MISTAKEN INSTRUMENTALISM IN PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM AND THE SELFISH GENE

Abstract

The theories of Psychological Egoism and the Selfish Gene both rely on an instrumental process that fails to take account of how a motive or a trait can be a means to more than one end. Psychological egoism ignores the lived, felt experience of benevolence that is a necessary part of the means to an end process. The theory of the selfish gene ignores the fact that even though we only evolve benevolent traits if they serve our genetic fitness, these traits nevertheless simultaneously increase the fitness of other beings when we enact them. The means-to-an-end process can occur in both directions when we are motivated by benevolence, serving both ourselves, and others, at a psychological level, and at a genetic level. This is not an affirmation of the theories of psychological altruism and biological altruism however, but a kind of mutualism that guides human beings, before culture and upbringing have their influence upon us.