You don't believe in truth?
The singular and eternal? No, of course not. Simple factual observations, yeah, but not on anything complicated and contentious like ethics. That's just wishful thinking from people who are afraid of uncertainty.
You don't believe in truth?
"The Golden Rule" is merely a way of expressing the principle of Reciprocity; in what sense is that "mindlessly simplistic"?That's because the Golden Rule is mindlessly simplistic.
Funny, I've always thought of the two as different applications of the same basic principle, dictated by scale; utilitarianism is simply what you get when you attempt to apply the ethic of reciprocity to the world at large. Am I going wrong somewhere?It seems to me that utilitarianism gives a sensible starting point for moral reasoning...
...
Also, I agree entirely with Orange Seeds that the "Golden Rule" is a very poor moral compass anyway...
People post all the time about how there's this common misconception that "atheists cannot be moral." I am curious what morality means to most CFC atheists.
If your explanation consists of an appeal to moral intuitions, please explain why those moral intuitions have access to some sort of objective moral truth. Please also clarify what it means for an ethical statement to be true and what it is that makes these ethical statements objectively true.
If you do not believe in objective morals, please say whether or not you consider your moral relativism to be meaningfully prescriptive and discuss the relative merits of this versus the objective morality that religion can (supposedly) provide.
Are we still talking about the Golden Rule? I though I had already established that the rule is merely an expression of the Ethic of Reciprocity, and so must be dealt with as such. One cannot take it in isolation, any more than one could take, say, the communist motto "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" in isolation.1) It has obvious counterexamples - there are moral questions that it gets completely wrong.
2) It isn't complete - there are moral questions it simply cannot answer.
The Golden Rule is interesting insofar as it appears to be an important part of human evolution. It's not an ethical system, though. It's about as useful as Objectivism, as ethical systems go.
Jefferson's Bible?All the morals of the Bible and more of them. Without all the crap. And nobody believes the fairy tales are actually real.
Well, in other words, you're purposedly looking at the letter and not even trying to get the spirit, which is exactly what my answer was describing.I'm sorry, it's not my responsibility to guess what you mean by you words. I can only use the accepted meaning of your words to comment. If "do unto other as you want done unto yourself" means something other than "do unto other as you want done unto yourself," then you damn well better explain it rather than state it as some grand ethical insight. Seriously. My counterexample is an exact counterexample to the claim above. So is Mises'.
If you're going by nitpickign the phrasing, let me tell you then : the question was "where your moral system comes from", the answer is : "the Golden Rule". The moral system comes FROM here, it IS not it. The Golden Rule is just a simple general description of the basis of morality, upon which the moral system is build.1) It has obvious counterexamples - there are moral questions that it gets completely wrong.
2) It isn't complete - there are moral questions it simply cannot answer.
The Golden Rule is interesting insofar as it appears to be an important part of human evolution. It's not an ethical system, though.
"simple" doesn't mean "simplistic".That's because the Golden Rule is mindlessly simplistic.
I answered with the word "reciprocity". If you doesn't like to have things done to you, and requires/expects others no to do them to you, then it stands to reason you can not be right to not answer in kind to them.I think you've misunderstood what he's after: he wants to know why atheists think that their moral systems do tell you what's good or bad. Citing the Golden Rule (or any other moral precept) doesn't answer that question. Why is it right to do to others as I'd have them do to me? What does it mean to say that such actions are "right" at all?
Meh, again, it's a general principle, of course it is possible to interpret it in plenty of ways, especially when applied in something as complex as life. I still stand by the fact that it's the basis of morality, and everything else is constructed on top of this - and the different interpretations are more due to the complexities of our mind, our perceptions and the pervasiveness of bias than due to a basic flaw in the Rule.Also, I agree entirely with Orange Seeds that the "Golden Rule" is a very poor moral compass anyway, for the reasons already given, and this is why it does not, in fact, appear in most rigorous ethical systems. I'd dispute the claim that it appears in most non-rigorous ones, in fact; one can find it in various religions only by interpreting it so loosely that a wide variety of rather different moral strictures are all considered to be equivalent.
Funny, I've always thought of the two as different applications of the same basic principle, dictated by scale; utilitarianism is simply what you get when you attempt to apply the ethic of reciprocity to the world at large. Am I going wrong somewhere?
