Deck 12: Ethical Theories, Moral Principles, and Medical Decisions

Question 1

Not all utilitarians accept the principle of utility as the standard for determining the rightness of an action.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Martha Nussbaum endorses a capabilities approach to ethics.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

One criticism of feminist ethics is that it is too unified and dogmatic a view to prove useful.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Act utilitarians maintain that the principle of utility should be used to test rules, which can in turn be used to decide the rightness of particular acts.

Question 5

According to the Principle of Effort, the president of a company should receive a greater share of social "goods" than his/her file clerk (assuming that they both work equally as hard) because the president's contributions to society are inherently more important and difficult.

Question 6

Rule utilitarians hold that the principle of utility should be applied to particular acts in particular circumstances.

Question 7

If an ethical theory is based solely on intuitions then, Nussbaum claims, it has no relevance to real problems.

Question 8

W.D. Ross rejects pluralistic approaches to ethics in favor of a duty-based approach.

Question 9

Utilitarianism focuses solely upon some inherent feature(s) of an action itself and is unconcerned with the consequences that an action produces.

Question 10

One of the most serious objections to utilitarianism is that it may justify the imposition of great suffering on a few people in order to benefit a great many of people.

Question 11

Immanuel Kant believes that an action is right when it is in accordance with a rule that satisfies a principle that he calls the "categorical imperative" and thus he believes that the consequences of an action are morally irrelevant.

Question 12

The capabilities approach takes health as its primary focus.

Question 13

Autonomy is an absolute right and should never be restricted under any circumstances.

Question 14

One problem with virtue ethics is that it provides us with no explicit guidance on how to act in a particular circumstance.

Question 15

Identity-based theorists reject the use of universal moral concepts.