Empathy vs. the golden rule

[African_Love]

I think the golden rule is irrational and here's why. First of all, the golden rule presupposes that other people share your preferences. Secondly, I believe that an action is moral only if it minimizes suffering or increases happiness (hedonistic consequentialism). The golden rule sometimes increases suffering and minimizes happiness. If you followed the golden rule consistently and you found a 7 year old who wanted to experiment with heroin, you wouldn't be justified in preventing them from doing so. If you wouldn't want anyone violating your autonomy and telling you what to do with your body, are you justified in violating someone's elses? I would say 'yes' because although we should generally respect the autonomy of other people, we're justified in violating someone's autonomy if it prevents more distress than it causes.



Another example. If you knew that your best friend's wife was cheating on him but it could be absolutely guaranteed that he would never find out, she was a loving partner and they had a happy relationship together, would you be justified in telling him? I would argue 'no' because as long as his wife's infidelity is not causing him to suffer or depriving him of happiness (I say this because killing someone in their sleep would deprive them of happiness even if it could be done painlessly), there's nothing morally wrong with it. You can argue that he has a right to know but I believe happiness is more important than knowledge, it's the only thing in the universe that is intrinsically valuable and distress is the only thing that is intrinsically disvaluable, everything else is only instrumentally valuable or disvaluable to the extent that they increase pleasure or pain. He might appreciate your having told him and think he was better off for it but it wouldn't make him any happier and feeling happiness/not suffering is all that matters. Telling him on the basis that he'd want to know the truth is nonsensical because in order to want to know something, you would have to know it. What people want is to be able to genuinely believe that what they know is true. Your desire to know the truth is satisfied as long as you believe that you know the truth, whether or not it actually is true is irrelevant.



I could go on but you get the idea. I believe that empathy (which I define as imagining another person's emotional state of mind and adopting it out of identification with them) is the only valid basis for a moral framework and if you based all of your moral decisions on empathy and empathy alone (concern and the desire to help others is not necessarily empathetic), you would naturally adopt a hedonistic/consequentialist world view. What do you think?

[Scheherazade]

I will bite... What's "the golden rule"?

[The Atheist]

Not what African Love thinks.

The Golden Rule has always been summed up thus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I don't see how that gets me giving a 7-year old heroin. Unless I want to do some smack as well...

[African_Love]

Not what African Love thinks.

The Golden Rule has always been summed up thus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I don't see how that gets me giving a 7-year old heroin. Unless I want to do some smack as well...

Not giving a 7 year old heroin, allowing a 7 year old to experiment with heroin. You wouldn't want someone to violate your autonomy so, according to the golden rule, you shouldn't violate anyone else's. Violating someone's autonomy isn't what's bad, it's the distress that you cause someone when you violate their autonomy that's bad. Sometimes it is necessary to cause people some amount of stress to prevent even worse stress. This is why I no longer consider myself an anarchist but pro-welfare state, that's another topic I guess.

[Scheherazade]

The Golden Rule has always been summed up thus: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.Oh, that Golden Rule...

[The Atheist]

Not giving a 7 year old heroin, allowing a 7 year old to experiment with heroin.

Makes no difference.


You wouldn't want someone to violate your autonomy so, according to the golden rule, you shouldn't violate anyone else's.

Nope.

Seven year olds don't have any kind of autonomy. Legally, morally or factually.

The hypothetical is a fail.


Violating someone's autonomy isn't what's bad, it's the distress that you cause someone when you violate their autonomy that's bad. Sometimes it is necessary to cause people some amount of stress to prevent even worse stress. This is why I no longer consider myself an anarchist but pro-welfare state, that's another topic I guess.

:lol:

Anarchist to socialist, that is a huge leap!

I don't buy the "violating autonomy" argument anyway, as there are people in the world whose physical or mental state can mean they are unable to have autonomy anyway. Small children also fall into this group.

[African_Love]

Nope.

Seven year olds don't have any kind of autonomy. Legally, morally or factually.

The hypothetical is a fail.

