ABSTRACT

When we face a choice between two incompatible actions, is there a universal priority? The early Confucians used the notion of quan 權 to navigate conflicts. On the one hand, quan can be a mean of weighing or assessing. Through quan, agents should be able to recognize the most valuable action and arrive at a universal priority. Thus, quan entails impersonal reasoning. On the other hand, quan means balancing, and its aim is to seek the most appropriate response. What is appropriate depends on each individual’s personal factors. Thus, quan implies personal reasoning. I argue that quan represents a holistic thinking process that includes both impersonal and personal reasoning. But agents cannot engage in these two types of reasoning simultaneously. By reverse engineering how exemplars would implement quan, I show that these two types of reasoning are primarily used in different kinds of value conflicts.

摘要

当我们面临两个不相容的行动之间的选择时，是否存在普遍的优先顺序？早期儒家利用权权的概念来解决冲突。一方面，拳可以作为衡量或评估的手段。通过quan，智能体应该能够识别最有价值的行动并得出普遍的优先级。因此，“拳”意味着客观的推理。另一方面，“拳”的意思是平衡，其目的是寻求最恰当的回应。什么合适取决于每个人的个人因素。因此，“权”意味着个人推理。我认为泉代表了一个整体的思维过程，包括非个人推理和个人推理。但代理人不能同时进行这两种类型的推理。通过对范例如何实现“权”进行逆向工程，我表明这两种类型的推理主要用于不同类型的价值冲突。