Exam 7: Plato Why Should We Be Good

Explain what Hume means when he says, "It is impossible there can be a progress in infinitum; and that one thing can always be a reason why another is desired. Something must be desirable on its own account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment and affection."

According to Nietzsche, ___________________ is one in which the value of an act is determined by its consequences.

According to Mill, "Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool."

According to Huxley, "This observance of a common understanding, with the consequent distribution of punishments and rewards according to accepted rules, received the name of __________, while the contrary was called __________."

In the reading, we find this argument: "All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body."

According to Hanley, "Another God-given candidate for the missing ingredient might be the soul. It might then be supposed that clones will be something less than fully-fledged persons. This is a very serious error, and if many are tempted to make it, we are in much more trouble than Dolly can bring us."

According to Singer, "The issue here is: Where should we draw the line between conduct that is required and conduct that is good although not required, so as to get the best possible result? This would seem to be an empirical question, although a very difficult one."

According to Mill, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

According to Nietzsche, "At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the timelessness of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon."

According to Marquis, "The view that what makes killing wrong is the loss to the victim of the value of the victim's future gains additional support when some of its implications are examined."

According to Aristotle, virtues and vices are ...

Harris says, "Another plausible objection is the natural reluctance to play God with men's lives, the feeling that it is wrong to make any attempt to re-allot the life opportunities that fate has determined, that the deaths of Y and Z would be natural, whereas the death of anyone killed to save them would have been perpetrated by men."

According to the received nature, or common view of justice (not Socrates's view), the perfectly and completely unjust person is the happiest and is perceived to be just.

According to Hursthouse, one concept of virtue ethics concerns happiness or flourishing; this is referred to as arête.

According to Thomson, "Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called 'slippery slope arguments'; the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory, and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically."

According to Kant, "There is in fact no other determination of the ______________, except that to an end, which in the very notion of it implies that I cannot even physically be forced to it by the elective will of others."

According to Singer, "Should I consider that I am less obliged to pull the drowning child out of the pond if on looking around I see other people, no further away than I am, who have also noticed the child but are doing nothing? One has only to ask this question to see the absurdity of the view that ..."

Mill says that his position has critics, "who say that happiness, in any form, cannot be the _______________ of human life and action; because, in the first place, it is unattainable."

According to Thomson, "If anyone does wish to deduce 'he has a right' from ___________, then all the same he must surely grant that there are cases in which it is not morally required of you that you allow that violinist to use your kidneys, and in which he does not have a right to use them, and in which you do not do him an injustice if you refuse."

According to Hursthouse, one concept of virtue ethics concerns practical or moral wisdom; this is referred to as ...