I answered with the word "reciprocity". If you doesn't like to have things done to you, and requires/expects others no to do them to you, then it stands to reason you can not be right to not answer in kind to them.
And please, like I answered above : if we're going to speak about general causes, let's argue in good faith and not try to find loophole in the phrasing, I don't find it interesting in such a debate to just try to nitpick how something is formulated while ignoring the intent. So let's keep out for the moment all the bizarre cases, I only highlight the general principle.
Meh, again, it's a general principle, of course it is possible to interpret it in plenty of ways, especially when applied in something as complex as life. I still stand by the fact that it's the basis of morality, and everything else is constructed on top of this - and the different interpretations are more due to the complexities of our mind, our perceptions and the pervasiveness of bias than due to a basic flaw in the Rule.
Well, I'm referring to the ethic of reciprocity, rather than the Golden Rule itself, which, as I mentioned, is essentially an expression of the ethic, rather than a complete ethical philosophy in itself.I have to admit I can't see any connection between them at all.
The "Golden Rule" tells you to behave in a certain way, namely, act in the way you would like other people to act to you.
Utilitarianism sets a goal of action, namely, bringing about the greatest amount of good.
There's no indication in the "Golden Rule" that it is intended to bring about the greatest amount of good. Of course a utilitarian who thinks the Golden Rule useful will say that it does bring about the greatest amount of good, but it's hardly part of the Golden Rule. And I can easily imagine someone holding to the Golden Rule but thinking utilitarianism doesn't work, and conversely, a utilitarian who doesn't think much of the Golden Rule; they just seem to me to be quite different sorts of things.
I'm really not sure why people keep bringing up this example, given how superficial it is; surely, the masochist in question does not seek pain, but the pleasure that they derive from pain, which would render the correctly reciprocal behaviour an attempt to induce pleasure by whatever subjective means are appropriate, rather than simply causing pain to others? It would take a very particular, unusual sort of person to interpret the Golden Rule so literally....which is why it's not very good when applied to unusual cases such as masochism etc.
This whole part doesn't make a shred of sense.Does it?
Unpack this a bit:
If I don't want people to behave to me in a certain way, why does that make it morally wrong for me to behave to them in that way? Certainly it might be prudent for me to avoid behaving to them in that way, on the grounds that if treat people badly they are more likely to treat me badly. So it might indeed stand to reason that it would be a good idea for me to behave to others as I would like them to behave to me. But that is not morality, it is prudence. There is no imperative, no explanation of why I ought to behave in a certain way, only a recommendation that if I want to achieve certain results it would be prudent for me to behave in a certain way.
What I've seen him ask, and what I've understood of his question, is that he wonder from what general/universal/fundamental principle an atheist gets his idea of right and wrong.That was my point: he's trying to get at a meta-ethical theory of what right and wrong are. He's not asking for a (merely) ethical theory of which actions are right and wrong (at least as I understand the OP). The Golden Rule may provide the latter, but it does not provide the former, just as no other (merely) ethical theory such as utilitarianism does either.
A general principle is not a set of laws, a general principle is the idea on which you build a set of laws.The "bizarre cases" are what test the principle, though. If your moral principle proves to be a bad guide of how to behave in some cases then you can't rely on it in general, because how do you know whether it applies to the current case? You may not like nitpicking, but that's how we reason these things out.
Hu, of course that the Golden Rule is a summing up. That's the point, and that's precisely what I've been saying.If it's the basis of morality then people who don't know the Golden Rule couldn't be moral;but that seems implausible. I'd say a more plausible view is that the Golden Rule and its variants are attempts to summarise how people actually behave (when trying to behave morally, anyway). So it's a derivation from moral behaviour rather than the basis of it. And only, at best, a very rough and ready one, which is why it's not very good when applied to unusual cases such as masochism etc.
Well, in other words, you're purposedly looking at the letter and not even trying to get the spirit, which is exactly what my answer was describing.
And again, what's exactly is the point of trying to explain something at someone who is trying to misunderstand ?
In Internet slang, it's called "trolling", by the way.
If you're going by nitpickign the phrasing, let me tell you then : the question was "where your moral system comes from", the answer is : "the Golden Rule". The moral system comes FROM here, it IS not it. The Golden Rule is just a simple general description of the basis of morality, upon which the moral system is build.
Happy ?
