Hedonism (and to some extent egotism as well) rests upon the implicit belief that pleasure, pain, and desires are automatic, infallible guides to one's well-being and therefore need not be questioned. The conceptual faculty is regarded as irrelevant to determining what will promote the life of an individual. As has been emphasized in much of this course, neither pleasure and pain nor emotional impulses provide reliable signals as to which action alternatives will sustain and enhance an individual's life in the long run. Consequently, more sophisticated hedonists profess a dedication to long-term happiness rather than to immediate pleasure and present desires. As we shall find in the next subsection, happiness is very important to the rational egoist as well. Unlike the hedonist, however, the egoist recognizes that long-term happiness must be a consequence of actions that are consistent with his or her life-needs, and that happiness per se is not the most reliable criterion for distinguishing such actions.

Altruism follows from the false metaphysical belief that the individual exists only in order to serve others—other humans, one's nation, one's race, "society" in general, or perhaps "God." Each human being is seen not as an end in himself or herself, but only as a means. Often, the individual is regarded as merely part of a larger social organism, an idea previously refuted in Section 2 (pp. 2.4:3-11).