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PHIL 112 - FIRST EXAM

I. Identify briefly in one or two sentences any TEN out of fifteen people (15%):

Socrates, William Frankena, G.E.Moore, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Joseph Fletcher, J.J.C. Smart, Sir William David Ross, Austin Fagothey, Jeremy Bentham, Ayn Rand, Herodotus, George Stevenson, Thomas Hobbes, Plato, the Bishop of Gloucester, Thomas Aquinas, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Alasdaire McIntyre, Eugene Marais.

II. Define in two or three sentences any FIVE out of ten concepts (25%):

Cultural Relativism, Hypothetical Imperative, Reversibility Criterion, Synthetic, Intuitionism, Universal Ethical Egoism, Prima Facie Duty, Cultural Determinism, Duty, Analytic, Internal Sense Proposition, Categorical Imperative, Hedonism, Consequentialism, Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy, Empirical, Psychological Egoism, Practical Imperative, Emotivism, Virtue, Utilitarianism.

III Answer FIVE of the following ten questions (60%):

1. Explain why Lincoln did or didn't act egoistically when rescuing the piglets.

Lincoln was defending the thesis that everybody is an egoist, and that he, consequently, also was an egoist. When he rescued the piglets, his fellow passengers objected that that was clearly an altruistic action. "Not so," Lincoln answered, "I rescued the piglets for purely egoistic reasons. If I hadn't rescued them, I would not have been able to sleep for weeks. So I rescued them so that I would be able to sleep. Clearly, I acted for egoistic reasons: so that I could sleep better."

Lincoln was probably not serious, and he was just pulling the passengers' legs, but his arguments are tricky.

First, one egoistic action does not make him an egoist. This is known as a “pseudodilemma:” a person is forced to choose between two possibilities, whereas in reality there are many possibilities. In this case Lincoln tells us: “I do something egoistic, therefore I am an egoist.” In reality, however, he can be 10 percent egoist and 90 per cent altruist, 15 percent egoist and 85 per cent altruist, and so on. And even if he is an egoist, it does not mean that everybody is an egoist as well. But we tend to think in black or white categories, and we tend to think that he is either an egoist or an altruist. In reality, he--and we as well--are both.

Second, Lincoln implies that he rescued the pigs so that he could sleep better. But 'sleeping better' is the result of Lincoln's rescue, not the cause. It is not the case that Lincoln had sleeping problems and that he was considering drinking sassafras tea, running twenty times around the White House, taking DMACC's Miracle Pills, or rescuing pigs and finally settled on rescuing pigs. Lincoln cleverly switched cause and result to confuse his fellow passengers and he could do so because it is the unintended result. Generally the cause and the intended result of an action are similar: if I want to become rich and famous, then that causes me to enroll at DMACC, and then the result that I intended is that I become rich and famous. But the unintended result of an action has no necessary relation to the cause of the action: if I want to become rich and famous, then that causes me to enroll at DMACC, and while at DMACC I run into Chris and eventually we get married. But meeting Chris was an unintended result of my enrolling at DMACC has of course no relation to the cause of my enrolling there. Lincoln’s intention was to save the pigs, that intention caused him to jump into the water and that also caused unintended results--like for example getting water up his nose, getting wet and muddy, sleeping well—in addition to the intended result: rescuing the piglets. Only for the intended result we can say that it was like the cause of his action.

Third and last: sleeping well, or, in general, being happy, has nothing to do with egoism, altruism, or goodness or evil. When people act in agreement with their personality they feel happy, sleep well, or are nice to people. Bad people sleep well or are happy when they do bad things; good people sleep well or are happy when they do good things. We would like to think that a bad conscience makes us unhappy or keeps us awake, but people like Jeffrey Dahmen or Al Capone are perfectly happy and sleep perfectly well doing what they do, because it agrees with their personality. Now, when a good person does bad things, THAT is a different story. But as long as character and actions agree, people sleep well and are happy. If Lincoln had been an evil person, he would sleep well after he had tortured and drowned the piglets instead of rescuing them.

