Final Exam

DIRECTIONS: CHOOSE 3 OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS and prepare to write answers for the final exam. You may bring an outline. Choose your questions to show the depth and variety of your knowledge and avoid duplication. You MUST answer at least one question from Part A.

PART A

(1) Using arguments studied in this course, take a position on the morality of capital punishment. Be sure to include some analysis of arguments that oppose the position you choose.

(2) State and evaluate several different views on who benefits economically from racial discrimination in employment, and who is harmed by it. What consequences for the morality of racial discrimination would follow from each view? Explain.

(3) The following question and answer came from an interview with U. S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright on the T. V. show "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996:

Question from Lesley Stahl: speaking of US sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?"

Answer from Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

Using the views of at least 4 authors studied in this course, answer this question about Albright's claim that U. S. policy against Iraq is so valuable that it is worth the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children: Is Albright's claim right, morally speaking?(If you find that you do not have facual information that would be necessary to answer this question, say what information is missing and why it would matter. You may assume that the civilian causalities are not all the outcome of military action, like bombing water reservoirs and power plants, but also result from sanctions that prevented Iraq from buying food and medicine and spare parts in adequate quantities. Note that Albright did not dispute the numbers, which came from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency, December, 1995.)

PART B

(4) Choose two or three of the following topics and see what moral conclusions (if any) would follow if utilitarianism were true: abortion, extreme poverty, capital punishment, active euthanasia, racial discrimination in employment. Do the consequences that utilitarianism has for your chosen topics make it more or less plausible as a theory of morality, i.e., does it give the right answers in these important cases? Explain.

(5) Describe several moral arguments in this course that draw a moral distinction between doing something and allowing it to happen. Are moral conclusions drawn in these cases correct? Describe one or two arguments that killing and letting die are not morally different, and evaluate these arguments.

(6) What are some of the considerations that make waging a particular war moral or immoral. Include discussion of harm to “innocents,” and what it means to be innocent. Apply these considerations to evaluate the participation of the U. S. in several wars in which it has participated (you may include a future war with Iraq if you think you can anticipate how and why it would be fought).

(7) Which author's moral theory is most likely to be true: Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Mill, Rawls, Engels, Mao, Nietzsche? Explain your answer fully.

(8) Thompson's argument for the morality of abortion seems to depend on the claim that refusing to aide others does not violate their rights. Marquis argument against the morality of abortion seems to require that some cases of killing animals are morally wrong. Do either of these facts pose a strong objection to these authors' positions? Explain fully.

(9) What is equality, in the sense(s) discussed in this course? Describe several different views and argue that one is better than the others.

(10) Argue either that preservation of forests and the animals and plants that live in them is or is not be an important moral obligation of societies and governments. Give several different arguments for the side you defend, and consider possible arguments on the other side.

(11) Choose two arguments discussed in this course but not described elsewhere in your final, and give an outline and critical evaluation of them. Let one argument be the argument which was the strongest or most changed your previous opinion, and the other the worst or least convincing argument.