Ethical Issues and Life Choices Test Study Guide for Test 1 A Explain the following You will be asked to explain three different concepts ideas Please explain these clearly and coherently use examples where appropriate Not all of the concepts below will appear on the test but you will have some choice with regards to what concepts you will explain Each of these three answers will be weighted at 20 of your total grade 3 4 1 The fallacy of common practice Many people may be doing something but that does not make it right Example many people accept creationism so it must be right This occurs when you justify a course of action on the basis of the fact that most people do this action the action is common For example someone might say that eating meat is justified because most people eat meat It is a fallacy because the mere fact that most people do something does not make it the right course of action 2 The slippery slope fallacy Disagree by adding an extreme effect to that cause Extreme scenario Example if we legalize marijuana we will legalize cocaine This occurs when someone asserts that a certain event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the relevant event For instance someone might claim that once we legalize marijuana we will have to legalize heroin as well without supporting further why we would have to do that Deriving an ought from an is fallacy to how things should be Example tony is tall so he ought to be a basketball player Saying how things are and changing them Maximizing happiness and welfare the rightness or Act Utilitarianism wrongness of actions depends entirely on how they affect human welfare or happiness Conjunction of o Consequentialism An action is right just in case it has the best o Hedonism Pleasure is the only thing that is valuable o Universalism the consequences for every being at the time are consequences relevant Requires one question Does this particular action cause happiness An action is right if and only if it would produce overall at least as much or more pleasure happiness as any other action that one might perform instead or Ross s Deontology Kant Suggests the following principle of mortality with various 5 Kant s formations o Formula of Humanity Ethical Issues and Life Choices Test Study Guide for Test 1 Treat people never as a means to an end but the same time as an end o Formula of Universal Law Act only according to whether or not you can see this becoming a universal law without contradiction Formulate a general law Is it rational Ross s Series of duties including o Fidelity Reparation Gratitude Non maleficence harm prevention beneficence Virtue Theory An action is wrong if and only if virtuous agents would not perform it Virtues are character traits that we should have such as courage kindness temperance honesty justice An action is wrong if and only if it would not be performed by a virtuous agent A virtuous agent is someone who has virtues characteristics such as courage kindness or honesty Normative Ethics The branch of ethics concerned with giving a general account of what is right and wrong Harm Principle A liberty limiting principle in which a government may justifiably pass laws to limit the liberty of its citizens so that they do not harm other individuals or society Harm An action causes harm if it affects the rights of another person An action causes harm if it directly undermines the rights of another person or group of people There are different types of harm such as physical mental and economic harm Offense Principle Created by Feinberg The principle asserts in effect that the prevention of offensive conduct is states business Hate Speech Language oral or written that expresses strong hatred contempt or intolerance for some social group particularly social groups classified according to race ethnicity gender sexual orientation religion disability or nationality Speech Codes A policy to prevent hate speech Argument of freedom vs equality 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Case study Doe vs University of Michigan 1989 Prohibited and behavior that stigmatized on the basis of race ethnicity sex religion sexual orientation etc Does hate speech cause harm o Lawrence opposes hate speech being protected and believes it causes harm o Arthur believers that hate speech distress us but does not harm us 13 Principle of Legal Moralism A government may pass laws that interfere with individual freedom in order to protect moral standard Related to if pornography should be censored to protect women Ethical Issues and Life Choices Test Study Guide for Test 1 Strossen does not believe that censoring pornography would benefit women because o Forbidden fruit She believes that if you make it illegal people will want it more o The media already shows violence and sex regardless of pornography o Utah vs New Hampshire In Utah pornography is more regulated than in New Hampshire but they have a higher rate of sexual violence still According to this principle it is justified to pass laws that limit individual liberties in order to protect common moral standards even if the actions in the question are not harmful 14 Like racism or sexism but against animals members of different Speciesism species To believe that we treat animals worse and give them rights than we do humans simply because they are not members of our species Singer argues that speciesm is just to take the species in itself as determitive of its moral status o His arguments Principle of equal consideration Common interests among species deserve equal consideration Our interest that we have in common with animals is the desire to not suffer 15 Animal abolitionism Gary Francione The view that we are required to end the human ownership of animals and that all beings have a right to not be treated as property of others A view according to which we have moral obligation to end ownership of non human animals This is based on the view that all sentiment beings have a right to not be regarded as property B Answer the following question You will be asked to answer one of the questions below use examples where appropriate Not all of the question below will appear on the test but you will have some choice with regards to which question you will answer Your answer in this section will make up 40 of your total test grade 1 What is the difference between act consequentialism and rule consequentialism Consequentialism is a normative ethical theory that asserts that whether an
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