Is the Golden Rule a Foundational Moral Principle or A Rule of Thumb?

[meltzerboy]

Existence is a context.

Existence is a text, not a context, don’t you think? In what sense is existence a context?

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Existence is a text, not a context, don’t you think? In what sense is existence a context?

It depends where you draw the frame. Human existence can be contextual in that it isn’t the only existence that can be experienced on the Earth or in the Universe. If you are speaking about all of existence then I’d agree, you need a frame.

 

[Bradski]

You have not yet explained why human beings other than yourself are valuable.

I hope that no harm comes to people I know and love. I feel distressed if I see them distressed. I feel happy when they are happy. They therefore have value to me. If they didn’t, I would be indifferent to their experiences (as I would be to bacteria).

I can also see that almost everyone feels exactly the same way about others that they know. So I can see that it is universal. So I wouldn’t want to intentionally hurt someone because I know that person is valuable to others. I am averse to intentionally causing pain.

It’s simple empathy. Which you could say is God-given and I wouldn’t be able to argue against that. But I feel (obviously), that it’s an entirely natural state. Dignity flows on from that.

 

[PRmerger]

I hope that no harm comes to people I know and love. I feel distressed if I see them distressed. I feel happy when they are happy. They therefore have value to me. If they didn’t, I would be indifferent to their experiences (as I would be to bacteria).

I can also see that almost everyone feels exactly the same way about others that they know. So I can see that it is universal. So I wouldn’t want to intentionally hurt someone because I know that person is valuable to others. I am averse to intentionally causing pain.

It’s simple empathy. Which you could say is God-given and I wouldn’t be able to argue against that. But I feel (obviously), that it’s an entirely natural state. Dignity flows on from that.

Some people have empathy for cockroaches. I actually saw someone carry a cockroach out of an auditorium rather than step on it, which is what I would have done.

Does a cockroach have inherent dignity for that person, but not for me?

 

[HardRockGTR]

Some people have empathy for cockroaches. I actually saw someone carry a cockroach out of an auditorium rather than step on it, which is what I would have done.

Does a cockroach have inherent dignity for that person, but not for me?

This is where animism and religions such as Jainism arise.

(I have tremendous respect for Jains, by the way)

 

[Peter_Plato]

I hope that no harm comes to people I know and love. I feel distressed if I see them distressed. I feel happy when they are happy. They therefore have value to me. If they didn’t, I would be indifferent to their experiences (as I would be to bacteria).

I can also see that almost everyone feels exactly the same way about others that they know. So I can see that it is universal. So I wouldn’t want to intentionally hurt someone because I know that person is valuable to others. I am averse to intentionally causing pain.

It’s simple empathy. Which you could say is God-given and I wouldn’t be able to argue against that. But I feel (obviously), that it’s an entirely natural state. Dignity flows on from that.

This explains why people actually do have empathy for others, but it falls short of making morality obligatory.

It doesn’t show that people SHOULD or MUST have that kind of concern in a moral sense, it merely demonstrates where a sense of empathy comes from.

What if there are individuals who do not show concern or empathy? You could not say, by your view of morality, that it is morally incumbent on them to care for others when they don’t have empathy or care at all.

That is not to say that morality means everyone is obliged to “feel empathetic,” but it does mean that treating others as having moral worth is a requirement of any moral agent.

A moral claim would be that human beings must be concerned about the well-being of others even when they don’t feel in the least empathetic.

Your narrative in no way shows that moral claims are obligatory just how some (or perhaps most) humans might happen to feel empathetic (you have described the genesis of moral feelings) but that is a far cry from showing that moral agents must treat others as necessarily important in a moral sense.

Or do you think moral principles are not obligatory, but, rather, conditional on the capacity to muster the empathy necessary to treat others as valuable?

Surely, you don’t mean, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you, when and if you feel an empathetic desire to do so!” do you?

 

[PRmerger]

(I have tremendous respect for Jains, by the way

I do, too.

But do you have tremendous respect for Jainism?

