Week 11 Quiz

In this course, which statement is the central claim of utilitarianism?

Select one.

• The right act is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the person who acts
• The right act is the one that follows the rules a person's own culture accepts
• The right act is the one that produces the greatest overall happiness, with each person counted equally
• The right act is the one a person of good character would do in that situation

Which work opens with the sentence "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."?

Select one.

• Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
• Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"
• Plato, Republic, Book II

Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was printed some years before it was published. In which year was it first published?

Select one.

• 1780
• 1789
• 1861
• 1863

True or false: utilitarianism counts only the happiness of the person who is deciding what to do.

True or false.

• True
• False

On which point does Mill part from Bentham?

Select one.

• Mill denies that consequences decide whether an act is right
• Mill counts only the happiness of the person who acts
• Mill holds that pain and pleasure play no part in morality
• Mill holds that pleasures differ in quality as well as in amount

In the course's theory-matching set (illustrative), which theory is the statement "A broken promise is wrong if breaking it causes more misery than keeping it" keyed to?

Select one.

• Utilitarianism
• Kantian deontology
• Virtue ethics
• Social contract theory

A utilitarian keeps a costly promise because a general practice of keeping promises lets people plan and trust one another, even though breaking this one promise would produce a little more happiness. Which view does this reasoning express?

Select one.

• Act utilitarianism
• Rule utilitarianism
• Ethical egoism
• Psychological egoism

Dataset B, argument 3 (illustrative): If an act maximizes happiness, it is right. If it is right, we ought to do it. So if an act maximizes happiness, we ought to do it. Which form does the argument take?

Select one.

• Modus ponens
• Denying the consequent
• Hypothetical syllogism
• Disjunctive syllogism

True or false: because Dataset B's argument 3 is valid, the course keys it as sound.

True or false.

• True
• False

The drowning child, a thought experiment that asks whether you must save a life at small cost, comes from which work?

Select one.

• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
• Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
• Plato, Republic, Book II
• Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"