A lot is going to hinge on that term, "rationally." I don't think you're going to get very far with conceptions of rationality that entail that we ought to treat people any particular way. It might be rational given my goals to treat people one way, and rational given another person's goals to treat people in some other way that conflicts with how I'd treat them. I can make sense of rationality when its' tied to the relation between goals and means of achieving those goals, but I doubt there's any rich, substantive account of rationality that incorporates, e.g., some kind of normative realism, just as I doubt you could get anywhere with moral realism or normative realism more generally.
So I don't think the principle you propose appreciably less ambiguous; at the very least, it may swap out one type of ambiguity for another, and, if the notion of rationality you have in mind relies on some kind of stance-independent normative facts, it may even turn out to be unintelligible.
Take where you go with this: "Other regarding welfarism: Treat others in ways that most maximize their welfare — where welfare is defined as that which makes them well off."
Different people will have different positions on what constitutes being well off, and I don't think there's any fact of the matter about which of these people are correct.
"However, this is the statement of utilitarianism."
It's not, unless you show that welfare maximization = utility maximization. You'd need arguments for that, and I don't think you'd have convincing arguments for that claim.
"The golden rule as a model of ethics is hard to deny — it’s sufficiently intuitive to have been parroted by great thinkers from many different civilizations"
That a few people made similar claims does not demonstrate the claim "is intuitive." I'm not even sure what that means, but merely because different people say a thing doesn't entail that the thing in question is intuitive.
As we've discussed before, I disagree with your definition of rationality.
Welfare maximization is utility maximization, given that welfare is just whatever makes things go best. This obviously doesn't prove any conception of well-being, like, say, hedonism, but it does prove that we should maximize what makes people's lives go well.
I think a lot of people find the golden rule very intuitive -- are you saying you don't know what intuitive means, or what the golden rule means?
I don't know what it means to disagree with a definition of rationality. I’m telling you how I tend to use/understand a particular term, at least in a specific philosophical context (I use the word “rational” in other ways in colloquial contexts). What are you disagreeing about?
It depends on what is meant by "welfare." You say that welfare is "just whatever makes things go best." Well, what do you mean by "best"? Is it what other people mean by "best"? Are you stipulating a specific definition for the purposes of discussion, or are you describing how others use the word, or what? I'm not really sure what you're doing here: stipulating that you’re using one word to mean the same thing as another word, making a claim about some agreed-upon meaning of these terms in some technical context, describing ordinary usage, etc.
"I think a lot of people find the golden rule very intuitive -- are you saying you don't know what intuitive means, or what the golden rule means? "
I wasn’t even questioning whether a lot of people find it intuitive. I was questioning how you arrived at that conclusion. You stated that it’s been expressed by great thinkers in different civilizations. But several people saying something doesn’t, by itself, entail that the thing is “intuitive.” Maybe people arrive at the golden rule after a life of reflection, and it wasn’t generally intuitive to most people in the past. Maybe it took centuries for such wisdom to become sufficiently widespread that people taught the golden rule from an early age are inclined to find it to be a natural and intuitive way to think. If so, perhaps it only began to become intuitive more recently.
Regarding the latter question about knowing what the words mean, when you ask “are you saying you don’t know what intuitive means” - I know lots of ways people use the word “intuitive.” I don’t know which usage among those I’m familiar with you may be using, or if you’re using the word in some other way. So I don’t know what you meant by it when you used it in this particular context. To know that, you’d have to tell me.
Your question is presented as though there is some singular usage, and that in using the word “intuition,” you’ve invoked that usage, so if I know what “intuitive” means, then I’d know what you mean. But that’s not how I think words work, so I’m not sure the question is well-posed, or at the very least the question may presuppose a view of language and meaning that I don’t share.
This blog was awsome, man!!
I want to be treated in accordance with my 3673 page long list of deontological rules, I also treat every other person like that.
The only objection to this is that my list is "foolishness" which assumes the entire question away.
