Golden Rule Flawed

Great Debates
1

In “The Atheist Religion” there was some talk of the golden rule being the basis for atheistic morality. Since the golden rule doesn’t really form the basis of my own principles this got me to thinking about the golden rule itself. My conclusion is that the golden rule is flawed.

First, a definition. Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would have yourself be treated.” or “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If anybody objects to this definition of the Golden Rule please feel free to chime in.

The problem with the Golden Rule, as a positive moral tool, is that it assumes the ethicity of the people who adhere to it. The Golden Rule is equally effective at supporting immoral behaviour as moral behaviour. This is because the Golden Rule is self-considering only. It does not take into consideration anybody else.

The Golden Rule tells us that when we consider an action we should ask ourselves if we would want the same done to us. This is useless on two perspectives:

  1. First, it doesn’t include how the actual receipient of our action feels about what we are going to do. It only asks us to consider if we wouldn’t mind the same act in return.

  2. Second, it requires us to have some other means of establishing the morality of the action because we have to establish if we would want this action taken against us.

In other words, as above, the Golden Rule, in order to be moral, requires its adherents to be moral themselves by some other means. Or, as stated above, it assumes the ethicity of its adherents.

Example #1. Consider a person who is very poor, and is considering taking up stealing. This person applies the Golden Rule and decides “I really don’t care if anybody steals from me, I don’t have anything.” So this person becomes a thief. Now, lets say they are a successful thief and becomes quite wealthy. The thief is now trying to decide if they want to continue stealing. They might say to themselves “Hmmm, I really wouldn’t want anybody to take all my stuff so I guess I’ll stop stealing.” (amusingly they could also reason “I am such a good thief I don’t care if anybody steals my stuff because I can certainly steal more than somebody could steal from me. Since I don’t care if anybody steals from me, I will continue stealing.”).

Example #2. A person is a thug and a bully. They enjoy fighting. They consider the Golden Rule to decide if they should pick a fight with somebody. “I enjoy fighting. If somebody were to pick a fight with me I wouldn’t care, as long as they weren’t bigger or stronger than I am. Therefore, it is okay to pick a fight with somebody as long as I am not bigger and stronger than they are.” So, with this reasoning a person could pick a fight with somebody who is the same size or bigger than they are and be perfectly moral. Since physical size doesn’t equate always to a desire to fight, this “moral” act could be quite a hinderance to the somebody else who would end up in the fight.

The Golden Rule is hopelessly flawed as a moral tool. It fails to consider the other person involved, and therefore, must be used in conjunction with some other principle in order to be moral. The Golden Rule is only a successful moral tool when the person who uses it is already moral.

“Glitch … Window, large icons.” - Bob the Guardian

2

Why develop a moral code or a conscience if you’ve got no god to whom you must answer? Well, if you try to take a global view of society you realize that that’s what it takes to make it work! The Golden Rule is not hard to understand. All the major religions in the world attempt to define acceptable behaviors and relationships in a manner that allows people to live together. I don’t need to believe in a god to recognize that there is a long term benefit to humanity (which includes me) to have social conventions that provide for the nurturing of children, care for those in need, the conduct of commerce, concepts of lineage, definitions of property, allocations of personal responsibility and whatever else. And I recognize that society doesn’t work if I don’t play by certain rules. Sort of a cog in the big machine philosophy, but that is the way it is.

Of course I recognize that there will always be a segment of the population that feels that enough of the other people will stay w/in the lines for society to work and that they can therefore cheat. These folks do and often get away w/it. That hardly justifies my pursuing a similar course. I’m a person and people are social animals. I both like and need other people. No fire and brimstone is needed for me to not want to be a scumbag. I just don’t want to be a scumbag. If a bit of logic is needed to understand the undesirability of being a scumbag, consider that scumbags tend to run out of friends (and go to jail and stuff like that).

All of the above came from an earlier thread, but it begins to address the question in the OP. The Golden Rule works just fine in conjunction with a global perspective of what it takes for people to live and work together. All the various global perspectives people might arrive at are sure to vary, greatly.

Again, from the past:

Although I’m atheist, I think (and I may get a bit of flack from other atheists on this) that humanity has probably experienced a net benefit from organized religion because there’s a good chunk of the population that is not inclined to attempt a global perpective. Organized religions do manage to get some rules of behavior across.

3

Wan’t there a re-phrasing suggested somewhere in those threads to account for empathy? Something along the lines of:

Putting aside for the moment the consequences of an incorrect empathic judgement, it is that aspect of morality which is missing in the plain form of the Golden Rule, but it does assume the good morals of the person applying it.

