Psychological Egoism

Psychological egoism shows that there is selfish motivation in every decision that we make, and in fact, our actions can always be found to have some sort of self-interested motivation apart from our perception of our motives. So, even if Abraham Lincoln's motivation to help the pigs were because he saw it as the right thing to do, he would still be acting according to the moral principles outlined by psychological egoism, he just would not have been aware of it.
             James Rachels responds to the assertions of psychological egoism by pointing out its many ambiguous assumptions. Rachels first claim is to show that just because we can derive satisfaction from helping others, it does not make us selfish and, in fact, it makes us unselfish. Had Abraham Lincoln's conscience not been bothered if he had not helped the pigs, then he could have been shown to be acting selfishly. But because the action gave Lincoln peace of mind, it "shows him to be compassionate and good hearted" (Rachels 1971) as well as show that his action was undeniably unselfish. Rachels second claim comes from the tendency to obscure the distinction between the motivation for an action and the consequence of an action and can be summed up by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit and it leads us on a wild-goose chase and is never attained. Follow some other object and very possibly we may fond we have caught happiness without dreaming of it." Just because an action has certain consequences, it does not mean that we are motivated by those consequences. How could we be properly motivated if we cannot possibly know all the consequences of our actions? The consequences come after the action has taken place and the motivation for the action is to help in the achievement of our goals. Rachels writes, "We do not desire some sort of "pleasurable consciousness" and then try to figure out how to achieve it; rather, we desire all sorts of different things and because we desire these things, we derive satisfaction for attaining them.