It is often said that consequentialism violates the separateness of persons. But what does this mean? Existing interpretations are often unclear, or let consequentialism off easy: because they target amendable parts of the consequentialist framework, they can be sidestepped by more subtle versions of the theory. Consequentialism's opponents, however, might hope for a stronger interpretation––one which suggests that the separateness of persons objection presses a distinct and powerful charge against consequentialist theory. This paper proposes such an interpretation. It starts from the fact that, unlike other moral theories, consequentialism determines how to act by looking at features such as states of affairs or outcomes. Yet, crucially, states of affairs or outcomes often make reference to, or extend across, more than one person. Thus, they implicitly and necessarily group together different individuals. In the proposal of this paper, it is this part of consequentialism which violates the separateness of persons.

中文翻译：

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后果主义和人的分离性


人们常说，结果论违反了人的分离性。但这是什么意思呢？现有的解释往往不清楚，或者让结果论轻易脱离：因为它们针对的是结果论框架的可修正部分，所以它们可以被更微妙的理论版本所回避。然而，结果论的反对者可能希望有一个更强的解释——一个表明人格的独立性反对对结果主义理论提出了独特而有力的指控。本文提出了这样的解释。它始于这样一个事实，即与其他道德理论不同，结果论通过观察事态或结果等特征来确定如何行动。然而，至关重要的是，事态或结果往往涉及或不止一个人。因此，他们隐含地、必然地将不同的个体归为一组。在本文的提议中，正是结果论的这一部分违反了人的分离性。