Final

Question 1

Which of the following is the basic principle of Utilitarianism?

Answer 1

Greatest Happiness Principle(Utility Principle)-Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness; Maximized happiness

Question 2

According to one objection to Utilitarianism, it is a doctrine worthy of swine. Which of the following is NOT a part of Mill’s response?

Answer 2

• ->Humans are capable of other pleasures than swine
• ->Higher pleasure, which swine cannot comprehend, exists
• ->Creates a test: pleasure people state is better is greater than that which people disagree on
• ->Quality is taken into account over quantity
• ->Superiority of mental pleasure over bodily pleasure

Question 3

According to one objection of Utilitarianism, it is too much to expect that people will always act with Utilitarianism in mind. Which of the following best captures Mill’s response?

Answer 3

People will always try and cheat the system no matter the standard. The important thing to strive for is objectivity.

Question 4

In one example of William’s, a large group of innocent villagers is soon to be killed. A stranger in town is given the choice of shooting one himself or allowing the execution of all to proceed. Which of the following captures one of the central points of the example?

Answer 4

Utilitarianism alienates you from your moral feelings and actions by making you look at your actions as little peaces of happiness or unhappiness on a table of calculations
“…it cuts out a kind of consideration which for some of others makes a difference to what they feel about such a case: a consideration involving the idea, as we might first and very simple put it, that each of us is specially responsible for what he does, rather than for what other people do.”

Question 5

Which of the following is NOT one of Williams; criticisms of Utilitarianism?

Answer 5

• ->Makes you look at your morals as little bits of happiness and unhappiness on a table of calculations
• ->Undermines your integrity by alienating you from your moral feeling and actions
• ->We cannot look at our moral feelings as only an unhappiness when they are violated
• ->Utilitarianism is turning people into pieces in a happiness producing machine, asking us to give up on our conviction and identity.

Question 6

According to the Doctrine of Double Effect:

Answer 6

“it is sometimes permissible to bring about by oblique (foreseen) intentions what one may not directly intend
–>It is okay to allow for something bad to happen if it goes against your moral code/unjustly harms another to prevent the bad, as long as you do not intend for it to happen.

Question 7

According to Foot’s distinction between negative and positive duties:

Answer 7

Negative duties, which are everyone’s duties to not harm another person, outweigh positive duties, which are everyone’s duties(not mandatory though) to help another person.
Come from the negative right not to be harmed and the positive right to benefit or aid from another.

Question 8

The thesis of Foot’s article is:

Answer 8

It is okay to allow for something bad to happen if it goes against your moral code/unjustly harms another to prevent the bad, as long as you do not intend for it to happen.
It is not okay to harm another to save many if it is what one intends to do.
???

Question 9

Which of the following is NOT part of the traditional cosmological argument for the existence of God?

Answer 9

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe has cause to its existence.
4. No scientific explanation(in terms of physical law) can provide a causal account of the origin of the universe.
5. Therefore, the cause of the universe must be personal(caused by a being/agent).

Question 10

According to McCabe, a “genuine” atheist is someone who:

Answer 10

one who simply does not see that there is any problem or mystery here, one who is content to ask questions within the world, but cannot see that the world itself raises a question.

Question 11

According to one objection to the cosmological argument:

Answer 11

• ->Is science or an agent the only two explanations?

- ->If everything has a cause created by God, why does God not have a creator, because he has a creator?

Question 12

Which of the following is NOT a premise in the ontological argumetjfor the existence of God?

Answer 12

1. God is, by definition, a being which none greater can be conceived.
2. A being than which none greater can be conceived exists at least in the mind.
   3.It is greater to exist in reality than exist in the mind.
   4.Therefore, God exists not only in the mind but in reality.
   Reformed to counter argument: God is not a merely possible being because he has an independant existence(does not rely on anything to exist)

Question 13

Which of the following is NOT a good argument for the ontological argument?

Answer 13

• ->Perfect Island objection-we can create into existence anything we want, such as a perfect island
• ->Kant “existence is not a predicate”-objects to the use of existence to define something’s existence

Question 14

According to Pascal, you should believe in God’s existence because:

Answer 14

if God exists and you believe, you gain everything, while you loose nothing if he does not exist.
If you fail to believe in God and he exists, then you loose everything and have eternal misery, while you gain nothing if he does not exist.

Question 15

Which of the following is a reasonable objection to Pascal’s argument?

Answer 15

His ideas are illogical because he applies cost benefit to belief.