Sum Ergo Cogito

4

Glitch:

I’m reminded of the sadist and the masochist. The masochist pleaded, “Oh, beat me! Beat me! Please!” The sadist folded hims arms with a devilish grin and said, “No.”

It’s a bit much, in my opinion, to say that the Golden Rule is “hopelessly” flawed when in fact there is hope for it, as you pointed out, if the user of it is moral. As a moral precept, though, it was not original to Jesus but to Confucius, who worded it just like Quixotic said, “Treat others the way you believe they want to be treated.”

5

I brought the modification to the Golden Rule up some time ago, though I may not have been the first to do so. I got it from Spider Robinson, who may or may not have lifted it from the Scholar (carefully filing off the serial number first, of course).

“Life is like a new suit of clothes. If it doesn’t fit, make alterations.”
–the old woman in Silverado

6

Quixotic is right, that is the way it should be phrased; otherwise you get people saying things like “Well, I like Guinness, so I should give my 2-year-old cousin Guinness.” A lot of people try to come up with moral codes that do not require using your brain to make judgment calls based on the situation, but I’ve never seen one that works. Sure you can list “don’t lie”, “don’t steal” and so on, but–sometimes you should lie (when the murderer asks if your friend is hiding in your house, do you say, “Yes, he’s in the broom closet”?). The proper application of any moral code requires empathy, intelligence and knowledge; you must recognize how you are the same as the other person, and also how you are different. I do not think the Golden Rule is flawed (at least not in its proper version), but I do find it incomplete in that it takes some twisting to get it to give you a directive if you actions do not directly affect another, like “should I keep myself healthy?” So I prefer the Categorical Imperitive, tempered with empathy.

As a side note to beatle’s comment, I also find religion useful in encouraging moral behavior. Since empathy is the root of morals, what do you do about people who are lacking in empathy? Take as an example a mass-murderer, yet not one who is wholly psychotic: In order for him to be moral, he must learn love and empathy, but how? When love is given, we feel a strong urge to return it, but it is difficult for humans to love a killer. Yet if you tell him God loves him, he may feel he should love in return, and therefore becomes moral to please God. Though I can see it can be useful, I cannot really condone it, for I think it is a lie; and were it a deliberate lie, it would be a cruel one. However, since I am sure the theists sincerely believe God exists and loves the murderers, I have no real complaint. Were it up to me, I would simply have to learn to love and understand the murderers in order to push them towards moral behavior. I think I could do it. The problem with religion as a source of a moral code is that doubt in the truth of the religion will remove the moral imperative. I prefer a morality tied to humanity and empathy, not an authority whose existence is so often in doubt.

7

But if you lose your empathy, you’re no better off than the guy who loses his religion.

8

Forgive me if I think it a lot less likely that I will stop caring about human beings at all than that I will cease to believe in the existence and love of an invisible being. There’s a lot more atheists than there are people without empathy. Even theism depends on empathy; what if you believe in God, believe He loves you, but don’t care about Him? If a theist or an atheist loses their empathy, their morals will likely go out the window.

9

I meant a general “you”, as in “if one loses one’s empathy”. The only real problem with empathy, as I see it, is the same as the only real problem for the Golden Rule (or the Categorical Imperative, or the Insert Moral Code of Choice), namely, that they do not apply except in the case of people who are already moral.

If empathy underpins morality, then a person who lacks empathy will be immoral. Sometimes people, especially sociopaths, display a very selective empathy. There might be one or more people whom they dearly love and would never harm, while the rest of us are just objects.

10

I don’t see how the Golden Rule can only be effective with those who are already moral. With people who are already empathic, yes (is that what you meant?)…but even a thief can understand that other people might not want to be stolen from, even if he doesn’t mind being stolen from himself.

The two incarnations of the Golden Rule seem like a two-step process to me. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”…that’s teaching basic empathy. Don’t we all say to little kids, “Why did you take that toy away from Bobby? How would you like it if he did that to you?” It teaches that other people have much the same feelings that you do, and you should respect theirs and they should respect yours. “Treat others how you believe they would want to be treated” teaches an intelligent empathy: recognizing that others aren’t exactly the same as you.

Empathy can be trained and taught, as I see it (except in very rare cases); is that not the example I used, where a murderer became moral because he was told God loved him and therefore he loved and wished to please God? Love often engenders love, whether the source is man or God. I do not understand your objection to empathy as a source of moral code, since that is the source of a theist’s moral code as well: They do right because they care about God and believe they understand what pleases him. That’s empathy.

