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Question One

Question One. Describe why Alan Gewirth’s position is anthropocentric. Answer One. Description of the transgenerational account of rights and duties. Idea that only moral agents can be bearers of rights and duties.

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Question One

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  1. Question One • Describe why Alan Gewirth’s position is anthropocentric.

  2. Answer One • Description of the transgenerational account of rights and duties. • Idea that only moral agents can be bearers of rights and duties. • Some mention of how the transgenerational account offers environmental constraints on human activity but only indirectly

  3. Question Two • On what basis does Onora O’Neill claim that utilitarianism is an inappropriate model for protecting the environment?

  4. Answer Two • Description of happiness criterion for moral value • Note that happiness criterion rules out of the moral community most forms of life as well as non-living nature • Indicate that trade-offs foil any attempt at a secure basis for specific rights. • Allows for regional damage (arctic etc.) • If quality of happiness is allowed, then a privileged position for humans may result

  5. How does O’Neill distinguish the concept speciesism from speciesist? Offer an example. Question Three

  6. Answer #3 • Stress that speciesism involves making a relevant conceptual distinction based on the concept of species membership without an adequate justification. • Speciesist refers to a relevant conceptual distinction based on the concept of species. This allows for species membership to be a justified distinction rather than always being an example of speciesism. • Examples marked as given

  7. Question Four On what basis does O’Neill draw into question the idea that non-human animals have rights?

  8. Answer Four • She notes that only human beings can be bears of duties. Hence the concept of rights is strained in the case of non-human animals. • She indicates that the normal assertion of rights is largely meaningless as animals do not have interests in freedom of association, property, privacy etc. • She claims that the assertion of rights is based on analogy with human rights, and hence is only as good as the analogy.

  9. Question Five • What serious problem emerges from Gewirth’s notion of a ‘potential prospective agent’ in his account of inter-generational justice?

  10. Answer Five • As discussed in class, the ‘potential prospective agent’ argument claims that non-existent individuals have rights. • This entails that is we fail to bring them into existence, we are violating their most fundamental right (right to life). • The position makes no relevant distinction between existence and non-existence with respect to rights ‘holders’. • It appears that not only would abortion be wrong, but also birth control, and any action or omission that fails to bring a person into being who could have existed.

  11. Question 6 • What grounds Taylor’s claim that human involvement with animals is inappropriate interference even in those cases where such involvement extends the life of the animal.

  12. Answer Six • Taylor puts an ultimate premium on the ‘wild’ state of an animal’s life. • This is directly connected to the notion of an animal having a teleological relation with the rest of nature. • Human involvement—all human involvement—violates the animal’s integrity as a purposeful thing. • A ‘hands off’ approach is always mandated when dealing with beings that are centres of a life.

  13. Question 7 • Offer your own evaluation of the relative merits of Taylor’s Principle of Fidelity.

  14. Answer Seven • A correct description of the principle • Stressing the idea that deception is always an unfair taking advantage of another’s trust. • Indicate that this only applies to moral agents. • Your assessment of the merit of the principle.

  15. Question Eight • Offer a brief description of moral intuitionism. What keeps it from being a merely subjective standard of moral value?

  16. Answer Eight • Moral Intuitionism is the theory that human beings have the capacity to primitively identify basic moral value (what is good). • As discussed in class, the moral judgments are on par with modern axioms in mathematics which are taken as self given truths. • The intuiting of the moral truth is attributed to an objective moral property that we have access to in this strange, immediate, way. • Moral Intuitionism is distinct from a subjective account because it is not base on the feelings, tastes or passions of the individual.

  17. Question Nine • Describe the strengths and weaknesses of consequentialism.

  18. Answer Nine • Stress the benefit of quantification and objectivity. • Indicate that it gives equal weight to all agents who possess the relevant attribute (as in the case of utilitarianism, this would be all beings who can feel pleasure/pain). • Outline the problem of trade/offs. • Indicate that it often fails to protect rights. • Notes that it is blind to those beings not included under the relevant attribute being maximized.

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