Now when a bad person does something evil, that will make him or her happy, but not the majority of the population. If Jeffry Dahmen had been sitting in the coach and seen the drowning pigs, he would have jumped out and speeded up the drowning by keeping them underwater or keeping their mother or farmer from rescuing them. That would have made him happy, but not the other passengers in the coach, the sow, the farmer or the farmer’s family. So, a good deed causes happiness for more people than a bad deed, at least that is what Utilitarians think.

2. Explain Kant's 'Reversibility Criterion.'

One of the weaknesses of Kant's Categorical Imperative is that it condones what we consider evil or silly behavior. In some cultures there are diseases, such as leprosy or blindness, which are seen as punishment by some God, and which are then interpreted as invitations to further punish the diseased person. In such a culture, e.g. in Ancient Persia, there would be a rule: "Always beat a blind person." Clearly, if everybody would always beat blind people, no chaos would result although blind people would have short and miserable lives. Similarly, a rule requiring everybody to say "Bongo" or something like that when someone sneezes would be silly but not lead to universal chaos. To prevent such rules from being Categorical Imperatives Kant introduced the Reversibility Criterion, which is a fancy name for what most of us know as the 'Golden Rule:' "Do not do to others, what you don't want others to do to you." The Reversibility Criterion now states that Categorical Imperatives which you don't want to apply to you--for example, if you were blind you wouldn't want everybody to beat you, even if no chaos would result--can not be Categorical Imperatives.

3. Was Socrates the wisest person on earth?

Socrates was pronounced to be the wisest person on earth by the God Apollo's oracle in the town of Delphi, and when he went there himself to investigate this statement, he noticed that on Apollo's temple was written: "Know yourself." The original meaning may have been: "When you read this, you should realize that you are a miserable good-for-nothing compared with (the priests of) the God Apollo." But Socrates reasoned that, if Apollo wants us to know ourselves, and if He thinks Socrates is the wisest person, then He must think that Socrates knows himself. And then Socrates realized that Apollo was right! When he heard that he was pronounced the wisest person, his reaction was that he was an average person who could not possibly be the wisest. But, Socrates realized, in realizing that he was an average person, he really was the wisest. His colleagues and competitors went around proclaiming that they were the most clever and most successful teachers, while in reality they were just average like Socrates. But they did not know they were average; they thought they were the best, did not know themselves and therefore were not wise. Socrates realized, correctly, that he was average; that he correctly knew himself, and that he was therefore wise.

Socrates thereby gave a new interpretation to what was written on Apollo's temple: "Know what your weak and strong points are,” or: “Have a realistic opinion of yourself." He also gave a new definition to Wisdom. Previously people had thought that wise people knew a lot, had a lot of experience, or had read a lot. But Socrates said that now anybody could be wise. All it takes to be wise is know your strong and weak points. A genius who knows he is a genius is wise, but so is a moron who knows he is a moron.

4. Discuss the relation between Etiquette or Manners and Morals or Ethics.

Manners and morals are quite different: many, for example, considered the writer Oscar Wilde an immoral person although everybody agreed that his manners were perfect. Manners are based on a set of rules that govern our behavior, and behavior that conforms to those rules is correct, but not necessarily good. Deciding whether manners are good or correct is easy: you just look at the manners and check—e.g. with a book on good manners—and if the manners conform to the rules, the manners are good or correct. Looking at the manners is sufficient. When we decide that an action is morally good, however, looking at the action is rarely enough: we have to find out whether the action is good. And it depends on our ethical philosophy how we decide whether an action is good. A Utilitarian makes her or his ethical decisions differently from an Ethical Egoist, and they, in turn, make their ethical decisions from followers of Kant or Aristotle.

5. Explain the weak and strong points of Ethical Egoism.

Ethical Egoism defines 'good' as 'in one's best self interest,' and it is clear that this will lead to contradictions and conflict. It is in my best self-interest--and therefore 'good'--to charge you an outrageously high interest rate but it is in your best self-interest--and therefore 'good'--to get a 20 % discount, which would be bad for me. This would mean that the same action would be good or bad at the same time, which is a contradiction. So, first of all, Ethical Egoism is not a good philosophy to deal with conflicts.