I'm really not sure why people keep bringing up this example, given how superficial it is; surely, the masochist in question does not seek pain, but the pleasure that they derive from pain, which would render the correctly reciprocal behaviour an attempt to induce pleasure by whatever subjective means are appropriate, rather than simply causing pain to others? It would take a very particular, unusual sort of person to interpret the Golden Rule so literally.
I've answered with the basic logical reasoning of reciprocity that is generally summed up by the Golden Rule (until someone act dumb and pretend he doesn't understand the concept and purposedly tweak the letter to ignore the spirit, that is, at which point we use walls of text to explain something that has been understood from the start but seems to be fun to be nitpicked at will).
A general principle is not a set of laws, a general principle is the idea on which you build a set of laws.
Just like the fact that murder is, at large, considered a bad thing, but we still have countless special cases, situations and the like where, well, in this case, okay killing this guy wasn't that bad, blah blah.
We then write plenty of laws to corner these cases and etc., but we still undestand that, roughly, most of the time, in a general kind of idea, killing someone else is not good.
Same thing here. The basis on which you build something is not the specifics of every special case. That's why it's called "the basis" and the other is called "the specifics". Duh.
All you're doing is returning to a single expression of the core ethic, finding loopholes in the wording rather than actually attempting to engage with the ethic itself. You're simply never going to get anywhere if you do that. (Not to mention the fact that this character of yours, who apparently desires to be the victim of theft, doesn't seem to be much more than a caricature of actual human behaviour.)Again, problem of relevant descriptions. I can say any action is good insofar as I phrase it in such a way that I would like it done to me:
"I will steal from x, because if i were x I would want my property to be useful"
"I will steal from x, because if I were x I would want to make other people happy"
and so on and so on.
If you're going to claim the above, you need a theory for what is the correct description of what is occuring.
Jesus said:And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Mozi said:If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself.
Brhaspati said:One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Other behavior is due to selfish desires.
Muhammed said:None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself
Confucius said:Zi Gong asked, saying, "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not "reciprocity" such a word?
Guru Granth Sahib said:Whom should I despise, since the one Lord made us all.
Gautama Buddha said:Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.
T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien said:Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.
Maybe because many of the Golden Rulers have stated it isn't an access to some kind of moral truth?@The Golden Rulers: I still have not heard any explanation for how the golden rule gives us access to some kind of moral truth.
Well, I'm referring to the ethic of reciprocity, rather than the Golden Rule itself, which, as I mentioned, is essentially an expression of the ethic, rather than a complete ethical philosophy in itself.
Anyway, what I meant was that utilitarianism advocates the greatest universal good, which, to me, seems to suggest an attempt to bring the good which you desire for yourself to the cosmos at large; "doing unto all others", as it were. The "goal", as you described it, is generated by the principal.
This whole part doesn't make a shred of sense.
You're mixing two completely different concepts : something being morally wrong/right in one hand, an action being beneficial or not in the other.
What I've seen him ask, and what I've understood of his question, is that he wonder from what general/universal/fundamental principle an atheist gets his idea of right and wrong.
I've answered with the basic logical reasoning of reciprocity that is generally summed up by the Golden Rule (until someone act dumb and pretend he doesn't understand the concept and purposedly tweak the letter to ignore the spirit, that is, at which point we use walls of text to explain something that has been understood from the start but seems to be fun to be nitpicked at will).
Same damn thing.
Again. I am not trying to misunderstand. Quite simply, nothing has been explained for me to understand it in any other way.
I see potential for very ironic answers.And don't pretend like you don't know what I mean.
I'm not mixing them, I'm trying to distinguish them. My point was that your argument for the rationality of the Golden Rule showed only that following the Golden Rule might be beneficial.
Yes.It did not show that following the Golden Rule is or might be morally right.
And that's the answer I gave.I still think you're misunderstanding. He's not asking for a principle which tells us what is right and what is wrong (i.e. which identifies which actions are right and which actions are wrong). He's asking for a principle which tells us what "right" and "wrong" mean.
You seem to miss the point of the Golden Rule then.Similarly, the Golden Rule or its variants purport to tell people which actions are right, or give them a way of establishing whether an action is right or not, but they don't purport to tell us what rightness actually is or why these actions are right and others aren't. But that is what he's asking for.
This is why the Golden Rule is a personal yardstick for me.Not happy, because the masochist example already shows that the golden rule is not the origin of the moral system, because it relies on something greater in order to avoid it.