Question 16

The problem of evil can be understood in terms of an apparent inconsistency between three statements. Which of the following is Not among them?

Answer 16

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is wholly good.
3. Evil exists

Question 17

According to the “free will” defense against the problem of evil:

Answer 17

humans have free will, which spans the evil in the world, for even a world with evil, which has free will, is greater than a word without evil, which does not have free will, and a world without evil an with free will cannot exist.
[Evil & Free Will] > [No Evil & No Free Will]

Question 18

Which of the following best captures Mackie’s response to the “free will” defense agains the problem of evil?

Answer 18

• ->Why would God not make man so that they would always freely choose to do good? This argues with the omnipotence and wholly good arguments.
• ->People’s free choices were not chosen by their characters, but instead were chosen randomly, and there would be no value in their choice if it when against their nature.
• ->Why would God refrain from controlling people’s will if he was omnipotent and could do only good? He cannot control man and must no longer be omnipotent.
  1. Good cannot exist without evil
  2. Nevil is a necessary means to the good
  3. The universe is better with some evil, than it could be with no evil (second order goods)
  4. Evil is due to human free will

Question 19

Swinburne imagines the anti-theodicist making the following argument: “A creator able to do so ought to ensure any creature whom he creates does not cause passive evils, or at any rate passive evils which hurt creatures other than himself.” Which of the following best captures Swinburne’s response to this argument?

Answer 19

The Responsibility Defense-If there was no true harm done after an action is preformed, people would have no feeling of responsibility for their actions, nor for their fellow man around them. Similar to parents who allow for their children to solve their own issues without interfering without cause.

Question 20

Swinburne imagines the anti-theorist making the following argument: “A creator is never justified in creating a world in which evil results except by the action of a humanly free agent.” Which of the following is NOT part of Swinburne’s response to this argument?

Answer 20

World Understanding and Mastering Defense:
–>Forces us to understand and master our world
–>The world is not yet perfect and human’s must strive to create a perfect world
The three types of worlds:
1. Finished-no improvement
2. Basically Evil- everything needs improved but nothing can be
3. Basically Good, Half-finished- can overcome obstacles and create the 1st option over time

Question 21

Which of the following best captures one of Rawls’ two Principles of Justice?

Answer 21

1. Each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.
   AKA Everyone can have as much liberty as possible and the only infringement is to prevent another lack of freedom.
2. Inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out to everyone’s advantage, and provided that the positions and offices to which they attach are open to all.
   AKA Inequalities are acceptable when everyone benefits, even unequally, more so than in a “fair” system, and government and state positions are open to everyone.

Question 22

Which of the following best captures Rawls’ argument for his Principles of Justice?

Answer 22

The Original Position

• ->people with a veil of ignorance-do not know social/economical position/talents/phycological tendencies
• ->These people, if rational and selfish, would choose his principle because they would still be better off in his system then in any other system, such as a “fair” system

Question 23

Which of the following is NOT part of Nozick’s conception of distributive justice?

Answer 23

1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition(make, create, discover, claim something not previously owned) is entitles to that holding.
2. A person acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer(legitimate methods of transfer-sale, trade, inherit, gift) from someone else entitled to the hiding, is entitled to the holding
   - ->it is unjust to take away one’s holdings to create more “fairness” if the holdings are obtained in the above way

Question 24

According to Nozick, the problem with “end-result” principles of justice in holdings is that:

Answer 24

• -> It is unjust to take away another legitimate holdings to create more fairness, because it matters how people get their stuff
• -> An unjust acquisition because it does not follow his methods of transfers.

Question 25

Which of the following best expresses the meaning of the term “conscious,” as used by Nagel?

Answer 25

–>”…an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be the organism-something it is like for the organism”
–>Consciousness is what it is like to experience things, so the subjective elements can not be removed to define it.
Conscious Being-being such that there is something to that being
Conscious State-being in a state as the conscious being

Question 26

Which of the following is NOT part of Nagel’s argument that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat?

Answer 26

• ->There is no way to define what consciousness is through any physical research or construction which can define what a bat is, because consciousness is not physical.
• ->You cannot stimulate what it is like to be a bat, because it goes against the Physicalism argument and there is no way to truly know what it is like to be a bat without becoming a bat.

Question 27

Which if the following best captures Nagel’s conclusion?

Answer 27

Physicalism can not define consciousness because it is objective, while consciousness is not.

Question 28

Which of the following best captures Nagel’s argument?

Answer 28

“If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character, it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inventible that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”