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1. The document provides a sample examination for a philosophy course on life, death, and morality.
2. It lists 17 potential examination questions organized into topics such as rights, utilitarianism, self-defense, animals, abortion, and cultural relativism.
3. The questions cover issues like the nature of rights, utilitarian views on killing, using violence in self-defense, Peter Singer's principle of equality regarding animal treatment, arguments around abortion, and debates over cultural relativism and moral methodology.
1. The document provides a sample examination for a philosophy course on life, death, and morality.
2. It lists 17 potential examination questions organized into topics such as rights, utilitarianism, self-defense, animals, abortion, and cultural relativism.
3. The questions cover issues like the nature of rights, utilitarian views on killing, using violence in self-defense, Peter Singer's principle of equality regarding animal treatment, arguments around abortion, and debates over cultural relativism and moral methodology.
1. The document provides a sample examination for a philosophy course on life, death, and morality.
2. It lists 17 potential examination questions organized into topics such as rights, utilitarianism, self-defense, animals, abortion, and cultural relativism.
3. The questions cover issues like the nature of rights, utilitarian views on killing, using violence in self-defense, Peter Singer's principle of equality regarding animal treatment, arguments around abortion, and debates over cultural relativism and moral methodology.
( LI FE, DEATH AND MORALI TY) LDM Sample Examination The real examination will be of two hours duration. You will be given a list of nine questions. You must answer eight of them. Below is a list of sample questions. The questions on the examination will be drawn directly from this list. Example questions For each question, you should be able to answer it in about 300 words, but there is no limit on the length of your answers. Each question is worth an equal number of marks. I have arranged the questions into rough groupings, corresponding to the most relevant parts of the unit. But for some questions, you might need to draw on materials from more than one part of the unit to give the best possible answer. Rights, utilitarianism, and trolleys 1. What is the idea of stringency for a right? Illustrate the idea with two different rights that might be of different stringency. 2. What should a utilitarian think about rights? Do rights really exist? Would it ever be justified, for a utilitarian, to respect rights, even if that led to a worse outcome overall? 3. What is Thomsons preferred account of why it is permissible to pull the lever in TROLLEY? Does the account succeed? 4. Utilitarians seem to be committed to some surprising conclusions about the morality of killing. Illustrate one or two of these conclusions, and try to explain why the utilitarian has such a surprising view. Self-defence 5. Describe Michael Otsukas position with respect to using violence in self- defence against innocent persons. Explain his reasons for his view. 6. Killing an innocent threat in self-defence is wrong, but excusable. Explain this claim, and discuss its plausibility. 7. What is the Hobbesian rationale for a liberty-right to engage in self-defence? What will the Hobbesian likely think about harming innocent threats in self- defence? Speciesism, animals, and equality 8. What is Singers principle of equality? How would our behaviour towards animals have to change if we were to adopt this principle? Why? 9. Does the principle of equality give a good explanation of what is wrong with racism? Why/why not? 10. For Singer, the morality of taking an animals life depends in part on whether the animal is a person. Explain why this makes a difference. Abortion 11. Conventional liberal views on abortion are untenable. Either we must accept that infanticide is no worse than abortion, or we must adopt a very conservative anti-abortion view. Discuss why a philosopher might think this is true. 12. Judith Thomsons violinist case shows only that women have a right to remove a fetus from their bodies. Therefore her argument is not a successful defence of abortion. Discuss both of the following: (i) Why might someone say this? (ii) Is this view correct? 13. Discuss the idea that abortion is wrong because of the potential properties possessed by the fetus (such as the potential for personhood, or autonomy, or some other morally significant property). Does this idea provide a good reason to think that abortion is morally wrong? Cultural relativism and moral methodology 14. How would you characterise the difference between virtue ethics and the approaches we have been looking at in most of the unit? 15. Is there a conflict between the virtue of being a good parent and the principle of equality? Explain your answer. 16. What is cultural relativism? If cultural relativism is true, does it have any implications for how we should treat people from other cultures? In particular, should we be tolerant of people from other cultures? 17. If moral relativism is true, then people who appear to disagree with one another about morals are actually talking past one another. Explain this claim. Is this a good objection to moral relativism?