PHIL-186 Midterm

According to Marx, which of the following is not a form of alienation?

Alienation by depression

According to Karl Marx, one of the forms of alienation is:

Alienation from Production Process

Consider the example of the shop keeper that was addressed in our lecture. In the example, a shopkeeper chooses to charge the fair price for his goods and services. According to Kant, what is the proper justification for charging the fair price?

Because it is the action that respects the moral law.

According to one of the lecture videos, Marxists maintain that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of ___________________."

Class struggle

According to John Stewart Mill, the only way to accurately discern and judge between two types of pleasure, is to appeal to _______________.

Competent Judges

The type of action based moral theory that considers the result of the action to be the appropriate object of moral evaluation is known as

Consequentialism

The type of action based moral theory that considers the intent of the indivudual to be the appropriate object of moral evaluation, is known as

Deontology

The type of moral theory that takes intentions to be the appropriate object of moral evaluation, is known as

Deontology

According to Marx, which of the following is a fundamental feature of the "Relations of Production."

Division of Labor

Which of the following can NOT be said about utilitarianism?

Egoistic

Robert Nozick's theory is called

Entitlement Theory

A utilitarian would claim that any instrumental good is predicated on an intrinsic good; and the only intrinsic good is reason governed activity.

False

According to Aristotle, a life of "reason governed activity" is not distinctively human. Further, "reason governed activity" is a type of activity that all creatures can perform.

False

According to Edward Freeman, the responsibility of corporate management is to increase the profit for stockholders. Any other forms of social responsibility is immoral.

False

According to Edward R. Freeman and the stakeholder theory, "[T]he doctrine of 'social responsibility'...does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained by collectivist means... I have called it a fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society." He goes on to conclude, "There is one, and only one, social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage its activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

False

According to Nozick, all people have a claim to moral rights that are only made to exist by social institutions.

False

According to the reading, Rawls believes that his theory would be supported by Karl Marx.

False

According to the stakeholder theory, all of the groups are important; however, the most important stakeholder group is the employee group

False

According to the video lecture, a disagreement is, by definition, an argument.

False

According to the video lecture, virtue ethics applies to management because it only benefits the winners.

False

As a consequentialist theory, utilitarianism evaluates the intention of the agent performing an action. Should the agent's intention be good, the action is considered morally good.

False

Corporate social responsibility ought to only be considered in terms of profit margins and P.R. appeal.

False

Friedman defines a "stakeholder" as, "...those groups that have a stake in or claim in the firm. Specifically I include customers, suppliers, employees, stockholders, and the local community; as well as management in its role as agent for these groups... Each of the stakeholder groups has a right not to be treated as a means to some end, and therefore must participate in determining the future direction in the firm in which they have a stake."

False

Kant claims that morality is particular and contingent; as such an action must be based on something that is universally applicable and necessary to all to every particular entity.

False

Kant's version of deontology is another form of hedonism.

False

Once in the original position and behind the veil of ignorance, agents would decide upon five principles.

False

Robert Nozick is considered a utilitarian.

False

The "Superstructure" is the Marxist term for all of the economic conditions that give rise to the "Economic Base."

False

The categorical imperative is a tool that measures our desires and feelings, in order to asses whether or not our action is respectful of the moral law.

False

The general point of the Wilt Chamberlain example is to show that end-state principles or distributional patterned principles of justice do not interfere with the liberty if other individuals.

False

The video lecture claims justice as equality is based on the principle that: "justice requires that people get what they deserve"

False

Eudaimonia is the chief good of all entities; and it is the end to which the actions of all entities ultimately aim.

False Eudaemonia is explicitly the goal of human beings. A rock and a knife are entities, but they do not strive for eudaemonia.

By "justice as fairness," Rawls means: the ideas and principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that necessarily benefits the best-off in society.

False Unequal circumstances only work to the advantage of the worst off in society.

Anand Vaidya, in Ill-Founded Criticisms of Business Ethics, points to a famous passage from Adam Smith which reads, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love." According to Vaidya, standard interpretations claim that rational individuals pursuing their own self interests are all it takes to get the necessary amount of business practices off the ground and running. "Any imposition of ethical principles would be redundant." In order to show the weakness and short sightedness of this claim, Vaidya makes clear the distinction between "the motivations for exchange" and the _____________.

Features necessary for the functioning of business

Aristotle claims that the highest good for a human being is ______________.

Happiness

According to the video lecture, the most important virtue in relation to business ethics is _________________.

Integrity

Which of the following does not apply to the original position?

It is based on the principle of utility

Which is not one of the three ways to talk about justice, according to the video lecture.

Justice as Mutual Respect

Which of the following authors states her or his underlying principle as, "In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit, or they need not participate. There are no values, no 'social' responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and the various groups they voluntarily form."

Milton Friedman

Kant claims that moral actions based on contingency are not justifiable. According to Kant, which of the following would NOT be based on contingency.

