Western Ethics Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The theory is the Reformative theory.

The reformative theory treats crime as the product of conditions, social, economic and psychological, that shaped the offender. Its aim is to change those conditions and reform the offender, through education, treatment and rehabilitation, rather than simply to make him suffer.

The retributive theory looks back to the offence and demands punishment because it is deserved. The deterrent theory punishes to frighten the offender and others from offending, and the preventive theory aims to disable the offender, for example by imprisonment, from repeating the crime. None of these focuses on the contributing conditions.

Answer: D

The best summary is one cannot will the egoistic maxim to be universalized.

Kant's categorical imperative requires us to act only on a maxim that we can at the same time will to become a universal law. The egoist's maxim, 'always act for my own advantage, using others as needed', cannot be willed as a universal law without defeating itself, since if everyone acted on it the egoist would be used in turn; and it treats other persons merely as means. That is the Kantian test applied to egoism.

The other options are criticisms made by other writers: that ethical egoism is self-contradictory (a charge made by G.E. Moore and others), that it rests on a wrong view of human nature (Butler's objection), or that it involves conflicts of will. They are not the specifically Kantian objection.

Answer: D

The correct code is a-i, b-iv, c-ii, d-iii.

Good is, for G.E. Moore, a simple, unanalyzable quality that cannot be defined in terms of anything else. Right describes an action that is fitting or appropriate to the situation. Duty carries the sense of obligatoriness, what one is bound to do. Virtue is an excellence of character, a nobility of the person.

The first three codes all pair good with nobility, which belongs to virtue, and then shuffle the rest; only the last code matches each concept with its defining feature.

Answer: C

The correct code is a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i.

The golden rule, treat others as you would wish to be treated, is a rule of reciprocity. Aristotle's golden mean places virtue between two extremes, as courage lies between rashness and cowardice. Kant's categorical imperative commands unconditionally, whatever one's desires. A hypothetical imperative is conditional: if you want this end, take these means.

The first two codes pair the golden rule with 'conditional', and the last pairs it with avoiding extremes, so only the third code is right.

Answer: D

The primacy of character is asserted in virtue-ethics.

Virtue ethics, from Aristotle to modern writers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre, asks first what kind of person one should be. Right action is what a person of good character, the virtuous person, would do, so character comes before action.

The ethics of care stresses relationships and responsiveness to particular others rather than character traits as such. Meta-ethics studies the meaning and status of moral terms and takes no stand on character versus action. 'Traditional ethics' in this context means the act-centred theories, deontology and utilitarianism, which judge actions first.

Answer: D

The statement not true of act-deontology is Act-deontology is a position that implicitly assumes hedonism.

Deontological theories hold that the rightness of an action does not depend on the good it produces, so they do not rest on hedonism or any theory of value. Act-deontology in particular, as William Frankena describes it, says that we must judge each particular situation directly, without relying on rules or on consequences.

The other three statements describe it correctly: particular judgements are basic and any rules are generalisations from them; the method is to get clear about the facts of the case and then judge; and no rule-of-thumb judgement can be made without taking stock of the concrete situation.

Answer: C

Hedonistic egoism construes happiness as maximization of one's own pleasure.

Hedonism says pleasure is the only intrinsic good, and egoism says each agent ought to pursue his own good. Together they give the view that each person should seek the greatest amount of pleasure, and the least pain, for himself.

'Maximization of pleasure of maximum number of people' is the utilitarian, universalistic principle of Bentham and Mill, not egoism. 'Maximisation of pleasure and minimization of pain' leaves out whose pleasure counts, which is the defining egoistic element. 'Bliss' (ananda) is a spiritual state, not a hedonistic quantity.

Answer: A

The view is J. S. Mill's.

This is Mill's 'proof' of the principle of utility in chapter 4 of Utilitarianism (1863): each person desires his own happiness, so happiness is a good to him, and the general happiness is therefore a good to the aggregate of all persons. Critics charge it with the fallacy of composition.

Bentham founded utilitarianism on the felicific calculus, Sidgwick defended it through rational intuition, and Kant rejected happiness as the ground of morality.

Answer: A

The view is that of the deterrent theory.

The deterrent theory justifies punishment by its effect on others: Ramu is punished so that other students, seeing the consequence, will not commit similar mischief. The offender is used as an example to discourage potential wrongdoers.

The retributive theory punishes because the offender deserves it, whatever the effect on others. The preventive theory aims to stop the same offender from offending again, for example by disabling him, and the reformative theory aims to improve the offender himself.

Answer: A

The answer is only (i) and (iv) are true.

Ethical non-cognitivists, such as the emotivists Ayer and Stevenson and the prescriptivist Hare, hold that moral sentences do not state facts. They express attitudes or emotions, or issue prescriptions, so they are not propositions (i) and are neither true nor false (iv).

Statements (ii) and (iii) are the cognitivist view, that moral sentences are propositions with truth values, so every code containing them is wrong.