首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
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
admin
2015-08-29
30
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 aphorism that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."
It 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". Each was asked to indicate, for each statement, where his views lay on a continuum that had "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 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, Machiavellian 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, Machiavellian misanthropes? Apparently, yes.
The best title for the passage is
选项
A、Utilitarianism as Moral Philosophy.
B、Utilitarians Are Not Nice People.
C、Utilitarian A Good Man?
D、Utilitarianism and Morality.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/rzKO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Fromsemanticpointofview,thedifferencebetween"politician"and"statesman"is______inthattheformerisderogatorywhil
ReadingontheInternet:TheLinkbetweenLiteracyandTechnologyWithaccesstotheInternetathomeandinclassrooms,Ali
ReadingontheInternet:TheLinkbetweenLiteracyandTechnologyWithaccesstotheInternetathomeandinclassrooms,Ali
HowtoReduceStressLifeisfullofthingsthatcauseusstress.Thoughwemaynotlikestress,wehavetolivewithit.I.De
HowtoReduceStressLifeisfullofthingsthatcauseusstress.Thoughwemaynotlikestress,wehavetolivewithit.I.De
HowtoReduceStressLifeisfullofthingsthatcauseusstress.Thoughwemaynotlikestress,wehavetolivewithit.I.De
随机试题
______是明确经营管理问题的症结,选定调查问题的主题。
WhatarethebeautiesofHawaii?Let’sstartwithfour.Thebeach,famousforitswatertemperature,airtemperatureandwav
A、HBsAgB、抗-HBsC、HBcAgD、抗-HBeAgE、抗-HBc病毒复制活跃的标志是()
与苯巴比妥理化通性不符的是
关于慢性肝淤血描述错误的是
某化妆品厂下设一非独立核算门市部,该厂将一批高档化妆品交门市部,计价60万元。门市部零售取得含增值税的销售收入80万元。该企业应纳消费税为()万元。(消费税税率为15%)
()工资制度属于团队工资制。(2007年11月二级真题)
一、注意事项1.申论考试是对考生阅读能力、综合分析能力、提出和解决问题能力以及文字表达能力的测试。2.仔细阅读给定资料,按照后面提出的“作答要求”作答。二、给定资料1.2011年年初,某明星在自己的微博上说,参加北京市交管局春
美国国家专利局授予发明者专利的数量,1971年为56000项,1978年降低到45000项,而用于科研与开发的国家投入,1964年达到国民生产总值的3%,1978年只有2.2%,而在此期间,在美国对科研与开发的投入不断减少的同时,联邦德国与日本在这方面的投
A、Inastationerystore.B、Inalibrary.C、Inaclassroom.D、Inapostoffice.D推理判断题。女士说:“我们有这个,或者你可能刘这些便笺吏感兴趣。”男士回答说:“我认为我更喜欢
最新回复
(
0
)