And, second, Ethical Egoism is based on the idea that we know what is best for us, and that we therefore should stick to what we know best. However, we don’t always know what is in our best self-interest, and our best self-interest can therefore not be a good basis for a good action in all cases. The good point of Ethical Egoism is that it stresses responsibility and self-reliance: in many situations--though not in all--we do indeed know what is best for us. Ethical Egoism does not help us, however, in solving conflicts between parties where each claims that the action which is in their best self-interest, is the right action.

6. Discuss Herodotus' story about the Greeks and the Callatians. What did Herodotus think this story showed? Was Herodotus right? Explain why or why not.

Herodotus was a Greek historian, who lived about one hundred years before Socrates. He tells the story of the Persian king Cambyses (Book III, 38) who invited a group of Greeks and a mysterious people, the Callatians. This was the first and last time people have heard of the Callatians. He asked the Greeks what they did with their parents and loved ones when they died. The Greeks answered that they cremated them. The Callatians, when asked by the Persian king, answered that they thought this was very disrespectful: burning your ones loved like trash and then putting them in a vase. The Greeks were surprised and asked the Callatians what they did with their loved ones. "We want them to be always with us, so we eat them," the Callatians replied. The Greeks did not approve of that. This, Herodotus wrote, proves that our ideas of right and wrong are relative: what is wrong for one person or group may be right for another. Nothing is therefore absolute, he said, and all morals are relative. But this story shows that some morals may be absolute after all: both the Greeks and the Callatians thought that one should respect one's deceased loved ones, although they differed as to how to express that feeling.

7. Evaluate Act and Rule Utilitarianism.

The problem with Act Utilitarianism is that with each individual action we have to calculate its consequences to see whether it will result in the greatest happiness, and that is time-consuming and impractical. Act Utilitarianism is also difficult to teach. More importantly, Act Utilitarianism is ultimately a case of the end justifying the means, which we intuitively reject. Rule Utilitarianism relies on discovering which rules result in the greatest happiness. This means that initially deciding which rule brings most happiness, but then afterwards we can apply a rule without going through all of the results of a single action each time. Rule Utilitarianism is therefore in the long run easier to teach and easier to figure out.

8. Explain Kant's 'Categorical Imperative.' How is it related to his 'Hypothetical Imperative?

"Imperative" here means "command" or "rule." There are two types of 'imperatives:' Rules that apply in some cases, for example: "If you want to become rich and famous, you should attend DMACC." "Attend DMACC" is therefore a rule that is valid only in some cases: if you want to become rich and famous. Kant calls these rules "hypothetical imperatives," because they only apply in some hypothetical cases. The other types of rules are those that apply always, and they are called "categorical imperatives," where 'categorical' means 'universal.' Kant claims that a rule is a categorical imperative when 1) it is universalizable and 2) non-self-contradictory. 'Universalizable' means that the rule can be applied in all cases, not just in most. 'Non self-contradictory' means that applying the rule should result in order, and not chaos. A rule, Kant explains, has as its purpose order, and therefore should result in order. If it does result not in order but in chaos, then it is not a good but a self-contradictory rule.

9. Discuss Charity, analyzing among others whether charity is demeaning (Ayn Rand), egoistic (Thomas Hobbes), or just plain common sense (Immanuel Kant).

Thomas Hobbes, whom one could call one of the early Psychological Egoists, claimed that people always act in their best self-interest and that giving to charity is merely showing off or making sure that when they hit upon bad times, they have a right to ask for help.

Discussion: That is, of course, possible but Hobbes gives no reasons why he thinks that this is always the case. Also, we know best what goes on in our mind; propositions about our own mind are ‘internal sense propositions,’ about which we are the authority. We may lie about it, but we still know best. Ayn Rand said basically the same—charity is showing off or an investment--but added that charity is an insult to the receiver of charity. Whoever gives, Ayn Rand said, claims that (s)he knows what the receiver needs, even better than the receiver her- or himself. Discussion: This may be the case in some events, but generally people appreciate receiving charity not only because they get some material help but also because it is the expression of sympathy, which most people appreciate. Kant basically agreed with Hobbes: charity is in your best self-interest but saw it only as insurance. Those who give to charity are more likely to receive from charity when they need it. Again, that is a possible explanation, but Kant had of course no way to figure out what went on in other people’s mind.

