PHI2630 Exam 2 Study Guide Explain 3 of these concepts They are each worth 20 of your final grade 1 Weak Paternalism a weak paternalist believes that is legitimate to interfere with the means that agents choose to achieve their ends if those means are likely to defeat those ends Ex Preferring safety over convenience and forcing them to wear seatbelts 2 Strong Paternalism a strong paternalist believes that people may have mistaken confused or irrational ends and it is legitimate to interfere to prevent them from achieving those ends Ex Preferring your hair in your face while riding a motorcycle over safety making it legitimate to force them to wear a helmet because their ends are irrational or mistaken 3 Inherently Dangerous from Lafollette in relation to guns Inherently dangerous objects are those whose nature or design is sufficient to justify our prediction that they will cause harm independent of any empirical evidence Ex Nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous They were built to cause harm However automobiles were not made to cause harm but causally implicated in many deaths Guns are inherently dangerous which is why we have special rules to regulate them 4 Fundamental moral right from Lafollette Gun Control right is a non derivative right protecting a fundamental interest A fundamental 5 Fundamental interest from Lafollette Gun Control interests are integrally related to a person s chance of living a good life whatever their interests desires and beliefs happen to be Fundamental 6 Derivative moral right from Lafollette Gun Control fundamental rights cannot be restricted without good evidence They are accepted as correct until proven otherwise Ex You have the derivative right to consume alcohol But since drinking and driving could potentially cause harm to others the state can restrict this Derivative rights like 7 Equality retributivism from Stephenson An Eye for an Eye talionis or principle of an eye for an eye meaning we ought to treat people as they have treated others What people deserve as recipients of rewards or punishments is determined by what they do as agents It tells us that punishment is to be identical with crime However it is widely rejected because of the moral issues The lex 8 Proportional retributivism from Stephenson An Eye for an Eye Proportional retributivism is punishments that are proportional to the crime Instead of treating the criminal in a barbaric way such as the equality retributivism principle suggests we instead provide a way of handling all crimes It does justice to our ordinary belief that certain punishments are unjust because they are too severe or too lenient for the crime committed 9 Preferential affirmative action from Pojman Why AA Affirmative Action is special treatment based on race gender or ethnicity Preferential AA also argues that in history Blacks have been severely wronged by Whites and therefore should receive compensation in the present to make up for the past Preferential 10 Moral Nihilism about War Moral Nihilism is the view that moral considerations do not apply to war that questions of moral right and wrong good and bad do no apply because war creates a context in which anything goes Thus to the question Is war ever morally justified the nihilist in effect refuses to answer the question claiming that questions about morality do not arise in connection with war 11 Antiwar Pacifism Antiwar Pacifism is described according to which wars are always or at least nearly always morally wrong One basis for such a view is the idea that all intentional killing of human beings is morally wrong 12 Terrorism from Valls Can Terrorism be justified Valls describes Terrorism as violence committed by non state actors against persons or property for political purposes This definition appears to leave open the normative issues involved and is consistent with ordinary language 13 Just Cause from Just War Theory Just cause means that there must be a just cause for going to war A very restrictive interpretation of this provision would require that the war be one of self defense in which a government is responding to violent aggression or is attempting to prevent imminent violent aggression by another state This interpretation rules out any aggressive war that would forcefully intervene with internal affairs of some state Answer one of the following questions below It will be 40 of your final grade 1 State Marquis s argument that abortion deprives the fetus of a future like ours valuable future Marquis Why Abortion is Immoral The loss of one s life deprives one of all the experiences activities projects and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one s future Therefore killing someone is wrong primarily because the killing inflicts one of the greatest possible losses on the victim 2 State the argument that Thomson responds to in her article anti abortion Thomson A Defense of Abortion The opposition to abortion relies on that premise that the fetus is a human being a living person from the moment of conception Opponents of abortion have been so concerned to make out the independence of the fetus in order to establish that is has a right to life that they have tended to overlook the possible support they might gain from making out that fetus as dependent on the mother in order to establish that she has a special kind of responsibility for it a responsibility that gives its rights against her which are not possessed by any independent person 3 How is the practice of punishment justified according to the retributive theory of punishment How are particular punishments for particular crimes justified according to the retributive theory of punishment Answer both questions The practice of punishment is justified according to the retributive theory of punishment because those who break the law and are properly judged to have done so deserve to be punished A sense of justice or fairness prevails here These wrongdoers are viewed as attempting to take unfair advantage of others and law governed society generally and the response to this is that justice demands in response to crime that the wrongdoer suffer some sort of deprivation The particular punishments for particular crimes are justified according to this theory because the punishment for a particular offence against the law should fit the crime This is the an eye for an eye principle However there are alternate interpretations Such as the principle of proportionality where the appropriate
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