I've made this post because the Golden Rule has been raised in numerous threads but has never had a thread of its own.

I want to address two things.

1. No Inherent Rights Implies the Golden Rule

This is an assertion made by Tom Palven.

If one has no rights, then one can clearly state, as Tom Palven does, that "Person A has no right to do deed X to me."
In fact, the idea of no inherent rights implies that "Person A has no right to do deed X", whether or not deed X is done to me, someone else, or involves just person A.

But, as deed X could be anything, no one has the right to things which they would consider good or which they would consider bad. No one has the right to share food with me, for example, even if I am hungry, and I do not have the right to ask for food. No one has the right to attack me, and I do not have the right to defend myself.

Nor do I have the right to grant rights, so in this scenario there are no rights at all.

This situation of no rights is compatible, as I understand it, with the Golden Rule, but does not imply it. It is also compatible with Nietzsche's philosophy, but does not imply it.

2. The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is, "If I do not wish a deed to be done to me, I should not do it to another".

This means that for any deed, the judgment for that deed is up to the individual. If two different individuals, therefore, make different judgments, they are in conflict with one another. How they resolve this conflict is determined by other judgments that the individuals involved make. For example, one may wish to negotiate, and one may wish to resolve the conflict by violence (according to their personalities or culture, etc.). In this situation, the negotiating person may not wish to engage or be the victim of violence, and so will not attack the second person, but this does not stop the second person from engaging in violence with the first.

This does not invalidate the Golden Rule, but it does show that violence and other forms of conflict are within its moral bounds.

There are several versions of the Golden Rule, all of which are very similar in that they imply "live and let live."
Confucius is credited with inventing the first Golden Rule when he allegedly stated that all human ethics could be described in one word, "shu", meaning "reciprocity".
Around 500 years later Rabbi Hillel preached "Do not unto others that which is hateful to you," and around 40 years after that Christ preached "Do unto others as you would hae others do unto you."

The version you mention, mcfate, "If I do not wish a deed done to me, I should not do it to others" is similar to Hillel's version. but the Golden Rule is a simple prescription never handed down in stone, and there are also other versions, one, at least, which some call "The Platinum Rule", which may go "Do not unto others that which they do not want done to themselves." Again, very similar in intent, but perhaps a little better.

Some may argue, "Well then, if someone murders someone else, he can't be punished, to which I would just say "Boloney." These prescriptions are, once again, not carved in stone.

Do you follow a particular version of the Golden Rule, Tom, or do you select that which seems best to you at the time? As far as I'm concerned, a rule is not a rule if you get to vary it and change it whenever you like. If this is the case you are obviously appealing to some other set of values and justifying them with whatever version of the Golden Rule is most useful in the circumstance.

While I like the "platinum" version above best, I can't say that I really follow any version. I'm "only human", and as with New Year's resolutions, I try to follow this rule, but have slipped many times, and probably will again, but I think I'm getting better at conforming to it with practice, as I grow older.
Let me say:
1. Altough the GR compares doing things or refraining from things "as one wants done to oneself", and thus seems to be subjective, at least IMHO it is objective in that the things that one does or does not want done to oneslf are generally universal. People the world over don't want to be lied to, cheated, bullied, raped, murdered, and so on. All trial lawyers and some theologians will protest that some lies or "white lies" are stonkingly beneficial and cite such aituations as "A wild-eyed man with a gun comes to the door and asks if your wife, who upstairs taking a shower, is home. Is it unethical to lie to this person?" If you say "No" they extrapolate from this that all lying and distortion of facts are wondrous works of art. Bullshite.

2. IMHO trying to abide by the GR is empowering. Reflecting back, it seems to me that bullying, coercing, cheating people, etc. may be more damaging to the self-esteem of those doing the bullying than those being bullied. I know that to this day I'm ashamed of things I did decades ago which hurt people, even inadvertantly, and especially the times I lashed out as a true asshole to try to cover up my own embarrassment or inadequacy. Thus the advice I've given to my grandkids is to try to follow the GR- to try to be kind and gentle to any girl or boy who seems to like them, and not to be aloof due to their looks, color, finanacial status, or whatever; and not to worry about whether they are on the list of some vivacious cheerleader or football hero as someone who they want to talk to.

