough.
And you can argue Socrates that he went peacefully to drink his hemlock and so on, but I'm not sure that we can rely on Plato, certainly not on Aristotle, who fled, right?
And Plato himself had to...
He was sold into slavery and barely escaped with his life and did not...
With equanimity, accept his fate, but rather fought to escape the evils around him.
So, the example of Socrates that you can go peacefully to your grave while suffering grave injustice is not something that we can verify independently, of course.
Socrates himself never wrote anything down.
And there's reason to be skeptical.
If that message was so popular and powerful, then Plato and Socrates, his greatest lineage, would have accepted his fate, but they didn't.
Aristotle fled, and Socrates attempted to escape all the evils when he got enmeshed in politics and so on that he was subjected to.
So, we don't know whether for sure Socrates did that, but we do know that his students did not, and therefore either he didn't do it or the lesson didn't quite take, which is sort of important.
So, rational self-interest is a very challenging concept to work with.
And if you are highly abstracted from the body, in other words, if you're on the gas planet side of the mind-body dichotomy, in other words, we should rise above the ailments and benefits of the body and so on, this Platonism slash theological abstractions, then it's really tough to separate Happiness from the pleasures and pains of the body.
It's not impossible, but if it's not taken into account, then it's not a very real formulation.
So, to paraphrase, Nietzsche could equally have said, reason equals virtue plus shark attack equals unhappiness.
Plus virtue plus Crohn's disease equals chronic pain and unhappiness.
Reason and virtue and just stubbed my toe means chronic pain, or at least for that moment, deep pain and unhappiness.
Reason and virtue and toothache equals, oh my God, get me to a dentist.
So the pleasures and pains of the body are significant in what means rational self-interest.
What is rational self-interest?
And if that is ignored, in other words, if happiness is considered to be an ethereal and abstract state only related to one's conformity with abstract values with no mention of the bodily demands, requirements, and habits of pleasures and pain, I think that's just a little too abstract to be of any real value.
Now, Ayn Rand made pretty much the same argument.
Well, that which is good for man's survival, as if there's just one kind of man, right?
But, of course, there's not one kind of man, right?
There's predators and prey, as we've talked about recently in the series The Fascists That Surround You, parts 1 to 6.
So it's like saying the self-interests of the lions and the antelope are one.
Well, they're not.
The lions dominate the antelope.
The self-interest of the farmer and his crops are one.
Well, they're really not.
Ayn Rand also argued that there can be no conflict of interest between rational men.
Her argument being like if you and some other guy go for a job and you both want it, but he's slightly better at it, then he should get the job.
And it's not like it's in your rational self-interest for him to get the job because he's better at it and he's better suited for it and he'll produce more in the general economy that you're part of and so on.
And, I mean, I can understand that to some degree.
It's a little tough to, you know, say, well, I won't be disappointed if you don't get the job.
You may recognize the other person's better than you, but you're still disappointed that somebody applied who's better than you because otherwise you'd have the job.
But what about two people, both with a lottery ticket?
Let's assume it's a private lottery and it's voluntary and so on.
Is there not a conflict of interest between these two?
I mean, if the other guy wins...
That's just random chance.
So, to me, that would be a conflict of interest between two people, even if both are completely rational.
They both want to win the lottery.
And there's no evil done to anyone if one person or the other wins the lottery.
No one's more fit to win the lottery.
So, it's not too artificial, but you can sort of think of ways in which there can be a conflict of interest between rational men.
There is a conflict of interest between sexual attraction and long-term parenting suitability sometimes.
You know, there's that When I Met Your Mother or How I Met Your Mother continuum that Barney puts up.
The more crazy, the more hot.
The more hot, the more crazy.
Or as some Hollywood director said, Beautiful wears out after about three days of them walking around your apartment.
So, the people who are sexy are not always the people who are going to be the best long-term parents or co-parents for your children.
As Margaret Atwood wrote, you need a woman with good hands and a strong back if you're going to work on a farm or something.
You don't need somebody cape moss thin and high heels.
So that's an important thing to understand.