 

[Bradski]

Some people have empathy for cockroaches. I actually saw someone carry a cockroach out of an auditorium rather than step on it, which is what I would have done.

Does a cockroach have inherent dignity for that person, but not for me?

A definition of empathy: Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.

In this case, I’m not sure that one could put oneself in the position of a cockroach, so I’m not sure that a reason for not wanting to kill it could stem from empathetic feelings. You can empathise with other people because you assume that what they are feeling is similar if not identical to what you would feel in any given situation.

To a certain extent, you can also empathise with any animal that exhibits what we would recognise as happiness, grief, sadness, anger etc. I’m not sure that a cockroach feels those emotions. In fact, I would assume not. But I do recognise that some people object to taking the life of any living creature. Their reasons you’d have to check with them.

Bestowing dignity is recognising that a sentient creature has worth, or value. You would empathise with the pain or distress it would suffer if it were placed in an undignified situation. That is, where someone would give it no value, or significantly less than you would feel appropriate.

So if you don’t consider that something has value in itself, then there’s no dignity.

Having said that, there was something I read last week in regard to cockroaches which muddies the water somewhat. It seems that you can buy a small electronics package that you can attach to a cockroach so that you can control it for a while using an app on your iphone (dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449562/The-app-lets-control-COCKROACH.html).

Strangely enough, I would not give it a second thought spraying a cockroach I found parading about in my kitchen, but could using them for amusement be…undignified?

 

[meltzerboy]

A definition of empathy: Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.

In this case, I’m not sure that one could put oneself in the position of a cockroach, so I’m not sure that a reason for not wanting to kill it could stem from empathetic feelings. You can empathise with other people because you assume that what they are feeling is similar if not identical to what you would feel in any given situation.

To a certain extent, you can also empathise with any animal that exhibits what we would recognise as happiness, grief, sadness, anger etc. I’m not sure that a cockroach feels those emotions. In fact, I would assume not. But I do recognise that some people object to taking the life of any living creature. Their reasons you’d have to check with them.

Bestowing dignity is recognising that a sentient creature has worth, or value. You would empathise with the pain or distress it would suffer if it were placed in an undignified situation. That is, where someone would give it no value, or significantly less than you would feel appropriate.

So if you don’t consider that something has value in itself, then there’s no dignity.

Having said that, there was something I read last week in regard to cockroaches which muddies the water somewhat. It seems that you can buy a small electronics package that you can attach to a cockroach so that you can control it for a while using an app on your iphone (dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449562/The-app-lets-control-COCKROACH.html).

Strangely enough, I would not give it a second thought spraying a cockroach I found parading about in my kitchen, but could using them for amusement be…undignified?

I would find it undignified, even cruel, to kill an insect such as a cockroach or ant that was minding its own business outdoors. Indoors I prefer to use the Combat baits.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Strangely enough, I would not give it a second thought spraying a cockroach I found parading about in my kitchen, but could using them for amusement be…undignified?

Undignified for whom? The cockroach or the human whose quest for meaning in their own life has lead them to subjecting a cockroach to the undignified position of being remotely controlled by a supposedly superior being who has nothing better to do with their life than subject an ostensibly inferior creature to such an indignity?

 

[Bradski]

Surely, you don’t mean, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you, when and if you feel an empathetic desire to do so!” do you?

You either feel empathy or you don’t. And we feel it to differing degrees. You respond accordingly.

The sense of empathy is greater with those we are closest to. So we would save our child from a burning building as opposed to anyone else. We would save someone we knew as opposed to a stranger. We would save a stranger rather than an animal. We would save someone we could see in distress rather than someone we couldn’t.

We don’t spend our lives trying to save everyone from any and all situations because we wouldn’t be able to function normally if we felt the pain of every child dying of hunger in the same way as we would for our own child.

So you’ve put it in a rather simplistic way, but yes, you do unto others when you feel sufficient empathy. We all do, including yourself. You would quite probably go mad if you felt everyone’s pain just as you felt the pain of your closest family members.

