考研阅读精选：与美德无关的功利主义
『功利主义者并非好人。』Goodness has nothing to do with it
与美德无关的功利主义
Sep 24, 2011 | From The Economist
http://images.koolearn.com/casupload/upload/fckeditorUpload/2011-10-25/image/ec1b0ec37720403ab312ed52e80e4ccb.JPG
IN THE grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill arenormally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with theethical theory known as utilitarianism. The goal of this theory isencapsulated in Bentham’s aphorism that “the greatest happiness of thegreatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
Which all sounds fine and dandy until you start applying it toparticular cases. A utilitarian, for example, might approve of theoccasional torture of suspected terrorists—for the greater happiness ofeveryone else, you understand. That type of observation has led DanielBartels at Columbia University and David Pizarro at Cornell to ask whatsort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Theiranswers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.
One of the classic techniques used to measure a person’s willingness tobehave in a utilitarian way is known as trolleyology. The subject of thestudy is challenged with thought experiments involving a runawayrailway trolley or train carriage. All involve choices, each of whichleads to people’s deaths. For example: there are five railway workmen inthe path of a runaway carriage. The men will surely be killed unlessthe subject of the experiment, a bystander in the story, does something.The subject is told he is on a bridge over the tracks. Next to him is abig, heavy stranger. The subject is informed that his own body would betoo light to stop the train, but that if he pushes the stranger ontothe tracks, the stranger’s large body will stop the train and save thefive lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the stranger.
DrBartels and Dr Pizarro knew from previous research that around 90% ofpeople refuse the utilitarian act of killing one individual to savefive. What no one had previously inquired about, though, was the natureof the remaining 10%.
To find out, the two researchers gave208 undergraduates a battery of trolleyological tests and measured, on afour-point scale, how utilitarian their responses were. Participantswere also asked to respond to a series of statements intended to get asense of their individual psychologies. These statements included, “Ilike to see fist fights”, “The best way to handle people is to tell themwhat they want to hear”, and “When you really think about it, life isnot worth the effort of getting up in the morning”.
Each was askedto indicate, for each statement, where his views lay on a continuum thathad “strongly agree” at one end and “strongly disagree” at the other.These statements, and others like them, were designed to measure,respectively, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and a person’s sense of howmeaningful life is.
Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro then correlatedthe results from the trolleyology with those from the personalitytests. They found a strong link between utilitarian answers to moraldilemmas (push the fat guy off the bridge) and personalities that werepsychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless.Utilitarians, this suggests, may add to the sum of human happiness, butthey are not very happy people themselves.
That does not makeutilitarianism wrong. Crafting legislation—one of the main things thatBentham and Mill wanted to improve—inevitably involves riding roughshodover someone’s interests. Utilitarianism provides a plausible frameworkfor deciding who should get trampled. The results obtained by Dr Bartelsand Dr Pizarro do, though, raise questions about the type of people whoyou want making the laws. Psychopathic, Machiavellian misanthropes?Apparently, yes. (591 words)
文章地址：http://www.economist.com/node/21530078
页:
[1]