I find the problem in debates about egoism and altruism usually has something to do with language, mind, and actuality. Here, people are being led astray by false impressions of language to think memories and insincts can be substituted for emotions like expectation.
I will quote a refined version of something I once wrote on this topic:
Quote:
The notion egoism and altruism must be at odds is the only illusion in the matter. Although many versions of both ideas fail at particular points, in abstract form, many of their features reflect humanity's collective experience well enough that they can be considered functional descriptions of actualities. Rather than being placed in either-or, one-must-be-right-and-the-other-must-be-wrong positions, the two ideas ought to be synthesized to the point they embody a duality of ideas which contributes positively to an effective understanding of the state of things.
'Egoism' is true in so far as it points out the aim of beings is to, in a very broad and variable sense, seek their own advantage, and 'altruism' is true in so far as it points out, in a more narrow sense, that it is possible for beings to contribute positively to other's experiences without expectations of receiving anything in return. The ideas are reconcilable since, whether because of nonconscious memories or instincts, a being can exist in a manner where they do not expect positive experiences and yet still acquire positive experiences, at least in part, because they did not expect them. Just because this reinforces the probability they will continue behaving that way does not necessarily mean they are expecting something in return. In this particular instance, 'advantage' refers to positive emotional experiences.
To clarify, 'expectation' cannot be realistically feigned to exist in a state other than an immediate conscious experience. Unthought about memories and instincts relating to prior circumstances cannot be substituted for the emotion of expectation. The illusion that such substitutions are realistic derives from certain applications of language, which, while workable in a specific context, become dysfunctional when applied to other situations. A statement like, "I expected you would help me fix my boat," emerges in reaction to the speaker's memory of an emotion they experienced at an earlier point. A false impression is created in some listener's minds when they associate this emotion too closely with the memory the speaker is using as a reference to the fact he once felt a certain way. These listeners wrongly think 'emotion' and 'memory' here refer to the same objective. However, the features and consequent applications of emotion and memory are too different for them to be considered the same thing, so confusing 'expectation' and the 'memory of expectation' for equivalents is hallucinatory.
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So, from these three paragraphs, it should be clear how misunderstandings of what language means in relation to the mind and the rest of the world have led to faulty conceptions of egoism and altruism.