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The Golden Rule and The Platinum Rule

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Notes

  1. For some nice “introductions” to the philosophy of (GR), see e.g.: Thomas L. Carson, Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), ch. 6; Thomas L. Carson, “Golden Rule,” in Hugh LaFollette (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, (2013), pp. 2186–2192; Harry J. Gensler, Formal Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), ch. 5; Harry J. Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule (New York and London: Routledge, 2013); Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

  2. See e.g. Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (eds.), The Golden Rule: The Ethics of Reciprocity in the World Religions (Continuum, 2008).

  3. For more on the history of the golden rule, see e.g. J. O. Hertzler, “On Golden Rules,” International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jul., 1934), pp. 418–436.

  4. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Penguin Books, 1985), First published 1651, ch. XIV, p. 190.

  5. Samuel Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations (New York: Wildy and Sons, 1964), First published 1672, book 2, 3:13.

  6. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Buffalo/New York: Prometheus Books, 1987), First published 1863, chapter 2, p. 28.

  7. Gensler, Formal Ethics, pp. 12–13.

  8. Ibid. p. 93.

  9. See Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, pp. 201–202.

  10. See Yong Huang, “A Copper Rule versus the Golden Rule: A Daoist-Confucian Proposal for Global Ethics,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 394–425.

  11. For instance, (LGR) seems compatible with Gensler’s interpretation of (GR) (see e.g. Formal Ethics and Ethics and the Golden Rule). I.e. both (LGR) and Gensler’s interpretation of (GR) might be true. For I interpret (LGR) as a rule of thumb in this paper and Gensler thinks of (GR) as a consistency norm.

  12. For a discussion of some arguments for and against (GR), see e.g. W. T. Blackstone, “The Golden Rule: A Defense,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, (1965), pp. 172–177; Samuel V. Bruton, “Teaching the Golden Rule,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jan., 2004), pp. 179–187; A. T. Cadoux, “The Implications of the Golden Rule,” International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Apr., 1912), pp. 272–287; Carson, Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice, ch. 6; Herschel Elliott, “The Limits of the Golden Rule,” Population and Environment, Vol. 20, No. 6 (Jul., 1999), pp. 561–565; Harry J. Gensler, “Ethics is Based on Rationality,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 251–264; Gensler, Formal Ethics, ch. 5; Harry J. Gensler, Introduction to Logic (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), Reprinted 2007, ch. 11; Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, especially ch. 14; Alan Gewirth, “The golden rule rationalized,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, I11, (1978), pp. 133–147; James A. Gould, “Blackstone’s Meta-Not-So-Golden-Rule,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 18, Issue 4, (Winter 1980), pp. 509–513; E. W. Hirst, “The Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule,” Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 35 (Jul., 1934), pp. 328–335; Hans-Ulrich Hoche, “Die Goldene Regel. Neue Aspekte eines alten Moralprinzips,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 32, H. 3 (Jul.–Sep., 1978), pp. 355–375; Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002, First published 1785, p. 48 (Ak 4:430); Don Locke, “The Principle of Equal Interests,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), pp. 531–559; Jouni Reinikainen, “The Golden Rule and the Requirement of Universalizability,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 39 (2005): 155–168; Leonard J. Russell, “Ideals and Practice (I),” Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 66 (Apr., 1942), pp. 99–116, especially pp. 109–110; Marcus G. Singer, “The Golden Rule,” Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 146 (Oct., 1963), pp. 293–314; Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule; Paul Weiss, “The Golden Rule,” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 16 (Jul. 31, 1941), pp. 421–430.

  13. According to Gensler we could express the golden rule using several different formats that are equally adequate. So, according to him (GR) can be formulated as an imperative, or hypothetical imperative, or as an obligation, or as a descriptive sentence, see e.g. Gensler, Formal Ethics, p. 101.

  14. Blackstone, for instance, sees (GR) as a metamoral rule, a rule for formulating rules or a formal condition, which must be met by an action or maxim if it is to be characterized as moral (see Blackstone, “The Golden Rule: A Defense”). This view is criticized in Gould, “Blackstone’s Meta-Not-So-Golden-Rule.”

  15. When Gensler speaks of “wanting” he seems to have such a concept in mind too, see e.g. Formal Ethics, pp. 42–43, footnote 2, or Introduction to Logic, p. 215, footnote 1.

  16. Gewirth thinks that the (literal) golden rule is problematic and should be amended to read: Do unto others as you would rationally want them to do unto you (see Gewirth, “The golden rule rationalized,” pp. 137–138). Others have suggested forms of (GR) like “Do unto others whatever good things you want done to yourself” or “Do onto others as you ought to want them to do unto you.” For more on this, see e.g. Gensler, Formal Ethics, p. 110–111, and Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, p. 210.

