Deck 6: Reasoning With Principles and Counterexamples

Question 1

Which of the following best captures the idea of an intermediate moral principle, as explained in Chapter 6?

A) An intermediate moral principle is any moral principle that can be used as a subconclusion in a moral argument, serving as an intermediary between a general principle and a specific conclusion.
B) An intermediate moral principle is a principle that helps us apply the idea of the "golden mean."
C) An intermediate moral principle is more specific than statements of universal or role-specific obligations, but not so specific as to be about only a single case.
D) An intermediate moral principle is a principle that combines the importance of thinking about ethics in terms of obligations, consequences, and virtues.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which of the following is an example of an intermediate moral principle?

A) Obey the rules whose acceptance would bring about the best consequences.
B) Act courageously.
C) Keep your promises.
D) Killing is wrong when it deprives the victim of a future of value.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which of the following is an example of an intermediate moral principle?

A) Do not act selfishly.
B) You are obligated to pursue only your own self-interest.
C) Causing harm to someone is morally worse than allowing that same harm to befall someone through no fault of your own.
D) Treat people with respect.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following is an example of an intermediate moral principle?

A) Lying to a potential sexual partner is seriously wrong when that person would refuse a sexual relationship if he or she knew the truth.
B) Act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means.
C) Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness, where happiness is understood as pleasure and the absence of pain.
D) Barack Obama acted wrongly in ordering a drone strike to kill the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

Question 5

Which of the following is an example of an intermediate moral principle?

A) It is always prima facie wrong to harm someone.
B) Harming someone is only permissible in defense of yourself or others.
C) Neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman acted wrongly in shooting the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.
D) In the absence of complete information, markets sometimes fail to allocate resources efficiently.

Question 6

Which of the following is NOT mentioned in Chapter 6 as a potential role for intermediate moral principles?

A) They can guide the application of more general principles to specific cases.
B) They can help resolve conflicts between more general moral principles.
C) They can be used to compare the moral value of different actions.
D) They can help prove that a more general principle is correct or incorrect.

Question 7

What moral principle does Don Marquis use in his argument about abortion?

A) It is usually morally wrong to kill someone who has a future of value.
B) Killing someone intentionally is morally worse than killing someone accidentally.
C) It is morally wrong to kill anything that has the potential to become a person.
D) It is morally wrong to kill anything that has a unique set of human DNA.

Question 8

Which of the following is a reason to accept Don Marquis's intermediate moral principle about the wrongness of killing?

A) It allows us to conclude whatever we want about the wrongness of killing different kinds of animals.
B) It entails that getting run over by a bus is bad for the person who gets run over.
C) It shows that abortion is not wrong before the fetus becomes viable outside the womb.
D) It explains why intentional killing is worse than accidental killing.

Question 9

Which of the following best captures the doctrine of double effect?

A) An action is not truly virtuous if it is chosen not for the sake of the virtue, but for the sake of some secondary effect of the action.
B) It is sometimes permissible to bring about a bad outcome as the side effect of your actions, even if it would be wrong to bring about that same outcome intentionally.
C) It is morally worse to bring something about intentionally than to merely allow it to happen.
D) Because every action has more than one effect, we must take all of the action's effects into account when evaluating the consequences of an action.

Question 10

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift introduce an intermediate moral principle about parenting to:

A) Show that income inequality is a serious moral problem because of the way it enables some parents to provide unfair advantages to their own children.
B) Justify the claim that parents are morally permitted to take any legal steps to benefit their children, even if that means putting other people's children at a competitive disadvantage.
C) Help resolve conflicts between the parental obligation to pursue good outcomes for one's children and the universal obligation to be fair to others.
D) Help parents understand how to apply the universal obligations of beneficence and nonmaleficence to their own children.

Question 11

Which of the following best captures the principle of "an eye for an eye," as explained in Chapter 6?

A) An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
B) Wrongdoers should suffer a punishment that is similar to the wrong that they have inflicted on others.
C) When the government will not punish wrongdoers, it is permissible for citizens to take justice into their own hands.
D) There is an upper limit to how much suffering the government may inflict on a criminal as a penalty for a crime.

