PHIL 440A.  FINAL EXAM REVIEW QUESTIONS

 

                The Final Exam will be held in class Friday August 21.  PLEASE BRING ONE OR MORE BLANK EXAM BOOKS AND A PEN TO THE EXAM.  EXAM BOOKS WITH NOTES WRITTEN ON THEM OR WITH PAGES MISSING WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.  Please answer all questions completely, but concisely.  Answer in complete sentences.  The exam will consist of selections from the following questions.  You will have 90 minutes to complete the exam.  To complete the exam in 90 minutes, it will be important to have thought out your answers in advance.  In preparing for the exam, you are encouraged to discuss these questions with other members of the class, and to discuss what the relevant considerations would be in answering them.  However, each student is expected to develop his/her own answers to the questions.  You should not discuss the wording of an answer or attempt to come up with an agreed upon answer.  If you draft answers to the questions, you should not show your draft answers to others, nor should you read or copy someone else's draft answers.  Exams will be available for pick-up in the Philosophy Department Office (in Savery Hall) during the first week of  September.  If you would like your Final Exam mailed to you, please bring a sufficiently large, stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Final Exam and insert it inside your blue book. 

 

1.  Explain and distinguish the following pairs of terms.  (You are not required to define them.  You can use examples to illustrate them.  However, your explanations or examples should be adequate for explaining the distinctions to a reasonably intelligent person with no philosophical background.)

 

(a) Hypothetical/Categorical Imperative

(b) Autonomous/Heteronomous Will (Kant)

(c) prudent/prudent but "trustworthy" ("moral")/trustworthy and fair (moral) person (Gauthier)

(d) philosophical utilitarianism/normative utilitarianism (Scanlon)

(e) internal/external view of agents (Nagel)

(f) care/justice perspective in ethics

(g) internal/external goods (MacIntyre)

(h) technical skill/practice (MacIntyre)

(i) morality of traits/morality of principles (Frankena)

 

2.  What are the three versions of the Categorical Imperative?  For each of them, answer the following question:  If true, would it provide purely descriptive necessary and sufficient conditions for moral rightness/wrongness?

 

3.  What is the difference between rights understood as side constraints and a "utilitarianism of rights"?

 

4.  (a) Explain why the following is true:  Nozick and Williams ("Internal and External Reasons") both believe that moral reasons are agent-relative.  (b) Explain why the following is NOT true:  In the sense in which Williams uses the term, Nozick and Williams are both internalistsW about moral reasons. 

 

5.  What is Gauthier's thesis?  Why does he think it is true?

 

6.  Give an example of moral luck that raises serious doubts about our ordinary beliefs about moral responsibility and explain why it does so.

 

7.  What does Kant mean by the "good will"?  Why is Mark Twain's story of Huckleberry Finn a challenge to Kant's account of what makes a will good?  (Hint:  Why would some people think that Huck's failure to turn Jim in to the bounty hunters is morally praiseworthy?  Why would Kant's view imply that what Huck did could not be morally praiseworthy?)

 

8.  What is Scanlon's contractualist principle for moral rightness?  Contrast philosophical utilitarianism and Scanlon's philosophical contractualism on the following issues:  (a) the subject matter of morality; (b) moral motivation; (c) the moral point of view.

 

9.  How does Glaspell's story, "A Jury of Her Peers" illustrate the difference between the justice perspective and the care perspective in ethics?

 

10. (a) According to Baier, what are the main differences between Kant's and Hume's ethics?  (b) How do they correspond to the ethics of justice and the ethics of care?  (c) Which does she favor, Kant's ethics or Hume's ethics?  Why?  (d) Which do you favor, Kant's ethics or Hume's?  Why?

 

11.  According to Baier, what is moral reflection?

 

12.  (a) What is Baier's historicist understanding of principles of justice?  (b) Why does it imply that there are no objective, universal principles of justice?

 

13.  (a) What is the different voice hypothesis?  (b) What is the gender difference hypothesis?  (c) What does Friedman mean when she says that the genders have been moralized?

 

11.  Explain three ways that Friedman believes that morally appropriate caring should involve justice.

 

12.  According to Friedman, what difference in moral orientation corresponds to the difference between what is called the "care" perspective and what is called the "justice" perspective in ethics? 

 

13. (a) Why does Aristotle not identify happiness with the maximization of pleasure?  (b) According to Aristotle, what is happiness?

 

14. (a) According to Aristotle, what is a non-moral virtue:  (b) According to Aristotle, what is a moral virtue?

 

15. Explain the role of a practice, a human life, and a tradition in MacIntyre’s account of virtue.  Use examples.

 

16.  According to MacIntyre, what three virtues will be regarded as virtues in any practice?  Why?

 

17. (a) Explain what Frankena means when he says that “principles without traits are impotent and traits without principles are blind.”  (b) How would Aristotle disagree with Frankena (and Socrates) about the role of principles in virtue?

 

18. (a) Which does Frankena believe to be more important in moral judgment, principles or virtues?  Explain.  (b) How would Schaller respond to Frankena on the importance of principles?  [In your answer, you must use at least one of the examples used by Schaller.]  (c) How would Aristotle (as interpreted by Talbott) respond to Schaller?

 

19. In this class we have identified a number of proposed purely descriptive necessary and sufficient (PDN&S) conditions or purely descriptive sufficient (PDS) conditions for moral notions.  Explain the following:

(a) Act Utilitarianism's PD N&S conditions for an act's being morally wrong.

(b) Hospers' PD N&S conditions for moral rules.

(c) J.S. Mill's PD N&S conditions for moral virtues.

(d) Kant's PD N&S conditions for an act's being morally wrong.

(e) Why is it a mistake to interpret Scanlon's contractualist principle as an attempt to give PD N&S conditions for moral rightness or wrongness?

(f) Why is it a mistake to regard Aristotle's Golden Mean Formula as an attempt to give PD N&S conditions for moral rightness or moral virtue?

 

20. (a) What is a Sensitivity Claim concerning moral judgment?  (b) For any principle P, explain the difference between explicit application of P and being implicitly sensitive to P in terms of a counterfactual test.  (c) How does implicit sensitivity help to explain how justice could be involved in the care perspective?  (d) How does implicit sensitivity help to explain how a moral virtue (or practical wisdom) could involve a moral principle in Aristotle's account?  (e) How would an historicist about morality respond to Aristotle?

 

21. (a) What is an Independence Claim concerning moral judgment?  (b) What is a Sensitivity Claim concerning moral judgment?  (c) Explain why Williams does not accept a Sensitivity Claim concerning moral judgment.  (d) What is the moral field hypothesis discussed by Dworkin?  (e) Why does Dworkin believe that the moral field hypothesis is the wrong way to support a Sensitivity Claim concerning moral judgment?  (f) How does Dworkin argue for a Sensitivity Claim concerning moral judgment? 

 

22.  (a) What does Williams mean by saying that reflection destroys moral knowledge?  Use his example of the hypertraditional society to explain your answer.  (b) Why does Williams believe that convergence on moral beliefs would not support objective moral truth?  (c) What would be necessary?