If you're just going to go and have sex, then your interest is to have somebody who's sexually attractive and so on.
But if you want to raise children with someone, then you need somebody who's caring, responsible, reliable, willing to sacrifice self-interest in the short run.
You have a baby who gets up five times a night, then you're tired.
You say, wow, but there's a long-term interest and so on.
Of course there is.
Of course there is.
But self-interest is something that is...
I made the case that it's largely subjective.
And I think that's true.
So, is it in someone's self-interest to get a good education?
Well, no, not necessarily.
If you are diagnosed with some fell disease and you have six months to live, you're probably not going to enroll in a PhD program.
Maybe you will, but it doesn't really pay off.
Is it in your self-interest to save or to spend?
Well, that's hard to say.
There's no really clear answer to that.
The trade-off between pleasant pleasures and future pleasures, you know, they say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and of course that's true, but the bird in the hand is guaranteed.
The two in the bush is not.
That's, of course, the fundamental difference, right?
You can save all your money and then get hit by a bus two days before you retire.
So that's kind of important to understand.
On the other hand, you might think that you're not going to live very long.
Lots of people have the family history or they grew up in a neighborhood or it's violent or they're on drugs.
They say, well, I'm not going to live to be 30.
So they hope I die before I get old.
They go and live for the moment and then they end up living a miserable life to 90.
Is it in your best interest to work hard or not?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know of any objective way to make the case that working hard is always better than not working hard.
Working hard has its benefits.
Working hard has its costs.
Not working hard has its benefits.
Not working hard has its costs.
What generally happens is that a lack of diligence or effort or focus or intensity when you're young pays off when you're young.
Whereas, you know, diligence and hard work and sacrifice and so on when you're young pays off when you're older.
But since old age is no guarantee, you might save all your money and then your broker runs off with it.
And, you know, you can't get it back or whatever.
All of these things matter.
So, I don't know any way to make the argument that people should not...
Be lazy.
They should work hard.
They should save their money.
They should get a good education.
I mean, I don't know how to make that case in a rational way.
And so, from this standpoint, self-interest is a very tough thing to figure out.
Now, we've talked about things that are not particularly moral, right?
I mean, working hard versus not working hard is not a moral decision.
I mean, there's self-interest involved.
It's not a moral decision.
But let's look at another decision, which is, should I take money from the government or not?
So, people who get paid in the US, they get old-age healthcare benefits.
They're getting about 300% more out of those benefits than what they put in.
And it's legal, of course, right?
And it's encouraged and everyone tells you you deserve it and so on.
Or should you take that money?
If you're on welfare and you have five kids by 5.2 different fathers, there's a very confusing orgy at the end, should you take the welfare money?
What are your alternatives if you don't?
If you have five children, you can't conceivably get a job that I mean, assuming you're kind of not educated very well, you can't conceivably get a job that will pay you enough to have them go into a daycare of some kind.
You can't possibly do that.
Putting five kids in daycare will cost you thousands of dollars a month, and you can't really get a job that will make that worthwhile.
Plus, you lose your welfare-granted Healthcare benefits, subsidized housing, maybe food stamps, whatever, right?
I mean, lots and lots and lots of benefits to go.
If you do that, say, well, what's your self-interest?
To work at a crappy job and lose money and lose benefits and not see your children, or to take this magic money that shows up in your mailbox that's legal and approved of and so on.
What is in your self-interest?
Well, I guess the rational, I mean, the libertarian rational self-interest argument would be that...
You should go and get the job and you should give up all these benefits and all that because you're then not violating the non-aggression principle and so on, right?
Well, that really only matters if you have an unbelievably rigid, which is not to say bad, but an unbelievably rigid interest in upholding the non-aggression principle.
Well, in her self-interest...
It is to her benefit to stay on welfare, stay home with her kids, and take all the benefits.
That is in her self-interest.
And we know that because that's what the vast, vast, vast majority of people in that situation do.
And so that's what they perceive to be in their self-interest.
The public sector workers who retire at 50 and on a full pension, and oh my goodness, didn't they throw their back out in some ill-defined way on their last year of work?
