Ethics Final

The principle of utility can be summarized as

"maximize overall well-being."

Which of the following must be true for the Argument from Expected Benefit to succeed?

Both a and b

According to utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, what is the relevant question for determining membership in the moral community?

Can they suffer?

According to the text, what do most utilitarians believe about conventional moral wisdom?

Conventional morality is mistaken in some ways but is mostly correct.

Socrates concludes that

Euthyphro has provided qualities of piety but no definition.

What attitude do most utilitarians take toward non-human animals?

If an animal suffers to the same extent as a human, the animal's suffering is equally important.

Which of the following accurately describes the relationship between ethical egoism and psychological egoism?

If psychological egoism is true, this supports ethical egoism.

The Euthyphro question asks

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

Why isn't psychological egoism considered an ethical theory?

It aims to tell us how we do behave, not how we should behave.

According to the text, what's wrong with the Argument from Paradigm Cases?

It begs the question against the ethical egoist.

Which of the following claims about ethical egoism is not true?

It claims that everyone always behaves selfishly.

How would most utilitarians characterize the principle of utility?

It is a standard of rightness.

According to the text, how should we regard utilitarianism's commitment to impartiality?

It is in some ways a strength and in others a weakness.

According to the text, what does the evidence suggest about psychological egoism?

It is very probably false.

Which of the following is a problem for ethical egoism?

It violates core moral beliefs.

What does it mean to say a policy is optimific?

It yields the greatest balance of benefits over drawbacks.

Which of the following responses to the problem of injustice is not consistent with utilitarianism?

Justice is intrinsically valuable.

What is the relationship between libertarianism and ethical egoism?

Libertarianism and ethical egoism are inconsistent.

What is the attitude of most consequentialists toward rule consequentialism?

Other versions of consequentialism are preferable to it.

According to the text, what is the best argument for ethical egoism?

Our moral obligations give us reasons, and all reasons come from self-interest.

What lesson have many people taken from the story of the Ring of Gyges?

People are fundamentally self-interested.

According to Mill, which of the following are desirable as ends?

both a and b

According to the text, what is wrong with the Self-Reliance Argument?

both a and b

If psychological egoism is true, then

both b and c

According to libertarianism, all of our duties derive from

consent and reparation.

What is supererogation?

doing something that is admirable and praiseworthy but not morally required

According to utilitarianism, the preferences and well-being of people with deep-seated prejudices matter ___________ the preferences and well-being of oppressed people.

equally to

If libertarianism is true, then

ethical egoism is false.

Psychological egoism is the theory that

everything people do is fundamentally motivated by self-interest.

According to the text, the existence of a guilty conscience is

evidence against psychological egoism.

John Stuart Mill thought that the only intrinsically valuable thing is

happiness.

The Best Argument for Ethical Egoism states that

if there is good reason to do something, then doing it must make you better off.

According to ethical egoism, conflicts between self-interest and morality are

impossible.

If ethical egoism is true, then everyone

is allowed to pursue self-interest

Mill argues that utilitarianism __________ the existence of God.

is consistent with

Psychological egoism

is one, but not the only, possible source of support for ethical egoism.

The case of the invisible hair elves is meant to show that

it is a mistake to hold a view as immune from refutation by evidence.

Euthyphro claims when the gods love things

it is because those things are pious

Most utilitarians believe that the morality of an action depends on

its actual results.

Consequentialists all agree that

morality requires whatever act is optimific.

If ethical egoism is true, then it is never morally permissible for someone to ___________ you.

neither a nor b

Utilitarians can completely avoid the problem of adding up well-being by claiming that well-being consists in

neither a nor b

If ethical egoism is true, then I should regard the interests of others as having

no moral importance.

According to Mill, to be virtuous, a person must always

none of the above

According to the text, from the fact that I expect my action to result in X, we can infer that

none of the above

According to utilitarianism, it is intrinsically morally right to

none of the above

If ethical egoism is true, others are morally obliged to

none of the above

Utilitarianism allows that we may count one person's interests as more important than the interests of others if

none of the above

Utilitarianism states that it is always intrinsically wrong to

none of the above

What definition of piety does Socrates endorse?

none of the above.

Suppose the widespread acceptance of egoism would make everyone better off. This would

not support ethical egoism.