Question 12

A counterexample is:

A) A real or hypothetical scenario about which a moral principle seems to give the wrong answer.
B) An intermediate moral principle that could be used to argue against another intermediate moral principle.
C) An objection to an argument that involves intermediate moral principles.
D) A thought experiment used to test an intermediate moral principle or moral theory.

Question 13

What is a counterexample?

A) An example of a situation in which a moral principle gets the right answer.
B) An example used to counter an objection to an intermediate moral principle.
C) An example that illustrates how a general or intermediate moral principle applies to specific situations.
D) An example of a situation in which a moral principle has counterintuitive implications.

Question 14

Which of the following is a counterexample to the statement that mammals don't lay eggs?

A) Whales are mammals, and they don't lay eggs.
B) Snakes lay eggs.
C) Platypuses are mammals, and they lay eggs.
D) There might be mammals that scientists haven't discovered yet.

Question 15

Which of the following is a counterexample to the statement that democracies don't have kings or queens?

A) The United Kingdom is a democracy, and it has a queen.
B) France is a democracy, and it doesn't have a king or queen.
C) A purely symbolic king or queen is compatible with democracy.
D) Myanmar is not a democracy, and it doesn't have a king or queen.

Question 16

Which of the following is most plausibly considered a counterexample to the principle that it is always wrong to tell a lie?

A) Suppose that you saw someone rob a bank. You are called as a witness at the robber's trial and you take an oath to tell the truth. The lawyer asks whether you saw the robbery. It is permissible for you to lie and say that you did not see the robbery.
B) Suppose that you and a friend are staying in a remote cabin in the mountains. A wild-eyed man with a bloody axe shows up at the cabin door. He asks whether your friend is there, explaining that he intends to kill your friend. It would be permissible to lie to the man to protect your friend.
C) Telling a lie is a way of manipulating someone because lying is a way of getting someone to do or believe something that you want him or her to do or believe. Since manipulating someone violates the obligation to respect persons, it is morally wrong.
D) Although people do have an obligation not to lie to others, they also have other obligations that can sometimes conflict with the obligation not to lie, and there will be cases in which those other obligations are more important.

Question 17

Which of the following is most plausibly considered a counterexample to the principle that it is always wrong to betray your country?

A) In 2001, the FBI agent Robert Hanssen confessed that he had betrayed his country by selling American state secrets to the Russians. He had spent fifteen years as a double agent simply for the sake of money and excitement. His actions led to the deaths of several people involved in American intelligence efforts.
B) During the American Revolution, thousands of colonists remained loyal to the British crown. When the war ended and Britain acknowledged the United States' independence, as many as 60,000 of these "loyalists" left the United States to settle in other parts of the British Empire.
C) Mohandas Gandhi was born in India in 1869, during the period of the British Empire's colonial rule there. Gandhi eventually became a prominent leader of nonviolent resistance to British rule, helping to secure India's independence from Britain in 1947.
D) German bureaucrat Fritz Kolbe worked in Adolf Hitler's foreign ministry during World War II. From 1943 until the end of the war, Kolbe smuggled Nazi secrets to American intelligence officers in Switzerland, providing valuable information that helped the Allies defeat Hitler. In doing so, Kolbe betrayed his country.

Question 18

A thought experiment is:

A) A historical example that provides a counterexample to a moral principle.
B) An imaginary scenario used to test a moral principle.
C) An imaginary scenario that provides a counterexample to a moral principle.
D) A way of predicting the outcome of a scientific experiment.

Question 19

Which of the following best explains the idea of a thought experiment?

A) A thought experiment is a kind of argument, involving hypothetical examples, intended to show that a person's mental state at the time of an action affects the morality of the action.
B) A thought experiment is a real or hypothetical scenario that philosophers use to show that a moral principle must be false because it has counterintuitive consequences.
C) A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario that philosophers use to test whether a principle entails a conclusion that fits with our intuitive judgments about that scenario.
D) A thought experiment is a kind of argument intended to show that a particular historical person acted rightly or wrongly in a specific case.

