PHI 2630 1st EditionExam # 1 Study Guide Lectures: 1 - 9Section AYou 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. Seven on the exam, choose from three.(1) The fallacy of common practice a. X is morally permissible because it is common for people to do X.b. Clearly, however, just because something is commonly practiced does not make it justifiable.(2) The slippery slope fallacya. X must occur because Y will occur.b. The slippery slope fallacy occurs when someone asserts that X must occur if Ydoes without providing any sort of evidence or proof of this connection.c. Example: if we allow women to have abortions in the first trimester then they’ll begin to have abortions in the second trimester, which is unacceptable, so we must not let them have abortions in the first trimester.(3) Deriving an 'ought' from an 'is' fallacya. When one assumes that because things are a certain way, that’s how they should be.b. Example: people under the age of 21 are not allowed to drink, so they should not be allowed to drink.i. Note that this assumes because something is the law that it ought to be the law.(4) (Act) Utilitarianism a. Utilitarianism asserts that human welfare or happiness alone is intrinsically valuable. The rightness or wrongness of actions depends solely on how theconsequences affect welfare or happiness. One must maximize the welfare ofall individuals who will be affected, in the short-term and long-term, by the consequence of an action.b. Utility: the net value of the consequences of an action. i. Principle of Utility: an action is right iff and because it would, if performed, likely produce at least as high a utility (net overall balance of welfare/happiness) as would any other alternative action one might perform instead.a. The utility may be negative and it may turn out that theright action in some circumstances is the one that would likely bring about the least amount of overall negative utility.c. Act Utilitarians either adhere to a value hedonistic or hedonistic utilitarianismanswer to the question, “What is happiness?”i. Value Hedonism: only states of pleasure have intrinsic value and only states of pain have intrinsic negative value. Everything else of value is of mere extrinsic valueii. Hedonistic Utilitarianism: an action is right iff and because it would likely produce, if performed, at least as high a net balance of pleasure,or less pain, as would any alternative action one might do instead.d. Utilitarianism is a form of act consequentialism in that it worries itself with the consequences (consequentialism) of particular acts. Other forms of consequentialism deal with the consequences of, say, rules, etc.(5) Kant’s Formula of Humanitya. Kant’s Formula of Humanity is part of his Categorical Imperative – a fundamental moral principle from which certain moral requirements could bederived. The formulation asserts that an action is right iff and because the action treats persons (including oneself) as ends in themselves and not merely as means.i. Requires that we not treat others merely as a means to our own ends (negative requirement) and that we treat them as ends in themselves (positive requirement).1. Persons are ends in themselves in so much as they have a special worth or value that demands of us that we have a certain positive regard for them, called dignity. In treating others as ends in themselves we adopt 2 goals: (1) goal of promoting the morally permissible ends of others and (2) goal of self-perfectionii. Suicide would violate the categorical imperative because that person has not treated himself or herself as an end.(6) Virtue Theorya. Makes the concepts of virtue and vice central in moral theory.b. An action is right iff and because it is what a virtuous agent (agent in character) would not avoid doing in the circumstances under consideration.i. Virtue: a trait of character or mind that typically involves dispositions to act, feel, and think in certain ways and that is central in the positiveevaluation of persons.1. Example: honesty, which involves at a minimum being disposed to tell the truth and avoid lying as well as the disposition to have certain positive feelings about truth telling and negative feelings about lying.ii. Vice: a trait of character or mind which typically involves dispositions to act, feel, and think in certain ways, and that is central in the negative evaluation of persons.1. Example: dishonesty, which may be understood as having inappropriate dispositions of action and feeling regarding truthtelling and lying. It has a negative value and contributes to what makes someone a morally bad person.iii. The application of moral theories to particular issues requires moral judgment, an acquired skill at discerning what matters the most morally speaking and coming to an all-things-considered moral verdictwhere this skill cannot be entirely captured by a set of rules.(7) Normative Ethicsa. Normative Ethical Theories consider how one ought to act in a moral sense. Itis the branch of ethics concerned with giving a general account of what is right and what is wrong.(8) Harm Principlea. Put forth by John Stuart Mill, the harm principle is: “A liberty-limiting principle according to which a government may justifiably pass laws to limit the liberty of its citizens in order to prohibit individuals from causing harm to other individuals or to society.”i. Harm: an action causes harm if it directly undermines the rights of another person (or a group of people), related to one’s interested being frustrated or defeated.1. Any speech or conduct that willfully or negligently interferes with important interests or rights of other is harmful conduct. The state is entitled to pass laws against conduct that deliberately or negligently interferes with the rights of others, just so long as the rights-violation is sufficiently serious and the harm cannot effectively be prevented by other, less costly means (for example, through public education or debate).ii. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty: the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individual or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self protection. That the
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