Phil 6 Study Guide

Front 1

In what way is work instrumentally valuable?

Back 1

work is a primary means to such ends as food shelter, clothing and health care

Front 2

According to DesJardins, work is likely to be something controlled by others, and this fact highlights a real vulnerability. Explain.

Back 2

Because work is likely to be something controlled by others, this opens the door for exploitation and for your interests, as an employee, to be set back

Front 3

What are three senses of “employee rights”?

Back 3

1) legal rights granted to employees on the basis of legislation or judicial ruling
2) good to which employees are entitled to on the basis of contractual agreements w/ employers
3) general moral entitlements that employees have to certain goods (or protection from certain harms) w/ in the workplace

Front 4

What are three senses of the “right to work”?

Back 4

1) right to work w/o being required to join a local union
2) right to a job
3) right, once hired, to hold that job w/ some degree of security (right to due process)

Front 5

What are two justifications for the view that the right to work implies that employees have a right to a job?

Back 5

1) Work is an expression of a meaningful life; work allows us to fulfill this life
2) work is a means to meet our basic human needs

Front 6

The right, once hired, to hold that job with some degree of security is also referred to as the right to what?

Back 6

The right to due process

Front 7

What is an “at will” contract?

Back 7

An “at will” contract is one that exists only so long as both parties consent or, conversely, can be broken at the discretion of either party

Front 8

What are the implications of an “at will” contract for: (1) the employer and (2) the employee?

Back 8

(1)Employers are free to terminate an employee at any time and for any reason; (2)employees are free to quite their job at any time and for any reason

Front 9

According to DesJardins, if employment at will governs the workplace, then the concept of employee rights is, at least in the legal sense, meaningless. Explain.

Back 9

With employment at will, employers are free to terminate an employee at any time and for any reason therefore the concept of employee rights are meaningless because a sense of employee rights is that employees have general moral entitlements to certain goods (or protection from certain harms, such as being fired).

Front 10

What is the philosophical idea that underlies the legal concept of due process?

Back 10

Even legitimate authority cannot be used in just any manner

Front 11

According to DesJardins, due process rights would establish the procedures (the “process”) that an employer must go through to ensure that the dismissal is not arbitrary. What might such procedures involve?

Back 11

Such procedures involve specifying the acceptable reasons for dismissal and establishing just cause conditions for dismissal

Front 12

What are four counterarguments to the right of due process? (Name and describe.)

Back 12

1)Argument from freedom
Freedom to vocalize and negotiate one’s needs
2)Argument from fairness
If the employee can leave at any time, then the employer should be able to fire an employee at any time
3)Argument from property rights
Employees are resources that can be disposed of
4)Argument from efficiency
Employees have no motivation to be efficient because employees cannot just be fired for any reason therefore they do not have as much motivation to be efficient as they would have with employment at will

Front 13

What is an objection to the argument from fairness?

Back 13

Employees are harmed more than employers are

Front 14

What’s the difference between power and authority?

Back 14

Power is the ability to impose one’s will on another;
Authority exists when that power is justified or legitimate

Front 15

Define: Risk.

Back 15

Probability of harm

Front 16

Define: Relative risk.

Back 16

Comparing the probabilities of harm involved in various acitivities

Front 17

What are three problems with the approach to workplace health and safety issues of focusing on the relative risks faced by workers and the level of acceptable workplace risk?

Back 17

1)Treats employees disrespectfully by ignoring their input
2)Assumes that healthy and safety are mere preferences that can be traded-off against competing values
3)Assumes an equivalence between workplace risks and other types of risks when there are significant difference between them

Front 18

What are two general understandings of “privacy”?

Back 18

1)privacy as a right to be “let alone” w/ in a personal zone of solitude
2)privacy as the right to control information about oneself

Front 19

According to DesJardins, under what two conditions may employee privacy be violated?

Back 19

1)employees infringe upon personal decisions that are irrelevant to the employment contract (implied or explicit)
2)whenever personal information that is irrelevant to that contract is collected, stored, or used w/o the informed consent of that employee

Front 20

What are the four P’s of marketing?

Back 20

Product, pricing, promotion, and placement

Front 21

What is the goal of all marketing?

Back 21

The sale, the eventual exchange between marketer and consumer

Front 22

What are two important elements of product placement?

Back 22

1)target marketing
2)marketing research

Front 23

According to DesJardins, there are ethical and unethical ways of influencing others. What are three examples of the former, and three examples of the latter?

Back 23

Ethical Ways:
- persuading
- asking
- informing
- advising
Unethical Ways:
- threats
- coercion
- deception
- manipulation
- lying

Front 24

What does manipulating something involve?

Back 24

Involves working behind the scenes, guiding their behavior w/o their explicit consent or conscious understanding

Front 25

On Kantian grounds, the case can be made that manipulating people is morally wrong. Explain.

Back 25

When I manipulate someone I treat him or her as a means to my own ends, as an object to be used rather than as an autonomous person in his or her own right

Front 26

DesJardins suggests two general guidelines for marketing practices. What are they?

Back 26

1)Marketing practices that seek to discover which consumers might already and independently be predisposed to purchasing a product are ethically legitimate
2)Marketing practices that seek to identify populations that can be easily influence and manipulated are not ethically legitimate

Front 27

What are two approaches to regulating deceptive marketing practices, and what are problems associated with each?

