Philosophy 215 Final Exam Questions And Answers Well Defined.

Hardin's "Lifeboat Ethics" - correct answer "Every human born constitutes a draft on all aspects of the environment: food, air, water, forests, beaches, wildlife, scenery and solitude. Food can, perhaps, be significantly increased to meet a growing demand. But what about clean beaches, unspoiled forests, and solitude? If we satisfy a growing population's need for food, we necessarily decrease its per capita supply of the other resources needed by men." what we owe to future generations - correct answer- In addition to the moral debt of compassion and justice that we owe to those people currently living, do we not also have a duty to future generations to ensure they have the best chances of survival? - If we do have such an obligation, then that obligation puts pressure on how we can intervene to help those currently suffering. - But constantly giving aid to the needy, we risk exhausting finite resources and endangering the survival of our future generations. Spaceship Earth - correct answer Environmentalists use the metaphor of the earth as a "spaceship" in trying to persuade people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources The Lifeboat - correct answer "Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, "first come, first served"? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our "safety factor," an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don't leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our country's agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences." Learning the hard way - correct answer If each country is solely responsible for its own well-being, poorly managed ones will suffer (and presumably perish). But they can learn from experience. They may mend their ways, and learn to budget for infrequent but certain emergencies. Peter Singer - correct answer Famine Affluence and Morality Singer's Beliefs - correct answer- We (each, individually) have a positive obligation to sacrifice some of our well-being and resources to help people in struggling in poverty. - There is no morally significant difference between killing and allowing to die one whom you could easily save. The Strong Principle - correct answer "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." The Weak Principle - correct answer "If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it." Singer's Argument - correct answer(1) The Weak Principle: If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. (2) It is very often in our power to prevent something very bad from happening without sacrificing anything morally significant. For example, we could give much, much more of our income to famine-relief than we do, thereby preventing many deaths by starvation, simply by not buying new clothes and shoes when our old ones are still perfectly functional, and buying expensive meals out when we could eat much more cheaply. (3) We ought, morally, to give up such luxuries and give much, much more of our income to famine-relief. Climate Change and Individual Responsibility - correct answer- Sinnott-Armstrong admits that climate change is a problem, and that governments probably have an obligation to do something about it. - But, he claims, it does not follow from the fact that there is responsibility at the group level that there is also responsibility at the individual level. The Harm Principle - correct answer An action is morally wrong if it causes harm to others When is an action a cause of harm to others? - correct answer Sinnott-Armstrong's Answer: Plausibly, when it is either a necessary and/or a sufficient condition for that harm. Necessary Condition - correct answer X is a necessary condition for Y when X must occur in order for Y to occur. In other words, without X, Y will not occur. For instance, buying a closed figure is a necessary condition for being a triangle. Sufficient Condition - correct answer X is a sufficient condition for Y when the occurrence of X guarantees the occurrence of Y. In other words, wherever X occurs, Y does too; e.g., being 5 is a sufficient condition for being 1. I am not a necessary condition for the harm - correct answer My individual emissions are not required in order for climate change to occur. If I stopped emitting altogether this very instant, the harm would still occur with or without my efforts. I am not a sufficient condition for the harm - correct answer My individual emissions do not by themselves guarantee that climate change will occur. If I was the only person producing emissions, climate change would not occur at all Car-Push - correct answer You and 4 of your friends are pushing a car off of a cliff with an innocent person inside of it. It only takes 3 strength of 3 people to push the car. The car goes off the cliff and the person inside dies. The Contribution Principle - correct answer An action is morally wrong if it contributes to making some harmful situation worse. The Risk Principle - correct answer An action is morally wrong if it causes an increase in the risk of harm to others The General Action Principle - correct answer An action is morally wrong if it would be bad for everyone to perform an action of the same kind. Noisy Airport - correct answer You are in a crowded airport, where EVERYONE is talking. It is so noisy, that several people miss an important announcement on the intercom, and miss their flight as a result. At some point, amidst the noise, you say to your friend, "I wish everyone would be quiet!" Hiller argues that it is at least prima facie morally wrong to take a Sunday drive in your gas-guzzling automobile because of the following moral principle: - correct answer(MP) it is prima facie wrong to perform an act which has an expected amount of harm greater than any other easily available alternative. Why do people believe in Individual Causal Inefficacy? - correct answer Selfish and denial & The fallacy of double division Selfish and denial - correct answer We recognize that if we countenance the fact that individual actions are significant, then if we wish to remain moral, we'd have change our entire way of life. The fallacy of double division - correct answer AGCC is a threshold phenomenon where one particular action carries us over the tipping point. If this is so then perhaps it is very unlike that ours will be the harmful action. So we are willing to Gamble. The "Nero's Fiddle" effect - correct answer Since we have likely already crossed the tipping point, no matter what one does, we are going to be facing serious harms. Thus we decide to "fiddle while Rome [in this case Rome is the Earth] burns." But this is surely wrongheaded since the degree of severity of the harms faced is likely to be marginally effected by our individual actions (as Hiller has argued) and this marginal might have tremendous consequences for millions of people's lives. Limited Capacity for Valuing - correct answer The philosopher Thomas Nagel talks about the absurdity of human life when viewed from a cosmic perspective. We care deeply for ourselves and our families and communities, But when we adopt the "view from nowhere" these cares are dwarfed by the enormity of the universe. This misleads us into thinking that what we do is unimportant. Hiller suspects that this is because, as David Hume points out, our moral sentiments are adapted to our local environment. Degrazia on Gun Control - correct answer- There is a right, both legal and moral, to private gun ownership. - More precisely, competent, law-abiding adults in the United States have a right to own such ordinary weaponry as handguns and long guns (shotguns and hunting rifles). - According to the US Supreme Court—whose judgment this essay accepts for the sake of discussion—a legal right to bear arms is grounded in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. - A moral right to private gun ownership, meanwhile, is most plausibly thought to be supported by a more general right to self-defense, which itself may be understood to derive from a basic right to physical security. Degrazia's Position - correct answer "My thesis is that, assuming there is a right to bear arms, the most defensible policy approach in the United States would feature moderate gun control." Degrazia defends the following as additions to the minimal regulations that constitute the legal status quo: - correct answer(1) universal background checks; (2) a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazine clips; (3) the requirement of a license for all new gun owners, contingent upon passing a rigorous safety course; (4) safe storage requirements and required safety features on all guns; (5) tracing mechanisms on all guns and a national database of gun sales and gun owners; (6) "de-crippling" of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF); and (7) restoration of funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study the relationships among gun ownership, specific gun regulations, and gun violence. Basic moral rights are moral rights that... - correct answer(1) protect highly general interests that are vital to the prospects for living a decent life, and (2) are not specifications or instances of more general rights. An example of a basic right, which will be important to our discussion, is the right to physical security. - Derived moral rights - A derived right, by contrast, is a right that is derived—conceptually, empirically, or both—from one or more basic rights.