Fun Stuff > BAND
Folk Music and the Environment
De_El:
We've got a bit of a misnomer going on though.
I just wish I was smart enough to contribute something here.
Edible:
--- Quote from: zerodrone on 27 Jan 2008, 17:34 ---1. "The government" is not an individual.
2. In theory, the individuals who pass laws which collect taxes accept that they, too, must pay those taxes. I am not aware of any exemption which allows members of the US government to avoid sales tax, for example.
--- End quote ---
1. Does this matter in this context, if I get a group of people, do the actions of the group as a whole have too follow this? It seems like an easy way out.
2. Well how about the individuals who dont pass the laws?
Jackie Blue:
The key thing that you are so frustratingly missing here is that nobody is saying the Golden Rule is always followed, just that it is always a good idea. In theory, every individual in the government who is involved in creating laws should not create laws that they themself would not follow, if they're following the Golden Rule.
John Curtin:
It isn't always a good idea. It is unable to resolve situations where there are two second parties with competing interests.
Here's an example that is perhaps one of the "classic" ethical quandaries. A woman is pregnant. A doctor examines her and discovers that for, whatever reason, if the foetus is not aborted the mother will certainly die. Who is the "other" of the golden rule here? The mother or the foetus? Unless the mother is genuinely willing to sacrifice her life to give the child a chance of survival, the golden rule paralyses the doctor by stating that the child must be aborted, otherwise the mother will die, and the child must not be aborted because that would be destroying the child's life.
Alternatively, it is not a "good idea" when one is dealing with a definitely morally culpable person. Say you are (for whatever reason) in a position to obstruct the plans of a person who is bent on committing a series of murders. If you were to obstruct his actions, you would be causing him displeasure. Of course, if you didn't obstruct him, you'd be causing displeasure to his victims. There are two answers to this:
Firstly, one could be overly legalistic and say that obstruction is an act and failure to obstruct is a mere omission, but that's just stupid and wanky.
Alternatively, though, if we say that we're going to require you to stop the murderer because, although you're causing him displeasure, you're preventing far greater displeasure on the part of the victims and so we ignore the displeasure of the murderer. Which in this case most people would agree with as being the moral course of action; however, we've now replaced the golden rule with utilitarianism which has its own difficulties. Aside from the fact that it requires one to assess the quantity of potential happiness to be caused by any course of action, it creates a kind of sanctification of "happiness" or "pleasure" as being the most important consideration in any situation.
This obviously applies equally to the golden rule. The fact that we've all seemed to agree that taxes are a "good thing" and that we ought to pay them, despite the displeasure they bring us, suggests that we agree that happiness isn't the ultimate consideration. Perhaps part of the problem is that "happiness" does not describe a single kind of emotion - it ranges from satisfaction to ecstasy, which I submit differ not only in degree but in character. You can't compare them in any sense that "if I make six people content then that is worth one ecstatic person", much in the same way you can't say "sonata form is worth the same as the theory of relativity".
Anyway I'm not proposing to solve the problem of ethics in an internet forum thread; it's just a good thing to consider. There is no perfect ethical framework; the golden rule is just as practicable on an everyday basis as utilitarianism or deontology or any other kind of popular ethical system.
a pack of wolves:
If I was that doctor then I'd leave the decision entirely in the hands of the woman, since that's what I'd want a doctor to do if I or anyone I knew was in the same position. If I was the person who knew that someone was about to commit a series of murders then I would stop them because if I was about to commit a series of murders I really hope somebody would stop me before I did it. The golden rule doesn't stipulate that you should never do anything which will cause displeasure but that you should act in a way that you hope people would act towards you in the same situation. It doesn't bind you to inaction or even pacifism at all.
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