But that's only rational if it makes your life best, which is welfarism. That would just be a wildly implausible version of OLT.
Remember that we modified the golden rule slightly to make it defensible.
A lot is going to hinge on that term, "rationally." I don't think you're going to get very far with conceptions of rationality that entail that we ought to treat people any particular way. It might be rational given my goals to treat people one way, and rational given another person's goals to treat people in some other way that conflicts with how I'd treat them. I can make sense of rationality when its' tied to the relation between goals and means of achieving those goals, but I doubt there's any rich, substantive account of rationality that incorporates, e.g., some kind of normative realism, just as I doubt you could get anywhere with moral realism or normative realism more generally.
So I don't think the principle you propose appreciably less ambiguous; at the very least, it may swap out one type of ambiguity for another, and, if the notion of rationality you have in mind relies on some kind of stance-independent normative facts, it may even turn out to be unintelligible.
Take where you go with this: "Other regarding welfarism: Treat others in ways that most maximize their welfare — where welfare is defined as that which makes them well off."
Different people will have different positions on what constitutes being well off, and I don't think there's any fact of the matter about which of these people are correct.
"However, this is the statement of utilitarianism."
It's not, unless you show that welfare maximization = utility maximization. You'd need arguments for that, and I don't think you'd have convincing arguments for that claim.
"The golden rule as a model of ethics is hard to deny — it’s sufficiently intuitive to have been parroted by great thinkers from many different civilizations"
That a few people made similar claims does not demonstrate the claim "is intuitive." I'm not even sure what that means, but merely because different people say a thing doesn't entail that the thing in question is intuitive.
As we've discussed before, I disagree with your definition of rationality.
Welfare maximization is utility maximization, given that welfare is just whatever makes things go best. This obviously doesn't prove any conception of well-being, like, say, hedonism, but it does prove that we should maximize what makes people's lives go well.
I think a lot of people find the golden rule very intuitive -- are you saying you don't know what intuitive means, or what the golden rule means?
Thanks for the reply!
I don't know what it means to disagree with a definition of rationality. I’m telling you how I tend to use/understand a particular term, at least in a specific philosophical context (I use the word “rational” in other ways in colloquial contexts). What are you disagreeing about?
It depends on what is meant by "welfare." You say that welfare is "just whatever makes things go best." Well, what do you mean by "best"? Is it what other people mean by "best"? Are you stipulating a specific definition for the purposes of discussion, or are you describing how others use the word, or what? I'm not really sure what you're doing here: stipulating that you’re using one word to mean the same thing as another word, making a claim about some agreed-upon meaning of these terms in some technical context, describing ordinary usage, etc.
"I think a lot of people find the golden rule very intuitive -- are you saying you don't know what intuitive means, or what the golden rule means? "
I wasn’t even questioning whether a lot of people find it intuitive. I was questioning how you arrived at that conclusion. You stated that it’s been expressed by great thinkers in different civilizations. But several people saying something doesn’t, by itself, entail that the thing is “intuitive.” Maybe people arrive at the golden rule after a life of reflection, and it wasn’t generally intuitive to most people in the past. Maybe it took centuries for such wisdom to become sufficiently widespread that people taught the golden rule from an early age are inclined to find it to be a natural and intuitive way to think. If so, perhaps it only began to become intuitive more recently.
Regarding the latter question about knowing what the words mean, when you ask “are you saying you don’t know what intuitive means” - I know lots of ways people use the word “intuitive.” I don’t know which usage among those I’m familiar with you may be using, or if you’re using the word in some other way. So I don’t know what you meant by it when you used it in this particular context. To know that, you’d have to tell me.
Your question is presented as though there is some singular usage, and that in using the word “intuition,” you’ve invoked that usage, so if I know what “intuitive” means, then I’d know what you mean. But that’s not how I think words work, so I’m not sure the question is well-posed, or at the very least the question may presuppose a view of language and meaning that I don’t share.