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  3. In the grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came

In the grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came

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问题     In the grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with the ethical theory known as utilitarianism . The goal of this theory is encapsulated in Bentham’s famous saying that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. "
    Which all sounds fine and dandy until you start applying it to particular cases. A utilitarian, for example, might approve of the occasional torture of suspected terrorists—for the greater happiness of everyone else, you understand. That type of observation has led Daniel Bartels at Columbia University and David Pizarro at Cornell to ask what sort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Their answers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.
    One of the classic techniques used to measure a person’s willingness to behave in a utilitarian way is known as trolleyology. The subject of the study is challenged with thought experiments involving a runaway railway trolley or train carriage. All involve choices, each of which leads to people’ s deaths. For example: there are five railway workmen in the path of a runaway carriage. The men will surely be killed unless the 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 a big, heavy stranger. The subject is informed that his own body would be too light to stop the train, but that if he pushes the stranger onto the tracks, the stranger’s large body will stop the train and save the five lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the stranger.
    Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro knew from previous research that around 90% of people refuse the utilitarian act of killing one individual to save five. What no one had previously inquired about, though, was the nature of the remaining 10%.
    To find out, the two researchers gave 208 undergraduates a battery of trolleyological tests and measured, on a four-point scale, how utilitarian their responses were. Participants were also asked to respond to a series of statements intended to get a sense of their individual psychologies. These statements included, "I like to see fist fights" , "The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear", and "When you really think about it, life is not worth the effort of getting up in the morning". These statements, and others like them, were designed to measure, respectively, psychopathy , and a person’ s sense of how meaningful life is.
    Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro then correlated the results from the trolleyology with those from the personality tests. They found a strong link between utilitarian answers to moral dilemmas (push the fat guy off the bridge) and personalities that were psychopathic, or tended to view life as meaningless. Utilitarians, this suggests, may add to the sum of human happiness, but they are not very happy people themselves.
    That does not make utilitarianism wrong. Crafting legislation—one of the main things that Bentham and Mill wanted to improve—inevitably involves riding roughshod over someone ’ s interests. Utilitarianism provides a plausible framework for deciding who should get trampled. The results obtained by Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro do, though, raise questions about the type of people who you want making the laws. Psychopathic misanthropes ? Apparently, yes.
Which of the following statements about utilitarianism may be agreed with by the author of this article?
选项 A、Utilitarianism is a logically and morally unsound philosophical perspective that should be completely discarded.
B、Utilitarianism provides a plausible framework for balancing the interests of different groups.
C、Utilitarianism adds up to the happiness of the majority while helps little in increasing personal happiness.
D、Utilitarians are not suitable for making laws because of their flawed personality.
答案B
解析 本题考查本文作者对于功利主义的看法。作者的观点散见于文中各处，但是在文章最后两段比较集中。见倒数第二段最后一句话“Utilitarians…may add to the sum of human happiness，but they are not very happy people themselves”和最后一段的“That does not make utilitarianism wrong．Crafting legislation—one of the main things that Bentham and Mill wanted to improve—inevitably involves riding roughshod over someone’s interests．Utilitarianism provides a plausible framework for deciding who should get trampled”。通过这些语句我们可以判断出，作者对功利主义基本还是持肯定意见的，认为它能够从总体上提升人们的幸福，而且为立法提供了一套准则和依据。因此，首先排除[A]。[C]具有一定的迷惑性，利用倒数第二段最后一句话设置干扰。[D]错误，文章的实验表明了功利主义信仰和精神疾病之间有关联，而制定法律的人往往就会持功利主义观点，但作者并没有进一步认为功利主义者不适合从事法律制定工作。
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