Strictly conscientious action is any action

performed because one believes it to be morally required.

Mill maintains that, in the long run, the best proof of a good character is

performing good actions.

Socrates claims that

piety is not the same thing as being loved by the gods

When Socrates first asks what piety is, Euthyphro initially claims that it is

prosecuting wrongdoers.

If all of our actions are motivated by our strongest desire, then

psychological egoism is true only if all of our strongest desires are for self-interest.

According to the text, the first premise of Argument from Expected Benefit,

seems to ignore the possibility of pessimists.

The story of the Ring of Gyges suggests that when people are free to do whatever they want without consequences, they tend to behave

selfishly.

The fact that ethical egoism requires actions that seem to be paradigm cases of immorality

shows that we should accept ethical egoism only if there are very strong arguments in its favor.

Which of the following best describes what Socrates wants to know?

some examples of pious action.

Mill claims that secondary moral principles

sometimes conflict.

Most utilitarians regard utilitarianism as a

standard of rightness.

According to the text, the evidence available

suggests, but does not prove, that psychological egoism is false.

Mill maintains that the business of ethics is to

tell us what our duties are.

When Euthyphro suggests that piety is what the gods love, Socrates objects that

the gods sometimes disagree.

On Mill's view, whose happiness is relevant for determining right conduct?

the happiness of all concerned

According to Socrates, if the gods love pious things because they are pious, then

the pious is not the same as the god-loved.

According to utilitarianism, the motive behind an action is relevant to

the worth of the agent who performs the action.

According to utilitarianism

there is no essential connection between the morality of an action and the morality of the intentions behind it.

To claim that murder, rape, and torture are always morally impermissible, the ethical egoist must maintain that

those who murder, rape, or torture never benefit from their crime.

According to Mill, what is the function of secondary moral principles?

to guide decisions via intermediate generalizations

Mill argues that, according to the utilitarian doctrine, lying is

usually morally impermissible.

According to the Argument from Injustice,

utilitarianism sometimes requires us to commit serious injustices.

According to Mill, when should the first principles of morality be appealed to in decision-making?

when secondary principles conflict

If getting what we want makes us better off, then

when we do what we want and what we want is to make ourselves better off, our actions are self-interested.

Measuring well-being is difficult for utilitarians because there

all of the above

Which of the following actions would Mill categorize as right?

all of the above

If psychological egoism is true, it can't be our duty to be altruistic because

altruism would be impossible and we aren't morally required to do the impossible.

Being a member of the moral community means that you are

are morally important in your own right.

How does Mill understand "happiness"?

as pleasure and the absence of pain

Why does disagreement among the gods pose a problem for Euthyphro's claim that what is pious is what is dear to the gods?

because it entails that some things are both pious and impious

According to the text, the Argument from Expected Benefit

begs the question.

According to the text, what's wrong with the Best Argument for Ethical Egoism?

Sometimes we have reason to do things that will gain us nothing.

What would the psychological egoist say about someone who acts to avoid a guilty conscience?

Such a person acts out of a self-interested desire to avoid guilt.

What would an ethical egoist say about a situation in which self-interest and morality conflict?

Such a situation is impossible, according to ethical egoism

If one cannot conceive of any evidence that would refute psychological egoism, what does this suggest about the theory?

The theory is not being held rationally.

Which of the following best describes the relationship between psychological egoism and ethics?

The truth of psychological egoism would mean that most of what we take for granted about morality would be mistaken.

What does psychological egoism say about acts of altruism?

They are impossible.

Which of the following is not an objection raised by Socrates?

We may not have an obligation to do as the gods command.

According to ethical egoism, how should we regard the basic needs of others?

We should completely discount them.

Psychological egoism is

a descriptive theory of human motivation.

Altruism is

a direct desire to benefit others for their own sake.

Consequentialism is

a family of ethical theories that includes utilitarianism.

Which of the following rights do we have, according to ethical egoism?

a right to pursue our own self-interest

Which of the following is impossible, according to psychological egoism?

acting to benefit others for the sake of others

Ethical egoism is the theory that

actions are morally right just because they promote one's self-interest.

The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that

actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

A psychological egoist would claim that giving up something you want for the sake of a loved one is

actually a self-interested action.

Mill claims that the corollaries of the principle of utility

admit of indefinite improvement

Ethical egoism

all of the above