Deck 5: Utilitarianism and Ethical Egoism

Question 1

What is the best objection to the utilitarian theory?

Answer 1

No Answer.

Question 2

How would a utilitarian think about climate change?

Answer 2

No Answer.

Question 3

How would a utilitarian think about overpopulation?

Answer 3

No Answer.

Question 4

What is the best objection to ethical egoism?

Question 5

Is happiness valuable for its own sake?

Question 6

All the following are true of utilitarianism except

A) the act that brings the most happiness is sometimes morally wrong.
B) it recognizes the right act as that which maximizes well-being.
C) everyone's well-being matters equally.
D) utilitarianism sometimes conflicts with conventional morality.

Question 7

Why might a utilitarian think that expected consequences are what matter to utilitarian evaluation instead of actual?

A) If we could go back in time to change things, we would change acts based on their actual consequences because what happens is all we care about.
B) Our inability to know all the actual consequences of an act would make knowing right from wrong impossible.
C) The purpose of utilitarianism is to evaluate acts by consequences, not serve as a decision-making procedure.
D) The only purpose of utilitarian theory is to specify the conditions under which an act is right or wrong.

Question 8

Act utilitarians believe that the right-making features of an act

A) are the consequences of that particular act, not the hypothetical effects of some set of rules.
B) include the consequences of the act for everyone affected by it from the time it is performed until the end of time.
C) depends on how well the consequences of that act rank when compared to the consequences of all alternative acts available to the agent.
D) All of the above

Question 9

Which best describes Bentham's utilitarianism?

A) We should only promote pleasures we would want others to promote for ourselves.
B) Utility should always be universalizable.
C) Utility is a function of certainty, duration, remoteness, and intensity of pleasure.
D) There are higher and lower pleasures and we should prefer to maximize the higher pleasures.

Question 10

Which of the following best fits with the claim that the rightness of an act requires summing its consequences across more than one domain of value?

A) Egalitarianism
B) Prioritarianism
C) Multidimensionalism
D) Hedonism

Question 11

All of the following express the position of some type of consequentialism except the consequences that make an act right

A) must benefit everyone equally.
B) are the consequences for the agent.
C) depend upon different variables.
D) must pass the universalizability test of conception.

Question 12

Suppose a healthy patient requiring minor surgery is at the hospital, and the surgeon realizes this patient is a donor match for five patients dying of organ failure and decides to let the scalpel slip and kill the patient to maximize utility by harvesting his organs. How might John Rawls object?

A) If the practice of killing healthy patients to harvest organs were followed as a general rule, it would reduce utility as healthy patients would avoid the hospital, causing their conditions to worsen.
B) If the killing could be done such that no one but the surgeon knew, then the killing would maximize utility and be morally necessary. The problem is that this contradicts conventional morality.
C) The requirement to kill this patient to make others well alienates the doctor from his larger practical project of healing people.
D) The calculation of consequences treats the individual patients as mere containers for valuable experiences and fails to factor in that the loss of one person cannot be replaced by saving another.

Question 13

Some objections to utilitarianism include that it (a) would sanction murder in certain cases, (b) fails to adequately respect the value of persons, and (c) makes many of our everyday pursuits and activities immoral because they fail to optimize consequences. Which of the following best summarizes the common criticism to all three objections?

A) Utilitarians moral judgments often conflict with the pretheoretical moral judgments we make in everyday life. As a theory, utilitarianism cannot explain them and the degree to which we think our pretheoretical moral judgments are true disconfirms utilitarianism.
B) Utilitarianism cannot account for the feeling of moral shame or regret that one might feel when performing the act that maximizes utility.
C) Utilitarianism demands too much of people's cognitive abilities to anticipate consequences.
D) Agents are more likely to reverse-engineer anticipated consequences to satisfy utilitarian requirements for a course of action they already favor than to actually investigate what consequences they should expect.

Question 14

Which of the following best describes ethical egoism?

A) The ego emerges from the initial internalization of other people's moral judgments as a small child.
B) People are going to always act in their own self-interest.
C) The moral act is the one that maximizes consequences for oneself.
D) The most important aspect of the ethical life is taming the ego and self-interest.

Question 15

Consider the following prisoner's dilemma: If Alice and Bob cooperate with one another by not confessing to police and informing on the other, they will each serve three years. If both choose not to cooperate with one another but to confess to the police and inform on each other, they will each serve eight years. And if one decides to cooperate with the other prisoner by not confessing and informing, but the other prisoner confesses and informs, the prisoner who confesses gets only one year and the other twenty-five. Egoistic reasoning by both Alice and Bob leads to what?

