holy mother for King shirt boss my name is Todd man I teach philosophy at Clemson University I've been teaching philosophy for about 30 years [Music] the psychological egoist it is not the person who just acts egoistically the psychological Equus is the person who believes everybody acts only for their own interests that's correct for instance parents are raising their kids it seems like they sacrifice so that kids can thrive and flirt the psychological ego says yeah but here's why they're doing they're doing it so their kids will look fondly on them they're doing it so they don't feel guilty in a society that says that you ought to sacrifice for your kids they're doing it so they can get money in their old age all of these are psychological egoist reasons interesting eleanor starts off a psychological egoist when I say she's a psychological egoist I don't mean simply that she's acting for herself she believes that everybody does that she believes that's the way the world turns people are acting for themselves ya know derp and you see the roots of it in her relation with her parents who certainly acted in accordance with the psychological egoist script they cared about themselves they didn't care about her she thinks everybody's got a game right everybody's out for something and so what happens to her she begins to see that things can be another way right and she sees it in seeing the humanity of this other person to whom she's drawn Chiti you're amazing in philosophy there's a philosopher David Hume and for Hume the fundamental moral motivation was sympathy with other people we begin to act morally through our sympathy with the people around us and you can see that in operation both with Eleanor and with Michael bingo an interesting person at all this is Chiti he's the content he's rule-based it's not about sympathy for him it's about acting in accordance with the right rule how you like them apples and so for Chiti he may be developing feelings but he's he's still so internal that he doesn't go through at least to the same degree the sympathetic reaction that draws Eleanor to Chiti and that draws Michael to the four of them all right no he's an interesting figure and all this when discussion of egoism because in a way she's not a psychological ego she doesn't believe that people act solely for reasons of self-interest she in fact wants to be the person that's known as the person right who gives the most and why is this because she's in competition with her sister so oddly enough all of this giving seems be rooted in a type of egoism that would be comforting to the psychological egoist so in some sense tehani doesn't believe in psychological egoism although in the way she behaves she can be seen as a person who exhibits it it makes so much sense Jason isn't a psychologically gross because he just has no theories about human nature and yet in some sense he's got the egoism of a little kid I'm completely wasted I gotta go barf one last time and then I'll be ready to learn philosophy like Eleanor he wants what he wants when he wants it but by the same token because his nature is softer and kinder in some ways his own actions come off even though their egoistic as actions that are not we could say as compromised as the actions of an Eleanor whatever the psychological egos as sort of a philosophical figure that you've got to respond to that can be interesting because it always raises the question am i doing this for reasons that are morally decent or am I doing this for reasons that are simply self-serving and one thing we should be clear on you can be doing them for both at the same time but for the psychological egoist because they will keep issuing that challenge why are you really doing this it allows us to sort out what our motives are a little bit better reflectively to think about them so as an exercise psychological egoism can be interesting to reflect on as a theory of what human beings are like it's thin soup he makes a strong case [Applause] [Music]