The so-called Silver Rule is the negative form of the Golden Rule, namely that one should not do unto others what one would not like to be done to oneself. It’s been touted about for millennia as a foundational basis for ethical principles, but it can be criticised for being too weak in the sense that that it does not require us to be positively good moral agents.
But I wonder about the fundamental moral correctness of the Silver Rule. Can it really be for the overall moral good that, if a person wrongs me, he retains the right for me not to wrong him similarly? If you break the Silver Rule, shouldn’t you forfeit your right to be treated by it?
The spirit of the silver rule contradicts this kind of legalistic analysis - just as with the golden rule, it’s in the spirit of the silver rule to transcend petty tit-for-tat attitudes.
I shouldn’t harm someone if I don’t want to be harmed myself, right? But what if I don’t care whether or not I’m harmed? Then, I am morally free to harm others at will- without breach of the spirit of the Silver Rule.
Worse, any breach of the Rule apparently undermines it. If I harm you despite wanting you not to harm me, how can it be for the greater good that I, as an immoral agent, should enjoy the benefits of the Rule when you, as a moral agent, do not?
He doesn’t retain rights - that’s legalism, not moralism. You retain the responsibility not to wrong him similarly, even if he abdicates that responsibility.
Moral systems are generally such that you adhere to them in spite of their direct cost, not because of their direct benefit. Otherwise it’s not morality, it’s just behaviour… If morality is tied to an act, then it is as unacceptable for you to commit an act as it is to have it committed against you.
Moral rules are guidelines at best, arguments to gather social sanction for censure, praise, retribution. You can appeal to others’ morality using the Silver rule.
Hmm, I’m not sure I follow. Morality is everything to do with behaviour, good and bad, and not some abstract metaphysical notion of the same. If behaviour is harmful it is bad and therefore immoral, and it is to the greater moral good that less harm is done. If the Silver Rule promulgates less harmful behaviour or more good behaviour, it is morally correct. Otherwise, nah.
My doubt about the morality of the Silver Rule is whether it necessarily begets the greater good.
[ETA the following…]
The Silver Rule only works if everyone subscribes to it. If there are ten people in a room and one of them harms the other nine, how can it be for the greater good that the nine harmed persons should observe the Silver Rule (and do nothing about it)? It’s not a question of two wrongs failing to make a right here. Nine people remain harmed. Obviously, it’s to the minority good of the harmer that the majority nine harmed persons do not retaliate, but what about the general good?
Breaching the Silver Rule, by harming another (i.e., doing unto them what you don’t want done to you) might serve the greater good by way of its deterrent effect on the behaviour of the harmer. Less general harm done = greater moral good.
You should know that this golden rule is itself only the logical consequence of a certain realization that may be accomplished by the mind (beyond the limitation of self). If, without accomplishing anything of the sort, you act according to the golden rule, or according to your interpretation of the Gospel message, or whatever else - in the background of all the perceptible foregrounds you are always striving to accomplish the realization preceding those modes of conduct, by the very venerable act of monkey-see-monkey-do. Fake it, till you make it. That is no joke! Thus the conduct called for in the rule is itself always only secondary, and not at all axiomatic. It is a lever, so that through difficulties and contradictions, one may for once gain some leverage over oneself!
So speak the crackpot wisemen about the golden rule, and so revere its origin.
It was a flippant remark, but my purpose in saying it is to point out that “moral” and “natural” behaviour is different - otherwise we’d never have developed a separate concept of it.
That’s your conception of the greater good, of course, and your morality need not include the Silver Rule.
A significant role of the current justice system is to take the deterrent effect and impersonalise it. If there are acts you agree no right-thinking person should want to do, you can discourage them/rehabilitate them. If someone punches you on the nose, and you consider that a wrong act, punching him on the nose is also a wrong act, as no right-thinking person should want to do that. Society as a whole can take sanctions, regrettably but necessarily, because we all agree that we don’t want to live somewhere where people can punch each other on the nose.
Trying to crystallise morality into a sentence or two will always lead to hideous contortions and sophistry as you try to justify the spectrum of moral judgements against the subtle shades of real-life contexts in any case. You can argue a huge range of responses to any situation, depending on what you want to argue.
The moral of nature seems to be, do whatever you need to in order to survive.
Animals don’t follow the Silver Rule, because they eat eachother and dont want to be eaten themselves.
Yes, that is its sole justification. Otherwise, why would anyone refrain from doing to others what in itself is advantageous to one, but which one would not like to be done to oneself?