Well, I don't think anyone is perfect, but it is the goal that we are talking about. I have values, but I do not always live up to them. However, our discussion here is about the values/goals, not how well you or I, as individuals, actually reach them. Unless, that is, there is a valid reason that they cannot be reached (they are impossible or something), which is very relevant to mention.



You could use statistics to develop this further (I'm not calling for statistics, I mean, it is possible to do a survey and get the statistics). I suspect, however, that there are some major differences between Christian and Muslim and secular ethics - common enough to make for a "hung parliament" of opinions (including how and whether there should be a democracy).

The Golden Rule does not imply that we should feed the hungry, assist the poor or heal the sick, all things that I believe are moral.
The Platinum is the same. Even if we say, "Treat people how they wish to be treated", which would indicate it is moral to assist others when they wish for assistance, leaves us with the dilemma of people who wish to be treated like kings.
Really there is some sort of dividing line between when we should treat others as they wish to be treated and when we should not. Finding this dividing line will tell us our moral values.

Adhering to the GR dosen't prevent anyone from being generous and charitible, and encouraging others to be generous and charitible, but since it by it's nature condemns stealing, it wouldn't condone robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I understand it does not prevent charity, but it also doesn't imply that charity is moral. If charity is moral, it is not due to the structure of the Golden Rule.

Stealing is a different kettle of fish altogether. What if two people desire the same property? This could be something like a car, some land, or even food. What if both parties feel that they are justified in owning this property? This is where the Golden Rule again generates conflict. And unless there is a specific component of the Golden Rule which explains how property is morally obtained, and under what conditions it can morally be kept, this conflict cannot be resolved by the Golden Rule. In this scenario, "robbing from Peter to pay Paul" is not condemned by the Golden Rule.

For example, Paul may be hungry and have no source of food, due to prior unfortunate causes (perhaps lightning struck his house/workshop and burnt down all his possessions and tools). Paul believes that keeping an excessive amount of food is immoral, which is why he has never done it. Therefore he believes Peter, who has an excessive store of food he cannot possibly eat all of, is being immoral. Part of the reason he feels justified in having some of Peter's food is because in theory he wouldn't mind if someone stole from his own excessive pile of food, and he practices this by not stockpiling the food initially.

Regarding the Platinum Rule, Paul does not wish to be denied food when he is hungry and he requests food from someone who has an excess (you can clearly see here that Paul has a moral judgment on the distribution of food, not contained within the Platinum Rule). If Peter denies his request for food, he is treating Paul in a way that Paul does not wish to be treated (though in the way that he himself wants to be treated).

It doesn’t prevent anyone from being generous and charitable. On the other hand, at least in its narrower formulations, it doesn’t attribute an ethical value to being generous or charitable, or suggest that generosity or charity are ethically required.

Am I obliged to rescue the toddler drowning in front of me in a shallow pool? Most people would say that I am. However the Golden Rule doesn’t say that I am. Which suggests that, while in itself it may be a valid and useful ethical principle, it’s not a complete statement of our ethical obligations.

As for “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, consider the following. I forcibly take some of John’s income by way of tax, and use this to finance a police force, which acts to prevent Michael from raping Mary. Assume that John takes a narrow view of the Golden Rule and believes that he has no ethical obligation to protect Mary from rape by others.

Am I taking John’s property for Mary’s benefit and, if so, am I infringing the Golden Rule?

mcfqte, you and Peregrinus seem to posie similar questions, so to keep it simple I'll answer his.

Peregrinus asked "Am I obliged to rescue the toddler drowning in front of me in a shallow pool? Most people would say that I am. However the Golden Rule doesn’t say that I am. Which suggests that, while in itself it may be a valid and useful ethical principle, it’s not a complete statement of our ethical obligations."

Under Christ's positive version of the GR, it seems you would be obliged to help, while under Hillel's you wouldn't. However, in practical terms I don't think this matters, since probbly close to 100% of sane people wouild instinctively act to save the child regardless of the GR or the legality of the act.


