Week 13 — Who May Rule, and How Far? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 12 of the term — credit this week's sentences to their authors, key an argument and reconstruct another, run the veil of ignorance on a new case, weigh the debate between Rawls and Nozick fairly, and explain the veil to someone new to philosophy.

This week you learned legitimacy and social contract theory, Hobbes's state of nature and absolute sovereign, Locke's natural rights and consent, Rousseau's general will, Mill's harm principle, Rawls's original position, veil of ignorance, equal basic liberties, and difference principle, and Nozick's entitlement theory, minimal state, and experience machine. In Week 2 you learned standard form, validity, the invalid pattern every A is B; this C is B; so this C is A, and denying the consequent; and in Weeks 11 and 12 you met the other three ethical theories. 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 C's two quotations (Q9 from Hobbes and Q10 from Mill, both English originals), Dataset H, the social contract set, Dataset J, the theory-matching set (illustrative), and Dataset B, the argument set (illustrative). The premises of 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, describe no real person or place, and raise no current policy question.

Part A — get the sources right, then reconstruct. A post on a study-group forum reads: "Rousseau wrote that the life of man without government is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,' and Locke's harm principle says a government may never limit anyone's liberty. Locke also said our natural rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Do three things:

• Correct the post. Say whose work describes the life of man in that sentence, and quote the sentence exactly as the course pins it; say whose harm principle is and quote it exactly; say why "a government may never limit anyone's liberty" misstates the harm principle, and which kind of limit the principle rules out; and give Locke's natural rights correctly.
• Key argument 5. Write Dataset B's argument 5 in standard form ("All just laws protect the vulnerable. This law protects the vulnerable. So this law is just."), name its pattern, key it for validity with a one-sentence reason from the definition of validity, and give a counterexample of your own: a law that protects the vulnerable and is still unjust.
• Reconstruct the harm principle on a case. A building's residents propose a rule that bans anyone from sitting on their own balcony after dark, for their own safety. Write the reasoning that the harm principle rules this out in standard form (P1, P2, then C introduced by "So"), with the harm principle, in your own words, as P1, mark any premise you add as "(added)", name the form, and say whether it is valid.

Then work this problem, showing your reasoning:

1. Hobbes's Leviathan appeared in 1651, and Locke's Two Treatises of Government carries a title page dated 1690. How many years separate them?

Part B — step behind the veil, then weigh the debate. Work this problem first, showing your reasoning:

1. Mill's On Liberty appeared in 1859, and Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971. How many years separate them?

Then do three things:

• Run the veil on a new case. A student housing cooperative must decide how to share out its rooms, some larger and some smaller, and asks every member to choose a plan as if they did not know which room they would get or how much they could pay. Describe what the veil of ignorance hides from the members and what it leaves them, describe one plan the difference principle would permit and one it would rule out, and say which theory Dataset J's statement "Choose principles of justice as if you did not know whether you would be rich or poor." is keyed to.
• Weigh the debate. State the entitlement objection to Rawls's difference principle in its strongest form, with an example of your own, and give the reply from Rawls's side; then state the history objection to Nozick's entitlement theory in its strongest form, with an example of your own, and give the reply from Nozick's side.
• Name the disagreement. End with one plain sentence naming exactly where Rawls and Nozick disagree.

Explain it to a non-expert

A relative who has never taken philosophy says, "The veil of ignorance just means people should be ignorant when they make rules, right?" Write a 3–5 sentence message in everyday words that explains what the veil hides and what it leaves, why choosing that way is meant to make the rules fair, and one honest limit or open question about the idea. Explain any term your relative might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a cousin who asks what "valid" means in logic. Model answer: "An argument is valid when its conclusion has to be true if its starting claims are true, the way a recipe works if the ingredients are right. Valid does not mean the starting claims are true. It only means the reasoning holds together. One limit: a valid argument with a false starting claim can still lead you to a false conclusion."

Use that pattern for your message to your relative, with your own explanation of the veil of ignorance.

Revise and reflect

Put your first draft away for a few hours, then reread it against Chapter 13. For the correction, check each quotation word for word, spelling included, and each attribution against the chapter's record; for each reconstruction, underline any added premise and check the form's name against Week 2's list; for the veil, check that it hides facts about each member and not general knowledge; for each objection, ask whether its strongest defender would sign your statement of it and whether the other side would sign your reply; and check that your relative message does not say the veil means ignorance of everything. 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 one of your reconstructions more exact, and which definition or pinned quotation showed you it was needed?
• (b) Which change made your statement of one of the objections or replies 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, your keying of argument 5 with your counterexample, your balcony reconstruction, and your first year gap;
• your Part B year gap, the veil analysis, the two objections with their replies, and your plain sentence;
• your message to your relative;
• 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 reconstructions, the evaluation, 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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