Utilitarian optimization erodes the sense of agency needed for ethical commitment

Evidence

Under such a conception, it is hard to imagine why individuals would maintain suffi cient investment in the exercise of their agency to continue the quest for ethical behavior at all. Indeed, after refl exively following the mandate of optimality long enough, they might simply wake one day to report to themselves, “Jeez, I’ve become a killer”— and not have an account of why. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 123

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Functional task separation replaces moral responsibility with technical responsibility — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 293; Continuous responsibility shifting across a hierarchy creates free-floating responsibility that incapacitates moral authority — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 463; Mediated distance between actions and outcomes erodes moral culpability — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 475

Broader Connections

• Functional task separation replaces moral responsibility with technical responsibility #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 293
• Continuous responsibility shifting across a hierarchy creates free-floating responsibility that incapacitates moral authority #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 463
• Mediated distance between actions and outcomes erodes moral culpability #corroborates (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 475