Peregrinus also said, "As for “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, consider the following. I forcibly take some of John’s income by way of tax, and use this to finance a police force, which acts to prevent Michael from raping Mary. Assume that John takes a narrow view of the Golden Rule and believes that he has no ethical obligation to protect Mary from rape by other."

Yes, I think that you are correct that in the narrow version of the GR , at least, it would be unethical for you to coerce John. There may be other ways for you to help protect Mary and for her to protect herself, but I believe that an appeal to situational ethics, or utilitarian ethics in which the end justifies the means (in this case stealing from John) has led to such events as the National Socialist Workers Party's (NAZI Party) justifying the Holocaust in Germany, and the US justifying the deaths of innocent children and civilians like Mary through "collateral damage" almost every day.

In ethical terms it matters hugely, though.

- If we would say that a person who stood idly by and let the toddler drown would act unethically, then we must concede that the Hillel Golden Rule is not a complete account of ethical obligations. There are other ethical obligations which do not stem from the Hillelian Golden Rule.

- And this mattes, because we are now facing the possilibility that those other ethical obligations could conflict with, and sometimes prevail over, obligations arising from the Hillelian Golden Rule.

- Which, in turn, means that we cannot now condemn an act as unethical merely because it conflicts with the Hillelian Golden Rule. The act could be justified independently of the Hillelian Golden Rule.

In short, it seems to me that if you (not you, Tom; the generic “you”) insist on the completeness and sufficiency of the Hillelian Golden Rule the corollary must be that you also insist that the person who watches the toddler drown in the shallow pool and does not intervene does not behave unethically. Which is a very sticky wicket to defend.



Taking John’s property is obviously something that John doesn’t want me to do.

But the very fact that we call it “John’s property” means that John has a claim to the money that I (and the rest of the world) don’t have. Obviously if it’s not actually John’s property in the first place, John can have no objection to its being taken and applied to fund the police force. If it’s not John’s property, you can’t characterise taking it as “stealing”

What is the source of John’s ethical claim to ownership of the property in priority to everyone else? Specifically, is their anything in the Golden Rule which tells us that certain property belongs to John and to no-one else?

If the Golden Rule doesn’t create John’s rights of property, what does? Again, it seems to me that we are looking at the Golden Rule not being sufficient to account for all the ethical obligations that we recognise.

Peregrinus, Apparently you don't think that John's income is necessarily his property. This is a very widespread and politically correct utilitarian attitude, and I'm familiar with it's various justifications. However, it differs from my own ethics that spring from what I believe to be in the incontrovertible logic of individual sovereignty. IMHO this debate seems to boil down to whether people are logically the sole owners of themselves or not, and it seems we probably differ too widely, and are too inflexible on this point to reach a compromise that would satisfy us both.

I haven't said that at all. Apparently you do consider John's income to be his property, and I am asking, why is it his property? Is this derived from the Golden Rule, or is it something which you assert independently of the Golden Rule? It seems to the that the latter is the case, but I don;t want to put words in your mouth.

The question relates to individual sovereignty as opposed to state ownership of individuals. Individual sovereignty is independent of, but totally compatible with, the Golden Rule. The GR is a prescription as to how individuals, not collectives, should interact with each other, and is addressed to individuals. Utilitarianism, as with Keynesianism, Marxism, and other isms presupposes the existence of a Benevolent Philosopher King Who Rules With An Iron Fist, or some other controlling authority, to "maintain law and order" lest people all quit their jobs and begin to rob banks, mug each other, and engage in anal sex on street corners at all hours of the day.

On the contrary, it is my belief that adherence to the Golden Rule might lead to spontaneous order rather than the government-imposed chaos we see in the Mid-East and in the US economy.