10. Discuss Thomas Aquinas' Natural Law theory in Ethics.

Natural Law originated with Aristotle and was developed by Thomas Aquinas and states that using items is good when they are used for what they were made for. Natural Law is often invoked when discussing homosexuality: human sexual organs were made for heterosexual reproduction and should therefore only be used for that.

The problem is that it is often difficult or impossible to find out what something was made for. Were hammers made only for hammering nails or for killing cave animals or cave people? And should it therefore NOT be used to scare off robbers? In the case of objects that were made long ago, the only way to find out what they were made for, is to look at what they are used for. But then it is not the intention of the maker but usage that tells us what things were made for.

Also, dictating that items can only be used for what they originally were made for goes against human creativity and inventiveness and the urge to experiment. This is also true in biology: horns may originally have originated as tools to fight over mates, but animals now also use them to fight off predators. There are similar problems with the giraffe's neck and the feathers and wings of birds, especially now that dinosaurs with feathers have been found. And what was my appendix made for?

11. Compare Universal Ethical Egoism with Psychological Egoism; does either theory imply we can do whatever we want?

Psychological Egoism states that we do what is best for us, and that implies that we have not much choice in our behavior. In any situation we do whatever is best for us, whether we want or not. Psychological Egoism therefore claims that we have no free will and we cannot do whatever we want, we can only do what is in our best self interest. We are computers that figure out what is best for us and then do it and the question of whether we want to do it or not does not come up. Universal Ethical Egoism states that acting in our best self-interest is good. It states that we have the possibility to do all kind of clever or silly things, but from all the things we may want to do, only those that are in our best self-interest are good. Universal Ethical Egoism therefore states that we have a free will, that we can, that is: have the possibility, to do whatever we want to do. However, not everything we want to do is good for us, and we may decide not to do some things we want to do. We can do what we want, but not everything we want is in our best self-interest.

12. Discuss on the basis of Kant's 'Case of the Inquiring Murderer' whether there are situations when lying is right. Discuss at least one way to change Kant's theory to justify lying in this case.

In Kant's "Case …" someone meets a person who clearly wants to murder somebody and asks for the address of somebody who happens to be a good friend of the person who is asked. There are two conflicting Categorical Imperatives in this case: 1) People should try to save lives, and, 2) People should not lie. We intuitively feel that lying is justified in this case and can justify it in either of two ways. First, we can rank the CatImps and let the higher have priority over the lower ranked CatImps. In that case we could rank 'Save lives' as higher so that it would have priority over 'Speak the truth' and the higher CatImp would cancel the lower CatImp out. Second: we could qualify CatImps by allowing exceptions and say, for example: "Always speak the truth, except to save a life." This latter statement would still be a CatImp: if everybody would speak the truth except to save a life, no chaos would result. Kant did not want to apply either possibility, probably since ranking and exceptions would be based on consequences, and he wanted to get away from consequentialist theories.

13. Explain whether Intuitionism and Emotivism claim that we are always right when we express our moral opinion.

Intuitionists indeed claim that we are always right because we have some moral hot line that ensures that we always make the right moral decision if we listen to our intuition. For Emotivists the question of being morally right does not arise. When we say: "Murder is wrong," we merely say, according to the Emotivists, that 1) we don't like murder and/or 2) we order you not to murder. We merely express our opinion in moral statements, according to Emotivists, and they ignore the question whether our opinion is based on good reasons or not, or whether it is morally good or not.

14. David Hume wrote that, when someone was murdered, he could see a victim, the murderer, and the instrument of the killing, but he could not see 'vice' till he examined his own feelings. Discuss and evaluate the implications of this statement.

David Hume wrote that, when a murder occurred, he could see the murderer, the victim, the instrument, blood, but try as he might, he could not see 'vice' or 'evil,' until he looked in his own heart and there he found a feeling of disapproval and that, he said, was evil or vice.

