Possible Exam Questions for Ethical Inquiry Mid term

Note: I will choose several questions from this list to be answered quite briefly and one or two questions to be answered at greater length.

1. What is the difference between normative ethics and meta-ethics?

2. How is a moral position different from a personal preference?

3. Clearly there can be important differences between the ethical beliefs that prevail in one culture and those that prevail in some other cultures. What might one say, if one wanted to acknowledge this fact without accepting the doctrine of cultural relativism?

4. What does a moral realist believe?

5. I have tried to suggest that ethics is not as shot through with controversy and indeterminacy as is often claimed. What do you think?

6. What objection to ethical egoism (at least as it is usually understood) can be developed by reflecting on ‘the prisoners’ dilemma’?

7. What do you think of ethical egoism as a normative ethical theory?

8. How does J. S. Mill try to justify his view that some pleasures are qualitatively better than others? What do you think of this view?

9. What objection to utilitarianism can be summarized by saying that it “ignores the separateness of persons”? What do you think of this objection?

10. What is the difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism?

11. What does it mean to call an imperative “categorical”?

12. According to Kant there is only one Categorical Imperative (though it can be formulated in several different ways). In plain English, explain the meaning of the so-called “universal law formulation” of the Categorical Imperative.

13. How can the Categorical Imperative be used as a test for whether an action is morally right? (What steps should one go through to apply this test?) Do you think this is a good way to determine if an action is right or wrong?

14. What does Kant mean by saying that we should regard persons as “ends-in-themselves” and not merely as means? What do you think of this idea?

15. What problem is raised for Kant’s theory by the apparent fact that we sometimes face conflicting obligations?

16. How is W. D. Ross’s view like and unlike Kant’s?

17. What is the difference between a prima facie duty and an absolute or actual duty?

18. What is the difference between an agent-neutral and an agent-relative perspective?

19. How does the ethics of virtue differ from the other normative theories we have studied?

20. What, according to Aristotle, is ‘the function’ of a human being?

21. How does Aristotle define happiness for a human being (the human good)?

22. Briefly, what is Aristotle’s ‘doctrine of the mean’?

23. What does Aristotle mean by saying that the mean is ‘relative to us’? Does that mean that he thinks there is no objective right and wrong?

24. What are some criticisms of virtue ethics?

25. What do you think of virtue ethics?