(1) If I do not wish a deed to be done to me, I should not do it to another
(2) Live and let live
(3) Do not unto others that which is hateful to you
(4) Do unto others as you would have others do unto you
(5) Do not unto others that which they do not want done to themselves

These variants of the Golden Rule have been offered in response to the Mcfate’s OP which poses the question about their relation to rights, specifically to a ‘no rights’ scenario (attributed to Tom Palven):
I have to agree with this conclusion for two reasons: (a) while a ‘no rights’ scenario is compatible with exhortatory ethical maxims of type (1)-(5) simply in the marginal or deflationary sense that the latter are not semantically formulated in such a way as to either include or exclude rights, (b) a ‘no rights’ scenario does not logically imply any ethical maxim whatsoever.

To put it another way, compatibility is not a relation of logical entailment, but rather one that simply does not make it logically impossible for two different kinds of things to co-exist, and rights and ethical maxims are effectively different kinds of things. They do not, as far as I can see, share the same ontology. Rights are instruments of social constitution, and I would be reluctant to grant that status to variants of the Golden Rule.

I think on these grounds that some scepticism is justified about mixing a discourse of rights and a discourse of Golden Rule-type ethical maxims as if there were some transparently obvious relation between them.

Davoz, I think that your skepticism about my sketchy comments linking the Golden Rule with rights, or lack thereof, is justified. Actually, the question of "rights" may be a bit of a red herring, and the question of self-ownership more germane. Let me stipulate that the following argument is predicated on a belief that no person is more divine or born with more inherent authority than any other person, which apparently must simply be taken as a given.

Peregrinus asked, in a post above. "If the Golden Rule doesn’t create John’s rights of property, what does?" As I see it, this question relates to 1. rights, 2 self-ownership vs partial ownership by others, and 3. the Golden Rule, platinum version.

!. I'd like to diiscuss rights first, and try to eliminate them from further consideration:
If I am correct, Thomas Aquinas, among others including Edmund Burke, argued for the "divine rights " of kings and popes. Later, the authors of the Magna Carta, Thomas Paine, and others merely extended those divine rights and argued that commoners and serfs had rights, also. The US Declaration of Independence stated that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, if in fact all men are endowed with them, what good did having these rights do minorities within the Third Reich? The claim to "inherent" or "God-given" rights seems irrelevant to facts on the ground.

However, to confuse the issue, "legal" or "political rights", privileges which are enacted by governments, actually do exist, unless they are later modified or repealed. These include such things as " rights" to a minimum wage, adequate health care, the right to drink alcoholic beverages, and so on. These legal rights presuppose a coercive government, and could not exist independent of coercive government to extract and dispense money for their enforcement.

I will take a break and later argue for #2 Self-ownership vs coercive government, below.

Continued from above,
#2. Self-ownership

From Plato to John Rawls, the overwhelming majority of philosophers, which the exception of a few like Butler Shaffer and David Friedman, have seemingly agreed with Christ's advice to "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." Hobbes said that people should submit to any controlling authority whatsoever that happens to be in power, and all the various brands of untilitarianism that I am aware of have invoked Hobbes "social contract" as a foundation. But why should this vague "social contract" be obeyed? The latest argument for the legitimacy of the "social contract" is "because it is democratic" and represents the will of the majority. This argument certainly doesn't hold up with regard to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, among other fiefdoms, and it doesn't hold up for actual democracies, either. If, as stipulated earlier, no person is born with more divine, or other kind of, authority than any other person, then no person can claim a "right" to tell another nonaggressive person how to behave. And, if no person has a right to dictate to a second party, then it is illogical that he can delegate a right he doesn't possess to a third party. Furthermore, if 100 people have zero rights each to control another person, their combined rights still equal zero, even if they call themselves a "majority" or a "democracy". So, if it cannot be shown how one person or a group of people gain a right to control person x, then person x is a free and sovereign individual by default. This, however, is not meant to imply that taxing authorities or minions of kings will not kill or imprison someone claiming individual sovereignty, since minions of kings and tax collectors are not known for their adherece to logic or ethical principles.
#3 How #1 and #2 relate to the Golden Rule of reciprocity, in post below.

#3 How does the Golden Rule relate to #1 Rights, and to #2 Self-Ownership (Individualism, Individual Sovereignty). To address the following statement by Peregrinus is to address this question:

Peregrinus said "Apparently you do consider John's income to be his property, and I am asking, why is it his property? Is this derived from the Golden Rule, or is it something which you assert independently of the Golden Rule? It seems to me that the latter is the case, but I don't want to put words in your mouth."

