The suggestions adds something of interest to “do whatever is in your rational self-interest”; here I don’t see where this further claim would/could come from.
This makes specific what part of “acting in your rational self-interest” means. To use an admittedly imperfect analogy, the connection between egoism and contractarianism is a bit like the connection between utilitarianism and giving to charity (conditional on it being effective). The former implies the latter, but it takes some thinking to determine what it actually entails. Also, not all egoists are contractarians, and it’s adding the claim that if you’ve decided to follow your rational self-interest, this is how you should act.
What do you mean by “morality”?
What one should do. I realize that this may be an imprecise definition, but it gets at what utilitarians, Kantians, Divine Command Theorists, and ethical egoists have in common with each other that they don’t have in common with moral non-realists, such as nihilists. Of course, all the ethical theories disagree about the content of morality, but they agree that there is such a thing—it’s sort of like agreeing that the moon exists, even if they don’t agree what it’s made of. Morality is not synonymous with “caring about the interests of others”, nor does it even necessarily imply that (in the ethical-theory-neutral view I’m taking in this paragraph). Morality is what you should do, even if you think you should do something else.
As for your second-to-last paragraph (the one not in parentheses) -
Being an ethical egoist, I do think that people are irrational if they don’t act in their self-interest. I agree that we can’t have irrational goals, but we aren’t free to set whatever goals we want—due to the nature of subjective experience and self-interest, rational self-interest is the only rational goal. What rational self-interest entails varies from person to person, but it’s still the only rational goal. I can go into it more, but I think it’s outside the scope of this thread.
This makes specific what part of “acting in your rational self-interest” means. To use an admittedly imperfect analogy, the connection between egoism and contractarianism is a bit like the connection between utilitarianism and giving to charity (conditional on it being effective). The former implies the latter, but it takes some thinking to determine what it actually entails. Also, not all egoists are contractarians, and it’s adding the claim that if you’ve decided to follow your rational self-interest, this is how you should act.
What one should do. I realize that this may be an imprecise definition, but it gets at what utilitarians, Kantians, Divine Command Theorists, and ethical egoists have in common with each other that they don’t have in common with moral non-realists, such as nihilists. Of course, all the ethical theories disagree about the content of morality, but they agree that there is such a thing—it’s sort of like agreeing that the moon exists, even if they don’t agree what it’s made of. Morality is not synonymous with “caring about the interests of others”, nor does it even necessarily imply that (in the ethical-theory-neutral view I’m taking in this paragraph). Morality is what you should do, even if you think you should do something else.
As for your second-to-last paragraph (the one not in parentheses) -
Being an ethical egoist, I do think that people are irrational if they don’t act in their self-interest. I agree that we can’t have irrational goals, but we aren’t free to set whatever goals we want—due to the nature of subjective experience and self-interest, rational self-interest is the only rational goal. What rational self-interest entails varies from person to person, but it’s still the only rational goal. I can go into it more, but I think it’s outside the scope of this thread.