Optional theme: Ethics practice questions.

A lifeguard could save more swimmers on this occasion by abandoning a struggling swimmer she has already reached. She refuses, reasoning that lifeguards who abandon swimmers they have reached would as a standing practice produce worse results than lifeguards who never do. Her reasoning is best described as

• act utilitarian, calculating the utility of this rescue in isolation
• deontological, treating the duty to rescue as binding whatever follows
• virtue ethical, asking which action expresses a courageous character
• rule utilitarian, assessing the practice rather than the single act

Answer: rule utilitarian, assessing the practice rather than the single act

Both utilitarian variants use the same standard of value, overall welfare, but apply it to different objects: the individual act or the general rule. A deontologist could reach the same verdict here, but without any reference to consequences at all.

In Ross's theory, calling fidelity a prima facie duty means that

• it is a genuine moral reason that can be outweighed by another
• it appears to be a duty but on reflection turns out not to be one
• it is the strongest duty whenever it applies to a case
• it binds only if promise-keeping maximises the overall good

Answer: it is a genuine moral reason that can be outweighed by another

'Prima facie' is Ross's technical label for a standing, genuine moral reason, not for a mere appearance. The duty that actually binds in the situation, which he calls the duty proper, emerges only once all the prima facie duties in play have been weighed against each other.

Mill answers the objection that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine by appealing to the settled preference of people who are acquainted with both kinds of pleasure. What role does this appeal play in his argument?

• It supplies a duty of self-development in place of the utility principle
• It shows that pleasure is not the only thing desirable as an end
• It gives an empirical criterion for ranking pleasures by kind
• It concedes that the quantity of pleasure is morally irrelevant

Answer: It gives an empirical criterion for ranking pleasures by kind

Mill remains a hedonist but adds a qualitative dimension, and the verdict of competent judges is his evidence for it. Critics object that the appeal either smuggles in a standard other than pleasure or makes the ranking hostage to contingent tastes.

Many people judge that diverting a runaway tram onto a side track where it kills one worker is permissible, while pushing one person into its path to stop it is not, although one person dies either way. Which principle is standardly invoked to explain the asymmetry?

• the principle that an agent's own integrity may outweigh the better outcome
• the principle that killing is always worse than letting someone die
• the principle that aggregate numbers never bear on permissibility
• the principle that harm may be foreseen but not intended as a means

Answer: the principle that harm may be foreseen but not intended as a means

This is the doctrine of double effect, which separates harm intended as the means from harm merely foreseen as a side effect. Consequentialists reject the distinction as morally idle, and that rejection, rather than a different count of the dead, is what divides the two verdicts.

Which normative approach objects that impartial rule-based theories misdescribe morality by treating dependency and particular relationships as complications rather than as the starting point?

• preference utilitarianism, as developed by Singer
• the ethics of care, as developed by Gilligan and Noddings
• Kantian deontology, in the formula of universal law and its test
• natural law ethics, in the Thomist tradition of moral thought

Answer: the ethics of care, as developed by Gilligan and Noddings

Care ethics grows out of Gilligan's criticism of moral-development research modelled exclusively on justice reasoning. It is a rival to impartialist theories rather than a branch of virtue ethics, although both give priority to the responsiveness of the agent over the application of rules.

G. E. Moore asks, of any proposed natural property such as being pleasant, whether it is still an open question that whatever has that property is good. What does he conclude from the fact that the question stays open?

• that moral judgements express attitudes rather than beliefs
• that all moral statements are false because nothing is good
• that goodness cannot be identified with any natural property
• that moral disagreement shows moral standards vary by culture

Answer: that goodness cannot be identified with any natural property

Moore's target is definitional naturalism, and he labels its mistake the naturalistic fallacy. His own conclusion is a non-natural realism about goodness, so the argument does not by itself support emotivism, even though emotivists later borrowed it.