Hume therefore said that Ethics is about emotions. His way of thinking was taken up by the Emotivists, who claim that ethical propositions are 1) emotional expression and/or 2) commands or suggestions to do or not to do some actions.

Philosophers like Kant claim that Ethical propositions are analytic: you look at the sentence and its meaning and then you can figure out whether it is true or not. Hume claims ethical propositions are synthetic: you look at what is happening in the world--in this case what is going on in your own mind or heart--and then you find out whether murder is right or not. If there is a feeling of disapproval, murder is evil but when there is a feeling of approval, then murder is good. One problem is that an overwhelming majority of people has the same opinion about some ethical questions, which cannot be explained by declaring those questions to be personal feelings or opinions. Another problem is how we get our emotions. Murder may evoke in us a feeling of disapproval, but how did that feeling originate? Is it: 1) an innate feeling that we can not control, or, 2) a feeling that is the result of our education by our parents who decided murder is evil, or, finally, is the feeling a result of many repeated intellectual conclusions by us that murder is bad? Hume, therefore, does not address the question of where these feelings come from, whether they can be changed, and, in the final analysis, whether they are right or wrong.

15 Discuss the relation between Egoism and Altruism.

Purely egoistic actions are in reality not in one's best self-interest, since they antagonize others. Rather, being polite, nice, and cooperative--or altruistic--is in one's best self-interest. Hence, in judging whether an action is in one's best self-interest, one has to take the long-term view and check whether it will antagonize others. Purely altruistic actions, for example giving away all your possessions, are not altruistic either, since that would mean in this case that you could not take care of yourself, have no car, no house and that you force others to take care of you or your family, which is not altruistic. In short, the difference between altruistic and egoistic may be minimal: it is in one's best self-interest to be altruistic and long-term egoism is almost identical with altruism.

16. Socrates asked Eutyphro: "Do your Gods say something is good because it is good in itself, or is it good just because your Gods say so?" Discuss the issues involved in his question.

Eutyphro told Socrates that telling right from wrong was easy: all he had to do was listening to his Gods. Socrates then said that there were two possibilities. One: the Gods pronounce an action as good for some reason that has to do with the action itself. Two: the Gods make an arbitrary decision, for example flip a coin, and pronounce the action good for a reason that has nothing to do with the action. In the first case, that is when the Gods have a reason for their opinion, we should be able to examine that reason and see whether that is a good reason and whether we agree with the Gods. In the second case we need not bother to listen to the Gods.

What Socrates wants to say is that we can't pass the buck. We have to make our own decisions and we can't accept someone else's reasons why an action is good or not. And Socrates did not exclusively target Eutyphro's Gods. He said that we should always make up our own mind and not listen to any authority, for example a neighbor, parent, spouse, coach or teacher. We can, of course, make up our own mind and on decide on basis of our experiences that we will listen to an authority: God, our neighbor, or our grandmother. But we need good reasons for our decisions and we cannot blindly rely on authority the way Eutyphro blindly relied on his Gods.

17. Explain why Kant thought that only the Will is good, and why Duty is so important.

Kant saw people as being different from animals because animal behavior is governed by instincts and urges while our behavior is governed by rules. People, Kant said, are auto-nomous, which means 'self-ruled' in Greek. Hence rules make us human, but only when we stick to those rules. Will, or willpower, makes us follow these rules, which is why Kant thought that the Will was the only good thing that was always good. Courage, for example, is not always good, for example when it is the quality of a murderer. Duty is the obligation to society to follow its rules; it is a realization that there are rules and that we have to follow them. Kant thought that doing a good deed, for example helping your little brother with his homework, out of a feeling of duty was better than doing the same deed because you felt like it, but many philosophers disagree with him on that.

18. Discuss Kant's "Practical Imperative."

Kant's Practical Imperative states that people are an end, purpose, or goal in themselves and should not be used as a means or tool for some else. He seemed have thought that it was identical or at least very similar to a CatImp, probably because a tool or means is something that is not always good or evil, but only good or wrong for a certain purpose. Declaring that people should not be used as a tool is therefore the same as saying that the rules for people should be universalizable, and, additionally, Kant's understanding of 'rule' meant that 'real rules' could not result in chaos, which is the other requirement for a CatImp. The Practical Imperative may have been directed against the Utilitarians. Utilitarianism basically states that if the end is general happiness, the end justifies the means or tools. This, however, is especially a problem in Act Utilitarianism. Rule Utilitarianism suffers much less from this defect.