I don't see how. By 'autonomy', I mean the capacity to make all decisions regarding your body as you see fit. If a 7 year old wants to stay up late and you make them go to bed, you are violating their autonomy, that is, you are preventing them from making independent decisions or doing what they want to do.





Anarchist to socialist, that is a huge leap!

Traditionally, anarchists have been socialists. Only in North America is 'libertarianism' associated with laissez faire capitalism. Anyways, I'm not a socialist. Socialism advocates worker ownership/control of means of production, no private property. Liberalism advocates a regulated, capitalist free market.




I don't buy the "violating autonomy" argument anyway, as there are people in the world whose physical or mental state can mean they are unable to have autonomy anyway. Small children also fall into this group.

I don't think a 7 year old would (an infant, sure). I'm not sure what you mean when you say you don't buy the 'violating autonomy' argument, what argument do you think I'm making? Do you mean you don't buy the idea that it's wrong to violate someone autonomy or what? If I want wear my hair a certain way and you put a gun to my head and force me to wear it differently, what are you doing?

[The Atheist]

I don't see how. By 'autonomy', I mean the capacity to make all decisions regarding your body as you see fit. If a 7 year old wants to stay up late and you make them go to bed, you are violating their autonomy, that is, you are preventing them from making independent decisions or doing what they want to do.

Yes, but because human children are not self sufficient, autonomy doesn't exist. To have autonomy in any meaningful way, a human needs to be at least self-sufficient. Seven year old are not capable of being self-sufficient.

[Alexander III]

"I don't see how. By 'autonomy', I mean the capacity to make all decisions regarding your body as you see fit. If a 7 year old wants to stay up late and you make them go to bed, you are violating their autonomy, that is, you are preventing them from making independent decisions or doing what they want to do."

So if one prevents a delusional schizophrenic from jumping of the roof to see if he can fly, its morally wrong ?

There are groups of people like children and the mentally ill who do not have autonomy over their actions and thus subjecting them to the rules above makes no sense.

But even then the golden rule makes sense, if you were about to jump of the roof due to some delusion, would you want somebody to stop you ?

[OrphanPip]

I feel like I'm suffering from memory loss, weren't you a Libertarian like 5 months ago, African Love?

[dafydd manton]

The OP has me confused, I have to say. It implies that the two are mutually exclusive. i would hope that I behave in such a way that I would harm no-one, but if somebody has a problem, I would equally hope that I can empathize with them. Example. I would not take drugs, but if I met someone who was suffering problems as a result of having done so, I would hope I would try to empathize as best I could.

[interest]

Perhaps the golden rule should be changed - instead of doing what you would like others to do to you, do what would cause the same emotion as you would want to feel. Which is essentially happiness/satisfaction.

[YesNo]

Another example. If you knew that your best friend's wife was cheating on him but it could be absolutely guaranteed that he would never find out, she was a loving partner and they had a happy relationship together, would you be justified in telling him? I would argue 'no' because as long as his wife's infidelity is not causing him to suffer or depriving him of happiness (I say this because killing someone in their sleep would deprive them of happiness even if it could be done painlessly), there's nothing morally wrong with it. You can argue that he has a right to know but I believe happiness is more important than knowledge, it's the only thing in the universe that is intrinsically valuable and distress is the only thing that is intrinsically disvaluable, everything else is only instrumentally valuable or disvaluable to the extent that they increase pleasure or pain. He might appreciate your having told him and think he was better off for it but it wouldn't make him any happier and feeling happiness/not suffering is all that matters.
I don't think I followed most of this which is a good reason not to respond, but I find the question curious. So I'll risk embarrassing myself.

The part I marked above in bold is what I would disagree with. I don't think pleasure and pain are enough to determine if something is good or bad. If you put your finger in a fire, you feel pain. That pain was not bad. It was your body telling you to stop putting your finger in the fire.

Also pleasure sometimes comes first and then pain comes as a consequence later. To twist the original example a bit, suppose it is you who are having the affair with your friend's wife. There is some initial pleasure. There are many ways in which that pleasure can quickly turn to pain which I will leave to the imagination. Suppose one of them occurs. Was the initial pleasure still good? Was the resulting pain bad?

