Creation & EvolutionForum for the discussion of this important topic. This forum is open to non-believers. There is a Christians-only forum in the Christians-only section too.
Some have argued that the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," is nothing more than Reciprical Altrusim. Another way of the "Selfish Gene" finding a way to reproduce itself.
Is the Golden Rule nothing more than Sociobiology in action. How is this reasoning flawed?
The belief that the Golden Rule is innate in human nature does not arise out of a scientist's despisement of God, as you so falsely portray it, but instead out of a realization that the Golden Rule exists in some form in almost all cultures, tribes, and civilization that have ever existed that we know of today. At least, those whose beliefs we can determine. It pre-dates Christianity and Christ and the Bible by centuries.
Firstly some don’t think Jesus' death is a sacrifice. Secondly there is a need for some rules to exist in order for society to be built. In ant colonies and bee hives those rules are enforced by nature (instinct) but in hairless ape societies and many other primate societies some rules exist not only through instinct but through knowledge. For instance a rule in ape society is that if a female enters a troop the first child is to be killed since the father might not be from that troop.
The need for humans to co-exist in large numbers (far exceeding those of a troop of apes), due to our inability to achieve much on our own, creates the need for rules. Rules become morals, then they evolve into commandments, then an anarchist/communist arrives and re-defines them, then a guy called Saul takes them and changes the s**t out of them, then a certain emperor uses them to control the masses, eventually they are preached by televangelists all over a certain country in hopes of accumulating political and monetary power. Hence Christianity is itself subject to evolution.
It's a common social belief that has arisen among many societies. It has nothing to do with biology. It is also not a moral absolute (such a thing does not exist), and it is entirely existential.
__________________ “Dangerous? Perhaps. But evil? She acts according to her nature. Is that evil?”
--Dream of the Endless
An important distinction must be made at the outset between what could be called the empathetic version of the Golden Rule versus the non-empathetic version. I’m not entirely sure which version of the rule Christianity supports, or even whether the distinction makes sense within Christian morality, so someone can correct me on that score.
The non-empathetic version of the Rule would interpret it just as written. If you are a pervert who would prefer it if your neighbor groped your bottom unexpectedly, the Rule would have you grope his or her bottom. The non-empathetic version is so named because it is entirely without empathy, or a recognition of the preferences of others. In essence, it says, “If I was in my neighbor’s shoes, but with my own preferences, I would prefer groping.” I think we can conclude that this version of the Golden Rule is not just a non-starter from the point of view of natural selection, but that it is totally bankrupt as a moral principle as well.
The empathetic version of the Rule would, in various ways, attempt to incorporate the preferences of others into the decision-making procedure. What we ask now is, “If I was in my neighbor’s shoes, with her preferences, what would I want others to do to me?” And here we begin to see the Golden Rule gain some traction as a moral principle. It is here also that some have argued it has an evolutionary role as well.
In this argument, the Golden Rule is one embodiment of a fairness norm that has survived because it facilitates coordination in, for example, food sharing games. Ken Binmore seems to take this line. He observes that we all seem to be able to form empathetic preferences – that is, preferences of the form “I’d prefer to be Eve eating an apple than Adam wearing a fig leaf,” said by Adam. His example, not mine. We would need these empathetic preferences, or at least something like them, to apply the Golden Rule in a way that does not fall back simply to the version of the rule we first outlined. Thus, a justification of the Golden Rule must essentially take the form of an evolutionary explanation of empathetic preferences.
So what do empathetic preferences contribute to fitness? Binmore seems to think that we wouldn’t even have the capacity to form them unless there was some advantage in it. To take one of his examples, suppose Adam and Eve are bargaining over a kill Adam has made. At least to some extent, there is an advantage to splitting it: hunting is difficult, and while Adam has been lucky today, he may not be so fortunate tomorrow. So, while he will not keep the entire kill for himself, he also won’t give everything to Eve. A point between those two extremes must be found and, more importantly, it has to be a point that Eve herself will regard as fair (otherwise, the cooperative arrangement won’t work at all.) So that they can find a division to which both can agree and commit themselves to, Adam and Eve’s normative demands must “mesh” in some way.
For Ken Binmore, that’s the role of empathetic preferences. Adam can figure out that an extra ten percent of the carcass will mean more to Eve (if the alternative is nothing) than the ten percent will mean to him (if the alternative is fifty percent.) In short, empathetic preferences allow Adam and Eve to perform interpersonal comparisons of utility – and, moreover, those comparisons will have a certain amount of intersubjective validity. Adam and Eve may have divergent personal preferences, but their empathetic preferences might be very similar.
Some very smart guys have done some MRI studies of people in experiments where the objective is to come to some agreement on the division of a certain resource (like a ten dollar bill.) First, these experiments indicate that there is a wide degree of agreement both between and within cultures on what counts as fair. Second, there are neurological patterns associated with both the making and accepting of unfair offers that are very consistent across persons. So there are hints that our empathetic preferences are similar, that we all genuinely know that a dollar found on the street is worth more to a poor person than a rich one; to an extent the sense of fairness that seems to go along with the situation (that the poor person might indeed deserve the dollar more than the rich one) may have its origin in the sort of coordination games humans were playing when they weren’t even humans.
Since it plays off of this shared sense of empathy, the Golden Rule may indeed have a very tight grip on us. The similarity in the “contours of our consciences” may allow the evolutionarily-minded moralist to calibrate his polemic so that it will be more readily accepted. In my view, this idea of “morals for moralists” is the most exciting thing to come to moral philosophy in quite a while. This may allow us to posit a morality that is objective without being absolute.
Last edited by self_interest; 5th October 2004 at 08:50 PM.
Reason: Response to posts made while I was composing...
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