Do you believe in psychological hedonism/egoism? Any philosophers on this?

You'll find that most here agree with you, and that Emily Austin agrees and talks about this in chapter 4 of her book "Living for Pleasure" under the title "Natural Hedonism.

Quote from wbernys

I'm become more interested in psychological hedonism (the thesis that all human actions are due to avoiding pain and increasing pleasure) and curious your guys thoughts on it.

Mark Twain makes the same argument in his "What Is Man" as well.

Epicurus has a very expansive view of pleasure that goes far beyond just physical stimulation, and yes that definitely plays into the idea that everyone acts for what they perceive to be their best interests.

My own view of employing the psychological hedonism argument in this context is that while there is a lot of merit depending on how it is presented (as Twain does), I don't find it particularly useful on the deeper and more important point of decided what the word "pleasure' really should be held to mean. it's one thing to say that every in truth acts for what they think will bring them the best result, but how that result correlates to "pleasure" is really the issue, and saying that "everyone does it" doesn't really help with that, at least from my point of view. All the other lemmings may be jumping off the cliff, but observing that everyone is doing it doesn't really help me decide that I should follow that path myself.

At first thought I think that Dr. Austin touches on the subject (maybe repeatedly) but I don't think there is a chapter devoted to it.

For that I would recommend the DeWitt book, which treats it extensively, but equally or more so I would recommend the article "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism" by Dr. David Sedley. i think we have it here or it's readily available on Academia -- if you can't find it let us know!

When examples are stated that hedonism leads to „bad“ outcomes, this „bad“ is instead the proof for hedonism. Because all value judgements are based on feelings. And prudent hedonists choose more good than bad outcomes / consequences.

Examples for hedonist defenders:

I dislike it when other people speculate about my motives in an attempt to prove a point, and I try--not always successfully--to refrain from doing this myself.

"You only left Christianity because you were hurt by people at church...You only deny God because you want to justify a life of sin...You only act morally because God's laws are written on your heart..."

Well, no. If they really wanted to know the answers to these questions, they could always ask. Be curious, as the man says:

Edit; yeesh, I forgot there's some strong language in that clip!

I generally don't discuss hedonism with adults, but my children are wonderful little hedonistic philosophers, especially with the sort of body-focused ethics that they are taught in their school.

My daughter (7 years old) came up with an interesting insight I had not yet considered on the usual subject of sweets. I was describing that the belly gets a bad rapport because people associate it with overeating or eating too many unhealthy things; BUT our stomach can guide us in all sorts of other things besides being hungry, such as moral conundrums, intuitions, danger and perhaps more; besides just whether or not we experience hunger. So therefore we should listen to our bellies about a lot of things. To which my daughter replied that it's actually our tastebuds we need to watch out for. This impressive (to me at least) technique or process of seperating out into various parts of the body the health and ill-health of eating lead us on an exploration of how the mouth can salivate and how that is a sign, often, that we are about to eat something that is both delicious and good for us as we don't seem to salivate when we are going to eat a treat (at least I don't). And that sometimes our minds are fickle things and that they too can be in cohoots with our taste buds in wanting to eat unhealthy treats all the time; but we've established our belly usually stays true to what we more often should choose and avoid.

All of this is to illustrate that a discussion of hedonism that is not discussing the range and diversity of sensations coming from various parts of the body isn't really a worthwhile approach to hedonistic thinking to me. One that gets stuck in neurochemical reductionism is tough to suss out as we do not experience this chemical bifurcation of object and subject in reasoning hedonistically from sensations, rather we experience everything embodied. Therefore a child trained in listening to their bodies has been, for me at least, a most worthy philosophical partner when it comes to the subject of hedonism as they have not been incultured to ignore their bodies.

And I'll end with this enormous statement by our Sage:

“The beginning and root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this”