19. Discuss Aristotle's 'Virtue Ethics.' Which are its weak and strong points?

Aristotle's 'Virtue Ethics has recently become popular as a reaction to the relativism of e.g. Utilitarianism. Relativistic theories like Utilitarianism hold that any action can be good or bad, depending on the consequences. Some philosophers have rejected this, most notably Immanuel Kant, who holds that some actions are good in themselves, no matter what the consequences are. Hospitality or friendship, for example, is considered by some to be good, no matter which consequences they have.

Aristotle, too, thought that some of our character traits, called 'virtues,' are always good. Our virtues have two sources. First, Aristotle said, when we want to find out what the virtues are, we look at what he called 'virtuous people,' and what we call role models, like John F. Kennedy, Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King Jr. We determine what their qualities or characteristics are, and these we call 'virtues.' This, properly speaking, is circular reasoning: we define a virtue as the characteristic or quality of a virtuous person, but that means that we define virtue with the help of virtue, and that is not a good definition. The characteristics of virtuous people are copied, taught, or learned by people, they lead to good results, and these good results reinforce the virtues in a feedback process. The good results of living on basis of virtues become causes or reasons for living on basis of these virtues, and that repeats itself in a self-perpetuating process. Second, some virtues are innate and will then be further developed by the educational process. But some vices are also innate, and they have to be eliminated by education. Education therefore teaches and reinforces virtues and eliminates vices.

Virtues need to be fine-tuned, according to Aristotle. Too much or too little of a virtue is not a good thing, and our intellect helps us in deciding how much of a virtue is the right amount. Too much courage is recklessness; not enough is cowardice. Aristotle is therefore a rationalist: he thinks that our mind, ratio in Latin, helps us decide what is right and wrong.

The weak points of Aristotle's ethical philosophy are that he does not give us any idea how many virtues there are, and on what basis human qualities are chosen to be virtues. Also, his choice of virtues clearly reflects a pagan society. In the Middle Ages Christian philosophers considered, for example, Love, Hope, and Charity to be virtues, but Aristotle considered, for example, Courage to be a virtue, and he also thought that the ability not to drink too much alcohol was a virtue, as was the ability to make witty remarks.

20. Explain the strong and weak points of Utilitarianism.

When compared with Ethical Egoism, Utilitarianism has the clear advantage of being able to solve conflicts between people. But it uses ‘happiness’ as the basis for determining what is good, and, of course, it is difficult to define happiness and, moreover, what is happiness for one person may not be happiness for the next.

The Utilitarians solved this problem by defining as good that which makes most people happy. In other words, they put it to a vote, which at least Kant thought was just horrible. It may be difficult to determine which action will make one particular person happy, but it is a lot easier to determine which action will make most people happy: just put it to a vote. When we want to determine whether an action makes a person happy, we run into the problem that what makes my aunt Petunia happy does not make her son Jeroboam happy. In such cases we want to find out what action will cause happiness for her or him. But when we only want to determine what makes most people happy, we don’t have to worry what causes happiness. We proceed from what will have caused happiness, or, at least what people say will have caused happiness. We look at the result, or at least what people say will be the result, and that is the basis for the Utilitarian definition of a good action. People can not be wrong about what makes them happy, because their opinions about what makes them happy are internal sense propositions. Freud, however, thought that people can be mistaken about their internal sense propositions. Rather than the mayor or city manager figuring out whether the inhabitants of Ankeny will be happier with a casino than with a racetrack, a vote will determine what will be built. Will they be all happy in the same way? That does not matter; the only thing that matters is that they say they will be happy. The great drawback of Utilitarianism is that it is difficult to predict the future. In the US space program we have had some spectacular successes when scientists predicted exactly what a spacecraft would do many years in the future. But in other areas, most notably the economy, it is very difficult to predict how the stock market will behave.