Exam 7: Plato Why Should We Be Good

According to Thomson, "If anyone does wish to deduce 'he has a right' from 'you ought,' 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."

Explain what Nietzsche means by a moral society.

At the beginning of the dialogue, it is argued that the origin and nature of justice is a mean or compromise. Explain why.

Mill says, "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, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs." Do you agree with Mill?

Explain what Singer means by the following two passages. (1) Singer offers a simple principle: "if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." (2) "The uncontroversial appearance of the principle just stated is deceptive. If it were acted upon, even in its qualified form, our lives, our society, and our world would be fundamentally changed."

According to Hursthouse, "the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce _____________________ is still a commonly voiced criticism of the approach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unable to provide action-guidance."

According to Wong, "The most heated debate about relativism revolves around the question of whether descriptive relativism supports ______________ relativism: that there is no single true or most justified morality."

Explain what Nietzsche means when he says, "A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood-for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle-these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as tempters."

Explain what Thomson means when she says, "A further objection to so using the term 'right' that from the fact that A ought to do a thing for B it follows that B has a right against A that A do it for him, is that it is going to make the question of whether or not a man has a right to a thing turn on how easy it is to provide him with it; and this seems not merely unfortunate, but morally unacceptable."

According to Marquis, the position he will assume in the reading is that "whether or not abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether or not a fetus is the sort of being whose existence is protected by the U.S. Constitution."

What example does Socrates give to show that the unjust do not truly profit?

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 ________, whereas the death of anyone killed to save them would have been perpetrated by men."

According to Singer, "I shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal ___________________; indeed, the whole way we look at moral issues-our moral conceptual scheme-needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society."

According to Singer, "Expert observers and supervisors, sent out by famine relief organizations or permanently stationed in famine-prone areas, can direct our aid to a refugee in Bengal almost as effectively as we could get it to someone in our own block. There would seem, therefore, to be no possible justification for discriminating on geographical grounds." Do you agree with Singer?

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 _____________ outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body."

Explain in detail what Aristotle means by passions, faculties, and states of character. Do you agree with Aristotle's distinctions? Explain your answer.

According to Kant, "The notion of will is in itself already the notion of a constraint of the free elective will by the law; whether this constraint be an external one or be self-constraint."

According to Hursthouse, "Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty years, it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the area of metaphysics."

Explain what Nietzsche means by a pre-moral society.

According to Kant, "as man is a free (moral) being, the notion of duty can contain only self-constraint (by the idea of the law itself), when we look to the internal determination of the will (the spring), for thus only is it possible to combine that constraint (even if it were external) with the freedom of the elective will. The notion of duty then must be an ..."