功利主义
最新书摘：
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/nuː s/2022-08-24在此，有一种特殊的情况非常重要。针对这种批评意见，功利主义众所周知的论证是，我们同意每一件事物都是不完美的：只能大致地发现偏好并使之聚合，假定现实与当下的偏好是唯一相关的偏好，给予我们在理论上能够最佳处理的那些偏好以强烈的关注，并将不可替代的物品视为可替代的，等等。尽管如此，有半个面包比没有面包要好，做我们力所能及的，要比陷入难以估量的直觉与无条理的决策之中要好。上述论证存在一种错觉。因为，要将功利主义的方法适用于至少看来是对其进行回应的事物上，不只是要在某些领域提供一种帮助，而个人在其中完全无法予以提供。至少通常来说，它是要为这些事物带来声誉，在决策中赋予其显得不当的重大作用，并将那些对相同方法并不做出回应的事物远远抛开。与自然科学中相似，在那些存在对其进行回答的试验技术的领域，科学问题会被提出来，因此，在颇不相同的政治与社会决策的事务上，重心就放在那些受到尊重的知识技术看来能够解决（或至少是承诺要解决）的考虑因素之上。将这视为是半个面包的事情，不仅要预先假定，将这些技术选择性地适用到特定情境中的某些因素，本身不会偏袒结果，而且要预先假定，从长远来看，考量更为宽泛的因素将必然属于同样的问题;而前述两种假定经常都是错误的。
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akrasia2016-11-14“…the reason why utilitarianism cannot understand integrity is that it cannot coherently describe the relations between a man’s projects and his actions” (UFA: 100).
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akrasia2016-11-14“He is the agent of the satisfaction system who happens to be at a particular point at a particular time…His own decisions as a utilitarian agent are a function of all the satisfaction which he can affect from where he is: and this means that the projects of others, to an indeterminately great extent, determine his decision” (UFA: 115).
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akrasia2016-11-14“if I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for things that I allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the more everyday restricted sense, bring about” (UFA: 95).
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akrasia2016-11-14“Consequentialism is basically indifferent to whether a state of affairs consists in what I do, or is produced by what I do, where the notion is itself wide enough to include, for instance, situations in which other people do things which I have made them to do, or allowed them to do, or encouraged them to do, or given them a chance to do. All that consequentialism is interested in is the idea of these doings being consequences of what I do, and that is a relation broad enough to include the relations just mentioned, and many others” (UFA: 93-94).
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akrasia2016-11-14“It is because consequentialism attaches value ultimately to states of affairs, and its concern is with what states of affairs the world contains, that it essentially involves the notion of negative responsibility” (UFA: 95).
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akrasia2016-11-14“the only kind of thing that has intrinsic value is states of affairs, and that anything else that has value has it only because it conduces to some intrinsically value states of affairs” (UFA: 83).