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.
Atheists: explain where your moral system comes from
- Thread starter Gogf
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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.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
"The Golden Rule" is merely a way of expressing the principle of Reciprocity; in what sense is that "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?
Mise
isle of lucy
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.
And yes, all this has been said before, by many people, over the past few thousand years. But yeah, keep thinking that the golden rule is the be all and end all of morality - makes it easier to see who to listen to and who to ignore in these sorts of threads
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.
And yes, all this has been said before, by many people, over the past few thousand years. But yeah, keep thinking that the golden rule is the be all and end all of morality - makes it easier to see who to listen to and who to ignore in these sorts of threads
Cheetah
Deity
Might makes right.
This is law, just under the level of importance of the laws of nature.
All my morals follow - with the help of logic - from this.
SomethingWitty
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2005
- Messages
- 533
Aesop's Fables. All the morals of the Bible and more of them. Without all the crap. And nobody believes the fairy tales are actually real.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
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.
Jefferson's Bible?
Akka
Moody old mage.
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 ?
"simple" doesn't mean "simplistic".
The phrasing of the Golden Rule is kept simple because, again, if someone is actually really trying to understand it, the sentence allows him to grasp the general idea.
And that's it's goal. It's not made to be foolproof, it's just made to vaguely describe a general concept that anyone can grasp if he does it in good faith.
I was answering the supposed intent of the OP, which was "I'd like to understand from where you get your morality". I wasn't intending to answer attempts based on nitpicking and twisting of the phrasing.
Akka
Moody old mage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
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.
That said, I can see that I may well be going wrong in thinking that utilitarianism necessarily stems from this principal of reciprocity, rather than merely being compatible with it; quite possibly, I'm imposing my particular interpretation of each its basic forms, which is never a good idea.
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.
Akka
Moody old mage.
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).
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.
The whole concept of "the spirit of something" is about this, and could avoid many pointless and boring debates if it was more used when it's relevant.
Hu, of course that the Golden Rule is a summing up. That's the point, and that's precisely what I've been saying.
It sums up the general concept of reciprocity, which is the basis of morality.
And it's not a description, it's a principle of reasoning, so it's not an end result, it's a cause. It works very roughly on the specific cases precisely because, as I said above, it's the general BASIS on which morality is build, and not the result. A general guideline is always more vague than the detailed results. Seems obvious, that's the point.
Orange Seeds
playing with cymbals
Again. I am not trying to misunderstand. Quite simply, nothing has been explained for me to understand it in any other way. I don't know what else to say. This is obvious:
If i said "dfhjdfg"
and you said "that is not good enough for a word"
then I say "you're trying to misunderstand me. Troll"
Then its not me that is arguing fairly here.
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.
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.
What _____ the ______ shrimp?
has a very different truth value from:
What ate the chef's shrimp?
Don't say the former and then cry out because we're not understanding how our comments about the former don't apply to the latter.
If killing is wrong is not always the case then we're relying on a higher system of ethics to understand what killing kind of killing is wrong. Likewise,iof treating someone like you want to be treated is good is not always the case then we're relying on a higher system of ethics. Golden Rule is not the starting point. Which is what is being asked for and we're contesting.
Also gorpish kang cunningham.
And don't pretend like you don't know what I mean.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
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.)
Once again, the "Golden Rule" is an expression of the ethic of reciprocity, it is not the ethic itself. If one wishes to assert flaws in the ethic, one must actually address the ethic, rather than playing with a selectively worded version of a particular attempt to express the principles in question.
Jesus said:
Mozi said:
Brhaspati said:
Muhammed said:
Confucius said:
Guru Granth Sahib said:
Gautama Buddha said:
T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien said:
Same damn thing.
I'm an atheist and I don't believe in any single true morality or moral code. My actions and beliefs are typically influenced most by The Golden Rule, an understanding of the importance of other peoples different cultural, religious, and political differences, and also by differing amounts of self-interest.
Gogf
Indescribable
@The Golden Rulers: I still have not heard any explanation for how the golden rule gives us access to some kind of moral truth. Even if we grant that it's somehow universal among humans, why does this mean that it's the correct way to look at morality and not just a common one?
@Plotinus: Cool, glad to see you involved! I'll respond to your post (along with Orange Seeds' and those other posts directed at me that actually include content) once I have slightly more time.
@Plotinus: Cool, glad to see you involved! I'll respond to your post (along with Orange Seeds' and those other posts directed at me that actually include content) once I have slightly more time.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Maybe because many of the Golden Rulers have stated it isn't an access to some kind of moral truth?
Paraphrasing: The basis of ethics is causality, everything has consequences, and so do actions. Actions have consequences, and our role is to find those consequences and act accordingly
When we master this, we might have our objective morality.
Utilitarianism per se doesn't specify what the good actually is. Classical utilitarianism holds the good to be pleasure, but other forms of utilitarianism are not committed to that view. There is no commitment to the notion that the good is whatever you, personally, want. The key element is trying to maximise the amount of whatever the good is.
