1 What does Singer claim the affluent should do with respect to starvation and world poverty Explain do not merely state his argument for this claim How does Singer respond to the demandingness objection Singer says that the affluent should help those starving and in poverty Singer s argument 1 Death from lack of food shelter and medical care is bad 2 If we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance this just means basically that if we can avoid these things without causing anything else comparably bad to happen or without doing something that is wrong in itself or failing to promote some moral good comparable in significance to the bad thing we can prevent then we ought morally to do it 3 We ought to prevent death from lack of food shelter and medical care If we see a child drowning in a pond and nothing would happen to us if we went in to save it other than out pants getting wet then we ought to save him The premise number 2 makes no mention of proximity or distance we ought to prevent these very bad things even if they are a great distance away However ignorance of the poverty in the world does grant you the grounds to discriminate and also the difficulty to help others far away This is longer true though thanks to mass media and modern transportation Singer s response to the demandingness objection that if everyone donated a small amount of money then famine would be alleviated but you shouldn t have to donate more than anyone else This argument may be sound but it is conditional meaning that some everyone would need to give money for this no still exist Another Singer demanded we ought to be true We know that not everyone will give but our obligations Singer says that acts that go beyond the call of duty are obligatory argument what Singer is asking of the affluent is too demanding replied that our normal behavior falls far short of what is morally and that our daily moral practices are unjustified we don t do what to do 2 Explain the difference between positive and negative rights Which sort of rights does Arthur claim natural rights are What significance does this have for our obligations to help others Positive rights rights to receive certain things require contracts promises or agreements Negative rights rights not to be interfered with in certain ways Natural rights rights one has just in virtue because you are the certain being that you are the rights to vote etc Natural rights are only negative rights Our obligations to help others does not come from their rights because then these rights would be positive requiring an agreement Rights need to be weighed up along with equality in determining what we ought to do 3 Distinguish beneficence from benevolence Do we have a right to either according to Ross Beneficence doing good for others with a motive in mind Benevolence doing good from the goodness of your heart According to Ross we have a right to beneficence It is less strange to say that people have a right to do good with a motive in mind rather than people have a right to do good out of the goodness of their hearts 4 Explain the principle of equality According to Singer which sorts of beings does the principle apply to How does Singer defend this claim Equality according to Peter Singer is that we ought to give everyone equal consideration and it should make no difference if everyone is equal with respect to ability or capacity But if differences between races and sexes shouldn t matter why should differences between species Singer compares discriminating against animals to discriminating against women Just because one being can reason and speak and the other can t doesn t give the right that they should be considered differently Because both beings have interest equality demands they both be considered as with any being of interest You can t pick and choose which beings of interest should be considered In order for a being to have interest the capacity for suffering enjoying is necessary and any being with interests must have these interests considered To clarify Singer states that if humans were being experimented on it would cause fear and dread However if animals were being experimented on it would not Humans would understand what was going to happen whereas animals would not Therefore experimenting on humans is worse than experimenting on animals because it causes more suffering but that is not to say that experimenting on animals is acceptable 5 According to Machan what sort of being has rights What is his argument for this claim How does Machan argue that beings with rights are more valuable than beings without rights Machan says that only humans have rights This is so because people are moral agents and rights secure a moral sphere Moral spheres a place where one can exercise his or her free will without the interference of others People may make free decisions for which they are responsible If there were no sphere people would neither be free nor responsible and so moral agency would be impractical Animals says Machan are not moral agents and need no rights to secure their freedom and responsibility which they don t have anyway Some humans aren t moral agents such as infants and the severely mentally retarded There is a hierarchy of value that Machan brings up Animals are more important than and stones or other inanimate things because they are agents and are subject to evaluation But humans are moral agents while animals are not and are subject to moral evaluation So humans are more important than animals 6 According to Ross do animals have rights Why does he give the answer he does Why does he express doubt about his answer Do we have obligations to animals Why or why not Ross says that animals don t have rights because they simply cannot claim them We do have obligations to animals however Ross gives an example of a historic house If we have such duties to artifacts it is because the interest other people take in the house so if someone destroyed it it would deny others the opportunity to see or use it Our obligations to animals are similar Animal pain is bad and we have an obligation not to produce things that are bad It seems that our obligations to animals are not founded on the interests of other people but because of consideration for the animal 7 Explain the reasons Pojman gives for the claim that we ought to use the death penalty Explain the Best Bet argument How does Pojman respond to
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