Making Good Decisions: Theory, Reflection, and Practice in Ethics

做出好的决定：建议研究总结什么是好的决定？直觉上，这是一个非常明显的问题。它的实际重要性是显而易见的。我们需要知道如何在政治、医药、商业、职业选择、是否参战、环境、削减或增加支出、与谁结婚(如果有人结婚)、如何过个人生活以及其他各种方式上做出正确的决定。因此，如果有一个简单的答案来回答这个问题：什么才是一个好的决定？我们需要听到它。如果这个问题没有一个简单的答案--无论是因为不同领域有不同的简单答案，还是因为没有简单的答案--我们也需要听到这个答案。这个问题也是伦理学家可能会关注的问题。伦理学是一门实践性的研究，在人类行动中有着广泛的应用。有人可能会反问：如果哲学伦理学不能告诉我们如何做出好的决定，它能告诉我们什么？这样的探索者可能会惊讶于大多数学术伦理学对‘什么能做出好的决定？’这个问题的边缘化。伦理学家并不是对此无话可说；但他们通常不会关注这一点。这似乎是一个错失的机会，在我提出的研究中，我的目标是纠正这一点。我建议采取‘什么才是一个好的决定？’作为我的焦点问题。这样做是从一个不同寻常的角度来看待伦理学，我相信这是一个具有启发性的角度，这不仅会引起专业哲学家的兴趣，而且会引起医疗、商业、环境和政治背景下的决策者的兴趣。当我们思考“什么才是一个好的决定？”这个问题时，我们发现自己面临着两个截然相反的选择。一是系统地看待伦理：认为好的决策对生活是如此重要，以至于必须有一个做出好的决定的公式，否则我们将在生活中完全迷失。另一种是反系统的伦理学观点：认为不可能有一个公式来做出好的决定，因为生活太复杂了，环境太多样化了。因此，试图找到一个是浪费时间。在我的书中，我将探索这两种可能性。我自己的方法是对伦理学采取一种反系统的观点，我将在从柏拉图、亚里士多德、耶稣、康德和密尔到现在的历史考察的基础上发展这一观点。我的总体论点的结论是，我们不能指望任何简单的公式来告诉我们如何以任何方式做出好的决定，希望这些决定具有相当普遍的适用性。特别是，我们不能指望现代数字系统(如决策理论)或系统道德理论(如功利主义、康德主义和(某些形式的)美德伦理学)试图提供给我们的那种简单公式。这一结果在柏拉图的《理想国》中被预见得非常清楚。就是这样，要回答这样一个问题：什么才是一个好的决定？足够的话，我们需要走一条令人惊讶的长路--事实上，一直走到一个内部转型理论。与其寻找一条简单的、万能的规则来管理我们的决策，我们需要看着我们自己，特别是看我们自己做出良好判断的能力。因为，即使有一条简单的、万能的规则可以做出好的决定--没有一条，看起来也不太可能--它的应用仍将取决于对如何以及何时和在哪里应用它的良好判断。在倒退的痛苦中，这种良好的判断本身不能由任何规则来教导。正如亚里士多德和柏拉图强调的那样--以不同的方式，通过新约的伦理--它只需要从正确的道德教育中内化，对任何真正有价值的东西进行正确的反思和深思熟虑的参与。

Making Good Decisions: Summary of Proposed ResearchWhat makes a good decision? Intuitively this is a very obvious question. And its practical importance is obvious. We need to know how to make good decisions in politics, in medicine, in business, in career choice, about whether to go to war or not, about the environment, about where to cut or increase spending, about whom to marry (if anyone) and how else to live our personal lives, and in all sorts of other ways too. So if there is a simple answer to the question 'What makes a good decision?', we need to hear it. And if there isn't a simple answer to the question-either because there are different simple answers for different areas, or because there is no simple answer-we need to hear that too. The question is also one that ethicists might be expected to focus on. Ethics is a practical study, with wide-ranging applications in human action. 'If philosophical ethics can't tell us how to make good decisions,' someone might rhetorically inquire, 'what can it tell us?'Such an inquirer might be surprised by the marginality in most academic ethics of the question 'What makes a good decision?'. Not that ethicists have nothing to say about it; but they don't usually focus on it. This seems a missed opportunity, and in the research proposed I aim to put this right. I propose to take 'What makes a good decision?' as my focal question. To do so is to look at ethics from an unusual angle, and I believe a revealing one, which can be of interest not only to professional philosophers but also to decision-makers in, e.g., medical, business, environmental, and political contexts. When we think about the question 'What makes a good decision?', we find ourselves facing two opposite alternatives. One is to take a systematic view of ethics: to think that good decision-making is so central to life that there simply has to be a formula for making good decisions, otherwise we will be completely lost in life. The other is to take an anti-systematic view of ethics: to think that there cannot possibly be a formula for making good decisions, because life is too complicated and circumstances are too various. So, it is a waste of time to try and find one. In my book I shall explore both possibilities. My own approach is to take an anti-systematic view of ethics, which I shall develop on the basis of a historical survey running from Plato, via Aristotle, Jesus, Kant, and Mill, to the present day. The upshot of my overall argument will be that we can't expect any simple formula to tell us how to make good decisions in any way which can hope to be quite generally applicable. In particular, we can't expect the kind of simple formulas that modern numerical systems like 'decision theory', or systematic moral theories like utilitarianism, Kantianism, and (some forms of) virtue ethics, try to offer us. The result is one foreseen very clearly in Plato's Republic. It is that, to answer the question 'What makes a good decision?' adequately, we need to go a surprisingly long way round-all the way round to a theory of internal transformation, in fact. Instead of looking for a simple all-purpose rule to govern our decision-making, we need to look to ourselves, and in particular to our own capacity for good judgement. For even if a simple all-purpose rule for making good decisions were available-and none is, nor ever looks likely to be-its application would still depend on good judgement about how and when and where to apply it. This good judgement cannot itself, on pain of regress, be taught by any rule. As stressed by Aristotle and Plato-and in a different way, by the ethics of the New Testament-it simply has to be internalised from the right sort of moral education, the right sort of reflection on and contemplative engagement with whatever is truly of value.