Question 20

What is a thought experiment?

A) An imaginary scenario used to elicit people's intuitive judgments about something as a way of evaluating a moral principle.
B) A detailed imaginary scenario in which everyone will agree about what the right thing to do is, which philosophers use to show that a particular moral principle is mistaken.
C) A fictional example or story designed to illustrate how a moral principle applies to specific cases, based on intuitive judgments.
D) A hypothetical scenario in which people's intuitive judgments match up with the implications of a moral principle to help people understand the principle.

Question 21

What is the purpose of James Rachels's thought experiment about Smith, Jones, and their drowning nephews?

A) To support the principle that killing someone is worse than merely letting him or her die.
B) To test the principle that killing someone is worse than merely letting him or her die.
C) To test the principle that we have a special obligation to protect children, even when they are far away.
D) To provide a counterexample to the principle that we have a special obligation to protect children, even when they are far away.

Question 22

What point is James Rachels trying to make with his thought experiment about Smith, Jones, and their drowning nephews?

A) That letting someone die is just as bad as killing someone when you have a special obligation to protect that person.
B) That letting someone die is sometimes morally worse than killing someone.
C) That letting someone die is no worse, morally speaking, than killing someone.
D) That killing someone is morally worse than letting someone die.

Question 23

What is the purpose of Robert Nozick's thought experiment about the person in the well who vaporizes someone with a ray gun?

A) To demonstrate that moral intuitions are unreliable in scenarios that are too unrealistic.
B) To demonstrate that all intermediate moral principles have exceptions.
C) To test the principle that it is always wrong to use force against an innocent person.
D) To test the principle that it is permissible to harm someone in self-defense when you have no alternative.

Question 24

What point is Robert Nozick trying to make with his thought experiment about the person in the well who vaporizes someone with a ray gun?

A) That it is permissible to use force against anyone who threatens you.
B) That it is not always wrong to use force against innocent people.
C) That science fiction can help us explore our moral intuitions.
D) That some philosophers are crazy.

Question 25

Which of the following best explains the idea of a moral intuition?

A) Your moral intuitions are (some subset of) the moral judgments you make about particular cases without going through any conscious reasoning process.
B) Your moral intuitions are the moral conclusions that you are logically committed to holding based on your moral principles.
C) A moral intuition is an argument, based on a counterexample, that shows that a particular moral principle is right or wrong.
D) A moral intuition is a belief about what is right or wrong to do in a particular case.

Question 26

Which of the following best captures the idea of a moral intuition?

A) A moral intuition is any moral judgment that you would not be willing to change based on counterexamples.
B) A moral intuition is any moral judgment about specific cases or hypothetical scenarios, as opposed to judgments about moral principles.
C) A moral intuition is a moral judgment that is widely shared within a culture, whether it is about a particular case or a moral principle.
D) A moral intuition is a moral judgment that you (initially) form more or less immediately when you think about an action or moral principle, without going through any conscious reasoning.

Question 27

Which of the following best explains the role that moral intuitions play in moral reasoning?

A) They enable us to illustrate the implications of proposed moral principles.
B) They help us evaluate moral principles by seeing whether the moral principles' implications conflict with our moral intuitions.
C) They distract us from reasoning clearly about moral principles.
D) They make it possible to use counterexamples to argue against moral principles.

Question 28

What role(s) do moral intuitions play in moral reasoning?

A) They can be used to support moral principles.
B) They are the conclusions of long chains of moral reasoning.
C) They make it possible to use counterexamples to argue against moral principles.
D) Both (a) and (c).

Question 29

What does it mean to say that a principle has counterintuitive implications?

A) That the principle's logical implications conflict with some moral intuition.
B) That the arguments for the principle rely on implied premises that are not plausible.
C) That the principle must be supported by counting the number of moral intuitions that agree with it.
D) That the principle leads to unexpected and enlightening moral conclusions.

