A Brief Analysis of the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule : Do unto others as they would do unto you. Or treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Often when talking about morality to people, I run into them saying that all that is needed for morality is the golden rule. Or they will argue that religions, despite the crazy metaphysics, have good moral rules associated with them (like the golden rule). The golden rule gets pointed to as this wonderful principle that all religions have discovered independently. "Surely then! It must be something profound!" They cry. Here I show that the golden rule is not all that profound, nor a good moral rule.

Here are a number of counter examples that show that the golden rule is not a good moral rule (at least in some cases).

Counter-examples:

1. Masochism – Say for example that I am a masochist (someone who loves receiving pain). I would like to be treated in such a way that I would be punished and beaten by any random stranger. Therefore, according to the golden rule, I should punish and beat any random stranger. This is contrary to most reasonable systems of morality.
   
2. Snarky and rude mannered – When I converse with other people I like them to be snarky and rude with me, or I like to be treated in a way such that when I am in conversation with people, I like them to be snarky and rude (because everyone knows snarky and rude people are so much fun!). Therefore I should be snarky and rude with other people. This seems contrary to morality or at least common courtesy.
3. Sadism – Imagine I am a sadist, someone who loves giving pain to other people. I like to be treated in such a way that I am allowed to beat people wherever I go. I should treat other people such that they are allowed to beat people wherever they go. This is absurd.

Here is an exemplar case of the golden rule and why I think the golden rule has no force in explaining our moral intuition about why some particular action is right or wrong.

Exemplar Case

I would like to be treated in a way such that no one steals from me, therefore, I should treat people in such a way that I do not steal from them. Or, because I don't like people stealing from me, I shouldn't steal from them. The rule does not actually provide any moral force in this case. Imagine a contrary case where there was a person who liked having things stolen from them all time. In such a case, that person would reason that because he wants to be stolen from all the time, he should steal from other people all the time. Of course the reply to this bizarre case might be something along the lines of “But no one wants to be stolen from!” I think the fact that no one wants to be stolen from is true (more or less), but I also think that this is the place where the moral force of the golden rule comes from. Instead the rule should read “do not do x because every human being does not want x done to them". So, do not steal because no human wants to be stolen from. Formulated as such, it applies a general rule to a particular case, which is a good form of inference. The golden rule makes a general moral rule from a particular case (one’s preferences), which is usually not a great form of reasoning. Why would one expect that one's own preferences would apply to everyone else?Just because you like being treated in a way such that other people give you ice cream does not mean you should treat others in such a way that you give them ice cream, (maybe they are allergic to ice cream, or despise it!)

Analysis

The golden rule strangely assumes that you should treat other people according to whatever preferences you have. Because some people have strange preferences, the golden rule outright does not work for them as a reasonable moral rule (because it does not capture some of what most people accept as the core features of morality (like not beating random strangers)). In the cases where the golden rule does work, it only works because that case is a case where every human being does not want x done to them, in which case the golden rule needs to be reformulated, reformulated as “do not do x because every human being does not want x done to them". But notice that now it is an empirical question about what human preferences are rather than an a priori search of one’s own preferences that determines how one ought to act. I think that this is a step in the right direction. Getting empirical information about human preferences, or working with value theory into what humans value and then coming up with an ethical theory based on that is much more appropriate than checking what your preferences are and then making moral rules out of them.

I think one last interesting thing that may or may not be the case is that the reformulated golden rule relies on the idea that nobody would like x. This reminds me of social contract theory. Social contract theory has many forms and maxims but I will take Thomas Scanlon’s which is that morals just are what people would reasonable agree to. I think in most accounts of what would be reasonably agreed to in a hypothetical society forming experiment is that people would agree that stealing is not something they would want in their society. I think in the case of stealing, it is if (historically) all societies have agreed that stealing other people’s property is wrong. I think this is really where the moral force comes from. “Nobody likes being stolen from so don't steal” amounts to “society has agreed that stealing is wrong, so don’t steal”.

Conclusion

The golden rule does not work for a number of cases and where it does work it only works because it tacitly assumes that all human beings have some preference. It then infers that because all human beings have that preference we should treat them according to whatever that preference is. The golden rule doesn't work in cases where people all don't have the same preferences (ice cream example). In cases where people all do have the same preferences it seems as if the real moral force comes from the idea that everyone has that preference rather than that you as an individual have that preference.