FirstQuizF21

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Philosophy

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Oct 30, 2023

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First Quiz, Phil 101, Fall 2021 Please answer all questions. If you don’t know the answer make an intelligent guess. The first is worth ten points and all others are worth fifteen points. This book is closed book, closed notes, and you may not use electronic aids. You may use an ordinary dictionary, or foreign-language dictionary. There are seven questions. 1. What is the name of the position that holds that the morally right action is that which produces the greatest long-term happiness and the least suffering over the population it affects? 2. There are disanalogies between the famous violinist case and the pregnancy case as well as analogies. Among these is the disanalogy that the violinist is a fully grown human being. a) Thompson thinks this disanalogy does not prevent the famous violinist case from shedding light on abortion. Why? b) What does Marquis think is wrong with unplugging the violinist and causing a fully grown human to die? c) How would Thompson reply to the objection that it is wrong to unplug the violinist because of your answer to b)? 3. Your aunt, on her deathbed, tells you to devote her entire fortune to her cat, Tiddles. Nobody knows about this. You know the money can do much more good spent in other ways. Some of the following arguments are Kantian, some Utilitarian. Which are Kantian ? You may write a reason for your choice, but please make it brief:

a) Tiddles is a cat . She cannot deliberate, but just does what she prefers. So you should use the money to help people instead. b) This was your aunt’s dying wish. Everyone wants dying wishes to be respected, including you. So you ought to devote the fortune to Tiddles. c) Tiddles can be made as happy as she can possibly be by spending only part of the money on her. So the rest ought to go to helping stop suffering in other ways. d) If you violate your aunt’s wishes to spend the money on something your think is more important, you’re using your aunt as a means to an end. You ought not to do that. e) Your aunt is dead. She can’t know the difference if you disobey her wish. So nobody is worse off if you spend the money in other ways, and lots of people will be better off. 4. One author we read wrote: No one thinks that had human beings all found chocolate disgusting, we would have been missing an independent fact about chocolate’s value. The question is whether all value is ultimately like that. The mind-dependent theorist says “yes”; the mind-independent theorist says “no”. a. Which author was this? b. Is the author a mind-depend or mind-independent theorist? c. What does the author think is most probably the cause of the moral values we have? 5. You are a lawyer defending someone accused of a series of violent assaults on a vulnerable population (runaway children, for example). The evidence is

overwhelming, and it is as clear as it can be under these circumstances that your client is guilty, and that this pattern of behavior is likely to continue if your client is released. However, you stumble across evidence that the police have seriously violated your client’s civil rights, so that the judge would have little choice but to throw the case out. Your client is unaware that you could argue this way. a. Why would a Utilitarian probably argue that you should keep your mouth shut and not offer the best defense that you can? b. Why would a Kantian probably argue that you ought to present the evidence and get your client released? c. A Utilitarian would likely argue as above, but doesn’t have to argue that way. What, in the above example, might the Utilitarian point out that supports setting your client free? (If you can’t think of a feature of the example that supports the Utilitarian case, just say what the Utilitarian would have to argue.) 6. Using diagrams, explain carefully the way in which Bowie and Simon think that Utilitarianism would justify slavery by answering the following questions. a) draw a graph of the happiness of various people in a society where everyone is roughly equally happy, but nobody is very happy. Use the net income of the people in the society as the X-axis, and the total happiness of all the people at each income level as the Y-axis. (5 points) b) On the same graph, draw a diagram of a slave-owning society, where the great unhappiness of those worst off (the slaves) is justified, according to Utilitarianism (5 points).

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c) How does the Utilitarian justify the unhappiness of the slaves? You might just shade the area of graph b) where people's happiness compensates for the unhappy slaves. Alternatively, you might write a brief explanation. Either of these is enough to answer the question. (5 points). 7. a) what is moral luck? A brief definition or explanation will do. (5) b) Give an example of moral luck (5). c) Suppose you drove your child to a concert, and she was killed in an unavoidable accident on the way. You'd probably feel very guilty, and think as yourself as a bad person. But this is not an example of moral luck! Why not? (You need not say again what moral luck is, just say what feature of this example makes it different from moral luck.) (5)