Question 30

Which of the following is NOT one of the ways of responding to counterexamples discussed in Chapter 6?

A) Deny that the counterexample applies to the principle being considered.
B) Revise the principle being considered to avoid the counterexample.
C) Insist that the principle being considered and the conflicting moral intuition are both correct.
D) Maintain that the principle is correct although it leads to counterintuitive results in this case.

Question 31

Which of the following is NOT discussed in Chapter 6 as a way of responding to counterexamples?

A) "Biting the bullet" and accepting the counterexample's counterintuitive result.
B) Insisting that the scenario is not actually a counterexample to the scenario being described.
C) Revising the principle so that it gets the right answer in the scenario described in the counterexample.
D) Adopting whatever normative theory is needed to show that the counterexample does not undermine one's argument.

Question 32

How does Mencius respond to the supposed counterexample to the principle that unrelated men and women should not touch each other's hands?

A) By accepting that, counterintuitive as it may seem, it would be better for Mencius to let his sister-in-law drown than to dishonor her by touching her.
B) By revising the principle to include relatives by marriage in the group of people whose hands a person may touch.
C) By explaining that, in the case described in the counterexample, his obligation to save another's life would take priority over his obligation not to touch an unrelated woman's hand.
D) By describing the historical case of Bo Yi, who refused to dishonor himself even at great cost to himself or others.

Question 33

How does Robert Nozick respond to the counterexample involving a person in a well who vaporizes someone with a ray gun?

A) By "biting the bullet" and insisting that although the person acts in self-defense, it is wrong to harm an innocent person.
B) By revising his principle of NONAGGRESSION to allow for the use of force against innocent people who pose a serious threat.
C) By insisting that the person who falls down a well is not innocent in the relevant sense, since "innocence" means "nonthreatening."
D) By revising his principle of NONAGGRESSION to allow for the use of force whenever one believes oneself to be in danger.

Question 34

According to Chapter 6, how can the use of counterexamples help you arrive at justified moral principles?

A) By helping you revise your moral principles until they fit well with your moral intuitions.
B) By helping you eliminate counterintuitive moral intuitions.
C) By helping you show that all competing moral principles are subject to counterexamples.
D) By preparing you to "bite the bullet" to defend your proposed moral principles.

Question 35

While thinking about the principle that it is always wrong to torture people, the philosopher Henry Shue imagines a scenario in which torturing a suspect is the only way to save Paris from being destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Based on the discussion in Chapter 6, which of the following would NOT be a plausible way for Shue to respond to that alleged counterexample?

A) Insist that, although it would lead to disaster, the police are still morally obligated to refrain from torturing the suspect.
B) Revise the principle to say that it is always wrong to torture people unless the would-be torturer is extremely confident that it is the only way to prevent a great catastrophe.
C) Argue that although torturing the suspect would violate the would-be torturer's obligation not to torture, the obligation to save Paris is more important in this particular case.
D) Add some detail to the scenario so that torturing the suspect would no longer guarantee that Paris would be saved.

Question 36

Intermediate moral principles can help you decide how to apply more general principles in tricky situations.

Question 37

Intermediate moral principles can help you resolve conflicts between more general principles.

Question 38

Intermediate moral principles are needed because general moral principles are always too vague to tell us what to do.

Question 39

Don Marquis uses his intermediate moral principle about the wrongness of killing to argue that abortion is wrong for the same reason that killing an adult is wrong.

Question 40

Don Marquis uses his intermediate moral principle about the wrongness of killing to argue that physician-assisted suicide is always wrong.

Question 41

The doctrine of double effect is that it is always worse to harm someone than it is to let someone be harmed.

Question 42

The doctrine of double effect says that it is sometimes permissible to bring about a bad outcome as a foreseen but unintended side effect of your actions.

Question 43

Some medical ethicists use the doctrine of double effect to argue that it is permissible for a doctor to administer painkillers to a terminally ill patient, even if those painkillers will hasten the patient's death, as long as the doctor's intended goal is to ease the patient's suffering.