I assert, independently of the Golden Rule, that Jack's income, unless it is garnished by a bank or other entity with which he has made a voluntary agreement, is in fact his income. Because, as shown in #2, Jack owns himself and is not partially owned by anyone else, his income is legitimately his to do with as he pleases. And as shown in #1, no one possesses a right to take any portion of it from him. And #3 if Jack did not want his money, or part of his corn crop, or anything else that John obtained in a voluntary transaction with anyone else (In the here and now We are not going to go back to $26 worth of beads for Manhattan, but keep this in the context of reasonable, voluntary, mutually agreed-on arbitration.) taken from him, to take it from John and thus do unto him that which he does not want done to himself (stealing), is a violation of the GR (Technically the Platinum Version, and generally understood to include all versions)

All other ethical codes that I am aware of, other than the Golden Rule, maintain that it is ethical for certain groups calling themselves governments to extract income from John though force or threat of force. Only the Golden Rule maintains that it is unethical to take property from John in order to "benefit society as a whole" because the ends justify the means.

So, the bottom line, IMHO, is that until logical discrepancies are shown to exist in what has been presented here, the only ethics code compatible with #1 and #2 is the Golden Rule, and by the same token, none of the versions of utilitarian, Judeo-Christi-Islamic, or situational ethics are compatible with the Golden Rule.

I’ll offer a rather different view, Tom.

Post-divine rights, formulations like ‘natural rights’, ‘social contract rights’, ‘human rights’, ‘moral rights’, ‘democratic rights’, and many others yet, have all looked like claims to explain some kind of knowable correspondence between propositions and natural objects, properties or relations. The reference to ‘correspondence’ here highlights the germaneness of naturalistic ‘rights’ claims to correspondence theories of truth. This is particularly salient because normative ‘rights’ talk tends to have the same assertoric form and force with which we make ‘correspondence’ statements of a rights-neutral, value-neutral or ethically-neutral kind (say, ‘the Eiffel Tower is in Paris’), and in this way to appropriate the relatively strict truth-correspondence relation of the latter.

The main reason for rejecting a Hobbesian or other ‘social contract’ doctrine (or, for that matter, a Rawls-model theorisation of an ‘ideal’ contract constructed from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’) which lays some claim to this putative ‘correspondence’ status is, in my view, that social realities which can be tracked to prehistoric modes of hominid existence and ecology (as I believe they can) cannot plausibly presuppose anything analogous to an originary ‘contract’. The point is, I suppose, that in relative historical perspective the evolutionary story of necessary functional relations and norms of group survival is very recent, but it is as much an evolutionary story of social constitution as of biogenetic constitution, and unless we are prepared to reject it holus-bolus we have to recognise that most naturalistically-grounded ‘rights’ talk is ex-post facto (including formulae like ‘the will of the majority’).

I say ‘most’, not ‘all’, because one cannot preclude the possibility of arguing for some evolved natural or existential conditions, properties or relations which can make certain ‘rights’ talk, certain propositions, not just normative within cultural boundaries (which, of course, happens), but ‘correctly assertible’ (to follow a kind of argument made by Mark Timmons in Morality without Foundations, OUP, 1999).

This line of argument leads me to suggest how the conditional ‘if it cannot be shown how one person or group of people gain a right to control person x, then person x is a free and sovereign individual by default’ can be shown to be false. Empirically verifiable processes of social and cultural normalisation and of ‘rights’ constructivism are in fact readily observable (the propositional content of the antecedent). However, x may be ‘free’ and ‘sovereign’ in the commonsense case of not being subject to physical or psychological constraints (the consequent), whether or not those processes can be demonstrated. I can see where the conditional is going, but it’s not, I suggest, the right formulation.

