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RE: The golden rule is a flawed heuristic (bad moral rule)

in #philosophy5 years ago

We have gotten so far away from producing real goods and services and judged not on our willingness to produce those, that we only have talk left... which is empty. We need to return to substance.

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Any service is that which creates value in the mind of the customer, Bill Clinton would get paid millions to give lectures. The value is created by the happiness brought into the world from the consumption of the product or service.

For example Alice makes ice cream for Bob and Sue makes ice cream for Bob. Bob prefers Alice's ice cream even though they both have the exact same ingredients because he prefers how Alice prepared it. To Bob Alice's ice cream tasted better and for whatever subjective reason Bob gave a higher rating to Alice's ice cream. This means for Bob's reasons, the ice cream of Alice is more valuable to him and created more happiness in him than the ice cream of Sue.

All behaviors which humans adopt can be said to have potential to impact the emotional states of other human beings. Moral behavior could be defined as behavior which conforms to some community standards put forth by other human beings. If the golden rule is not data driven then the behaviors it reflects are not based on the desires, wants, needs, feedback, preferences, of other people. As a result how can we assume that following the golden rule will produce behaviors which will be perceived as more moral than the behaviors produced by following the platinum rule which can conform exactly to the preferences of the community, or the individuals judging the behavior?

If "good" or "moral" behavior is just a result of the positive emotional state it produces in the minds of those judging it (perception) then how exactly could the golden rule which doesn't take into account other emotional states even be considered a moral heuristic?

Do what you think you'd want done to you? So if you hate yourself then you can treat others as badly as you treat yourself? See how easily the golden rule unwinds?

A moral service or moral services are no different from any other kind of services in a market. People adopt behaviors perceived a moral because there are social rewards for adopting these behaviors and there are social costs for not adopting them. The value of moral behavior is as subjective as the value of two pieces of artwork at an auction. There is no objective value of it in my opinion and it's subjective left up to the perceiver to determine how much a moral behavior is worth (or immoral behavior costs).

So when you say "real goods" you mean tangible? Moral behaviors are real because people value it. People prefer to shop at businesses which they perceive to be moral. People dislike immoral behavior.

The idea that someone made you a sandwich may indeed be the epitome of that golden rule, provided it was made from the kindness of heart, the desire to help another and not to poison of coerce. So it all depends on the intention, quality and consideration of that sandwich. The reality is in the why.

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