Exam 6: Reasoning With Principles and Counterexamples

Explain the doctrine of double effect in your own words. Describe a possible counterexample to the doctrine of double effect. How do you think a defender of that doctrine would respond to your counterexample?

Which of the following is a counterexample to the statement that mammals don't lay eggs?

If an intermediate moral principle entails that you ought to perform a particular action in a hypothetical scenario, but it's clear that you ought not to perform that action in that scenario, then the scenario is a counterexample to that intermediate moral principle.

Which of the following is a counterexample to the statement that democracies don't have kings or queens?

Intermediate moral principles are needed because general moral principles are always too vague to tell us what to do.

Which of the following is NOT discussed in Chapter 6 as a way of responding to counterexamples?

Don Marquis uses his intermediate moral principle about the wrongness of killing to argue that abortion is wrong for the same reason that killing an adult is wrong.

Don Marquis uses his intermediate moral principle about the wrongness of killing to argue that physician-assisted suicide is always wrong.

Which of the following is most plausibly considered a counterexample to the principle that it is always wrong to tell a lie?

Which of the following is NOT mentioned in Chapter 6 as a potential role for intermediate moral principles?

What is a counterexample? What is a thought experiment? What is the difference between a counterexample and a thought experiment?

A moral intuition is, roughly, a moral judgment that you form without going through any conscious reasoning process.

A thought experiment is a hypothetical scenario designed to test an intermediate moral principle (or other philosophical principle).

How does Mencius respond to the supposed counterexample to the principle that unrelated men and women should not touch each other's hands?

What is the purpose of Robert Nozick's thought experiment about the person in the well who vaporizes someone with a ray gun?

A counterexample is a real-life scenario in which an intermediate moral principle entails that someone in that scenario should have done something other than what he or she actually did.

When evaluating intermediate moral principles, it is never worth considering the principles' implications for cases where it's obvious what the right thing to do is.

An intermediate moral principle's implications about a particular case are counterintuitive if they conflict with one's intuitions about that case.

Which of the following best explains the role that moral intuitions play in moral reasoning?

Any argument against an intermediate moral principle provides a counterexample to that principle.