Question 44

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue for an intermediate moral principle that justifies anything a parent needs to do, short of breaking the law, to give their children the best start in life.

Question 45

One way of evaluating an intermediate moral principle is by seeing whether it entails the right answer about obvious cases, such as whether parents may read bedtime stories to their children.

Question 46

When evaluating intermediate moral principles, it is never worth considering the principles' implications for cases where it's obvious what the right thing to do is.

Question 47

Any argument against an intermediate moral principle provides a counterexample to that principle.

Question 48

A counterexample to an intermediate moral principle is a real or hypothetical case in which the principle entails the wrong answer.

Question 49

If an intermediate moral principle entails that you ought to perform a particular action in a hypothetical scenario, but it's clear that you ought not to perform that action in that scenario, then the scenario is a counterexample to that intermediate moral principle.

Question 50

A counterexample is a real-life scenario in which an intermediate moral principle entails that someone in that scenario should have done something other than what he or she actually did.

Question 51

Stephen Nathanson argues that cases of torture or arson provide counterexamples to the principle of "an eye for an eye."

Question 52

A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario designed to test an intermediate moral principle (or other philosophical principle).

Question 53

A thought experiment is a mental blueprint for an actual experiment designed to test an intermediate moral principle.

Question 54

Philosophers often use thought experiments to see whether a principle, such as an intermediate moral principle, agrees with their intuitions about what should happen in a hypothetical scenario.

Question 55

A moral intuition is, roughly, a moral judgment that you form without going through any conscious reasoning process.

Question 56

Applied ethicists generally try to avoid relying on moral intuitions when evaluating intermediate moral principles.

Question 57

An intermediate moral principle's implications about a particular case are counterintuitive if they conflict with one's intuitions about that case.

Question 58

Philosophers can respond to counterexamples to an intermediate moral principle by insisting that the alleged counterexample is not really a counterexample, by "biting the bullet," or by revising the principle.

Question 59

Good philosophers never revise their intermediate moral principles in response to counterexamples.

Question 60

In responding to a counterexample to an intermediate moral principle, "biting the bullet" means admitting that your principle is incorrect.

Question 61

In your own words, what is an intermediate moral principle? Why are intermediate moral principles useful in moral reasoning?

Question 62

Explain Don Marquis's FUTURE OF VALUE argument in your own words. What intermediate moral principle does Marquis use in his argument? What arguments does Marquis give to support his principle?

Question 63

Explain the doctrine of double effect in your own words. Describe a possible counterexample to the doctrine of double effect. How do you think a defender of that doctrine would respond to your counterexample?

Question 64

In your own words, explain Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift's intermediate moral principle about parenting. Describe a possible counterexample to that principle. How do you think Brighouse and Swift would respond to your counterexample?

Question 65

What is a counterexample? What is a thought experiment? What is the difference between a counterexample and a thought experiment?

Question 66

In your own words, explain the principle of AN EYE FOR AN EYE that was discussed in Chapter 6. What (alleged) counterexamples to it does Stephen Nathanson give? Do you agree that those are genuine counterexamples to the principle? Why or why not?

Question 67

What is a moral intuition? What role do you think moral intuitions should have in moral reasoning? Why?

Question 68

In your own words, explain the three different ways you can respond to a counterexample to an intermediate moral principle.

Question 69

When you encounter a counterexample to an intermediate moral principle that you have previously accepted, what should you do?

Question 70

What is the principle of KILLING AND LETTING DIE that was discussed in Chapter 6? How does James Rachels argue against it? Do you think his argument succeeds? Why or why not?

Question 71

Briefly explain James Rachels's criticism of the principle that killing someone is morally worse than letting someone die. How does Philippa Foot respond to Rachels's argument?

Question 72

What point is Mencius's disciple trying to make when he asks whether Mencius would save his sister-in-law from a drowning river? How does Mencius respond to his disciple's question?

Question 73

What is the point of Robert Nozick's thought experiment about the person who uses a ray gun to save himself while trapped in a well? What conclusion does Nozick draw from the thought experiment?