【案例】
Moral philosophy
道德哲学
Goodness has nothing to do with it
功利主义与善良无关
Utilitarians are not nice people
功利主义者都不是好人
Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition
A good man?
一个好人？
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.”
大体上，杰里米•边沁（英国哲学家）和约翰•斯徒亚特•穆勒（英国哲学家）通常都会被认为是好人。两人都提出了被称为功利主义的道德理论。边沁的名言——“最大多数人的最大幸福是道德和立法的基础”——概括了这个理论的宗旨。
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.
此话听似十全十美，但实际应用中却并非如此。例如，你知道，一个功利主义者可能会为了其他人更大的福祉而赞成严刑拷问嫌疑恐怖分子。通过观察这种现象，哥伦比亚大学的丹尼尔•巴特尔和康奈尔大学的大卫•皮萨罗提出了一个问题：什么样的人会有功利主义的人生观？他们的回答刚刚发表在《认知》杂志上，但这些回答令人难以释怀。
One of the classic techniques used to measure a person’s willingness to behave in a utilitarian way is known as trolleyology.
估量一个人在多大程度上愿意以功利主义方式行事的经典方法之一是电车难题。
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.
这项研究的被试会进行一些思维实验，实验内容涉及失控的轨道电车或列车车厢。所有实验都要求被试作出选择，而且每个选择都会导致人员的死亡。例如：有五个铁路工人在轨道上，一节失控的火车车厢正朝他们驶来。除非实验对象，即情景的旁观者采取适当措施，否则这些工人必死无疑。被试被告知他身处一座铁路上方的桥上，身边有一个又高大又重的陌生人；还被告知他自身体重太轻，无法使火车停下来，但如果他将陌生人推下轨道，此人庞大的身躯就能阻止火车前进，从而拯救五人的性命。不幸的是，这种方法会置这个陌生人于死地。
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%.
巴特尔博士与皮萨罗博士从之前的研究中了解到，约有90%的人拒绝作出这种杀一救五的功利行为。然而，有一个问题未曾被人提出过，那就是：剩下那10%的人究竟本性如何？
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.
为了解开疑团，两位研究者给208位大学生进行了一系列电车难题测试，并用四点评分制来评价其反应的功利程度。同时，被试也被要求对一系列意图获取他们的个体心理状况的语句作出回应。这些语句包括：“我喜欢看拳斗”，“处理人际关系的最佳方式就是说对方想听的话”，和“你真正仔细地想想，其实人生没什么意义，根本不值得你早上费劲起床”。每位被试被要求指出他对每个语句的认同程度，描述范围为从“非常同意”到“强烈反对”。以上及诸如此类的语句是专门设计来分别估量一个人的精神有多变态、对马基雅维利主义有多信奉以及认为人生有多大意义。
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.
然后，巴特尔博士与皮萨罗博士将电车难题测试的结果与性格测试的结果联系了起来。他们发现，对道德困境作出功利主义选择（将那个胖子推到桥下）与精神变态、信奉马基雅维利主义或倾向认为人生毫无意义的人格有密切关联。这表明，功利主义者可能会增加人类的总体幸福感，但他们本身却并非十分幸福的人。
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.
但这并不说明功利主义是错误的。精心制定法律——边沁和穆勒希望完善的主要事情之一——无可避免会牺牲一部分人的利益。功利主义提供了一个看似合理的框架来决定应该牺牲谁的利益。但是，巴特尔博士和皮萨罗博士的研究结果却提除了一个问题：你希望由什么类型的人来制定法律？是精神变态、马基雅维利式的厌世者吗？很显然，答案是肯定的。
http://www.ecocn.org/thread-58577-1-1.html
notes
JB&JSM good，ethi the- utili
A utilit，tort，for greater hap——DB at CU&DP at Cor ask:sort utilit outlook
ans not comf
trolley,clas,mea will
thought exper:runaway troll,choices,death
5 work,do nothing,kill/push strang,save
pre res,90% refus,10% nature?
208 gradu,troll test,meas,4-p
respo statem,psycho,Machiave,mean life
DB DP,corel,strong link
utili,add hap,not hap
not wro,craf legis inev intres
utili plas fram deci
who make law?psy,Machi?Y
words
1, in the grand scheme of things
在大背景下
2, encapsulate [in'kæpsəleit]
vt. 压缩；将…装入胶囊；将…封进内部
vi. 形成胶囊
3, aphorism ['æfərizəm]
n. 格言；警句
4, outlook on life
人生观
5, runaway ['rʌnə,wei]
adj. 失控的、脱缰的
6, a battery of
一连串的
7, individual psychology
n. [心理] 个体心理学 /个体心理状态
8, continuum [kən'tinjuəm]
n. [数] 连续统；[经] 连续统一体；闭联集
9, psychopathy [psai'kɔpəθi]
n. 精神变态，精神病
10, Machiavellianism [,mæki:ə'veli:ə,nizəm]
n. 马基雅维里主义（等于machiavellism）；权术主义
11, craft [krɑ:ft, kræft]
n. 工艺；手艺；太空船
vt. 精巧地制作
12, ride roughshod over
欺凌
13, misanthropes ['mizənθrəup, 'mis-]
n. 不愿与人来往者；厌恶人类的人
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