Week 12 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 12 — Duty, Character, and the Trolley: Testing the Theories — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 11 of the term — correct a post about Kant's formulas with their translator named, run a maxim through the universal-law test, key an argument for validity, state Kantian deontology and virtue ethics at their strongest with their objections, compare three theories on the runaway trolley, and explain the trolley problem to someone new to philosophy.

This week you learned duty and maxims, hypothetical and categorical imperatives, Kant's formulas of universal law and of humanity, the rigidity objection, Aristotle's virtue ethics with eudaimonia, the mean, and habituation, and the runaway trolley. In Week 2 you learned standard form, validity, and the categorical syllogism, and in Week 11 you met utilitarianism. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Philosophy Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together.

The task

You will use this week's pinned sources, Dataset D (the course's table of ethical theories), Dataset J, the theory-matching set (illustrative), and Dataset B, the argument set (illustrative). Datasets B and J are written for teaching and are not claims the course endorses; the course keys Dataset B's arguments for validity only, never for soundness, because the premises are open questions. The everyday cases below were written for this assignment; they are illustrative and describe no real person or place.

Part A — get Kant's sources right, then test his theory. A post on a study-group forum reads: "Kant's golden rule says you may never use another person as a means, and Kant wrote it in English as "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."" Do four things:

Correct the post. Say what the formula of universal law asks and how it differs from the golden rule; quote the formula of humanity exactly as the course's translation prints it and say what "never as means only" forbids and what it allows; and say whose English words the two quoted formulas are.
Run the test. Write a maxim of your own for an everyday case (not the lying-to-borrow case from Dataset J), and run it through the 3-step universal-law test: state the maxim, imagine everyone acting on it, and ask whether you could still will it.
State Kantian deontology at its strongest. State the theory as its best defenders would, then give the rigidity objection and a reply from the Kantian side.
Key argument 9. Write Dataset B's argument 9 in standard form ("Every person deserves respect. Every prisoner is a person. So every prisoner deserves respect."), name its form, key it for validity with a one-sentence reason from the definition of validity, and say why the course does not key it as sound.

Then work this problem, showing your reasoning:

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals dates from 1785, and Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was first published in 1789. How many years separate them?

Part B — weigh virtue ethics, then compare three theories on the trolley. Work this problem first, showing your reasoning:

Philippa Foot devised the runaway tram case in 1967, and Judith Jarvis Thomson named it the trolley problem in 1976. How many years separate them?

Then do three things:

State virtue ethics at its strongest. Define eudaimonia, explain the mean with courage between cowardice and rashness, say why the mean is not a halfway point, say how a virtue is developed, and give the action-guidance objection and a reply from the virtue ethics side.
Credit and run the trolley. Say who devised the runaway tram case and who named it the trolley problem, then run utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics on Foot's driver case and on the footbridge variation (only pushing a stranger wearing a heavy backpack onto the track stops the trolley), stating each theory's reasoning at its strongest.
Say where they part. End with one plain sentence naming exactly where the three theories agree and where they part, without naming one of them correct.

Explain it to a non-expert

A teammate who has never taken philosophy says, "The trolley problem has an easy answer: five is more than one, so you push. End of story." Write a 3–5 sentence message in everyday words that explains what the trolley problem tests, why someone might treat the footbridge differently from the switch even though the count is the same, and one honest limit of what you can claim. Explain any term your teammate might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor who asks whether "If you want a good harvest, water your garden" is a moral rule. Model answer: "That sentence is advice with a condition attached: it only tells you what to do if you want a good harvest. Philosophers call that a hypothetical imperative. A moral rule such as 'Do not lie' is meant to hold whether or not you want anything in particular, which is what Kant called categorical. One limit: philosophers still argue about whether any rule really binds everyone that way, so this is a distinction, not a verdict."

Use that pattern for your message to your teammate, with your own explanation of the trolley problem.

Revise and reflect

Put your first draft away for a few hours, then reread it against Chapter 12. For the correction, check both formulas word for word against the chapter and confirm that you named Abbott as the translator; for the universal-law test, confirm that you wrote all 3 steps for your own maxim; for argument 9, check the form's name against Week 2's list; for each theory, ask whether its best defender would sign your statement of it; for the trolley, confirm that Foot devised the case and Thomson named it; and check that your teammate message explains why the count might not settle the case. Make at least one change and keep both versions. Then answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

(a) Which change made your sourcing or your reconstruction more exact, and which definition or pinned quotation showed you it was needed?
(b) Which change made your statement of one of the theories stronger, and what had you left out at first?

Deliverables

Submit one document or recording that contains, in this order:

your Part A forum-post correction with your first year gap, the universal-law test on your own maxim, Kantian deontology with its objection and reply, and argument 9 keyed;
your Part B year gap, virtue ethics with its objection and reply, the credited trolley case with the three theories on both cases, and your plain sentence;
your message to your teammate;
your first and revised versions of the part you changed, and your reflection.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about five minutes with a transcript. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the correction, the reconstruction, the comparison, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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