The principle of reciprocity which you're appealing to specifies that the good is whatever you, personally, want. So there's a big difference right from the start. There is also no explicit aim of maximising the good; rather, only of doing it to others. Now suppose there were a situation where, by doing to somebody something which you wouldn't want done to yourself, you could bring about a greater amount of good than by not doing so. Utilitarianism would urge you to do that thing, whereas the principle of reciprocity would urge you not to. That is because they have different goals. The principle of reciprocity, in itself, is a guide to choosing between actions based on the character of the action itself, i.e. whether it's an action you'd like to have done to yourself or not. Utilitarianism, by contrast, is a form of consequentialism, which means it evaluates actions not on the basis of the action itself but on the basis of what its consequences are (or, perhaps, what its consequences are expected to be). That is a big difference. With reciprocity, your decisions are based on what the action is (or, perhaps, with the motive for the action, which is different again), but with utilitarianism, they are based on what final outcome you expect. This is why historians of ethical philosophy generally see utilitarianism as originating in the work of Bentham or perhaps Hume, and not Jesus.
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. It did not show that following the Golden Rule is or might be morally right. Even if following the Golden Rule is a good idea because it will make my life better, that doesn't make it morally compelling to do so.
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. That's not the same thing. If I asked "What is red?" you might point to various red things and explain that red things are those things that appear in a certain way when I look at them. But that wouldn't tell me what redness itself actually is - it wouldn't tell me why those things are red or what makes them that way. 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.
They're not the same. The Jesus and Mozi quotes seem to me to be functionally equivalent, although they are different in that Jesus is telling us to behave in a certain way whereas Mozi is speculating about what would happen if people behaved in a certain way. The Jesus quote makes "doing as you would be done by" the principle from which good behaviour springs, whereas the Mozi one makes it the consequence of thinking in a certain way. But we can suppose that they both endorse the same behaviour, at least.
The Brhaspati quote is different: it is telling us not to do things to other people that we don't want done to ourselves, whereas Jesus and Mozi want us to do to other people what we do want done to ourselves. Obviously the basic idea of applying our own desires to others is the same, but the recommended action is very different.
The Muhammad quote doesn't seem to me to be a prescription for action; it's just a recommendation to want your fellow believers to have the things that you want for yourself.
The Confucius quote seems to me to be rather vague. The natural interpretation I would place on "reciprocity" in this context is paying back to others what they do to you. That is obviously a very different thing from the Golden Rule, which is about doing to others what you would want done to yourself. The Confucius quote contains no reference to one's own desires or the idea of applying those desires to other people.
Similarly, there is no reference to this principle in the quote from Guru Granth Sahib; he's just telling us not to despise anyone, and not saying anything about transferring our own desires to them.
The same thing applies to the Buddha quote. The idea of putting oneself in someone else's place here seems to be about emotional empathy. If we imagine ourselves in someone else's place, then (it suggests) we will be led not to kill anyone, presumably because we will sympathise with them to the extent of seeing them as someone who deserves life. But it doesn't say that the reason we shouldn't kill them is because we wouldn't want to be killed. Moreover, it doesn't draw a general ethical principle from this. The ethical exhortation is limited merely to not killing. There's no indication that other kinds of behaviour can be derived from the same empathetic exercise.
I think that the T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien comes out similar to the Jesus version of the Golden Rule, since again it's appealing to one's own desires as a guide to dealing with others, although I think there are some subtle differences.
I say all this not to nitpick but to try to make the point that these different sayings are not, in fact, saying quite the same thing. It's fuzzy thinking to suppose that they are. Now you may say that they are variations on a theme and that they are all appealing to some underlying principle. If that's so then it would be worth stating precisely what that principle is - and I don't mean just appealing to a single word but spelling it out more exactly. And again, as I said above, the thing this thread is supposed to be about is not merely identifying which actions are good but explaining why they are good. Now if you say that good actions are those that stem from empathising with others, or whatever the principle of reciprocity is supposed to be, you still don't explain why doing that is good or why there should be a moral imperative to do so. You're just asserting that it is good. It may be a great way to live your life, but what makes it a more moral way than the alternatives?
Akka
Moody old mage.
I see potential for very ironic answers.
No.
Yes.
Seems that you should read it again, because you got it completely backward.
And that's the answer I gave.
You seem to miss the point of the Golden Rule then.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
This is why the Golden Rule is a personal yardstick for me.
If I'd have to define one for a system, I guess it simply is what is best for a society. Now this comes with ifs and butts, because 'best' can refer to peace and quiet in a society or it can refer to well being or financial matters, so this is not an absolute yardstick. Which is where politics step in and tries to group differing opinions on various matters together. Through elections we decide what moral system we'll adapt for a period of time and where the emphasis goes to.
edit: On second thought, I'm not too happy with that guess.
I don't think there is an unchanging moral system, even counting the religious ones since they also change over time. And wouldn't an objective moral system inspired by divinity be a constant?
