All that's golden isn't gold either.
A frenemy philosopher I know has been stubbornly defending the golden rule as some kind of "universal moral means" for a few years now, so I was happy to see that this week's thought experiment would give me a chance to expand my criticism of this idea. I think it's terribly misguided to focus on means without considering ends, and any propensity to do so contributes to the millions of hours that have already been wasted in this direction during the history of philosophy. Let's dive in to the experiment and then I'll explain further.
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Constance had always tried to observe the golden rule of morality: do as you would be done by, or, as Kant rather inelegantly put it, "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Now, however, she is sorely tempted by something that would seem to go against that principle. She has the chance to run off with the husband of her best friend, taking their entire family fortune with them. On the face of it, that would not be doing as she would be done by.
But, she reasoned, things are more complex than that. When we lock up a criminal, we are not saying we should also be locked up. We are saying that we should be locked up if we were in the same circumstance as the criminal. That proviso is crucial; context is all.
So, the question she should be asking herself is this: can she "will that is should become a universal law" that people in her circumstances should run off with their best friend's husband and fortune? Put like that, the answer seems to be yes. She's not saying adultery and asset-stripping are usually good, only that in her specific circumstances they are. So that's settled then: she can run away with a clear conscience.
Sources: The Analectics of Confucius (5th century BCE); Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant (1785).
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 247.
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Okay, so obviously the Golden Rule is too vague and simplistic for smarty pants philosophers if they can make it look this dumb. As expert reader John A. Johnson said in a comment to my post on Monday introducing this thought experiment:
Some version of the so-called golden rule can be found in every culture of the world. There are many lists on the Internet pointing to the presence of the golden rule across cultures, religions, and philosophies. Some versions, I think, are better worded than others. One of my favorites is the Yoruba "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts." I have nothing against the spirit of the golden rule, but I do not like how it is worded in Christianity, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6:31). This wording assumes that others want to be treated the same way you want to be treated. To the extent that people are similar, this works, but what if I want to be treated in ways that you do not want to be treated? What if I love Brussels sprouts and would like nothing more than to have you bring me a bowl of them every day, but if you hate Brussels sprouts should I bring you a bowl every day because that's how I would like to be treated? I strongly prefer the platinum rule ("Treat others the way they want to be treated") in combination with the silver rule ("Do no harm"). (The silver rule prevents us from harming others when they say that is what they want.) A woman following the platinum+silver rules would never harm her best friend by running off with her husband.
This is excellent. And it's not surprising because Johnson knows what he's talking about when he's analysing moral rules. The first paper he ever published was titled "A Socioanalytical Theory of Moral Development", which he discussed in a comment to another post of mine a few weeks ago. One of the relevant interpretations I took from his paper is that things like the Golden Rule are only intermediate steps along the way to more mature philosophical systems. In Johnson's (et al) paper:
"The first phase [of moral development in an individual] is an absorption of adult rules by children, rules that help insure their survival. Piaget said that this stage of moral realism confuses human-made rules with natural laws and is therefore immature. I would counter by saying that uncritical absorption of rules that keeps a child safe is adaptive at that stage of life. The next phase of development concerns reciprocity, as children learn to get along with other children. Reciprocity involves empathy and other moral emotions that have always been there, but take the forefront as the peer group becomes increasingly more important than one's parents. Finally, we get to the phase of autonomous reasoning (if we are lucky), where we get to think about moral issues like philosophers. We sift through what our parents and other authorities have told us are absolute truths about morality, we consider how our friends want us to interact with them, and then through reasoning decide what is the right thing to do, as far as we can tell."
This is similar to another theory for the moral development of individuals that I wrote about during my post on the 2nd level of personality and the meaning of life, where I noted the following:
How do we know what is right or wrong? What are the values and beliefs we hold that drive us to progress nicely through life or put up our defenses in a negative reaction? I'm not talking about a universal morality just yet (that will come later in my discussion of ethics), but the personal development of morality that any individual can go through. Once again, a theory of stages of development for these traits has been put forth by the psychological community - this time by Lawrence Kohlberg in the 1950's and 1960's. His three levels of moral development are:
There are important differences between Kohlberg's theory and Johnson's theory, but there is a lot of overlap too. Most relevant for this thought experiment is that it's obvious the Golden Rule is simply a second-level convention based on empathy, which may help explain why one struggles if you try to elevate it to the third-level status of a universal principle. In the pithy, simplified forms of a slogan, the various Golden Rules always seem to crumble under the weight of more intense scrutiny. The wikipedia entry for the Golden Rule notes a few such criticisms, "the most serious among these is its application. How does one know how others want to be treated? The obvious way is to ask them, but this cannot be done if one assumes they have not reached a particular and relevant understanding."
This reminds me of the time I warned us to Be Skeptical of Skepticism, when I criticised the head of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer, for his new view on a science of morality. I loudly applauded Shermer's and Skeptic's scientific rigour in their debunking of pseudoscience over the years, but then I asked us to consider this statement from Shermer (underlined emphases added):
"First, morality is derived from the Latin moralitas, or “manner, character, and proper behavior.” Morality has to do with how you act toward others. So I begin with a Principle of Moral Good: Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that it leads to someone else’s moral loss (through force or fraud). Given this moral principle, the central question is this: On what foundation should we ground our moral decisions? How do we know that rape and adultery are wrong? We don’t need to ask God. We need to ask the affected moral agent—the rape victim in question, or our spouse or romantic partner who is being cuckolded. They will let you know instantly and forcefully precisely how they feel morally about that behavior. Here we see that the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has a severe limitation to it: What if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? What if you would not mind having action X done unto you, but someone else would mind it? Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women. Most men, then, in considering whether to approach a woman with an offer of unsolicited sex, should not ask themselves how they would feel as a test. This is why in my book The Science of Good and Evil I introduced the Ask-First Principle: To find out whether an action is right or wrong, ask first."
As I said then, "this is very weak. Morals are rules that tell us how we ought to act. Period. They are not only concerned with actions towards another person. Is it moral to kick a puppy, overfish an ocean, or dump waste in a forest? Could you ask any of these life forms for their consent? What about an infant? Or an insane person? Or a terrorist? Shermer's principles do not hold up to any scrutiny."
At least Shermer recognised another standard criticism of the Golden Rule. As George Bernard Shaw said about it, "'Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different.' Hence, the Golden Rule of 'do unto others' is 'dangerous in the wrong hands,' 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.'" This is the same line of attack that Immanuel Kant pursued too, which Baggini brought to the fore. "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."
As Baggini alluded to in the thought experiment, Kant tried to deal with these "differences of situation" through his categorical imperative. He tried to simply just take them all into account explicitly. Instead of saying "do unto others," he basically said "do unto ALL others." That's it. In my post on Kant, I already made my objections to this clear:
"Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. This is fine, as I also believe strongly in a universal basis for morality, but Kant's formulation of such a principle is as follows:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
This could only have been written by a man who did not travel the world and deeply absorb the vast and diverse history of actions that are out there in the history of humankind. While long-term and far-reaching principles may be agreed to, the actions to get there will never be universally agreed upon. Especially as our knowledge is so limited about all the future consequences of our actions within the complex systems we interact with. Anyway, sure enough, in his entire life Kant "never traveled more than 10 miles from Königsberg. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks."
The problem here is with Kant's focus on the word "act." In reality, could any single definable behaviour become a categorical imperative on its own? No. As I described in my response to thought experiment 60:
"Deontological moral rules are not sufficient. Consequentialism shows that results matter too. And virtue ethics says intentions also count. Together, these three schools of thought make up the three main camps of moral philosophy. However, as is often the case with thorny philosophical issues, the best position on morality isn't an "either/or" decision from among these three choices, it's an "all/and" decision which considers the three of them. For any morally-considered human behaviour, there is an intention, an action, and a result. That's the way an event is described prior to, during, and after it occurs. It's the way the past, present, and future are bound together by causality yet allowed to be looked at separately across time. Virtue ethics concerns itself with the intention. Deontology focuses on the action. Consequentialism focuses on the result. But all three may be evaluated individually for moral purposes. ... We can hold all three of these judgments in our head at the same time and use them to guide future decisions accordingly with respect to blame, praise, imitation, or change."
So now we can reply to the main point Baggini is trying to make. As I noted on Monday, Baggini said in his discussion of this thought experiment that:
"The problem Constance's situation highlights is not just a sophisticated joke at the [golden] rule's expense. It goes to the heart of what the principle actually means. For either one of two extreme interpretations, the principle is either ridiculous or empty."
In fact, we find that the Golden Rule is ultimately empty. And here's why. Even if we re-word it perfectly, give it a platinum coating, and then extend to it the most generous benefit of the doubt about the spirit of its law, the Golden Rule is simply calling for reciprocity, for empathy, for more cooperation. But this isn't enough! A philosopher I usually admire named Oliver Curry published a paper in 2016 titled "Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centered Approach" that also tried to place cooperation as the sole center of moral philosophy. In an online discussion about this, however, I said the following:
Curry’s paper provides a wealth of support that cooperation is important to the construction of our morality and that these are not supernaturally inspired ideas, but he’s ignoring a big chunk of human experience, which is why his morality doesn’t go anywhere. A simple Wikipedia definition of morality is “the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and those that are bad.” But Curry has nothing to say in his paper about when and why his forms of cooperation might be good or bad. Why is that? Because 1) he’s got no goal, and 2) he’s missing at least half the story. Let me explain.
Morality as cooperation? Towards what? Putting a bagel on Saturn? Subjugating ladybugs? Spreading the message of Moses? Without any guiding goal, how could anyone ever decide whether it is moral to focus their cooperative efforts on kinship, mutualism, exchange, conflict resolution, or anything else for that matter? Yet we make those decisions all the time. And get them wrong all the time. And debate why those decisions were right or wrong. Morality can’t just be about cooperation or for cooperation’s sake.
Morality as cooperation? That’s only half the story. What about when cooperating with your family would be wrong? What about when mutually absconding with natural resources would be wrong? What about when submitting to Nazis would be wrong? What about the virtues of competition in many, many, many scenarios. Game theory allows for two basic choices - cooperate or compete. Wise morality requires understanding when it is necessary to use one or the other. To say you can only choose between various types of cooperation is tying at least one hand behind your back.
The theory of morality I proposed in my paper (Bridging the Is-Ought Divide, ASEBL Journal, Jan 2015) is that morals are rules that lead to the survival of life in general over the long term. That’s the fundamental and objective goal we all *ought* to agree to, which we can then use to try to judge right from wrong. We are discovering these rules all the time, but they require the balancing of competition and cooperation in order to find the optimum satisfaction of needs for individuals, societies, species, and ecologies over timeframes from the immediate present to the evolutionarily distant future. (Those spheres are the complete list because they make up all the spheres of life according to E.O. Wilson’s definition of consilient biology, i.e. the study of all life.) Curry provides a great catalogue of cooperative possibilities for our arsenal of moral choices, but there are other options as well, and our aim in using them must be true.
So, using my universal definition of good, which is a moral end and not a moral means, we see that Constance's actions to steal her friend's husband is clearly wrong, as we knew all along.* She's wrong, not because this is an action that others wouldn't want done to them (some bored wives might not mind), or because this is an action that everyone everywhere all the time shouldn't do (maybe some husbands need to be rescued from abusive wives), but because Constance's actions in this scenario would result in consequences that would probably harm her friend, isolate Constance and the man from other friends who used to trust them, and undermine the goal of developing a cooperative society where individuals can best act towards the survival of us all.
____________________
* Note that Johnson had it right too. I've essentially taken his silver rule of "do no harm" and added my particular definition of harm to it.