And so they get an extra, two-thirds of their pensions are tax-free, and they make $100,000 a year, most of it tax-free, and they can also go and get another job, and they can go on vacations.
I was reading about one British doctor who retired at like 53 or something like that, and he goes jetting off to Acapulco, and he goes jetting off to Mallorca, and he basically says, this is a pretty sweet life.
It wasn't that much fun being a doctor.
Lots of sick people.
And I've got this great life.
I can take my kids on these great vacations and Got a grandkid on the way, a nice car, beautiful house, and no financial worries for the rest of my life after working for, you know, 20 years kind of thing.
How are you going to argue against his self-interest?
You shouldn't take that money because it contributes to inflation for the young.
You shouldn't take that money because it's being added to the national debt which will negatively affect your children.
That is a case that you will simply not be able to make with any degree of effectiveness.
I mean, the counter-arguments are, well, I paid into the system, but you're getting more out of the system than you paid into it.
Well, I was forced into the system.
What am I going to do?
Return some of the money?
Plus, if you say my kids are going to be born into debt, I need to save the money to give them the money so that they can pay the increased taxes that they're going to have to pay over the course of their life.
Plus, if I'm the only person who gives this money back, and I can guarantee you it'll be me and two other guys, then it's going to have a huge negative net effect on me and a completely invisible non-effect on government spending and the national debt.
Say I hand back my pension of £80,000 a year or £60,000, whatever it was.
Well, government's just going to use that as collateral to borrow more money.
Which is going to end up...
It's not like...
If you don't take government money, it's not like the government says, ah, well, let's apply that to the national debt, because that's our most pressing issue.
I mean, that's nonsense.
They don't do anything of the kind.
They say, ooh, more money, fantastic.
Let's use that as collateral to borrow more.
Returning money to the government is...
It's not good.
I mean, unless you want the government to collapse quicker.
So, in what way would his rational self-interest be served...
By handing back all this money, having to go back to work, at a job he doesn't really like, being a doctor, not being able to go on vacation, not having his hobbies, not going fishing, not reading great books, not putting an edition onto his house, not paying for his children's education.
What sense would that make?
What argument could you make?
Now, you could also argue that because this person is in an environment of coercion, that self-interest doesn't, you know, doesn't matter.
Self-interest trumps ethics when you're in a situation of coercion.
Because there's no such thing as ethics, right?
So, I would never steal a loaf of bread if I'm in a concentration camp.
I may steal a loaf of bread if it's what I need to survive.
I may steal it from another prisoner.
I mean, who knows?
Who knows what I'd do in a concentration camp?
But, of course, nobody would chastise me for the concentration camp survival tactics.
Of course, if they had any rationality at all and any sense of moral perspective, then they would attack the concentration camp system.
This is why these emergency ethics are so ridiculous.
So, what does it mean to have self-interest?
Reason equals virtue equals happiness if you're in the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages or whatever, or let's say you're in a monastery and you suddenly lose your faith.
Are you going to be happy if you confess to atheism and get killed?
Of course not.
Of course not.
If you are a young man in a highly religious environment and can't leave, are you going to confess your atheism, be ostracized from the community?
You know, live a lonely, sexless life?
Not reproduce?
Well, it's hard to say.
If you're gay in a highly homophobic culture, what are you going to do with that homosexuality?
Well, a virtue is honesty.
Are you going to be honest about your sexual preferences?
No.
Most likely no.
You're not going to get killed.
Are you going to renounce Islam in a Muslim country?
Likely not, since the penalty is death.
So I understand that these are all systems and situations of coercion, for the most part, or social ostracism, which is not coercion, of course, but is definitely a form of bullying and verbal abuse.
In terms of its effects on the mind, there's little difference between punching someone and verbally abusing them, with the difference being that Punching will get you sympathy.
Verbal abuse usually just gets you more verbal abuse if you complain about it.
But there is a kind of physical aggression in verbal abuse.
I mean, I know that this is all, we're going to censor my speech or whatever, and I'm not talking about that.
