http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/magazine/does-the-golden-rule-hold-up-in-modern-society.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

October 25, 2013

Does the Golden Rule Hold Up in Modern Society?

By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

• want to be treated in a manner that accounts for the possibility that other people can’t predict what I want
• want to be treated in a manner that does not assume all people are the same
• never want anyone else to automatically impose their preferences upon my life

119 Comments

• Greg
• New York

Your Golden Rule response is ridiculously overthought, to the point of nonsense. The phrase simply means to treat others with fairness and compassion, as any -- indeed, all -- of us would choose to be treated.

• Sajwert
• NH

Ask yourself if you want to be cheated, or stolen from, or lied to, or treated rudely with contempt, do you want to be ignored, denigrated because you are a skin color you can do nothing about, belong to a church that someone else doesn't, do you want this? If the answer is a resounding no, then you don't do it to anyone else.

• Rev. E.M. Camarena, Ph.D.
• Hells Kitchen, NYC

Saroyan, among others, wanted to see if it is possible to lead what he called a civilized life, meaning - to him - a life that would not hurt anybody else. But that is an impossible standard. We cannot be responsible for how other people feel about what we do. The golden rule means we should not ACTIVELY do things to someone that would bother us should they do it to us.

• Che Beauchard
• Manhattan
• 
  

One tends toward literal interpretations of rules when one is seeking legal loopholes, not when one is seeking insight into how one can be ethical. I suggest a more generous and less legalistic reading.

• Brian Wood
• 95415

The Ethicist makes The Golden Rule more complicated than is needed. Think of it the same way as the phrase "All men are created equal". Both phrases are concise ways of stating the correctness of individuals being afforded equal opportunity in a just society.

All people are obviously NOT created equal, but deserve an equal opportunity to achieve what they might.

As for The Golden Rule, one obviously cannot know how all others want to be treated. Nor, by the way, would it necessarily be ethical to treat each individual how he or she wants to be treated, as that could interfere with how others perceive their own treatment (i.e. I want you to treat me as more important than my brother). It is silly to try to parse the Golden Rule in such a literal way. The Golden Rule is shorthand for saying all individuals deserve freedom from oppression by others, as well as consideration for their particular needs.

Consequentialism

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/opinion/in-charitable-giving-no-hierarchy-of-goodness.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

August 10, 2013

Good Charity, Bad Charity

By PETER SINGER

• many people appear to have irrational attitudes toward the small risks of very bad things happening
• we will achieve more if we help those in extreme poverty in developing countries, as our dollars go much further there. But the choice between, say, helping the global poor directly, and helping them, and all future generations, by trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is more difficult
•  new developments are making these decisions easier
• charity evaluator GiveWell
• More experimental is GiveDirectly, which will transfer at least 90 cents of every dollar you give to an extremely low-income African family
• “Effective altruism"
• Thinking about which fields offer the most positive impact for your time and money is still in its infancy, but with more effective altruists researching the issues, we are starting to see real progress.

In Charitable Giving, No ‘Hierarchy of Goodness’

To the Editor:

• people give more, and more consistently, when pursuing their personal convictions

MELISSA A. BERMAN
President and Chief Executive
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

It is not a choice of giving to one or the other; neither is a “bad charity.”

ROBERT S. GREEN
New York, Aug. 11, 2013

Without the arts, life is not worth living.

BARBARA BARRAN
Brooklyn, Aug. 11, 2013

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/chapters/chapter-life-you-could-save.html?pagewanted=print

March 11, 2009

FIRST CHAPTER

‘The Life You Can Save’

By PETER SINGER

• practical ethics
• In 2007 [...] hypothetical situation actually occurred near Manchester, England. Jordon Lyon, a ten-year-old boy, leaped into a pond after his stepsister Bethany slipped in. He struggled to support her but went under himself. Anglers managed to pull Bethany out, but by then Jordon could no longer be seen. [...] 
• policemen soon arrived; they refused to enter the pond to find Jordon. [...] 
•  inquest on Jordon's death, the policemen's inaction was defended on the grounds that they had not been trained to deal with such situations. 
• The mother responded [...]
• by choosing to spend your money on such things rather than contributing to an aid agency, you are leaving a child to die, a child you could have saved?
• extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. 
• It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness
• In wealthy societies, most poverty is relative. 
• US, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV
• Three quarters of them own a car.
• Three quarters of them have air conditioning. 
• Three quarters of them have a VCR or DVD player. 
• All have access to health care.
• not quoting these figures in order to deny that the poor in the US face genuine difficulties.
• these difficulties are of a different order than those of the world's poorest people

FIRST CHAPTERS Nonfiction

determinism

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/?smid=pl-share

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/?pagewanted=print

NOVEMBER 13, 2011, 5:25 PM

Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?

