Editing Golden Rule (section)

==Criticism==
Philosophers such as [[Immanuel Kant]]<ref name="Kant" /> and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/05/the_golden_rule.html |title=Only a Game: The Golden Rule |publisher=Onlyagame.typepad.com |date=24 May 2007 |access-date=12 September 2013 |archive-date=4 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004235045/http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/05/the_golden_rule.html |url-status=live }}</ref> have objected to the rule on a variety of grounds. One is the epistemic question of determining how others want to be treated. The obvious way is to ask them, but they might give duplicitous answers if they find this strategically useful, and they might also fail to understand the details of the choice situation as one understands it. People might also be biased to perceiving harms and benefits to themselves more than to others, which could lead to escalating conflict if they are suspicious of others. Hence [[Linus Pauling]] suggested that a bias towards others is to be introduced into the golden rule: "Do unto others 20 percent better than you would have them do unto you" - to correct for subjective bias.<ref>{{cite book |author=Pauling, Linus |title=Fallout: Today's Seven-Year Plague |publisher=Mainstream Publishers |location=New York |date=1960 }}</ref>

===Differences in values or interests===
[[George Bernard Shaw]] wrote, "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Shaw|first1=George Bernard|title=Man and Superman|date=1903|publisher=Archibald Constable & Co.|page=227|url=https://archive.org/stream/mansupermancomed00shawrich#page/226/mode/2up|access-date=23 February 2018}}</ref> This suggests that if one's values are not shared with others, the way one wants to be treated will not be the way others want to be treated. Hence, the Golden Rule of "do unto others" is "dangerous in the wrong hands",<ref>Source: p. 76 of ''[[How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time]]'', [[Iain King]], 2008, Continuum, {{ISBN|978-1-84706-347-2}}.</ref> according to philosopher [[Iain King]], because "some fanatics have no aversion to death: the Golden Rule might inspire them to kill others in suicide missions."<ref>Source: p. 76 of ''[[How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time]]'', Iain King, 2008, Continuum, {{ISBN|978-1-84706-347-2}}.</ref>

[[Walter Terence Stace]], in ''The Concept of Morals'' (1937) argued that Shaw's remark

{{blockquote|...seems to overlook the fact that "doing as you would be done by" includes taking into account your neighbour's tastes as you would that he should take yours into account. Thus the "golden rule" might still express the essence of a universal morality ''even if no two men in the world had any needs or tastes in common''.<ref>{{cite book |last= Stace |first = Walter T. |title= The Concept of Morals |publisher= The MacMillan Company; (reprinted 1975 by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc.); (also reprinted by Peter Smith Publisher Inc, January 1990) |date= 1937 |location= New York |page= 136 |isbn= 978-0-8446-2990-2}}</ref>}}

===Differences in situations===
[[Immanuel Kant]] famously criticized the golden rule for not being sensitive to differences of situation, noting that a prisoner duly convicted of a crime could appeal to the golden rule while asking the judge to release him, pointing out that the judge would not want anyone else to send him to prison, so he should not do so to others.<ref name="Kant">Kant, Immanuel ''Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'', footnote 12. Cambridge University Press (28 April 1998). {{ISBN|978-0-521-62695-8}}</ref> On the other hand, in a critique of the consistency of Kant's writings, several authors have noted the ''"similarity"''<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Alston |editor1-first=William P. |editor2-last=Brandt |editor2-first=Richard B. |title=The Problems of Philosophy |date=1978 |publisher=Allyn and Bacon |location=Boston, London, Sydney, Toronto |isbn=978-0205061105 |page=139}}</ref> between the Golden Rule and Kant's ''[[Categorical imperative|Categorical Imperative]]'', introduced in ''[[Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals]]'' ([[Categorical imperative#The Golden Rule|See discussion at this link]]).

This was perhaps a well-known objection, as Leibniz actually responded to it long before Kant made it, suggesting that the judge should put himself in the place, not merely of the criminal, but of all affected persons and then judging each option (to inflict punishment, or release the criminal, etc.) by whether there was a “greater good in which this lesser evil was included.”<ref>{{cite book |author=Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. |chapter=Reflections on the Common Concept of Justice |date=1989 |orig-date=1702 |title=Philosophical Papers and Letters. |editor=Leroy E. Loemker. |publisher=Kluwer |location=Boston |page=568}}</ref>

===Other responses to criticisms===
[[Marcus George Singer]] observed that there are two importantly different ways of looking at the golden rule: as requiring either that one performs specific actions that they want others to do to them or that they guide their behavior in the same general ways that they want others to.<ref>M. G. Singer, The Ideal of a Rational Morality, p. 270</ref> Counter-examples to the Golden Rule typically are more forceful against the first than the second.

In his book on the Golden Rule, Jeffrey Wattles makes the similar observation that such objections typically arise while applying the Golden Rule in certain general ways (namely, ignoring differences in taste or situation, failing to compensate for subjective bias, etc.) But if people apply the golden rule to their own method of using it, asking in effect if they would want other people to apply the Golden Rule in such ways, the answer would typically be no, since others' ignoring of such factors will lead to behavior which people object to. It follows that people should not do so themselves—according to the Golden Rule. In this way, the Golden Rule may be self-correcting.<ref>Wattles, p. 6</ref> An article by Jouni Reinikainen develops this suggestion in greater detail.<ref>Jouni Reinikainen, "The Golden Rule and the Requirement of Universalizability." Journal of Value Inquiry. 39(2): 155–168, 2005.</ref>

{{Anchor|platinum rule description}}<!-- Do not delete this code as it is used to link here from elsewhere. Rp2006-->It is possible, then, that the golden rule can itself guide people in identifying which differences of situation are morally relevant. People would often want other people to ignore any prejudice against their [[Race (human categorization)|race]] or nationality when deciding how to act towards them, but would also want others to not ignore their differing preferences in food, desire for aggressiveness, and so on. This principle of "doing unto others, wherever possible, as ''they'' would be done by..." has sometimes been termed the Platinum Rule.<ref>[[Karl Popper]], ''[[The Open Society and Its Enemies]]'', Vol. 2 (1966 [1945]), p. 386. Dubbed "the platinum rule" in business books such as Charles J. Jacobus, Thomas E. Gillett, ''Georgia Real Estate: An Introduction to the Profession'', Cengage Learning, 2007, p. 409 and Jeremy Comfort, Peter Franklin, ''The Mindful International Manager: How to Work Effectively Across Cultures'', Kogan Page, p. 65.</ref>