I'm just saying that, biologically speaking, there's little that body distinguishes between a physical and a verbal attack, with the caveat being that the verbal attack tends to have more damage and lasts longer.
Words, you know, sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words will never harm me.
This is nonsense.
This is what I mean.
This is just another way of making victims of verbal abuse feel worse.
Sticks and stones hurt your body relatively little compared to verbal abuse, particularly when you're a child.
It harms the system.
Objectively, measurably, empirically, scientifically.
It's a poison.
A verbally administered poison.
That provokes cortisol, which is a poison in the body.
So, you can poison someone remotely.
So, as far as self-interest goes, I don't know how you can objectively define how somebody should act morally in terms of self-interest.
What about in a free society, let's say that you're trying to make the decision to steal versus earn?
So we'll put ourselves in a non-violent society, so we can't blame the system, and we will create a specifically moral choice to steal or to trade or to go without.
I want an iPad.
Well, that's interesting.
What if it made you happy...
to get the iPad for nothing and it did not make you unhappy if you stole the iPad.
You experienced no guilt, no remorse, no problem with it.
In fact, you would feel like an idiot for buying it rather than stealing it.
What if?
So, if you do a calculation With the idea that it's going to make you happier to get the iPad for free by stealing it, and it's going to make you unhappy to trade for it.
And you will never suffer any negative repercussions in terms of guilt or remorse or shame if you steal the iPad.
Even if you get caught, you will not suffer any negative emotional repercussions.
No guilt, no shame, no whatever, right?
You might be angry that you got caught, but you will never self-attack.
Let us also understand...
In terms of your self-interest, that you fully understand that the vast majority of people will not steal.
Right?
Because Kant's categorical imperative, right, where you say, well, Kant's argument would be, well, you can't justify stealing because if everyone stole, there'd be nothing to steal.
You can't universalize it, and therefore, it is not a valid moral rule.
Right?
Right?
Which, of course, he never applied to taxation.
But that would be the Kantian argument.
You can't universalize stealing.
Act as if the principle of your action became a universal moral rule.
I'm going to steal this iPad.
Everyone should steal everything.
Well, clearly there would be no iPad, and therefore you can't morally justify stealing.
But what if you had no interest in morally justifying anything?
You just wanted the iPad.
What if you would use morality if necessary to defuse other people, but you don't give a rat's ass about morality?
Because you don't suffer any guilt or remorse and you don't suffer any pleasure from conforming to a moral principle.
It hurts you to conform to a moral principle and you feel great if you don't.
You feel no remorse if you don't conform to a moral principle and you feel like a sucker if you do.
And you know that the universalization argument will never work.
Because the vast majority of people you know feel terrible for stealing.
Guilt, shame, self-attack.
They cannot enjoy their ill-gotten gains, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
So you know that if somebody says, well, what if everyone stole?
You're fully comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to steal.
It's the equivalent of saying to someone who has got a contract with the NFL, well, you can't take that contract with the NFL. Because if everyone was an NFL player, then we'd have no doctors, no farmers, no construction workers.
We'd have no food, no health care, and no place to live.
So you can't become an NFL player.
But he'd say, well, trust me, very few people can become NFL players.
I'm not going to have to worry about everyone becoming an NFL player.
It's not on the radar.
It's not in the realm of possibility.
It's like saying to a lion, you can't eat a gazelle, because if you eat all the gazelle at once, there'll be no food for lions in the future, and you'll all starve to death.
It's like, no, no, no, don't worry.
I know I'm not going to eat all the gazelle.
I got it.
I got it.
Don't worry.
It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
I get full, you see?
So, if somebody has no problem being a thief...
And thinks it's actually a good thing, and has no interest in conformity to abstract moral principles, suffers no self-attack for violating abstract moral principles, and knows for sure that very few people are conscienceless thieves, but most people will work diligently and assiduously to produce that which the thief wants to steal.
What argument are you going to make for his self-interest that he should not steal?
Universalization doesn't work because it's a lie.
Abstract moral principles and deviance from it doesn't matter because he has no conscience.
