RELATIVISM OF ABSOLUTE JUDGMENTS
RELATIVISM OF ABSOLUTE JUDGMENTS
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DOI：
10.1038/scientificamerican1268-84
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发表时间：
1968-01-01
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
PARDUCCI, A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
PARDUCCI, A
马克·吐温在晚年的悲观情绪中嘲笑人类对幸福的追求。“每个人，”他写道，“都是痛苦机器和幸福机器的结合。这两个功能和谐地一起工作，具有精细和微妙的精度，在给予和接受的原则。对于一个部门的每一个幸福，另一个部门随时准备用悲伤或痛苦来修改它。马克·吐温对生活的悲观评价是幸福和悲伤的平衡，这可能与判断的一般相对主义相一致。我们很清楚，幸福在某种意义上是相对的;例如，我们取得的成就越多，我们就越难取悦。事实上，这一原则经常被用来解释为什么美国黑人在十年的经济和社会进步中越来越不满，在这十年中，不断上升的期望远远超过了所取得的任何进步。我们认识到，诸如”公平”和”不公平"、”好”和”坏"、”大”和”小”之类的判断反映了一种相对主义，这种相对主义掩盖了它们的绝对语法形式。然而，这种相对主义的普遍性可能比人们通常认为的要大得多。考虑一个道德判断的“测试”，这个测试是给一个有700名大学本科生的演讲班的。每个学生都被要求根据自己的”个人价值观“来评价不同行为的道德价值。他的任务是将每一个行为分为五类：“我-不是特别坏或错误"，”2-不受欢迎，一个好人不会这样做"，”3-错误，非常可疑"，”4-严重错误”和”5-非常邪恶“。“一半的学生得到了一份主要由相对温和的不法行为组成的清单;另一半则得到了一份更严重的清单。
In the pessimistic mood of his later years Mark Twain mocked man's search for happiness." Every man," he wrote," is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every hap piness turned out in the one department, the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or pain...." Mark Twain's gloomy assessment of life as a balance of happiness and sorrow may be consistent with a more general relativism of judgment. We are well aware that happiness is in some sense relative; for example, the more we achieve, the harder we are to please. In deed, this principle is regularly invoked to explain why black Americans have be come increasingly resentful during a dec ade of economic and social progress, a decade in which rising expectations have far outstripped whatever progress has been made. We recognize that judg ments such as" fair" and" unfair,"" good" and" bad,"" large" and" small" reflect a relativism that belies their absolute grammatical form. The pervasiveness of this relativism, however, may be much greater than is commonly believed. Consider a" test" of moral judgment that was given to a lecture class of sev eral hundred college undergraduates. Each student was asked to rate the moral value of different acts of behavior in terms of his" own personal set of values." His task was to assign each act to one of five categories:" I-not particularly bad or wrong,"" 2-undesirable, a good person would not do this,"" 3-wrong, highly questionable,"" 4-seriously wrong" and" 5-extremely evil." Half of the students were given a list made up mainly of relatively mild acts of wrongdoing; the other half got a nastier