H. P. Grice's Dual Principle of Conversational Egoism and Altruism

H. P. Grice’s Dual Principle of Conversational Egoism and Altrusim -- ego (Freud) Philosophy of mind Freud rejected the view that the mind is a unity. Instead, he divides it into three parts: id [German Es, literally, “it”], ego [German Ich, literally, “I”], and superego [German Überich]. For Freud, the id contains bodily appetites and unconscious instincts. It is not subjected to logical processing or to time, and it represents the resistance of human nature and what should be checked. The id replaced what Freud earlier called the unconscious. The superego is a human’s moral faculty and is the agent of conscience. It is the location of ego-ideal, that is, what one desires but cannot have. It represents an individual’s social personality, and acts as a deputy for the culture outside oneself. It is a judge and a censor. The presence of the superego explains how it is possible for us to act in a way that serves something beyond our own self-interest. The ego, the subject of intentional actions and decisions, is the mediator between id and superego, and is the real “I” or genuine self. It has a conscious part and an unconscious part. It tries to measure itself by the ideal set by the superego and to act on the demands of the superego to subdue the unsociable chaos of the id’s desires. The ego also tries to keep its own perceptual responses free from the constraints of morality. The contents of the id can find expression in consciousness only through the ego, through the approval of the ego, or by the ego falling prey to the id’s manipulation. Freud compares the relation between the ego and id to the relation between a rider and horse. In all, the ego represents characteristic human values of prudence and rationality. It is the layer of the id that has been modified by the influence of the external world of reality. Freud’s tripartite picture does not simplify the function of mind into a conflict between rational and irrational. In a sense, it can be traced to Plato’s division of the soul into reason, spirit, and appetite, although Freud locates reason in the area of ego. As with all the major elements of Freudian theory, it is tempting to accept Freud’s account of the ego, id, and superego without suitable scrutiny. “Putting ourselves on the footing of everyday knowledge, we recognise in human beings a mental organisation which is interpolated between their sensory stimuli and the perception of their somatic needs on the one hand and their motor acts on the other, and which mediates between them for a particular purpose. We call this organisation their ‘Ich’ (‘ego’, literally, ‘I’).” Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 23 -- egocentric particulars Logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind A term introduced by Russell, which he also called emphatic particulars. Items designated by words such as “this,” “I,” “here,” “now,” “past,” “future,” “near,” or “far,” whose denotation is relative to the speaker and his position in space and time and depends on the contexts of their utterances. In a sense, all of them can be defined in terms of an ostensive “this.” These words are neither proper names, nor terms for general concepts, nor descriptions and therefore are not easy to fit into the usual logical and semantic categories. They will affect the truth of the propositions in which they occur, for such propositions cannot have a constant truth-value. They may be said to denote without connoting anything. It therefore becomes a fundamental problem how to avoid egocentric particulars in the formulation of epistemologically basic propositions. Since the use of egocentric terms must involve the selective activity of the mind, the existence of such terms is also supposed to be a criticism of the no-ownership theory of mental states. Other authors call egocentric particulars token-reflexives, indicator terms, or indexicals. “There is also difficulty about ‘egocentric particulars’, i.e. ‘I’, ‘this’, ‘now’, ‘here’.” Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth -- egocentric perceptual statements Philosophy of language, epistemology Shoemaker’s term for statements that make use of egocentric terms such as “this,” “here,” “near,” “far,” “left,” or “right” to describe events or objects in relation to the speaker. The truth or falsity of these statements is decided with reference to such circumstances as the speaker’s location, orientation, and point of view. “It is just because egocentric perceptual statements can be false, and can be discovered to be false by reference to the speaker’s point of view, that they are informative in the way they are.” Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity -- egocentric predicament Epistemology The term, coined by the American philosopher R. B. Perry, refers to the situation according to which everyone’s knowledge is limited by his or her own experience and cannot go beyond that experience. This situation has already been expressed in Berkeley’s dictum “to be is to be perceived.” Because of this predicament, we cannot have empirical knowledge of other minds, for we cannot share their experience. We also cannot have empirical knowledge of the mind-independent external world, for any recognition of the world must be formed on the basis of one’s experience. Idealism, although widely criticized in this regard, generally takes this predicament as a strong proof of its truth. “The fallacious argument from the egocentric predicament is to confuse the redundant statement that ‘everything which is known, is known’ with the statement that ‘everything which is, is known’; or to infer the second statement from the first.” Perry, Realms of Value -- conversational self-love, egoism, ethical Ethics Also called normative egoism or rational egoism. An ethical view that holds that satisfying some desire of mine is a necessary and sufficient condition for me to act. This theory places the self at the center of ethical life in relation to other persons. According to this view, people will naturally behave unjustly and reject fundamental moral rules, if they can do so without any negative consequences for themselves. It then follows that we do not have a natural regard for the public interest, and that a rational person will act to maximize selfish satisfactions. For an ethical theory based on this account of human psychology, moral life is the life that maximizes the good-for-me. Psychological egoism provides a theoretical basis for ethical egoism, but the failure of psychological egoism would not entail that ethical egoism is false. It only shows that ethical egoism must find another basis. Egoism stands in contrast to altruism, which claims that morality must be based on our desire to help others. Egoism was explicitly argued for by Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic and developed by Hobbes. To explain obvious acts of altruism and benevolence in many situations, egoists argue that altruism or the observance of the general moral order is disguised self-seeking, for it will create a stable society, which can preserve us and promote our long-term interests. The main difficulty of egoism is that it takes morality as an external bond, rather than being an internal feature of our moral personality. The prisoner’s dilemma indicates that cooperative action may achieve better results than selfish action and has been offered as a serious basis for rejecting ethical egoism. However, it is also argued that egoism will allow us to act cooperatively as long as this promotes deeply based long-term self-interest. On this view, the prisoner’s dilemma only shows that people should not pursue egoistic ends directly and does not entail the rejection of egoism itself. “There is a theory of how we should act which has been called, confusingly enough, ethical egoism. This claims that each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest.” B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy