The Golden Mean Fallacy is a fallacy because it assumes that no one is ever entirely wrong or right, though. Yes, compromise is a good thing. But sometimes one side of the conflict is decidedly more wrong than the other, and it's a fallacy to assume that there's always a perfect, middle of the road solution.
The examples you listed have more to do with personal growth, really, than interpersonal interaction. I don't know if the Golden Mean Fallacy can apply to personal growth very well, because really the only one you're arguing with is yourself, even if you're getting advice on it from outside sources.
Is that cake frosting?
I don't see how Aristotle's concept of virtue can be seen as a compromise between two extremes.
It's more like, I dunno, the notion of equality in math.
If I say that 2 + 2 = 1, I am wrong, and my answer is in defect; and if I say that 2+2 = 8, I am wrong, and my answer is in excess. But it makes no sense to say that the right answer is a compromise between 1 and 8 or between 0 and 5 or anything like that. All these answers are wrong, and 4 is instead correct.
Analogously, if I behave like a coward, I am wrong, and if I behave recklessly, I am also wrong. But true courage, although it is in a certain sense "halfway" between cowardice and recklessness, is in no sense the result of a compromise between these two extremes; the two extremes are just two different ways in which one can fall short of the correct behaviour.
edited 29th Jan '12 12:50:11 PM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
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It depends on the kinds of things you are compromising, of course, I am just saying you picked a bad example.
Blanket statements about something always being a vice tend to strike me as oversimplifying.
Also, you say this as to contrast niceness with standing up for yourself. That depends on your interpretation of niceness and what even counts as that.
Ultimately I think what really needs to be kept in mind is that right and wrong are often uncertain, and we shouldn't expect general guidelines to cover everything.
edited 29th Jan '12 12:55:54 PM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart
Ace Of Spades: They're to do with personal growth because that's what virtue ethics are about, and I was just wondering what level these virtues should be taken to. That and the Golden Mean Fallacy is named for Aristotle's ideas about virtue. I wasn't talking about the way it's often used to make two groups of people look like strawmen.
Carciofus: That's one way of looking at it, it's just that when I read about virtue ethics, they were described in terms of compromise between two extremes.
Hidden Faced Matt: Okay, maybe the courage example was a bad one. How about the hardworking example, then? It's bad to be lazy, but it's also bad to be a workaholic and I think it's important to take a break now and again.
As for the example about cheating, I meant cheating in a stable and loving relationship. Maybe it's excusable if your partner is abusive and there's no way to get out, but what I meant was, "only be reasonably faithful" is not a good rule of thumb to have about relationships.
When I said "nice", I meant polite, respectful, helpful, altruistic - an all-round pleasant person. It is possible to be too nice though, to the point where you're bending over backwards to please everyone, no matter how they treat you. So, if, for example, you have a really toxic friend who constantly takes advantage of your kindness, it would be acceptable for you to say "I'm not going to stand for this any more" and break off the friendship. No, I don't think standing up for yourself is a bad thing. You've got to look out for your own interests sometimes. It is bad, though, to be completely selfish.
edited 29th Jan '12 1:27:24 PM by Xandriel
What's the point in giving up when you know you'll never stop anyway?
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Ultimately, I think the reason the truth isn't "between" two extremes isn't so much because one is right and one is wrong, * but because these issues aren't really so one-dimensional in the first place.
edited 29th Jan '12 1:41:05 PM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart
Well, if I understood fallanxy correctly, it's that fallancy follow following logic:
There are two sides, A, B and C. Because A and C are on extremes, they are automatically wrong and B is correct answer.
However, this is not always so.
For example, let's look at the matter of religion. According to Golden Mean Fallancy, sides A and C (Let's call them Atheist and Fundamentalist) are both incorrect, and C (Angostics, who are in middle of two extremes) are correct. However, existance of God is True/False question. Sometimes there is no middle ground, only "correct" and "false", which are both extremes.
True, middle road can be good and the best choice. However, this is not always in Real World. For example, middle road to dealing with Nazis would have been limited warfare, where peace would have been achieved trough diplomacy. However, I assume we all agree that the best course of action is an extreme, complete defeat of Nazi Germany and death of Adolf Hitler.
Sorry for ramblish and invoking Godwin's Law, but I thought it would be good example.
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I would say Artistotle's notion of virtue and ethics are antiquated, and it's best if you leave them aside. Since virtues (or morals) are not objective, taking two arbitrary values such as "courage" and "cowardice" means very little. Why do you choose "cowardice" as the opposite of "courage"? Are they opposites at all? Is courage the same for you, as it is for me? Is being cautious the same as being a coward?
"It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few."
Aristotle's golden Mean is not a fallacy, but it is ill-defined.
Courage is a virtue: not enough courage is the vice of cowardice, too much courage is the vice of fool-hardiness.
Thrift is a virtue, too much thrift is the vice of miserliness, ot enough thrift is the vice of profligacy.
If Aristotle had defined a system so we can tell which is too much and which is not enough, that wuld have been useful. All he did was compile pillars of adjectives such that the left hand column is not enough, the right hand column is too much and the middle column is just right.
Too much is a bad thing, not enough is a bad thing. Aristotle earnt his drachmae by preaching that People Sit On Chairs.
"The middle ground isn't always right" doesn't mean "the middle ground is never right", guys & gals.
edited 29th Jan '12 5:54:21 PM by RTaco
Aristotle actually has an example on courage, dividing it into two categories. He argues that nerve/recklessness (θρασύτης) is courage that does not contain any ounce of logic, therefore it is excess. The other extreme is cowardice. The middle road is bravery (ανδρεία), which is courage accompanied by logic.
However, virtue as a compromise is not the same for everyone. Aristotle stated that the middle can be deduced either objectively or subjectively. Objectively when it comes to scientifical facts for instance, and subjectively when it comes to people. A virtue is a subjective middle. He Admittedly, I do not think this always works.
It is also interesting to note that not every vice stands apart from the middle equally. Recklessness is closer to the spirit of bravery than cowardice, and it is preferable. It is easier to achieve bravery if you stand at the reckless end of the spectrum, rather than the cowardly one. However, to achieve it, personal knowledge and growth are required.
As for cheating, Aristotle has admitted there are vices with no middle ground. Adultery, murder and malevolence are among them. There is no compromise to be found here.
In the end, his thesis that virtue is a compromise was used to prove a point: that virtue is in fact, attainable with personal work and does not exist in people from birth, as the aristocracy of those times believed. That must have seemed groundbreaking at the imes.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
@HFM: The dictionary is actually a surprisingly bad source when arguing over definitions, because dictionaries only describe definitions, they don't set them. Courage being the mean between cowardice and recklessness is actually one of Aristotle's original examples.
@OP: I agree that Aristotle's moral system isn't an example of the Golden Mean Fallacy, because he specifically says that the mean between any two points is not necessarily virtuous: the mean between evil and even more evil is not good.
Rather, it's wrong because (among other reasons) he doesn't calibrate his scale very well, and often his virtues are in fact very near the extreme of one of the sides, instead of being in the middle. Take courage again; if you described a line of exactly how much danger you were willing to put yourself in, in exact units, what we describe as "courage" would probably not lie in the middle. Or even overlap it.
Aristotle is basically picking his list of virtues a priori and then telling us that they are virtuous because it's possible to overdo or underdo all of them. His theory has no descriptive power, so it's wrong without any need to call in the notion of "just because something lies between two extremes doesn't mean its good".
I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1
I'm interested in virtue ethics, because I believe strongly that even though Humans Are Flawed, we can improve ourselves to an extent if we work hard enough. Specifically, I've been reading about Aristotle's philosophy. He argues that virtues are usually in between two extremes, and it's just as bad to have too much of a virtuous trait than to not have enough of it. This is often described as being a prime example of the Golden Mean Fallacy.
Is it really a fallacy, though? Isn't compromise sometimes best? Take, for example, courage. It's certainly better to be brave than to be a coward, but being too brave would mean being reckless. In that case, isn't it best to be overall brave, but to balance out that courage with a healthy amount of caution? In the same way, it's good to be hardworking, but bad to be a workaholic and develop all sorts of physical and mental health problems as a result. It's good to be kind, but not so good to be a doormat. I don't think this is a case of "all or nothing".
For example, say you were shy, and wanted to be less so. You'd want to learn to express yourself, speak up more in social situations and develop self-confidence, not become a loudmouthed Attention Whore.
Then again, for some things, compromise really isn't a good idea. It isn't exactly virtuous to be "just faithful enough" to your significant other, and only cheat on them now and again, because infidelity is always a vice.
Long story short, I have to say I agree with Aristotle, though I think sometimes it's best to lean more towards one trait than another. (Let's say there's a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a complete jerkass and 10 being completely nice. I'd say it's best to be a 7 or 8 on the scale rather than a 5 - basically, be an overall nice person, but know when to stand up for yourself.)
What do you guys think? Do you think this is a fallacy, or do you think compromise is sometimes ideal?
What's the point in giving up when you know you'll never stop anyway?