I didn’t know about the diamond rule. What I like about the golden rule is its reciprocity, which gives a sense of why the golden rule is acceptable.
Well, whether the negative Golden Rule is “weaker” or “stronger” than your “rule of thumb,” it is not the same, as you rightly point out.
Here is a case where the negative formulation of the Golden Rule would be considered “stronger” than your “rule of thumb.”
Suppose there is a man in a coma, and that a woman needs a blood transfusion. She is the same blood type as the man in the coma. On the negative Golden Rule a blood transfusion would be permissible as long as we would be willing to undergo the necessary blood draw were we in a coma. But on your “rule of thumb” the blood draw is impermissible because it infringes on the comatose man’s right to life and to his body.
The generalization that a sadomasochist prefers to give and receive pain does not apply in all situations all the time. Pain preference is often context specific in the real world.
A sadomasochist prefers to give and receive pain at the right time, when he/she wills it.
If this is so, then according to the golden rule, they ought recognize this preference in others. If you only want pain some of the time, or any pleasure/pain is highly conditional, then maybe the universality of consent is a paramount derivative of GR. Give others pleasure or pain when they want it.
Intuitively I think folks recognize the spirit of the golden rule that it isn’t about imposing our peculiar preferences as the standard, but goes a bit beyond to respect the unknown or generally shared preferences of others. But this is indeed a problem if we don’t know what others want or don’t want generally.
What is the weird abstract idea of self-ownership? If I trespass on someone else’s property, have I infringed on the right of their self-ownership? Or is just about some measure of space around their body? What are the limits of self-ownership?
I believe you are talking about the positive golden rule here because I cannot see how that follows that the blood transfusion is permissible under the negative golden rule. Do you mind elaborating? Anyhow, even if the negative/positive golden rule allows the blood transfusion, I don’t think it is right without the permission of the man, so that is another fault of the negative/positive golden rule.
I am talking about situations in which a sadomasochist wants to deliver pain to others. This is allowed according to the positive golden rule!
The positive golden rule is about what we are allowed to do to others, given the fact that we prefer it or not.
It is not a very abstract idea at all. You own yourself, your property, your time, and your life.
Yes.
“Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
On this rule it is impermissible to draw blood from the comatose man if I would not want my blood to be drawn if I were in a coma; and it is not impermissible otherwise. It is the negative rather than the positive formulation because we are taking something valuable from the comatose man, namely his blood. We are asking whether this alienation of his blood is permissible.
Okay. So you would not want your blood drawn if you were in a coma, unless somehow your permission had been received prior to the moment when you went into the coma.
I see.
Yes. My permission for the blood transfusion must be taken before I go into a coma. We don’t take the organs of dead people without their permission, either.
No worries, I didn’t know that the golden rule could be derived.
Another thing. Do you have more on the golden rule?
I know the Chinese had it and the Egyptians too.
Do not do to others that which is hateful to you. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go learn ~ Rabbi Hillel
Except that, upon looking deeper into the definition of a masochist, they are the ones who want to receive pain, not inflict it. So, the golden rule works like this, “I want pain to be inflicted on me because I am a masochist, therefore I want pain to be inflicted on other masochists”. So, it is a niche market.
I’ve talked to a few BDSM practitioners, and looked at websites depicting what they do and want to do, ranging from spanking by hand to whipping, beating, forced sex etc. – what would be called torture in other contexts. There is a fuzzy line between what might or might not be “consented” on the one hand, and what looks more like assault and battery. I am not sure whether BDSM is morally acceptable – desired, consented, and practiced carefully or not.
I find the psychopathology of sadists somewhat understandable. They are getting satisfaction from inflicting pain on someone else; the sadist can externalize whatever floating hostilities they harbor. They can imagine themselves in Alpha glory. The psychopathology of the masochist seems more disturbed. It seems (to me) like an exercise of violent self-loathing and self-hatred–not just “low self-esteem” but self-esteem fallen into the abyss.
They seem made for each other, but what is morally healthy about giving free play to one’s crazy delusions? I don’t think people should be arrested for BDSM activities, but I don’t think they are just another ‘kink’ in the category of a woman wearing a jockstrap.
At any rate, it seems like it falls outside of the Golden Rule or the Rule of Thumb.
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If you are a sadomasochist, then you enjoy both receiving and delivering pain.
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This is known issue with the lex aureum. Hence the diamond platinum rule I mentioned above.
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I guess both the sadists and masochists are brought in here to make a point of the discrepancy between what we call the golden rule and the absurdity resulting from it. I disagree. The golden rule has a very specific moral principle. If the sadist, for example, wants to make her own “golden rule”, by all means do it. But it is not the golden rule that we traditionally know.
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Empathy deficits, psychological disorders, malfunctioning prefrontal cortex are all possible problem areas in ponerology (the study of the origin & nature of evil).
It seems the corrupt environments/systems, social inequalities, institutional pressure, cultural biases can make good people do bad things; foster & legitimize destructive behavior on a mass scale and make socieities/political ideologies malicious entities.
I just used the golden rule, as everybody agrees, and showed that it is problematic in the case of sadomasochists.
Yes, that is what I am trying to show. But people seem to disagree.
Likewise, the sadomasochists can form their own golden rule without using the traditional formulation as we have known it. My point is, the OP’s argument that the Golden Rule, formulated over centuries and universally acknowledged, leads to absurdity is mistaken because respect of people’s humanity is the main principle.
If the sadomasochists want to change the definition of respect, they should write their own philosophy so as to differentiate it from the Golden Rule that most people follow.
To avoid the straw man fallacy, we should stick to the true purpose of the GR.
Sadomasochists don’t need to form their own version of the positive golden rule. The positive golden rule in its current form allows them to inflict pain on others when they wish.
People were just mistaken about granting universality to the golden rule then. And the golden rule is not about humanity; it is about the actions we are allowed to take and those we are not, depending on our judgment of how those actions affect us.
If you are not happy with the form of the golden rule as presented, you are free to change it.
I’m good with the formulation of the GR, in case you did not understand it from my post. And I argued that it does not lead to absurdity.
The problem with this case that it implodes the spirit/purpose of GR in all circumstances depending on the whims of personal desire as it is projected as the standard for reciprocity. But this is just your point.
Maybe we can advance the perspective that there is no such thing as an sadomasochist, as if the generalized title somehow predicts for him/her how they desire to act towards and be acted upon by others at any and all times.
If a sadomasochist knows that his/her preference is variable in time then that consideration feeds into GR. They ought to recognize the primacy of variability concerning wills and respect that right in other people.
Nobody knows when the sadomasochist allows reciprocity. If the sadomasochist doesn’t all ow reciprocity all the time according to his nature, he/she cannot extend this as a standard that is acceptable anytime.
GR is a bigger concept than what a specific literal formulation of it conveys.