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
2015-06-14
32
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.
Psychopathic or Machiavellian people are expected to make the laws probably because
选项
A、common people are tired of the current policy-makers.
B、policy-making will be based on utilitarianism.
C、they are good at making laws and policies.
D、they are likely to bring up brand-new policies.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/tAOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
大自然对人的恩赐,无论贫富,一律平等。所以人们对于大自然,全都一致并深深地依赖着。尤其在乡间,上千年来人们一直以不变的方式生活着。种植庄稼和葡萄,酿酒和饮酒,喂牛和挤奶,锄草和栽花;在周末去教堂祈祷和做礼拜,在节日到广场拉琴、跳舞和唱歌;往日的田园依旧是今
Cultureshockisapainfulexperiencewegothroughwhenweencountermanynewthingsinanothercountryandwe【1】______insom
TheProblemsofTakingEnglishCoursesThroughEnglishWhenstudentstakecoursesthroughthemediumofEnglish,theyhaveto
Vibrationsinthegroundareapoorlyunderstoodbutprobablywidespreadmeansofcommunicationbetweenanimals.Itseemsun
TheofficiallanguagesofNewZealandareEnglishand
Nowomancanbetoorichortoothin.ThissayingoftenattributedwiththelateDuchessofWindsorembodiesmuchofthe【M1】____
TheSeattleTimesCompanyisonenewspaperfirmthathasrecognizedtheneedforchangeanddonesomethingaboutit.Inthene
ThebattleforTripoli______.
______,whohelpedspearheadingthenewschoolofpoetryknownasImagism,isoneofthemostinfluentialAmericanpoetsofthe
人和动物的区别,除了众所周知的诸多方面,恐怕还在于人有内心世界。(2008年真题)
随机试题
假定一个循环队列的队头和队尾指针分别为P和q,则判断队空的条件为_________。
A、大黄酸B、大黄素C、芦荟大黄素D、大黄酚E、大黄素葡萄糖苷易溶于热水的是
氧瓶燃烧可用于
地下水环境影响评价工作中,当I类建设项目位于基岩地区时,一级评价以同一地下水文地质单元为调查评价范围,二级评价原则上以同一地下水水文地质单元或()为调查评价范围。
海因里希将事故连锁过程分为()。
采用封闭式运作方式的基金具有如下特征()。
手表定律:指一个人拥有两只走时不一致的手表时反而会失去判定准确时间的信心,用以比喻同时面对几种不同的工作目标或价值观念等时,人的工作和生活可能会陷入混乱。下列不属于手表定律的是()。
文本框Text1的KeyDown事件过程如下:PrivateSubText1_KeyDown(KeyCodeAsInteger,ShiftAsInteger) ...EndSub其中参数KeyCode的值表示的是发生此事件时(
A、96dollars.B、36dollars.C、60dollars.D、48dollars.C
Asubjectwhichseemstohavebeeninsufficientlystudiedbydoctorsandpsychologistsistheinfluenceofgeographyandclimate
最新回复
(
0
)