Test 1 Flashcards

Front 1

Explain the difference between saying that it is wrong to keep hen's in battery cages and saying that it is wrong to draw another card in blackjack when you have a count of 17 in your hand.

Back 1

The hen's being kept in battery cages part of this statement is a real ethical judgement that uses ethical vocabulary, whereas the black jack statement is a strategic issue that has no moral standing or ethical judgement.

Front 2

Explain the concept of moral standing. Why is it an important concept in environmental ethics?

Back 2

Moral standing is what we give to different entities in which we owe moral obligations to. It is important in environmental ethics due to the fact that if something is given moral standing, we then owe moral obligations to it. Also, in terms of policies, something with moral standing has protection.

Front 3

Explain, using examples, the difference is between direct and indirect obligations to the non-human world.

Back 3

- Direct obligations= clear cutting--we owe it to the environment not to clear cut

- Indirect= clear cutting--we owe it to Jack not to clear cut on his land

Front 4

Explain, with examples, the difference between something having intrinsic value and something having instrumental value.

Back 4

Instrumental value brings about something that is valuable. Intrinsic value is something that is valuable within and about itself. Example: Money is not important by itself but it does bring about other valuable things when you use it to purchase a good.

Front 5

What is the difference between an anthropocentric and a non-anthropocentric view of moral standing?

Back 5

Anthropocentric view of moral standing implies that duties are owed to humans because only humans have moral standing. Non-anthropocentric view of moral standing implies that we shouldn't do something because it is unfair to the chickens or forest, for example. It could be biocentric, zoocentric, etc. In simple terms it means humans vs. everything else.

Front 6

Explain clearly why ethical judgement cannot be deduced from scientific or empirical statements. Employ Hume's Guillotine.

Back 6

Science just tells you how it is and tells you the fact, it does not tell you what you "ought" to do or "should" do.

Front 7

Describe the argument from the premise of cultural diversity to the conclusion that ethical relativism is correct. What is the main weakness of this argument?

Back 7

The main weakness of this argument is that ethical relativism could be hard to tolerate or understand from an outsider of a particular cultural membership

Front 8

Why does being an ethical relativist make is difficult for someone to criticize their own culture?

Back 8

A person could be bias in their own culture/self even though they are trying to broaden their horizons and accept others even though they still have bias. They may not want to have the ugly duckling syndrome by adopting norms from other cultures which could create an outcast within their own culture. Also, if you have a belief in your own culture, the non-belief contradicts your own culture and in order to believe otherwise you have to believe false things.

Front 9

Describe how two cultures that apparently differ in their moral principles might actually have similar moral principles and differ in only how they apply them.

Back 9

Two different cultures could have a moral principle of women dressing in modesty. For example, North American women should dress sophisticated and not show too much skin to show modesty but women in a Muslim country dress to cover every part of their body, including their face to show this moral principle The principle is the same in both countries but are applied differently.

Front 10

Explain the significance of the Ultimatum Game for the truth of psychological egoism.

Back 10

Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from doing so. Therefore, when this is applied to the Ultimatum Game, it is said that most games result in a 50/50 split , or proposals and acceptances of half the amount each to maximize the self-interests of both players.

Front 11

Explain how hedonistic utilitarianism and preference-satisfaction utilitarianism differ in their understanding of the source and nature of utility.

Back 11

Hedonistic Utilitarianism has to do with an act or policy being the right one if, and only if, it causes the maximum aggregate amount of utility (intrinsically valuable) where as Preference-satisfaction utilitarianism has to do with an act or policy being the right one if, and only if, it causes the maximum aggregate amount of preference satisfaction.

Front 12

Why does Derek Parfit's case of the Harmless Torturers create a problem for act-utilitarianism but not for rule-utilitarianism?

Back 12

If one person does a click on the torture machine it doesn't do much, however if everyone does it, it brings the person to much pain and torture, therefore, there should be a rule here because everyone shouldn't do this even though each individual isn't technically doing anything wrong.

Front 13

Why does existence of sadists create a problem for hedonistic utilitarianism ?

