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    Psychological egoism, as advanced by Hobbes, is a thesis ... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→If psychological egoism is true, it must be supported by empirical observation of human behavior rather than by a priori reasoning.

    Psychological egoism, as advanced by Hobbes, is a thesis about the necessary form of desire—that all desires are self-referential by definition.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.All intentional action requires the agent to desire its performance, making self-satisfaction a necessary component of any desire.
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    • 2.When we claim to desire another's good altruistically, we actually desire the satisfaction of believing we helped them.
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    • 3.Desires are mental states of individual agents; they cannot transcend the psychological boundaries of the desirer by definition.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Parents risk their lives for children without conscious desire for self-satisfaction, showing desires can be genuinely other-directed.
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    • 2.Distinguishing 'wanting X' from 'wanting the satisfaction of wanting X' is logically coherent; confusing them commits an equivocation fallacy.
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    • 3.If all desires reduce to self-satisfaction, the thesis becomes unfalsifiable and thus empirically vacuous rather than philosophically substantive.
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    Related

    All intentional action requires the agent to desire its performance, making self...Desires are mental states of individual agents; they cannot transcend the psycho...Distinguishing 'wanting X' from 'wanting the satisfaction of wanting X' is logic...If all desires reduce to self-satisfaction, the thesis becomes unfalsifiable and...
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    If psychological egoism is true, it must be supported by empirical observation o...Parents risk their lives for children without conscious desire for self-satisfac...When we claim to desire another's good altruistically, we actually desire the sa...

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