A) Bob serves one year in prison, and Alice serves twenty-five.
B) Bob and Alice each serve three years in prison.
C) Bob serves twenty-five years in prison, and Alice serves one.
D) Bob and Alice each serve eight years in prison.

Question 16

John Stuart Mill proposed the following argument for utilitarianism: "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." How might one criticize it?

A) This argument is problematic because Mill seeks to derive an "ought" from an "is."
B) This argument is problematic because Mill was a well-known supporter of duty ethics.
C) This argument is problematic because the conclusion is a factual statement, not a moral one.
D) This argument is problematic because Mill confused happiness with Aristotle's notion of Eudaimonia.

Question 17

Imagine that five patients will die unless they receive new organs from a healthy stranger. From a utilitarian point of view, it thus seems right to kill one innocent patient to save five.

A) Utilitarians can respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients would be negative, because patients would no longer trust their doctors.
B) Utilitarians can respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients are hard to predict, which means that we have a compelling reason for not killing healthy patients.
C) Utilitarians respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients can be expected to be negative under some circumstances, which means that we have a compelling reason for not killing healthy patients.
D) All of the above

Question 18

A common objection to ethical egoism is that the theory is self-defeating.

A) The essence of this objection is that if all of us do what is best for ourselves, then this would entail a version of utilitarianism, so ethical egoism defeats itself.
B) The essence of this objection is that if all of us do what is best for ourselves, then everyone will end up in a situation that is worse from an egoistic point of view.
C) No, ethical egoism is not self-defeating, but the utilitarian theory is.
D) No, ethical egoism is not self-defeating, but Kant's duty ethics is.

Question 19

According to John Stuart Mill, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." If true, this is a problem for

A) mainstream utilitarians because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
B) virtue ethicists because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
C) duty ethicists because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
D) None of the above

Question 20

Utilitarianism is

A) a general ethical theory that is applicable to all decisions made by engineers as well as others.
B) the view that an act is right just in case it bring about the greatest sum total of pleasure or well-being for everyone affected by the act.
C) incompatible with the political slogan "America first!" when interpreted in the intended way.
D) All of the above

Question 21

Which of the following statements is the best explanation of the distinction between psychological egoism and ethical egoism.

A) Psychological egoism is the view that everyone should maximize their own psychological well-being; ethical egoism is the view that it is morally right to maximize one's own psychological well-being.
B) Psychological egoism is the view that knowledge of one's own psychology is the key to human well-being; ethical egoism is the view that it is morally right to maximize one's own psychological well-being.
C) Psychological egoism is the view that knowledge of one's own psychology is the key to human well-being; ethical egoism is the view that it is ethically acceptable to maximize one's own psychological well-being.
D) Psychological egoism is the view that many people do in fact seek to maximize their own psychological well-being; ethical egoism is the view that it is morally right to maximize one's own psychological well-being.

Question 22

Rule utilitarians believe that we ought to act per a set of rules of that would lead to optimal consequences in society if they were to be accepted by

A) everyone, or almost everyone.
B) the agent throughout his life.
C) the agent at the point in the action is performed.
D) the agent and the people directly affected by the agent's actions.

Question 23

John Stuart Mill wrote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question." This quote

A) proves that Mill was not a utilitarian, because utilitarians think we should bring about the greatest good to the greatest number.
B) proves that Mill was not a utilitarian, because only Aristotelians can accept this theory of value.
C) is compatible with the utilitarian theory; Mill is just making a claim about the moral value of certain types of consequences.
D) shows that Mill accepted Aristotle's theory of happiness.

Question 24

John Stuart Mill proposed the following argument for utilitarianism: "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." The argument

A) violates Hume's is-ought thesis.
B) would be valid if we were to add the following bridge premise: "If everyone desires X, then X is desirable."
C) would be valid if we were to add the following bridge premise: "If at least one person desires X, then X is desirable."
D) All of the above

Question 25

Ethical egoists have to keep in mind that how things go for oneself often depends on how others behave.

A) If you are rude and dishonest to your colleagues in the office they are likely to treat you in the same way. As an egoist you therefore have a strong reason to treat others well.
B) If your acquaintances find out that you are an egoist they are likely to punish you, so if you are an egoist, it is likely to be in your best interest to not tell anyone about this and be nice and polite to others.
C) The consequences of some of the actions open to us are sometimes unknown or difficult to foresee, meaning that we may not be in a position to conclude with certainty what an ethical egoist should do in a particular case.
D) All of the above