Perfect impartiality dissolves the self-attribution that makes action meaningful

Evidence

Here, though, we encounter a diffi culty: Once fully inside the view from nowhere that utilitarianism demands of us, we no longer remember why it was that we felt obliged to behave that way. Our steadfast effort to strip normative ethics of its agentrelativity leads us to a dramatic, possibly irreversible, confusion: We no longer remember why our behavior matters, because we no longer have a mechanism for ascribing that behavior peculiarly to us. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 134

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Kantian prohibitions count as agentrelative because agents reason to accept them — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 131; Believing a cause is moral converts self-censure into self-approval — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 400; Impartiality frameworks breed indifference to concrete need — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 686 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Believing a cause is moral converts self-censure into self-approval #corroborates (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 400