Davoz, I searched for Mark Timmons and read the foward and several chapter synopses in his Morality Without Foundations: A Defense of Ethical Contexualism, 1999. In it he said "My work engages the recent metaethical debate between moral realists on the one hand, who defend the idea that morality is objective (in a fairly strong sense of that term) and moral irrealists who argue that it is not objective, at least not in the way the realists think. I side with the irrealists." He specifically stated that he disagreed with the alleged realists David Brink, Richard Boyd, and Nicholas Sturgeon. I googled these gentlemen and was unable to determine, (to understate the case) how the implementation/acceptance of either their views or those of Timmons might affect me in the real world.

Do you suppose that any of those four men would deem it ethical of me to try to avoid the taxes, rules, and regulations of the authoritarian state except when impractical, and condone my belief that at the same time, I'd be a fool not to accept any jobs or benefits that the state might offer? Would they all think that it would have been a silly mental construct for a slave to feel that in his heart he owned himself, while the law said that he was the property of a plantation? You said " I can see where the conditional is going, (with regard to involuntary servitude) but it’s not, I suggest, the right formulation." Can you suggest what the right formulation might be? (If you can try to answer using 7th grade words it would be of great help.)

Tom, the force of this argument seems to depend crucially on the scope of your concept of individual autonomy or self-ownership (‘ ... as shown in #2, Jack owns himself ...’), and on how it can be successfully argued for

(1) in the context of any discourse in which it could be held to have a relationship of entailment with the Golden Rule,

and I’m not (yet) convinced that the case you made in your #2 quite does the trick. Now, evidently, you might want to reject my criterion (1), but I would just say that it’s a coherentist criterion, by which I mean that if your self-ownership concept (I’ll call it SO) holds in a discourse of aspirational politics but not in other relevant discourses about ‘self’ or ‘ownership’, then for an epistemological coherentist there are reasons not to accept it without further argument.

I’ll just offer a view here about the crucial self-concept. It seems to me that SO has an uncertain status. It shares some aspects of, on the one hand, a metaphysically-driven notion of the fully autonomous self which is the basis for a very substantial (Western) myth and, on the other, the kind of mutable and socially contextual self which emerges from empirical work in cognitive psychology, sociology and neuroscience. Within the scope of a web forum I simply offer some examples of arguments I have found cogent: from ethical philosophy, reasons for denying this concept of autonomy because self cannot be other than dependent on situation , environment or framework if it is to be an ethical concept at all [1]; from neurobiology, similarly, the contention that a (neurobiological) individual simply has no use for a self-concept if alone in the world [2]; from sociocultural studies, views questioning conventional notions of identity and integrity on empirical grounds which give evidence of plurality and diversity in individual self-concepts [3]; from neuroscience, an influential view about the uncertain interrelationship between a ‘core’ self and an ‘autobiographical’ self [4].

The upshot is that the empirical self is much more episodic, fragmented and less synchronically and diachronically stable than SO suggests. Thus, while under no apparent physical or psychological constraints on actions within her perceived capabilities, your ‘free’ and ‘sovereign’ self-owning individual runs the risk being a metaphysically idealised individual who, in reality, cannot take on the metaphysical load your theorisation imposes. She might well ask, for example, ‘Which self do I actually own?’.

My argument, in short, is that you may be able to demonstrate compatibility with the Golden Rule for an idealised SO, but such compatibility is relatively empty if the self-owning construct does not meet a coherentist criterion and this, I believe, is likely to be the case.

(PS Out of respect for your carefully and closely argued posts, I’m responding to them in turn.)

[1] Mensch, James Richard. Ethics and Selfhood. State University of New York Press, 2003: 15, 32.
[2] Gjedde, Albert. Subjectivity and the Self: The Neurobiology of Consciousness. In Anjum P. Saleemi, Ocke-Schwen Bohn, and Albert Gjedde (Eds). In Search of a Language for the Mind-Brain: Can the Multiple Perspectives be Unified? Denmark: Aerhus University Press, 2005: 176.
[3] Oyserman, Daphna and Hazel Rose Markus. The Sociocultural Self. In Jerry Suls, (Ed.), Psychological Perspectives on the Self, Vol. 4, The Self in Social Perspective Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993: 190.
[4] Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. London: William Heinemann. (2000).