11

That’s likely because I don’t have one. I suppose that with a sharp bias, one could interpret what I said to be an objection to empathy, but it really isn’t. As I told you in the Atheist Religion thread, I think empathy is wonderful basis for an ethic, an is an essential part of my own ethic that I shared with you there: tolerance.

I’m just saying that empathy (and my own ethic of tolerance) is just like the other ethical underpinnings, dependent on the adoption of it by its user. One can also teach tolerance, but if the student goes off on his own and begins to drift away by getting in with the wrong crowd or something, then he can lose his tolerance.

12

“this is the captain speaking; this flight has not been hijacked, but we do have to take a short detour.”

For the record, moving from the classic formulation of the Golden Rule to the fully empathic formulation is the second change; prior to the classic formulation was the negative formulation: “Whatsoever things you would not have done to yourself, do not do to others.” Strangely, this precedes (at least in any documentation I’ve found) the positive formulation by at least a century, probably substantially more.

13

Makes sense, Polycarp; first get people to stop doing bad things, then get them to do good. Indifference is better than evil, but good is better than indifference.

14

— The Analects of Confucius, Book XV, Chapter XXIII

15

Lib, if your ethic is tolerance, where does that leave charity? Your rule, as I understand it, is “peaceful honest people should be able to live without coercion”. But that seems to make charity and kindness morally neutral: they neither fight against coercion nor coerce.

16

I am opposed to tolerance. I believe in acceptance. Tolerance is simply allowing to happen what you believe is wrong. Acceptance is allowing to happen what you find not suitable for you, but perhaps so for those in whom you accept it. (Freshly picked nits, cheap!)

“Life is like a new suit of clothes. If it doesn’t fit, make alterations.”
–the old woman in Silverado

17

Oh lord, Polycarp, Libby’s going to flame your arse for that one! :wink: The defintions of both acceptance and tolerance are fuzzy.

18

See, Libby’s going with defintion 2a, and you’re going with 2b:

Tolerance:
1 : capacity to endure pain or hardship : ENDURANCE, FORTITUDE, STAMINA
2 a : sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own b : the act of allowing something : TOLERATION
3 : the allowable deviation from a standard; especially : the range of variation permitted in maintaining a specified dimension in machining a piece
4 a (1) : the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance (as a drug) or a physiological insult with repeated use or exposure <immunological tolerance to a virus> <an addict’s increasing tolerance for a drug> (2) : relative capacity of an organism to grow or thrive when subjected to an unfavorable environmental factor b : the maximum amount of a pesticide residue that may lawfully remain on or in food

Now, as to “acceptance”:
1 : an agreeing either expressly or by conduct to the act or offer of another so that a contract is concluded and the parties become legally bound
2 : the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable
3 : the act of accepting : the fact of being accepted : APPROVAL
4 a : the act of accepting a time draft or bill of exchange for payment when due according to the specified terms b : an accepted draft or bill of exchange

Goodness, defintion #3 seems much more likely to be interpreted as allowing people to do things you find wrong!

19

And we’d all be better off if this was done from the start at childhood. I believe that we are all born instinctively knowing the difference between right and wrong, even though we are born with the instinctive nature to do the wrong over the right.

I look at my 18 mo old son. The boy is a royal terror. He will do bad things just to push the envelope to see how far we’ll let him go. He’ll watch my wife an I and our actions while going to do something wrong. He knows its wrong, he’s just seeing if we are going to do anything about it.

If every child was taught discipline and the “Golden Rule” and every parent adheared to it themselves as an example, then there wouldn’t even be a debate on whether or not it was flawed.

I know… I know… that’s improbable in this day and age.

“We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 †

20

Gaudere:

As always, your perception is razor sharp. You’re right. My political philosophy, libertarianism, is not concerned with the whole of morality per se, but with civic ethics. Charity and kindness are moral obligations, but not civic ones. I oppose laws that force people to be charitable or kind. I do not believe that you should be civicly obligated to give me charity or to be kind to me.

It is my own conscience and my God that obligates me to share with others for nothing in return. It is an ethical paradox to force charity or kindness, and that is why it shouldn’t be done.

Poly:

If a man is peaceful and honest and enjoys stuffing brillo pads up his butt, I might not accept what he does, but I will tolerate it. Tolerance (like all ethical codes) is a funny thing. I won’t, for example, tolerate intolerance. And you, for example, cannot be opposed to tolerance; you have to accept it.