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WGU Ethics Mod. 5
WGU Ethics terms
Question | Answer |
---|---|
It suggests that an action will initiate a chain of events culminating in some significant impact. | Slippery slope defense |
What is a philosophical doctrine that says all knowledge is derived from our senses. | Empiricism |
what British thinker refuted the concept of "innate ideas" and insisted that all human knowledge was of empiric origin. | John Locke (1632-1704) |
Other leading empiricists are _______ and _______. | David Hume (1711-1776), George Berkeley (1685-1753) |
What is denied that any knowledge we have is innate to being human. | Empiricism |
Who believed that knowledge of the world is limited because our senses and reason were limited. | Empiricists |
We are blank slates who only get knowledge through our senses of the world. This is considered what? | Empiricism |
Whose moral behavior is based on pleasure (good) and pain (evil). We decide morality by our senses. Humans are not born with innate knowledge. | The Empiricists |
Who argued that we can know divine law through reason or revelation. | John Locke |
Who believed in God and the afterlife and that the pleasure or the rewards of the afterlife would balance any injustices on Earth. | John Locke |
Whose key insights on Ethics: Morality must be demonstrable (provable). | John Locke |
Whose key insights on Ethics: It is based on pleasure or pain. | John Locke |
Whose key insights on Ethics: Moral good and evil represent the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to law. | John Locke |
Whose key insights on Ethics: Three kinds of law: law of opinion (happiness); civic law (virtue); divine law (law of moral rectitude/righteousness). We can know divine law through reason or revelation. | John Locke |
Who placed more emphasis on feelings than most previous philosophers arguing that moral assessments are emotional reactions. | David Hume |
Who believed that no action--one of goodness or one of vice--contains the essence of goodness or vice. | David Hume |
Who brings empiricism to its purest form. Impressions are necessary to ideas. All ideas are associated with each other. | David Hume |
Who believes our thinking cannot extend beyond our immediate senses. | David Hume |
Whose key insights on Ethics: Moral judgments are formed through feelings more than reason. | David Hume |
Whose key insights on Ethics: Virtue and vice exist through our feelings, not in the actions themselves. | David Hume |
What is the ethical theory constructed around the reasoning that the greatest good for the greatest number is the only criterion for creating morality. | Utilitarianism |
Critics of ______________ argue it wrongly elevates pleasure above other values; it ignores distributive justice | Utilitarianism |
Critics of ______________ argue it wrongly assumes that ends justify the means, allowing for immoral actions (the means) in order to achieve the Greatest Good. | Utilitarianism |
Ethics based on acting in whatever way results in the best consequences. Is called? | Consequentialist moral philosophy |
What philosophical approach that says morality should be judged by outcomes. | Consequentialism |
Who is a big proponent of utilitarianism? | Jeremy Bentham |
Who was a British philosopher(1748-1832) largely responsible for Utilitarianism and social reformer. | Jeremy Bentham |
Whose ethics brought him to the conclusion that government could not be ruled by the aristocracy. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who believed in the rights of animals because they could feel pain | Jeremy Bentham |
Who was opposed to the British legal system, especially for the power held by judges. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who strongly opposed capital punishment. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who believed that legal punishment should be adapted to fit the crime. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who did not believe that sexual behavior should be legislated as long as it caused no harm to others. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who did not believe that euthanasia was morally correct. | Jeremy Bentham |
Who was founded on establishing morality through a calculus of happiness: that which, "takes into account the intensity, duration, likelihood, extent, etc. of pleasures and pains." | Bentham's Utilitarianism |
A measurement of the utility and potential happiness of given actions. | Hedonic Calculus |
Whose Hedonic Calculus tried to establish utilitarian standards. | Bentham |
How powerful pain or pleasure is. What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Intensity |
How long pain or pleasure lasts. What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Duration |
How likely pain or pleasure is to result. What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Certainty |
How likely pain or pleasure will repeat. What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Fecundity |
How pure (unmixed) the pain or pleasure is. What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Purity |
How many people pain or pleasure affects.What kind of Hedonic Calculus? | Extent |
Who was trained at the knee in Bentham's ethics. Big proponent of utilitarianism. | John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) |
Who rated the kinds of happiness open to humankind. | John Stuart Mill |
Whose thinking moved past the idea of quantity of happiness to the quality of happiness. | John Stuart Mill |
Who differentiated between the inferior happiness we achieve through our senses, to the superior pleasures of the intellect (appreciation of art, music and so on). | John Stuart Mill |
Which British philosopher largely responsible for Social Contract Theory. | Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) |
Whose famous treatise is Leviathan. | Thomas Hobbes |
Who took a mechanistic view of humankind. | Thomas Hobbes |
Who describes people “the state of nature,” which is the condition of people before there was any state or civil society. . In this state all humans are equal and equally have the right to whatever they consider necessary for their survival. | Thomas Hobbes |
What is based on the idea of people giving up some of their natural rights to a government in exchanged for social order. | Social contract theory |
What is based on the reasoning that its rules are what "rational people will accept on the condition that others accept them as well. | Social contract theory |
What removed morality from formal religion. | Social contract theory |
Under this, rulers serve by the consent of the governed. | Social contract theory |
This is based on the idea of reciprocity. | Social contract theory |
Unlike other moral theories this doesn't address humankind's virtues or its better angels. | Social contract theory |
This does not aspire to elevate moral behavior in the way other theories have. | Social contract theory |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Constructs moral rules for harmonious living. | Strength |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Constructs moral rules that are in our best interests to follow | Strength |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Rational people will not create rules that are too difficult or impossible to live by. | Strength |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Allows people to live together in a moral world of limited altruism (unselfishness). | Strength |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: No clear or consistent definition of what is a moral rule or law. | Weakness |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Does not resolve the question as to how much are we bound by laws of society. | Weakness |
Is this a Strength or Weakness of the Social Contract: Does not address moral claims of those outside the social contract (for example, infants, mentally impaired people, animals). | Weakness |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism wrongly(erroneously) elevates pleasure above other values. | Objection |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism ignores distributive justice. | Objection |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism wrongly assumes that ends justify the means. | Objection |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism requires too much calculation. | Objection |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Maximizing pleasure should not be the overriding value in human existence. | Reasoning |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism doesn't necessarily distribute happiness to those who "deserve" to be happy, or to all in a society. | Reasoning |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism would allow for immoral actions (the means) in order to achieve the Greatest Good. | Reasoning |
Objection or Reasoning for Utilitarianism: It is impractical to calculate the utility of every option and outcome as Utilitarianism would require. | Reasoning |