Innateness and Selfishness

A cardinal proposition of the Empiricist tradition that Locke initiates is 1. There are no innate ideas, from which, as Hume, notably, shows, is derived 2. There is no innate idea of Self. A third proposition advocated by the members of this tradition, including Smith, is 3. Selfishness is a natural instinct. Now, the relation within the system between #2 and #3 is unclear, and possibly inconsistent. In contrast, Dewey argues that the #3 is simply false, on the basis of the premise, which follows from #1, that Selfishness is a learned mode of behavior. In any case, the unresolved apparent incoherence in the Psychological model that grounds Capitalism may be one reason why its advocates tend to avoid deciding if the concept of Selfishness that it entails is a descriptive principle, or a normative one.