Doesn't feel bad if he steals.
In fact, feels bad if he does.
On what grounds are you going to say that it is against his rational self-interest to steal?
You say, well, you're in less danger if you steal, if you don't steal.
So if you earn and produce, you're in less danger.
But what if he has, as many of these sociopaths are, what if he has a very high drive for risk and stimulus, a very high desire for risk and stimulus?
There's a film called Parenthood with the truly great and underrated Tom Hulse.
Who plays, he was the giggly guy, giggly Amadeus and Amadeus.
And Tom Howells plays a compulsive gambler who gets into debt to a bunch of loan sharks.
And he then realizes that he can't pay off and he goes to his dad.
And he goes to his dad and says, I need your help.
And his dad says, okay, here's what we're going to do.
I'm going to pay off these loan sharks and then you're going to learn my business.
And Tom Hulse basically looks at him and says, ah, plumbing supplies.
And you can see that it's simply, he has less than no interest and he just basically vanishes again.
Because he has such a drive for stimulus, the idea of working in plumbing supplies would be skin-crawlingly insane.
It'd be like, I used to have these Fantasies or nightmares, waking nightmares as a kid of lying in like a coffin and having concrete poured in me and having the concrete hardened around me and only my face could be out.
I would never move again.
That's what it would be like for the guy to be in plumbing supplies.
So we say, well, it'll be less risky.
Well, it's like going to an opera singer and saying, you should work in plumbing supplies because there's less singing.
Well, I like singing, right?
That's what I do.
That's what I love.
Go to Brad Pitt and say, you need to be in plumbing supplies because there's less acting.
It's like, dude, that's what I do it for.
I love the acting.
It's the same thing.
You say to the guy, well, look, there'll be less risk if you...
Less risk, you see, if you don't steal.
It's like, but that's why I love it.
I mean, I get kicks.
It's great.
So on what grounds are you going to say to the thief...
Thou shalt not steal.
Because there's some rule, he doesn't care about the rule.
Because it's less risky, he loves the risk.
Because he should avoid guilt, doesn't feel guilt.
Because it will make him happy, makes him happy to steal.
So rational self-interest kind of works in a way if everyone has the same balance of risk-reward, conscience, self-attack, guilt, and all of that kind of stuff.
Then...
I can kind of see it.
I can kind of see how that might work.
But the reality is that this is not how people are, right?
Human beings are not constituted biologically, environmentally, however it is.
Genetic environment doesn't matter at the moment.
Human beings are not constitutionally, even remotely similar, when it comes to self and interest.
And because of that, the idea that self-interest can result in a conflict-free society is not rational.
It's not empirical.
It excludes the sociopaths of a number of categories.
So, how are you going to make the case that you can have a universal standard called pursue your self-interest Even if you call it your rational self-interest, pursue your rational self-interest to the point where everybody will end up with the same rules.
I don't see how it can be done.
Unless you abstract the rules and just say, well, there's a rule called you should not steal, and it's in your rational self-interest to not steal, and therefore you should not steal.
But that is an empty series of words without any...
Wait behind them.
It is in your rational self-interest to not steal.
Well, explain to me what that means if it is both rational and in his self-interest for someone to steal.
Now, you can say, which is where UPB comes in, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, my free book available at freedomainradio.com forward slash free, End commercial.
You can say it is impossible to logically justify rape, murder, theft, and assault as universally preferable behavior.
It cannot be logically justified.
It produces instantaneous and insurmountable contradictions.
That you can do.
And that has weight behind it because you can prove that.
But, if you try to prove to a sociopath that it's important to obey his conscience which doesn't exist, then it's like telling an atheist to obey a God who isn't there.
It doesn't fit.
It doesn't work, right?
Anyway, listen, I look forward to comments on this.
It's a very interesting topic.
I certainly don't claim to have, you know, put the final nail in every conceivable logical possibility, but these are sort of my thoughts on it since the call on Sunday, for which I, again, thank the caller.
And I look forward to your feedback on it, and thank you again, as always, for listening.
If you'd like to donate, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
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