  17. Most persons that write about (GR) seem to believe that it applies to every human being. Many endorse applying it also to animals, e.g. Gensler, some dissent, e.g. Neil Duxbury, “Golden Rule Reasoning, Moral Judgement and Law,” Notre Dame Law Review 84 (2009), pp. 1529–1605, especially p. 1586, footnote 266. Some also think it applies to e.g. the unborn, the dead and God. For more on this, see e.g. Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, section 9.5.

  18. Singer thinks that (GR) should be restricted to general ways of behaving, such as taking account of the interests and wishes of others, to avoid certain arguments against (GR) (see Singer, “The Golden Rule”). This view is criticized in e.g. Gensler, Formal Ethics, p. 96, Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, p. 98, and Hoche, “Die Goldene Regel.”

  19. Some think that (GR) is more important than (SR), some that (SR) is more important than (GR), some that they are complementary, and some think that (GR) and (SR) are equivalent. See Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, ch. 10, for more on this.

  20. Francis of Assisi was perhaps the first person to introduce a same situation clause into the formulation of (GR) (see Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, p. 13, footnote 1). Many people since have insisted on such a clause: among modern philosophers, see e.g. Carson, Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice, ch. 6, Gensler, Formal Ethics, ch. 5, and Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, pp. 13–15.

  21. See Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, p. 200. Perhaps the first person to point out the important difference between the wide and narrow scope readings was Richard M. Hare, see R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 108.

  22. See Singer, “The Golden Rule” and Huang, “A Copper Rule versus the Golden Rule.”

  23. Huang, “A Copper Rule versus the Golden Rule,” mentions four main arguments for the view that (PR) is better than (GR). The first of these is a version of the argument discussed below. This seems to me to be the strongest and I won’t say anything about the others.

  24. See Georg Henrik von Wright, Varieties of Goodness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 201.

  25. See Gensler, Ethics and the Golden Rule, pp. 199–200.

  26. Gensler discusses this scenario in several places, e.g. in chapter 2 in Ethics and the Golden Rule.

  27. See e.g. David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973); Robert C. Stalnaker, “A Theory of Conditionals,” in N. Rescher, (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968); Robert C. Stalnaker and Richmond H. Thomason, “A semantic analysis of conditional logic,” Theoria, Vol. 36, Issue 1, (April 1970), pp. 23–42.

  28. For an introduction to deontic logic, see e.g. Lennart Åqvist, “Deontic Logic,” in Gabbay and Guenthner (eds.) Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 2nd Edition, Vol. 8 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), pp. 147–264.

  29. Here is the proof. Suppose that (1) It ought to be the case that A materially implies B, (2) It is historically settled that A, and (3) It is not the case that it ought to be the case that B, in some possible world w. Then (4) there is a possible world, w’, deontically accessible from w such that (5) B is false in w’ [from 3]. Hence, (6) A materially implies B in w’ [from 1 and 4]. Since the deontic accessibility relation is included in the alethic accessibility relation, (7) w’ is also alethically accessible from w. Hence, (8) A is true in w’ [from 2 and 7]. Accordingly, (9) B is true in w’ [from 6 and 8]. But this is absurd [from 5 and 9]. In systems that combine temporal, alethic and deontic logic and where the past (and present) is settled, we can also prove that every sentence that isn’t about the future is historically settled. But this proof is more complicated; so, let us leave that to one side. (HN) is also valid if “ought” in (HN) is interpreted as a prima facie ought. But I won’t prove this in the present paper.

  30. A potential problem with this argument is that it suggests that (LGR) is inconsistent. For it still appears plausible that we can derive the proposition that it ought to be the case that I do not serve Becky broccoli from (LGR). And if this is correct and there are no conflicts of obligations, we can derive a contradiction. I think that this is a genuine problem for (LGR). But it is a different, although related, problem. One way to avoid it is to interpret “ought” in (LGR) as a prima facie ought. Then (LGR) in itself doesn’t seem to give any clear answer about what our all-things considered obligation is in such a case, but at least we cannot derive any contradiction. However, since I am not primarily concerned with defending (LGR) in the present paper, I won’t say anything more about this problem or about the problem of how to solve conflicts between prima facie obligations.

  31. See Singer, “The Golden Rule,” especially pp. 296–297.

  32. This passage contains several different arguments against (PR). For some possible answers to some of these, see Huang, “A Copper Rule versus the Golden Rule.”

  33. A slightly different version of this example is mentioned by Gensler in many places, e.g. in Gensler, Introduction to Logic, ch. 11.

  34. An example of this kind is discussed by several philosophers, see e.g. Hoche, “Die Goldene Regel.”

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    Daniel Rönnedal

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Rönnedal, D. The Golden Rule and The Platinum Rule. J Value Inquiry 49, 221–236 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9471-8

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