Moral Law

Which of the following social programs would Nozick be willing to place a high percentage income tax on the public?

None of the above. Taxes are just a new form of slave labor.

According to Anand Vaidya, in Ill-Founded Criticisms of Business Ethics, which of the following would not be considered one of the three common complaints against business ethics.

Outdated

Rawls claims that, at the very least, people ought to guarantee themselves: income and wealth, rights, liberties, opportunities, status, and self respect. He calls these ...

Primary Social Goods

The two distinct types of utilitarianism, discussed in the lecture and the reading, are ________ and ______.

Rule and Act

________________ is the mean between the excess of "wantonness" and the deficiency of "insensibility."

Self Control

According to the video lecture, which of the following is not considered one of the three theories of justice?

Social reform theory

The statement "Corporate execs have a responsibility to make as much money as possible for their employers, while conforming to the basic rules of society. These corporate execs can spend their own personal time and money however they want, but when they are on the clock they belong to their employers." can only be applied to which of the following ethical theory:

Stockholder

John Rawls' theory is not based on and does not necessarily support the principles of utility and libertarian principles.

TRUE

"Any inequality in society should be to the benefit of the least advantaged in society" is an expression of ...

The Difference Principle

The purely hypothetical situation in which an agent must enter, in order to arrive at principles of justice is called ...

The Original Position

In order to arrive at the principles of justice, agents must suspend their knowledge of their social and economic status. Rawls calls this the

The Veil of Ignorance

According to Aristotle, the moral virtues are traits of character that consist in a disposition to choose the ___________.

The mean between extremes

According to the video lecture, specific jobs or fields depend on the possession of certain virtues. Prof. Hadreas claims that the most important virtue for a CPA is _______________.

Transperancy

A maxim can be universalized, even if it is denied by some people in the actual world.

True

According to Amartya Sen, one of the reasons we should not over employee Adam Smith's emphasis on self-interest in the Butcher-Brewer-Baker simplicity, is Adam Smith's appointment as the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

True

According to Aristotle, finding the mean of a moral situation is dependent upon the needs and capacities of the individual.

True

According to Karl Marx, one of the forms of alienation is "alienation from the product."

True

According to Marx, "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production."

True

According to Milton Freidman, when business executives discuss "social responsibility," they are passively referring to socialism.

True

According to Rawls, no rights are endowed to every human being, regardless of whether or not her or his society supplies them. Rawls does not believe in the existence of natural rights.

True

According to the lecture, Mill maintains that there is a hierarchy of pleasures that are discernible through the employment of competent judges; whereas Bentham claimed all pleasures are equal in kind.

True

According to the reading, Rawls' theory of Justice as Fairness is based on traditional theories of the social contract.

True

If lying should bring about a greater amount of happiness in the long run than telling the truth, a utilitarian would say that it is the morally right thing to do. But it is rarely the case that lying can do this.

True

Justice as fairness claims that an injustice is committed when someone is treated unfairly

True

Kant maintains that the ultimate reason/justification for any moral action is grounded in a categorical imperative.

True

Karl Marx did not create the concept of communism

True

One of the goals of justice as fairness, is to assign principles of basic rights and duties that will determine the division of social benefits.

True

One of the ways that Mill altered Bentham's account of pleasure is by switching from a quantitative model to a qualitative model.

True

Rawls claims that, in order for his theory to work, agents in the original position and the veil of ignorance need to make choices based on their own self-interest.

True

Stockholder theory maintains: The corporate executive is a private employee, not a public servant. This is the basic reason why the doctrine of "social responsibility" involves the acceptance of socialist views: that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses.

True

The economic base is composed of two fundamental parts "the means of production" and "the relations of production."

True

The superstructure grows out of the economic base and offers justifications for the division of labor.

True

The video lecture claims "Distributive justice: Concerns the proper distribution of social benefits and burdens."

True

Utilitarianism claims that one acts morally if and only if that act brings about the most possible net happiness as any other act.

True

Jeremy Bentham created a tool that can measure the overall utility of an action, that subtracts possible pains from the possible pleasure that the act can provide. He called it the "hedonic calculus."

True The hedonic calculus

Virtue theory is a normative ethical theory that evaluates agents and the character of the agent performing an action.

True Virtue theory focuses the characteristics of the agent, as the primary object of moral evaluation.

According to Aristotle, a good person is a person that posseses the excellences of being human. These excellences are whatever characteristics a human being might have that contribute to the fulfillment or performance of the function of a human being. So the excellences of a human being are those characteristics that _________________.

engage in reason governed activity

According to Edward R. Freeman, which of the following is NOT included in the list of stakeholders?

the historical traditions of the firm

The main criteria for evaluating an argument is to test its __________.

validity Great. An argument is valid when it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false at the same time. A test for validity is to apply a counter example. Wherein one provides a similar state of affairs with true premises, but with a false conclusion. Refer to lecture "philo_186_lecture1" on Canvas, in Files for further clarity.