By EDDY NAHMIAS

• understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one’s reasons for choosing them, planning one’s actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires
• deliberation
• rational thinking 
• self-control 
• typically ignored by scientists who conclude that free will is an illusion.  It also turns out that most non-philosophers have intuitions about free and responsible action that track this conception of free will
• most people think that free will and responsibility are compatible with determinism (all events are part of a law-like chain of events from earlier events
• misunderstand determinism to mean that we are 
• somehow cut out of this causal chain leading to our actions. People are threatened by a possibility I call “bypassing” — the idea that our actions are caused in ways that bypass our conscious deliberations and decisions.  
• So, if people mistakenly take causal determinism to mean that everything that happens is inevitable no matter what you think or try to do, then they conclude that we have no free will.  
• Or if determinism is presented in a way that suggests all our decisions are just chemical reactions, they take that to mean that our conscious thinking is bypassed in such a way that we lack free will.

Brain, free will, Neuroscience, Philosophy

Related ~ Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?

• twilson1b
• Germany

NYT Pick

Can the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics free the brain from determinism?

determinism2

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/are-we-ready-for-a-morality-pill/?smid=pl-share

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/are-we-ready-for-a-morality-pill/?pagewanted=print

Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?

By PETER SINGER and AGATA SAGAN

• 23 of 30 rats freed their trapped companions
• situational factors can make a huge difference, and perhaps moral beliefs do as well
• biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not
• Anthony Burgess wrote “A Clockwork Orange,” a futuristic novel about a vicious gang leader who undergoes a procedure that makes him incapable of violence

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals), Ethics, morality, Philosophy

Related ~ Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?

230 Comments

• peregrine
• Salt Lake City, Utah

It's somewhat ironic that a morality pill is not likely to be developed any time soon unless someone powerful stands to make a huge profit from it. 

• greppers
• upstate NY

So 7 rats were conservative Republicans?

• Ellen Fishman, elementary public school teacher
• chicago

Situational conditions and learned habits are so strong.

Qs for Singer

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24singerqa.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24singerqa.html?pagewanted=print

Questions for Peter Singer

Published: December 24, 2006

• I'm a pragmatist: whatever works.
• The better organizations have learnt from the mistakes of the past — which doesn't mean that there are no mistakes now, but that waste and corruption are less common than they once were. [...] If you are thinking of giving a large sum, you might ask about going to see some of their projects for yourself.

Singer's position (proposition)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/11garn.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/11garn.html?pagewanted=print

March 11, 2009

BOOKS OF THE TIMES

If You Think You’re Good, You Should Think Again

By DWIGHT GARNER

• “First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad.
• Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.
• Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important.
• Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong.”
• counters
•  Charity begins at home. 
• I work hard for my money. 
• Charity breeds dependency. 
• Some charity groups waste too much money on overhead.
• Helping the world’s poor will bring “meaning and purpose” to our lives, he suggests, through financial adjustments that will mostly “make no difference to your well-being.”
• “Roughly 5 percent of annual income for those who are financially comfortable, and rather more for the very rich.”
• When it comes to living the so-called “good” life, one’s moral omissions count more than ever.

Philath. Philo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/magazine/17charity.t.html?pagewanted=print

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?

By PETER SINGER

• Unicef, more than 10 million children die every year — about 30,000 per day — from avoidable, poverty-related causes.
• Hobbes, the 17th-century English philosopher, 
• we all act in our own interests. 
• On seeing him give alms to a beggar, a cleric asked Hobbes if he would have done this if Christ had not commanded us to do so. Yes, Hobbes replied, he was in pain to see the miserable condition of the old man, and his gift, by providing the man with some relief from that misery, also eased Hobbes’s pain. That reply reconciles Hobbes’s charity with his egoistic theory of human motivation
• 18th-century German philosopher Kant disagrees. 
• an act has moral worth only if it is done out of a sense of duty. Doing something merely because you enjoy doing it, or enjoy seeing its consequences has no moral worth, because if you happened not to enjoy doing it, then you wouldn’t do it, and 
• you are not responsible for your likes and dislikes, whereas you are responsible for your obedience to the demands of duty.
• Gates told a Time interviewer, “There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning” than going to church.
• Thomas Pogge
• international corporations are willing to make deals to buy natural resources from any government, no matter how it has come to power. 
• providing a huge financial incentive for groups to try to overthrow existing government. Successful rebels are rewarded by being able to sell off the nation’s oil, minerals or timber.
• beneficial for the industrial nations, because it enables us to obtain the raw materials we need to maintain our prosperity, but it is a disaster for resource-rich developing countries, turning the wealth that should benefit them into a curse that leads to a cycle of coups, civil wars and corruption and is of little benefit to the people as a whole.
•  our obligation to the poor is not just one of providing assistance to strangers but one of compensation for harms that we have caused and are still causing them
• (Living luxuriously, it is said, provides employment, and so wealth trickles down, helping the poor more effectively than aid does. But the rich in industrialized nations buy virtually nothing that is made by the very poor.)
• MDGs

Related Articles

•  THE AGE OF DISSONANCE; The Minimalist Do-Gooder (March 21, 2004)

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