[misterreplicant]

I believe we all have our own "Golden Rule". It's composed of our personal values in life and how you picture a "Perfect World" if you will.

Just thought I'd put that one in there, just talking about the Golden Rule and all...

[The Atheist]

I believe we all have our own "Golden Rule". It's composed of our personal values in life and how you picture a "Perfect World" if you will.

Just thought I'd put that one in there, just talking about the Golden Rule and all...

I have a friend who has a personal one:

Do others before they do you.

(He's a car salesman!)

[cyberbob]

The thing about violating someone's autonomy for their own good is that it's a slippery slope. Who are you to decide if a heroin addict is better off NOT doing heroin? It may harm their health, but by that standard the government should be allowed to decide what we eat, who we have sex with, and anything that they interpret as having an effect on your health (which can be pretty much anything).

In the case of a child, I suppose it is ok to prevent them from trying heroin, but only because their brain isn't fully developed to the point where they can properly weigh the consequences of their actions or distinguish right from wrong. 7 year old children, by the way, ARE autonomous since they are in control of their minds and bodies. They may not be independent since most 7 year olds probably can't survive on their own, but they ARE autonomous.

And in the case of your friend's wife, it's more complicated than you make it seem. If she's having an affair, there's always the possibility that she can contract an STD and pass it on to your friend, which WOULD hurt him. Or what if her lover becomes jealous and hurts your friend? You can keep adding conditions such as "ok let's say she will never get an std and her lover will never do something to hurt your friend" but then the argument becomes too hypothetical and imo pointless.

[Rores28]

AfricanLove .. do you purposefully use examples that will discourage acceptance of your position?

The general case your making is actually a pretty easy one but you've thrown in emotionally charged examples that I can only see as disinclining an understanding or acceptance.

The most obvious example as to why the Golden Rule is inferior compared to empathy is the masochist. If a masochist did unto a non-masochist as he wanted done to him we wouldn't think this would be the most favorable circumstance. Therefore empathy is a better prescription.

Also you constantly run into opposition with your hedonist philosophy because you define it has happiness/pleasure and suffering/distress etc... People have roughly similar associations with these words but not so general as you are using them. I think you would be better off saying net positive experience/emotion and net negative experience emotion, since I think (though correct me if this isn't true) that is what you are implying with those terms.

Also are you the one who recommended "The Moral Landscape" by Harris to me? If not you should check out that book, you'd def enjoy it.

[Cunninglinguist]

I see your main argument as: it is more moral to put priority on consequences of action than it is to unconditionally follow the “golden rule.” This is not exactly a novel argument and it is one side of a terribly good debate, as the consequentialists and the deontologists have been arguing over this for umpteen centuries.

A thing I have to point out here is that you impose a certain definition of happiness. Namely, that having real knowledge about the world is not necessary for it. Though this is highly debatable, and renders happiness a purely subjective state of being. Rather, one could say, that to be happy is to possess a certain relationship with the world (what this relationship is exactly and whether or not it is truly knowable* is up for further debate) and (possibly) to have real knowledge about this relationship. In other words, you say that happiness is more important than knowledge, but one could say that knowledge is a prerequisite for happiness. For, to not define happiness in this sense, it becomes impossible to distinguish a man living in a real paradise from a man living in a fool’s paradise. If happiness is to be defined as everyone’s ultimate priority the lack of distinction thus becomes a sort of inconvenience. For, any human with the option between a real paradise and a fool’s paradise would always choose the former, given that they both supplied him with the same subjective state.

One could argue that everyone functions as a consequentialist, anyways. Even the deontologists have only adopted deontology because they believe that it is the best way to augment their happiness. Everyone has the same ultimately priority, that is happiness, yet we each estimate differently the methods that seem to be best for achieving it. To some extent, some methods are better than others (probably things such as not doing heroin, for example).

*Our real relationship with the world could be that we are brains in vats, and essentially an unknowable one. Yet, at least we can be certain that the husband you describe does not know, whereas for the rest of us whether or not we know is just uncertain