--------------------------------------------------
Constance had always tried to observe the golden rule of morality: do as you would be done by, or, as Kant rather inelegantly put it, "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Now, however, she is sorely tempted by something that would seem to go against that principle. She has the chance to run off with the husband of her best friend, taking their entire family fortune with them. On the face of it, that would not be doing as she would be done by.
But, she reasoned, things are more complex than that. When we lock up a criminal, we are not saying we should also be locked up. We are saying that we should be locked up if we were in the same circumstance as the criminal. That proviso is crucial; context is all.
So, the question she should be asking herself is this: can she "will that is should become a universal law" that people in her circumstances should run off with their best friend's husband and fortune? Put like that, the answer seems to be yes. She's not saying adultery and asset-stripping are usually good, only that in her specific circumstances they are. So that's settled then: she can run away with a clear conscience.
Sources: The Analectics of Confucius (5th century BCE); Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant (1785).
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 247.
---------------------------------------------------
Okay, so obviously the Golden Rule is too vague and simplistic for smarty pants philosophers if they can make it look this dumb. As expert reader John A. Johnson said in a comment to my post on Monday introducing this thought experiment:
Some version of the so-called golden rule can be found in every culture of the world. There are many lists on the Internet pointing to the presence of the golden rule across cultures, religions, and philosophies. Some versions, I think, are better worded than others. One of my favorites is the Yoruba "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts." I have nothing against the spirit of the golden rule, but I do not like how it is worded in Christianity, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6:31). This wording assumes that others want to be treated the same way you want to be treated. To the extent that people are similar, this works, but what if I want to be treated in ways that you do not want to be treated? What if I love Brussels sprouts and would like nothing more than to have you bring me a bowl of them every day, but if you hate Brussels sprouts should I bring you a bowl every day because that's how I would like to be treated? I strongly prefer the platinum rule ("Treat others the way they want to be treated") in combination with the silver rule ("Do no harm"). (The silver rule prevents us from harming others when they say that is what they want.) A woman following the platinum+silver rules would never harm her best friend by running off with her husband.
This is excellent. And it's not surprising because Johnson knows what he's talking about when he's analysing moral rules. The first paper he ever published was titled "A Socioanalytical Theory of Moral Development", which he discussed in a comment to another post of mine a few weeks ago. One of the relevant interpretations I took from his paper is that things like the Golden Rule are only intermediate steps along the way to more mature philosophical systems. In Johnson's (et al) paper:
"The first phase [of moral development in an individual] is an absorption of adult rules by children, rules that help insure their survival. Piaget said that this stage of moral realism confuses human-made rules with natural laws and is therefore immature. I would counter by saying that uncritical absorption of rules that keeps a child safe is adaptive at that stage of life. The next phase of development concerns reciprocity, as children learn to get along with other children. Reciprocity involves empathy and other moral emotions that have always been there, but take the forefront as the peer group becomes increasingly more important than one's parents. Finally, we get to the phase of autonomous reasoning (if we are lucky), where we get to think about moral issues like philosophers. We sift through what our parents and other authorities have told us are absolute truths about morality, we consider how our friends want us to interact with them, and then through reasoning decide what is the right thing to do, as far as we can tell."
This is similar to another theory for the moral development of individuals that I wrote about during my post on the 2nd level of personality and the meaning of life, where I noted the following:
How do we know what is right or wrong? What are the values and beliefs we hold that drive us to progress nicely through life or put up our defenses in a negative reaction? I'm not talking about a universal morality just yet (that will come later in my discussion of ethics), but the personal development of morality that any individual can go through. Once again, a theory of stages of development for these traits has been put forth by the psychological community - this time by Lawrence Kohlberg in the 1950's and 1960's. His three levels of moral development are:
- Pre Conventional Morality - Rules are external and merely self-serving. Avoiding punishment or gaining rewards are the primary motivators.
- Conventional Morality - Others play a major role in morality. Feelings of empathy are considered. One wants to have good interpersonal relationships and maintain social order.
