Egoism, Relativism, and Other Theoretical Distractions
by Dr. Jan Garrett
This page revised April 28, 2005
Descriptive Egoism
Psychological Egoism: The theory of human nature according to which everybody, in everything he or she does, aims to produce some good for him- or herself.
Normative Forms of Egoism
Individual Egoism: The view that everybody should always act so as to produce the greatest good for me.
Personal Egoism: The view that I ought always to act so as to produce the greatest good for myself but I do not say what others should do.
Universal Ethical ("Ethical?") Egoism: The view that everybody ought always to act so as to produce the greatest good for him or herself.
Descriptive Collective Egoism
The view that people in groups always try to produce the greatest total good for their groups (it being understood that the group is smaller that the set of beings affected by their actions).
Normative Collective Egoism
The view that people in groups should always to try to produce the greatest total good for their groups (it being understood that the group is smaller than the set of beings actually affected by their actions or omissions)
Ethical Subjectivism
The view that whatever an individual perceives to be right is right (and there is no rational basis for challenging his judgment).
Ethical Relativism
The view that whatever a group that shares a common culture perceives to be right is right (and there is no rational basis for challenging its judgment).
Strong and Weak Forms of These Views
"Strong" and "weak" do not refer to the plausibility or implausibility of these views, but the audacity of the claim. The use of the modifier "always" or the pronoun "whatever" is a sign of a strong form of a claim. We could also construct weak forms: for instance, Weak Psychological Egoism might be the view that
most people (or everybody most of the time) pursue some good for themselves in everything (or most things) they do.Weak psychological egoism is more likely to be true than the strong form given above.