Undignified for whom? The cockroach or the human whose quest for meaning in their own life has lead them to subjecting a cockroach to the undignified position of being remotely controlled by a supposedly superior being who has nothing better to do with their life than subject an ostensibly inferior creature to such an indignity?

Bit of both, I’d say.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

Or do you think moral principles are not obligatory, but, rather, conditional on the capacity to muster the empathy necessary to treat others as valuable?

Could you explain how morality is obligatory? Isn’t the basic premise of free will that we choose to be moral we are not obliged to be?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Could you explain how morality is obligatory? Isn’t the basic premise of free will that we choose to be moral we are not obliged to be?

The basic premise of free will is that we are responsible for our choices because our choices are freely made choices. The basic premise of morality is that some of those free choices are obligatory - even though we are capable (free) to not act on them - because to do otherwise would be morally wrong.

It is morally wrong of me to run over a pedestrian on the street. I am morally obliged not to do so even though (and especially when) I could freely WILL to do so.

Moral choices, even though they are obligatory, could not be obligatory without free will. If free will did not exist, what sense would “obligatory” have, since all my choices would simply be determined by forces outside of my will? Moral choices (obligatory ones) presuppose free will.

 

[PRmerger]

Bestowing dignity is recognising that a sentient creature has worth, or value. You would empathise with the pain or distress it would suffer if it were placed in an undignified situation.

Again, like Roscoe’s response, this is a tautology. “A creature has dignity because it is sentient” and “Because it is sentient, a creature has dignity”.

Not helpful.

It also appears to be arbitrary.

Why could someone not say, “A creature has dignity because it can feed itself”.

Or “A creature has dignity because it can protect its young”.

Why is “sentience” a criterion for dignity?

And when a creature is not sentient, is she undignified? I have seen quite a few anesthetized individuals and their inherent dignity and worth is always forefront in my mind, despite their lack of sentience.

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

The basic premise of free will is that we are responsible for our choices because our choices are freely made choices. The basic premise of morality is that some of those free choices are obligatory - even though we are capable (free) to not act on them - because to do otherwise would be morally wrong.

It is morally wrong of me to run over a pedestrian on the street. I am morally obliged not to do so even though (and especially when) I could freely WILL to do so.

Moral choices, even though they are obligatory, could not be obligatory without free will. If free will did not exist, what sense would “obligatory” have, since all my choices would simply be determined by forces outside of my will? Moral choices (obligatory ones) presuppose free will.

Aren’t they obligatory only in the context that you’ve chosen to follow it. Christian morality and Norse morality may have some overlap but they are only obligatory to those that have chosen to follow those paths.

 

[PRmerger]

Aren’t they obligatory only in the context that you’ve chosen to follow it. Christian morality and Norse morality may have some overlap but they are only obligatory to those that have chosen to follow those paths.

So are you of the opinion that someone whose morality is different than yours has different obligations?

If so, then you must see that you could never tell a person, “You can not do [A]” or “You must do B]”.

Is that your paradigm, Roscoe?

 

[Peter_Plato]

You either feel empathy or you don’t. And we feel it to differing degrees. You respond accordingly.

The sense of empathy is greater with those we are closest to. So we would save our child from a burning building as opposed to anyone else. We would save someone we knew as opposed to a stranger. We would save a stranger rather than an animal. We would save someone we could see in distress rather than someone we couldn’t.

We don’t spend our lives trying to save everyone from any and all situations because we wouldn’t be able to function normally if we felt the pain of every child dying of hunger in the same way as we would for our own child.

So you’ve put it in a rather simplistic way, but yes, you do unto others when you feel sufficient empathy. We all do, including yourself. You would quite probably go mad if you felt everyone’s pain just as you felt the pain of your closest family members.

Yes, but we are morally obligated not to harm others even when we have or feel NO empathy for them. It would seem that moral determinations are made quite independent of, and ought not even correspond to, feelings of empathy.

