Deck 7: Ethical Egoism: Morality Is Acting in Our Best Self-Interest

Question 1

Glaucon's story of Gyges's ring is used to support which of the following conclusions?

A) People behave morally only because they lack the power to get away with being immoral.
B) People behave morally because they are genetically programmed to strive toward good.
C) People behave morally because acting purely out of a sense of moral duty is its own reward.
D) People behave morally because moral purity is the only way to achieve the power of Gyges's ring.

Answer 1

People behave morally only because they lack the power to get away with being immoral.

Question 2

Identify the fallacy in the following argument: "All acts of so-called altruism, including Luigi's heroism, are motivated by psychological egoism. After all, you cannot prove that Luigi, who ran into a burning building to save a child, was not acting purely out of self-interest."

A) accident
B) appeal to inappropriate authority
C) hasty generalization
D) ignorance

Answer 2

ignorance

Question 3

When serial killer Craig Price was asked if he thought what he had done was wrong, he replied, "[Morality] is a private choice." Which moral theory was Price adopting?

A) ethical egoism
B) natural law theory
C) hedonism
D) ethical subjectivism

Answer 3

ethical subjectivism

Question 4

In the context of ethical egoism, which of the following statements would you most likely hear from a hedonist?

A) "The world is an illusion. It is simply a test for those true to God to overcome."
B) "The outside world exists only as an object of my consciousness."
C) "Assume nothing, for assumption is the death of imagination."
D) "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die."

Question 5

Which of the following theories maintains that we always act out of self-interest?

A) Ayn Rand's ethical egoism
B) psychological egoism
C) ethical subjectivism
D) liberation ethics

Question 6

According to Thomas Hobbes, which of the following is one of "the passions that incline men to peace"?

A) altruism
B) an innate sense of justice
C) fear of death
D) guilt

Question 7

Psychological egoism is weak as a theory because it:

A) contradicts the proven theory of sociobiology.
B) assumes the existence of Gyges's ring.
C) does not meet the requirement of falsifiability.
D) involves a paradigm shift.

Question 8

What, according to Ayn Rand, is necessary for our survival as humans?

A) religion
B) reason
C) caring and being cared for
D) altruism

Question 9

Ayn Rand propagated the idea of objectivist ethics, which proposed that:

A) a man's life is not his own; instead it belongs to God or his neighbors.
B) one must become a socialist and fight for improving the lives of the poor.
C) there is no source of values other than objective reality.
D) fulfilling one's immediate desires leads to moral corruption.

Question 10

In the context of ethical egoism, _____ is an economic system based on the pursuit of rational and prudent self-interest, individual freedom, and minimal government interference.

A) democratic socialism
B) totalitarianism
C) laissez-faire capitalism
D) liberalism

Question 11

In The Fountainhead, which trait does architect Howard Roark praise in people?

A) sympathy
B) altruism
C) modesty
D) independence

Question 12

One of the challenges to ethical egoism in the United States comes from _____, which is the theory that community is the basis of ethics.

A) consequentialism
B) socialism
C) rationalism
D) communitarianism

Question 13

Which of the following people claimed that the ethical egoism underlying capitalism serves as a tool of oppression?

A) Ayn Rand and Thomas Hobbes
B) Frantz Fanon and Gustavo Gutierrez
C) Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith
D) Ruth Benedict and Plato

Question 14

Which of the following events would Ayn Rand most likely use to support her view of Marxism?

A) the current problems in the American health care system
B) global capitalism and the growing gap between rich and poor nations
C) the collapse of the Soviet Union
D) the current popularity of old Marx brothers' movies

Question 15

You are hiring an assistant manager for your company. You have limited the pool of applicants to four equally qualified people. According to James Rachels, which of the following acts would be morally obligatory or acceptable if we accept the ethical egoists' definition of moral community?

A) a democratic election, because everyone's interests count equally and all the employees in the company should vote on whom should be hired
B) affirmative action, because you are obligated to hire minorities
C) equality, where you divide the job between the applicants
D) nepotism, where you hire your daughter for the job because she's the one you created the job for in the first place

Question 16

Communitarians regard this as the basis of morality.

A) individualism
B) laissez-faire capitalism
C) democracy
D) psychological egoism

Question 17

Identify the person who said each of the following.

-"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles." Which of the following philosophers is most likely to have made this statement?

A) Ayn Rand
B) E. O. Wilson
C) Thomas Aquinas
D) Gustavo Gutierrez

Question 18

Identify the person who said each of the following.

-"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life..."

A) Thomas Hobbes
B) Thomas Aquinas
C) Plato
D) Karl Marx

Question 19

Identify the person who said each of the following.

-"The colonialist bourgeoisie had hammered into the natives' mind the idea of a society of individuals where each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is individual thought... [However] the interests of one will be the interests of all, for in concrete fact everyone will be discovered by the troops, everyone will be massacred-or everyone will be saved."

A) Aristotle
B) Ayn Rand
C) Adam Smith
D) Frantz Fanon