Back 13

Sadists want to torture people, they get pleasure out of doing so. Hedonistic utilitarianism wants to maximize pleasure for everyone but it is wrong to do this for sadists, therefore the idea of hedonistic utilitarianism is incorrect.

Front 14

Why does the difficulty with comparing and measuring different people's degrees of preference satisfaction create a problem for preference satisfaction utilitarianism?

Back 14

It is difficult to measure the intensity of peoples preferences and everyone has different backgrounds and cultures, therefore, it is hard to measure and compare them. This is usually done by Willingness to Pay, which is hard.

Front 15

Explain how the transplant case shows a conflict between the deontological/rights based approach and the utilitarian approach to ethics.

Back 15

In the transplant case, the surgeon wants to maximize the aggregates therefore she will take one life to save four, but it does not consider the right to live for the individual in which she will let die. In this case the hedonistic reasoning seems wrong and therefore this should be rethought.

Front 16

Population policy A will result in a world population of 9 billion with a per ca-pita utility of 100 utiles. Population policy B will result in a population of 12 billion with a per ca-pita utility of 90 utiles. Explain how average utilitarianism and total utilitarianism will differ in their assessment of these two policies regarding future generations.

Back 16

Total utilitarianism maximizes the aggregate utility added up for everyone, whereas, average utilitarianism maximizes the aggregate utility per person.

Total utility for policy A = 900

Total utility for policy B = 1080

Therefore, the average utilitarian would pick policy A

Front 17

Explain why indirect utilitarianism offers a way around some of the weaknesses of direct utilitarianism.

Back 17

Indirect offers a way around the weaknesses of direct by advocating respect for rights on the grounds that enforcing rights will maximize utility by reducing feelings of anxiety and insecurity. Direct just looks at everything as a whole. Indirect gives other tools about maximizing utility. More tools is the key thing here.

Front 18

Explain the difference between the consequentialist and the deontological approaches to ethics

Back 18

The consequentialism approach is the idea that an agent ought to aggregate intrinsic value for recipients with moral standing, whereas, the deontological approach is the idea that each agent ought to act so as to obey the moral principles governing that type of act

Front 19

Explain the difference between subjective and objective consequentilism.

Back 19

Subjective consequentilism says that intrinsic value which we should aggregate and maximize pertains to the mental states of recipients. Objective consequentilism holds that the intrinsic value which we should aggregate and maximize pertains to features of recipients other than their mental states.

Front 20

Explain the difference between psychological egoism and ethical egoism. Why is the former not a sound argument for the latter?

Back 20

Psychological egoism = the empirical theory that people always do act to maximize their own narrow self-interest

Ethical egoism = the ethical theory that people are always ought to act to maximize their own narrow self-interest.

Front 21

Explain, with an example, the paradox of ethical egoism.

Back 21

"Paradox of egoism" is a weakness within ethical egoism that implies some valuable consequences, like friendship, are not available to people who always act to maximize their own narrow self-interest.

Front 22

Explain why ethical egoists have difficulty cooperating and why this difficulty appears to make ethical egoism self-defeating.

Back 22

Because ethical egoists believe that they ought to always maximize their own pay off, therefore, even if it is in their best interest to cooperate in a particular situation, they will not and thus tend to fail to maximize their own self-interest.

Front 23

Describe Contractarianism and explain why it might be a solution to ethical egoism's difficulties with cooperation.

Back 23

Contractarianism is the theory that ethics is a state enforced social contract among ethical egoists. It may be a solution to difficulties with cooperation by making a social contract to establish a state with coercive power to punish cheating, giving cheating a lower payoff than cooperating.

Front 24

Describe what you think are important difficulties for contractarianism.

Back 24

Contractarianism would create a free-market society that encourages highly competitive, self-interested behaviour and would thus foster vices of greed, ruthlessness and selfishness. It is also problematic from a moral standing perspective because it leaves out many human and non-human entities without further argument.

Front 25

Describe what is meant by the rights-based approach to morality

Back 25

The rights based approach is the idea that the moral principles to be obeyed concern respecting the moral rights of morally considerable recipients.