- Principled or Postconventional Morality - Moral rules are based on universal principles of justice, equality, the social contract, and individual rights.
There are important differences between Kohlberg's theory and Johnson's theory, but there is a lot of overlap too. Most relevant for this thought experiment is that it's obvious the Golden Rule is simply a second-level convention based on empathy, which may help explain why one struggles if you try to elevate it to the third-level status of a universal principle. In the pithy, simplified forms of a slogan, the various Golden Rules always seem to crumble under the weight of more intense scrutiny. The wikipedia entry for the Golden Rule notes a few such criticisms, "the most serious among these is its application. How does one know how others want to be treated? The obvious way is to ask them, but this cannot be done if one assumes they have not reached a particular and relevant understanding."
This reminds me of the time I warned us to Be Skeptical of Skepticism, when I criticised the head of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer, for his new view on a science of morality. I loudly applauded Shermer's and Skeptic's scientific rigour in their debunking of pseudoscience over the years, but then I asked us to consider this statement from Shermer (underlined emphases added):
"First, morality is derived from the Latin moralitas, or “manner, character, and proper behavior.” Morality has to do with how you act toward others. So I begin with a Principle of Moral Good: Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that it leads to someone else’s moral loss (through force or fraud). Given this moral principle, the central question is this: On what foundation should we ground our moral decisions? How do we know that rape and adultery are wrong? We don’t need to ask God. We need to ask the affected moral agent—the rape victim in question, or our spouse or romantic partner who is being cuckolded. They will let you know instantly and forcefully precisely how they feel morally about that behavior. Here we see that the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has a severe limitation to it: What if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? What if you would not mind having action X done unto you, but someone else would mind it? Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women. Most men, then, in considering whether to approach a woman with an offer of unsolicited sex, should not ask themselves how they would feel as a test. This is why in my book The Science of Good and Evil I introduced the Ask-First Principle: To find out whether an action is right or wrong, ask first."
As I said then, "this is very weak. Morals are rules that tell us how we ought to act. Period. They are not only concerned with actions towards another person. Is it moral to kick a puppy, overfish an ocean, or dump waste in a forest? Could you ask any of these life forms for their consent? What about an infant? Or an insane person? Or a terrorist? Shermer's principles do not hold up to any scrutiny."
At least Shermer recognised another standard criticism of the Golden Rule. As George Bernard Shaw said about it, "'Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different.' Hence, the Golden Rule of 'do unto others' is 'dangerous in the wrong hands,' 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.'" This is the same line of attack that Immanuel Kant pursued too, which Baggini brought to the fore. "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."
As Baggini alluded to in the thought experiment, Kant tried to deal with these "differences of situation" through his categorical imperative. He tried to simply just take them all into account explicitly. Instead of saying "do unto others," he basically said "do unto ALL others." That's it. In my post on Kant, I already made my objections to this clear:
"Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. This is fine, as I also believe strongly in a universal basis for morality, but Kant's formulation of such a principle is as follows:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
This could only have been written by a man who did not travel the world and deeply absorb the vast and diverse history of actions that are out there in the history of humankind. While long-term and far-reaching principles may be agreed to, the actions to get there will never be universally agreed upon. Especially as our knowledge is so limited about all the future consequences of our actions within the complex systems we interact with. Anyway, sure enough, in his entire life Kant "never traveled more than 10 miles from Königsberg. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks."
The problem here is with Kant's focus on the word "act." In reality, could any single definable behaviour become a categorical imperative on its own? No. As I described in my response to thought experiment 60:
"Deontological moral rules are not sufficient. Consequentialism shows that results matter too. And virtue ethics says intentions also count. Together, these three schools of thought make up the three main camps of moral philosophy. However, as is often the case with thorny philosophical issues, the best position on morality isn't an "either/or" decision from among these three choices, it's an "all/and" decision which considers the three of them. For any morally-considered human behaviour, there is an intention, an action, and a result. That's the way an event is described prior to, during, and after it occurs. It's the way the past, present, and future are bound together by causality yet allowed to be looked at separately across time. Virtue ethics concerns itself with the intention. Deontology focuses on the action. Consequentialism focuses on the result. But all three may be evaluated individually for moral purposes. ... We can hold all three of these judgments in our head at the same time and use them to guide future decisions accordingly with respect to blame, praise, imitation, or change."
