Final Exam

Question 1

Zwarthoed

Answer 1

• expensive consumption habits
• general obligation–justice in virtue of their capacity to shape consumption habits
• special obligation–care for children’s present and future interests –> upbringing for healthy emotional environment (correlation found between consumer involvement, depression, and anxiety)
• ECH may be harmful to healthy emotional & moral development, autonomy, economic self-reliance

Question 2

Little

Answer 2

• must consider thoughts and interests
• for a fetus to be alive it must occupy someone’s body
• intertwinement against her consent
• don’t have an automatic and moral duty to gestate

Question 3

Warren

Answer 3

• uses person instead of human–person refers to someone of the moral community
• interests of the woman outweigh the interests of the potential human
• person: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity to communicate, and self-awareness

Question 4

Wills

Answer 4

• porn isn’t necessarily harmful to women and we ought to be wary about the stereotypes
• Women can enjoy VP from the perspective of the person that is not their gender
• good cop (housewife) vs. bad cop(suggestions from P that the alternative to being a housewife is being a woman who sleeps around–fair game for sexual violence)

Question 5

McKeever

Answer 5

• Sexual exclusivity can have a supportive value in a romantic relationship and can act as a symbol for the exclusively shared identity that is distinctive to romantic love
• SE is not necessary for romantic love
• adapting to SE depends on personalities, values, interests, and situations of the partners
• sexual jealousy can be reasonable and appropriate due to fear of a loss of love and change in the nature of the relationship

Question 6

Calder

Answer 6

• share responsibility for structural injustices
• sweatshop labor
• Janis & Paul, A&B ($100)
• structural injustices—problems with policies and institutions rather than the intentions of individuals
• an obligation to pay restitution–difficult to know who to pay to
• unjust enrichment

Question 7

Hardin

Answer 7

• Tragedy of the Commons
• cow example–ruin the pasture
• overpopulation–ruin the world
• must agree to an equal degree of coercion–share the wealth
• prisoners dilemma

Question 8

Hill

Answer 8

• a means only
• victim pornography–degrading treatment of women
• industry degrades women as a class
• degrading is public–between at least two people
• one cannot lose the moral status of being a person via degradation
• to get rid of porn would be bad–can make women feel shameful about their sexuality (the last thing they need)

Question 9

Christensen

Answer 9

• dehumanizes–people are only viewing porn in the mere animal way
• objectifies–sex between strangers condemns other activities (lifeguard situations, hand models)
• exploits–if a sexual activity is consensual then it is not exploitation
• power imbalances in ordinary pornography are no greater than in other forms of entertainment

Question 10

Marquis

Answer 10

• killing a fetus is on the same moral status of killing an adult human being
• theft of experiences
• abortion is not always wrong–extreme cases
• desire account–the fetus does not have a desire to live
• discontinuation account–discontinuation of experience of the living (Marquis says no as it implies that it already happened)

Question 11

Narvenson

Answer 11

• we don’t owe anything to those we have not harmed
• silver rule–what is the likelihood that you will be in a situation where you need help?
• cannot reasonably ask for help when you are unwilling to give it

Question 12

Singer

Answer 12

• if it is within our power to prevent something bad from happening then we ought to do it, as long as it doesn’t cost us anything of comparable harm
• proximity–should help everywhere because we are a global village
• morally required–less demanding than a utilitarian view

Question 13

Thomson

Answer 13

• violinist thought experiment
• Henry Fonda case
• Burglar case
• not obligated to stay hooked up

Question 14

Saul

Answer 14

• if you are going to mislead you should not take comfort that it is less bad, you might as well have just lied
• some instances where lying is worse–court of law
• some instances were merely misleading is seen as an admirable way to avoid harm

Question 15

LaFollete

Answer 15

• Licensing parents because children are especially vulnerable to them
• we license lawyers and doctors because they can cause harm to people
• wants to have tax incentives
• we will still monitor abuse and neglect
• parents must be competent–knowledge, judgment, disposition, and abilities

Question 16

Gabriel

Answer 16

• effective altruism–do as much good as possible (typically in donating $$ to aid organizations)
• not claiming that EA is bad
• unjust–assigns no intrinsic value to justice, favors efficiency over priority
• blind–quantification/observational/instrumental bias
• claims that EA can accommodate these objections

Question 17

Fredrich

Answer 17

• duty to adopt
• not everyone should adopt–they may not have the resources
• thinks that if people adopt they will satisfy their desire to be a parent in a broader sense
• there are many children in the world who need to be adopted but there are less children who are adoptable
• if we can protect others from serious harm then we ought to do it