Front 26

Explain the relationship between a right and its correlative duty

Back 26

A moral right is a morally justified claim on others. The possession by one person of a moral right creates a duty in others to respect that right, a correlative duty to that right.

Front 27

What is a natural right?

Back 27

A natural right has to do with the rights-bearers having rights because they have certain natural features.

Front 28

On what natural feature is Kantian natural rights based? Why might this be too restrictive?

Back 28

The natural feature that Kantian's natural rights was based was to "act only on those principles that you can at the same time will to become universal laws of nature". This may be too restrictive due to the fact that only autonomous rational agents have rights, so only they are considered by his rights based theory, and so only they have moral standing.

Front 29

Why does the rights-based approach to ethics have difficulties protecting people against non-point source pollution?

Back 29

Because any moral rights are of little help in this situation due to the fact that the structure of moral right is such that one person's right not to be polluted places a correlative moral duty on all other agents not to pollute and each agent can claim that his or her activities do not interfere with the right-holder in any way, if they stopped their activities, the violation of the supposed right against pollution would still occur.

Front 30

Explain why justice doesn't always mean that we treat people the same way.

Back 30

Justice is about moral equality, however, justice does not require that we treat all entities in exactly the same way. Moral equality only requires that governments, organizations and individuals not to treat people differently based on morally arbitrary features such as race, sex, age etc. An example in cases where it seems reasonable to treat people equally but differently is the fact that disabled people are entitled to reserved, convenient parking.

Front 31

Why is environmental racism unjust?

Back 31

Environmental racism is unjust due to the fact it goes against moral equality. Dumping pollution containing substances near the housing of people of color is treating people differently based on morally arbitrary features.

Front 32

Explain in words why, if people have identical marginal utility schedules, then maximizing utility should result in an equal distribution of goods.

Back 32

Because in general poorer people get more satisfaction out of an extra dollar than do rich people. Therefore, you can maximize satisfaction by redistributing dollars from the rich to the poor.

Front 33

Why is it a problem for utilitarian theories of justice that some people get more pleasure than others out of a given amount of economic goods?

Back 33

Has to do with the law of diminishing marginal utility. Some people may be more efficient at converting goods into utility. These people are called utility monsters.

Front 34

What are the weaknesses of Locke's theory regarding the initial acquisition of private property rights in environmental resources?

Back 34

Mixing what an agent owns with un-owned nature need not result in private ownership of the mixture and in the statement that enough, and as good, be left in common for others, individual acquisitions of environmental resources eventually add up to where there is a situation where there is not enough, and as good, left in common.

Front 35

Describe the common good approach to ethics. Why is it consequentialist? What is the major weakness?

Back 35

Each agent ought to act so as to contribute to the betterment of the community as a whole. It is consequentialist because it looks for source of intrinsic value in states of the world that don't include mental states. The major weakness is that it's central notion may seem mysterious, restricting moral standing to ones community leaves out the other communities and individuals and the common-good approach does not have the resources to protect the rights of individual members of the community.

Front 36

Describe the teleological version of objective consequentialism. What do you see as its major weakness?

Back 36

Each agent ought to act so as to best fulfill the natural purposes of recipients with moral standing. The weaknesses are that it crosses the is/ought gap and the biology is out of date.

Front 37

Distinguish between derivative and non-derivative virtues. Give an example of the former.

Back 37

A derivative virtue is a character trait that is justified because it helps an agent fullfil the requirements of another type of ethical theory. A non-derivative virtue is a character trait that comes about that do not derive from some ethical theory outside of virtue ethics itself.

Front 38

How might virtue theory be employed by environmentalists?

Back 38

Green community can shape people to bahave in ways that preserve the environment. Virtue theory can be used by environmentalists through green virtues. Green virtues can be like not being wasteful, habits of not driving larger vehicles and being thoughtful about the environment

Front 39

Define ethical relativism

Back 39

The view that the truth of ethical statements depends on the cultural membership of the agent making the statement