Back 27

1) Targets those marketing practices that are intended to deceive
- need to determine the mental state of those who initiated the practice
- making judgment before the practice actually occurs
- punishing companies w/ the intent to manipulate, prior to the practice occurring
2) Emphasizes marketing practices that actually deceive
- too strong  consumers are deceived by many relatively trivial marketing practices
- too weak  places the burden on consumers to take the initiative and come forth to prove the deception

Front 28

What is the “reasonable consumer” standard, and what are the strengths and weaknesses to adopting it?

Back 28

The “reasonable consumer” standard is the idea that consumers are not assumed to be ignorant
- assumes the best about consumers and doesn’t hold marketers to extreme and difficult standards
- cost of this approach is that it does abandon protection to those consumers who may well deserve the greatest protection, namely, those most vulnerable and susceptible to deception

Front 29

What is the “dependence effect,” and what are three unwelcome implications of it?

Back 29

Dependence effect: consumer demand depended upon what producers had to sell
1)by creating wants, advertising was standing the law of supply and demand on its head
2)advertising and marketing tend to create irrational and trivial consumer wants and this distorts the entire economy
3)by creating consumer wants, advertising and other marketing practices were violating consumer autonomy

Front 30

What is the difference between first-order and second-order desires?

Back 30

first-order desire: those that I just happen to have at any given time
second-order desire: those that I have regarding first order desires

Front 31

According to Dworkin, there are two conditions for autonomy. What are they?

Back 31

1) Authenticity: the desire is not renounced or rejected by the person who has it
2) Independently Accepted: the desire must be such that the person who has it can critically reflect upon it

Front 32

What does it mean to be “vulnerable”?

Back 32

To be susceptible to harm (have one’s interests set back or defeated)

Front 33

There are two general senses of vulnerability that are relevant for the discussion of target marketing. What are they?

Back 33

1)a person is vulnerable as a consumer by being unable in some way to participate as a fully informed and voluntary participant in the market exchange
2)the harm is other than the financial harm of an unsatisfactory market exchange

Front 34

The United States legal system recognizes two forms of sexual harassment. What are they?

Back 34

1)quid pro quo harassment occurs when granting sexual favors is made a condition of employment,
2)hostile work environment occurs when a pattern of sexual harassment within the workplace prevents a woman from doing her job

Front 35

Define: Equal opportunity.

Back 35

The commitment to nondiscrimination in employment practices

Front 36

Define: Affirmative action.

Back 36

Refers to any positive step beyond equal opportunity and passive nondiscrimination taken to alleviated the harms of unjust discrimination

Front 37

Define: Preferential treatment.

Back 37

Employment practices that go beyond simple equal opportunity and affirmative action by granting preferences to members of underrepresented groups in hiring and promotion decisions.

Front 38

According to DesJardins, the ethical basis for the assumption that equality is valuable can be found as a fundamental tenet of all major ethical theories, if not a fundamental assumption of morality itself. What is the fundamental tenet/assumption to which DesJardins refers?

Back 38

The ethical basis for the consensus of a commitment to equal treatment for each individual, providing each person with equal economic opportunity

Front 39

What’s the difference between discriminating and discriminating unethically?

Back 39

Discrimination is the ability to make distinctions
Discriminating unethically is when the criteria used in making such discrimination are unethical or unfair

Front 40

According to DesJardins, there are three types of preferential policy. What are they?

Back 40

1)in the case of otherwise equally qualified candidates, give preferences to the previously disadvantaged candidate
2)identify members of previously disadvantaged groups in the pool of qualified applicants and given them preference in the hiring decision, even if there is another candidate, typically a white male, who is more qualified
3)simply require that members of disadvantaged groups be hired with only minimal consideration given to qualification

Front 41

Which of these three types of preferential are most ethically problematic, and why?

Back 41

The third type (to simply require that members of disadvantaged groups be hired with only minimal consideration given to qualifications) because with this third type the job qualifications basically don’t really matter

Front 42

What are the two general arguments against preferential hiring?

Back 42

1)the merit argument: claims that by ignoring or overriding qualifications, preferential policies violate the white male’s right to have hiring decisions based on merit
2)the equal respect argument: claims that preferential treatment violates the white male’s right to be treated w/ equal respect and given equal opportunity

Front 43

What is the compensatory argument for preferential hiring?

Back 43

Requires that individuals harmed by discriminatory hiring processes receive compensation for that harm

Front 44

What three issues need to be resolved if one is to adequately address the compensatory argument for preferential hiring?

Back 44

1)requires that the compensation be proportionate to the harms done
2)the party paying the compensate be responsible for the harm
3)the party receiving compensation be the party harmed

Front 45

According to DesJardins, the employee’s right to due process can be defended on grounds of respect and fairness. Explain

Back 45

An employee’s right to due process protects them from the abuse of authority in the workplace. When there is unjustified authority then there is simply power with one person imposing one’s will on another as a mere means to one’s own end. Thus this violates the autonomy of that individual and denies him the respect he deserves. Also, institutions that allow people to impose their will upon others w/o justification are fundamentally unfair and unjust.

Front 46

How does DesJardins respond to the following claim: “One cannot hold marketing responsible for a given purchase because one cannot prove that it caused the purchase”?

Back 46

DesJardins claims that if marketers believed that marketing was ineffective in influencing consumer choice then their selling to businesses would be fraud and they would undercut their own careers. Their service works or it doesn’t and if it does work and if marketing can and does influence consumer choice then marketing cannot disavow ethical responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

Front 47

According to DesJardins, an increasingly diverse population in and out of the workforce creates challenges to business. Explain.

Back 47

Differences among genders, ethnic groups, and cultures can create significant barriers to an efficient and peaceful workplace. The workplace is but a subset of the wider society and social concerns of equality and discrimination can be expected to appear w/in the workplace