I certainly agree with the direction you’re taking. However, the ‘moral’ of nature, if we want to anthropomorphise nature like that, rather seems to be: do whatever you need in order to reproduce. Animals often stake their survival for reproduction: e.g., salmons, who, after they have swum up waterfalls in order to spawn, cannot go back to the sea and just die after they have spawned up there; but there are countless examples. The thing is that those genes that further the organism’s ability to reproduce tend to be inherited more than others. Thus the urge to sacrifice one’s individual survival to one’s genetic survival (reproduction) is selected; the opposite urge is not. So it’s really not a moral of nature, but a mechanism of nature.
If being eaten enables one to reproduce (as it does in the case of certain species of spider), the organism will want to be eaten: for the will to be thus eaten is then selected, whereas the will not to be thus eaten is not.
Now may the widespreadness of the ‘Silver Rule’ not also be due to mechanism rather than morality? Do those who live and let live not have a better chance of reproducing than those who live and let die (and thereby provoke others to kill them)? No morality, just legality, lawfulness, logic: that is, as I’ve said, a step in the right direction.—
Are there any bronze rules that take into account people with different preferences and tastes?
Or erm… brass rules or something for treating people how they don’t think they want to be treated because they’ll further appreciate the effect of this treatment later? Maybe even wooden rules for treating people in ways that neither of you know the outcome of for the purposes of exploration and adventure? etc. (Jokes, perversions, I could go on?)
All this moral tartuffery or even mechanical structuring that assumes certain outcomes over others is surely so unnecessary and only a parody of itself?
Why not simply acknowledge that physiological reflexes, such as emotions, are more than enough to conduct your life by when used in accordance with your intellectual reflexes. If you remember that hitting certain people causes them to hit you back, and this causes you pain, and that this provokes fear within you, and moreover, that pain and fear are less preferred at the point in time in question - you don’t do it. Likewise if you remember that offering kindness to certain people gives you an unwelcome sensation of pity, or gives you an annoying friend who holds you back, or flatters you out of misunderstanding or idolisation, don’t do it! Do do it for other reasons if you’ll prefer all the consequences… I’d even argue that this rarely even needs to be a conscious decision anyway because memories and feelings are naturally immediately motivational/depressive by their very effect on your body.
Moralising is evidently for idiots who have removed themselves from their own bodily motivations and therefore ability to make decisions, or the young who don’t have the experience who just need better parenting to give them grounds for expectations (… or for people who want to invent grounds to feel naughty or dirty?) Physiological feeling and intellect in harmony is surely the real motivation for everything, and not morals or mechanisms that assume that everyone constantly has sex or reproduction or survival constantly on their mind at some level of consciousness, even when the situation has nothing whatsoever to do with any of these things: which is most of the time.
Alternatively, going by immediate physiological feedback is evidently for idiots who don’t realise that society is an emergent phenomenon, and that what seems best to the individual in the short term leads under large-scale iteration to the sort of society nobody wants to live in. If you hit someone smaller and weaker than you, you learn that you can impose your will on them.
Reason and will are complimentary, and neither should be guides in themselves to how to live - unless you particularly aim for either a nasty, brutish and short existence in a free-for-all of bullies, or a sterile emotional vacuum of mere thought and no real life.
There is an insuperable biological argument for subjective morality that some of you have illustrated by your references to survival and reproduction. Morality is mechanistic and physiological, and is obviously a fundamental constituent of the evolutionary imperative of life. Its engine is reciprocity.
Anyhoo, it sure does make for fascinating discussion. I’m still trying to think of a good reason why the Silver Rule is necessarily morally correct.
[ETA…]
By the way, I’m pretty sure the survival impulse tends to override the reproductive impulse- salmon notwithstanding. If I catch you screwing my wife and walk into the bedroom with my shotgun, are you gonna finish…?
Morality is a selective mechanism, a means to survive as an lifeform (also as a civilization) - in that sense just a matter of which morality proved to reproduce. The silver rule fits into this picture very well, more so probably than the golden rule.
The difference between the instinct to reproduce and morality is of course that we can reflect on the latter and make conscious changes, such as would be the case with the golden rule. Most people have different wishes - most people have similar objections.
With the golden rule, morality and reproduction possibly becomes something alien, unnatural. The silver rule seems more simply logical.
The moral consensus seems to be that he should be punished as an example. But not by you - but by the state, for violating the silver rule. So you can keep your hands clean and the rule stays the rule.