So now we can reply to the main point Baggini is trying to make. As I noted on Monday, Baggini said in his discussion of this thought experiment that:
"The problem Constance's situation highlights is not just a sophisticated joke at the [golden] rule's expense. It goes to the heart of what the principle actually means. For either one of two extreme interpretations, the principle is either ridiculous or empty."
In fact, we find that the Golden Rule is ultimately empty. And here's why. Even if we re-word it perfectly, give it a platinum coating, and then extend to it the most generous benefit of the doubt about the spirit of its law, the Golden Rule is simply calling for reciprocity, for empathy, for more cooperation. But this isn't enough! A philosopher I usually admire named Oliver Curry published a paper in 2016 titled "Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centered Approach" that also tried to place cooperation as the sole center of moral philosophy. In an online discussion about this, however, I said the following:
Curry’s paper provides a wealth of support that cooperation is important to the construction of our morality and that these are not supernaturally inspired ideas, but he’s ignoring a big chunk of human experience, which is why his morality doesn’t go anywhere. A simple Wikipedia definition of morality is “the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and those that are bad.” But Curry has nothing to say in his paper about when and why his forms of cooperation might be good or bad. Why is that? Because 1) he’s got no goal, and 2) he’s missing at least half the story. Let me explain.
Morality as cooperation? Towards what? Putting a bagel on Saturn? Subjugating ladybugs? Spreading the message of Moses? Without any guiding goal, how could anyone ever decide whether it is moral to focus their cooperative efforts on kinship, mutualism, exchange, conflict resolution, or anything else for that matter? Yet we make those decisions all the time. And get them wrong all the time. And debate why those decisions were right or wrong. Morality can’t just be about cooperation or for cooperation’s sake.
Morality as cooperation? That’s only half the story. What about when cooperating with your family would be wrong? What about when mutually absconding with natural resources would be wrong? What about when submitting to Nazis would be wrong? What about the virtues of competition in many, many, many scenarios. Game theory allows for two basic choices - cooperate or compete. Wise morality requires understanding when it is necessary to use one or the other. To say you can only choose between various types of cooperation is tying at least one hand behind your back.
The theory of morality I proposed in my paper (Bridging the Is-Ought Divide, ASEBL Journal, Jan 2015) is that morals are rules that lead to the survival of life in general over the long term. That’s the fundamental and objective goal we all *ought* to agree to, which we can then use to try to judge right from wrong. We are discovering these rules all the time, but they require the balancing of competition and cooperation in order to find the optimum satisfaction of needs for individuals, societies, species, and ecologies over timeframes from the immediate present to the evolutionarily distant future. (Those spheres are the complete list because they make up all the spheres of life according to E.O. Wilson’s definition of consilient biology, i.e. the study of all life.) Curry provides a great catalogue of cooperative possibilities for our arsenal of moral choices, but there are other options as well, and our aim in using them must be true.
So, using my universal definition of good, which is a moral end and not a moral means, we see that Constance's actions to steal her friend's husband is clearly wrong, as we knew all along.* She's wrong, not because this is an action that others wouldn't want done to them (some bored wives might not mind), or because this is an action that everyone everywhere all the time shouldn't do (maybe some husbands need to be rescued from abusive wives), but because Constance's actions in this scenario would result in consequences that would probably harm her friend, isolate Constance and the man from other friends who used to trust them, and undermine the goal of developing a cooperative society where individuals can best act towards the survival of us all.
____________________
* Note that Johnson had it right too. I've essentially taken his silver rule of "do no harm" and added my particular definition of harm to it.
