Recently I’ve been busy juggling both work and school. During these times I often have to remind myself the reasons that I am working so hard for which brings up a very fun topic in philosophy, egoism. Ethical egoism is described as actions that serve one’s own self-interest exclusively. It argues that there is no other duty except to one’s self and the actions that further the self’s interests. However, in practice does this ideology benefit the individual? A well-known social experiment in philosophy examines two people that are held in the custody of the police. The situation is that the police don’t have any actual evidence against the two suspects but are pushing to get a confession and are interrogating the two separately. The consequences are: if one person confesses they will not serve any jail time while their partner serves 10 years. If both individuals confess then both will serve 5 years in jail and if both people keep quiet then the two will have to serve 1 year in jail. From the ethical egoist standpoint, the best possible outcome is to confess and that’s because they want to minimize their sentencing regardless of the other person confessing or not. How the ethical egoist is thinking is purely for their own self-interest and by confessing they avoid the maximum sentencing of 10 years and could either end up in jail for 5 years or get out scotch free. However, if their partner is also an ethical egoist then both will individuals will confess and serve 5 years each. Because both parties pursued only their own self-interests the result is that both their sentencing worsened. The best possible outcome would be that the two keep quiet which minimizes their sentencing to 1 year each. However, to get to this result they both have to cooperate and not think about which option that only serves their own self-interest. The outcome of this argument argues against ethical egoism because if both individuals acted for only their own self-interest then the results will not be in their favor. Why I am bringing this topic up is because recent games that I have been playing and social issues that we all face relate to this to some degree. Many of us would answer that many of our actions as self-serving of the self, but sometimes we should examine the situation so that the outcome is truly the most optimal. For example, a friend at work recently asked for a raise and was refused. The manager also voiced that each employee’s pay is kept private. This is for the interest of the overall company since recent hires are being paid at higher base pay, a reality that would upset the veteran employees that have worked at the company for decades. While the company would like this status quo to continue, a different outcome could be that the workers unionize together and demand higher pay collectively. The company cannot lose its veteran employees because they are needed for training and their valued experience and the new hires are there to rejuvenate the company. Thus for the company to survive they must comply. Thank you for reading this post, I ran out of ideas for topics and thought revisiting this one would be a fun thought experiment.
