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Wengert, Robert G. Blackwood, Dennis Michael 2011-05-07T12:35:20Z 2011-05-07T12:35:20Z 10000-01-01 1995 Egoism is the doctrine that one ought to act only for self-interested reasons. I shall be concerned with the presupposition of egoism: acting only for self-interested reasons is in one's long-term interest. I shall be concerned with this presupposition's truth with respect only to cases in which one's interests conflict with those of others. So I shall be concerned with this affiliated egoistic doctrine (call it the 'doctrine of advantage'); in cases of conflict between one's interests and those of others, acting only for self-interested reasons tends to be in one's long-term interest. With respect to conflict of interests' cases, I refer to one's best all-things-considered interests at the time. However, no one or few people know accurately their actual, all-things-considered, long-term interests and perhaps few their all-things-considered immediate interests. Also, by 'advantage', I refer both to the acquisition of Moorean-type intrinsic goods and common naturalistic goods like wealth, power, pleasure, etc. By 'naturalistic goods', I mean some human ends considered valuable by reasons reducible to natural selection and, possibly, social conventions. I also assume that conflicts of interests occur regularly throughout everyone's lifetime, owing to different human needs and wants, scarcity of resources, etc. I shall have two tasks in this dissertation: (1) to detail and explain chronologically the main arguments for and against egoism and, specifically, the doctrine of advantage from the Western tradition until and including the eighteenth century discussions; (2) to classify these arguments. I shall not concern myself with theological arguments concerning the rewards and punishments in the hereafter. I shall only be concerned with arguments with respect to earthly types of advantages and disadvantages. Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T12:35:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9522081.pdf: 11180257 bytes, checksum: deef5e656848728c79b5e3d8a29a2903 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1995 Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:42:58Z Item is restricted indefinitely. Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:18:45-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission U of I Only AAI9522081 (UMI)AAI9522081 http://hdl.handle.net/2142/20301 eng Copyright 1995 Blackwood, Dennis Michael Philosophy Egoism: Arguments for and against it from western philosophy text Philosophy Philosophy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D.