That would mean I am not morally required to always act on empathetic feelings, but I may be morally required to act where no such feelings exist. Which is precisely my point. Empathy does not equate to “morally binding.”

I may be morally bound to look after my own own children whether or not I actually have feelings of empathy. On the other hand, I may not be morally bound to look after a starving child on the other side of the globe even though my feelings of empathy strongly favour doing something.

Again, this proves my point that morality is quite a different matter from empathy and explaining how people might come to feel empathy for others does not explain why moral obligations exist.

You are not claiming that your responsibility for your children ends when you no longer feel any empathy for them, are you?

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

So are you of the opinion that someone whose morality is different than yours has different obligations?

If so, then you must see that you could never tell a person, “You can not do [A]” or “You must do B]”.

Is that your paradigm, Roscoe?

Do you veiw morality as telling other people what to do?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Aren’t they obligatory only in the context that you’ve chosen to follow it. Christian morality and Norse morality may have some overlap but they are only obligatory to those that have chosen to follow those paths.

If the only determiner is choosing to “follow those paths,” then you would have to concede that Nazi officers who committed atrocities in WWII were only doing what was “obligatory” for them because they “chose” to follow those paths.

The problem - aside from the obvious one for you of having to excuse Nazi atrocities - is that obligatory cannot mean optional. The two words are contradictory. Obligatory cannot mean “if I so choose,” otherwise I could choose to rape or murder others and that would be, for me, just fine because I choose "following those paths” to make those actions morally good.

I could not be obligated to anything, not even my own choices, because I could at any time change my mind and make nothing obligatory. Nothing could oblige me, not even choosing to make something obligatory because I could choose to make it otherwise.

If something is obligatory it cannot, by definition, be optional. Refraining from murdering someone cannot be optional nor dependent upon whether you have “chosen to follow those paths.” If murder is morally wrong, then it is not a matter of an optional buy-in. It is absolutely obligatory for all moral agents not to commit murder whether they agree to it or not.

Morality, to be at all meaningful, cannot be a matter of whether you want to follow that path. Many choices for human agents might be open to that kind of deliberation, but if “moral” means anything, it must mean obligatory for all human beings no matter what paths they may have freely chosen in other (non-moral) respects.

 

[meltzerboy]

If the only determiner is choosing to “follow those paths,” then you would have to concede that Nazi officers who committed atrocities in WWII were only doing what was “obligatory” for them because they “chose” to follow those paths.

The problem - aside from the obvious one for you of having to excuse Nazi atrocities - is that obligatory cannot mean optional. The two words are contradictory. Obligatory cannot mean “if I so choose,” otherwise I could choose to rape or murder others and that would be, for me, just fine because I choose "following those paths” to make those actions morally good.

I could not be obligated to anything, not even my own choices, because I could at any time change my mind and make nothing obligatory. Nothing could oblige me, not even choosing to make something obligatory because I could choose to make it otherwise.

If something is obligatory it cannot, by definition, be optional. Refraining from murdering someone cannot be optional nor dependent upon whether you have “chosen to follow those paths.” If murder is morally wrong, then it is not a matter of an optional buy-in. It is absolutely obligatory for all moral agents not to commit murder whether they agree to it or not.

Morality, to be at all meaningful, cannot be a matter of whether you want to follow that path. Many choices for human agents might be open to that kind of deliberation, but if “moral” means anything, it must mean obligatory for all human beings no matter what paths they may have freely chosen in other (non-moral) respects.

I realize Roscoe can speak for himself, but I don’t think he means that one’s own behavior determines morality. Rather it seems he means that the moral code of the group to which one belongs may differ from that of another group. The commonality between groups would be some sort of internal consistency in explaining how the morality dictated by the group makes rational sense both to the members of the group and to members of other groups, who may not entirely agree with it. This sounds like moral relativism, and perhaps it is, but I can understand within certain limits how it might apply. For example, the contentious issues of abortion, euthanasia, suicide, just war, and others involve differences of belief and faith, even within a single faith, grounded in their own perspectives of morality.