Short Answer Questions
1. What does philosophical ethics attempt to do?
2. State Jeremy Bentham’s highest ethical principle.
3. State John Stuart Mill’s highest ethical principle, including the main qualifications that occur later in the text than his first statement of it.
4. Name three of the main revisions Mill makes to Bentham’s principle and state briefly why he makes them.
5. What does Mill name as the “circumstantial advantages” of the higher pleasures? (List.)
6. What is Mill’s answer (in multiple parts) to the objection that happiness is “unattainable”? Be specific.
7. What is Mill’s position on self-sacrifice? (Requires multiple parts.)
8. What is Mill’s answer to the objection that his moral standard is “too high for humanity”?
9. How does Mill answer the objection “that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness”?
10. Briefly explain in your own words the two “most marked cases of injustice” for Mill.
11. What aspect of Mill’s theory points toward its most prominent weakness, and why?
12. What are the two distinguishing marks of rationality for Kant?
13. Why is the strong possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent beings ethically relevant for Kant?
14. Why does Kant claim that the good will is the only thing in the world that is good without qualification?
15. How does willing go beyond mere wishing for Kant?
16. What is a maxim?
17. State Kant’s first and second formulas of his supreme moral principle? (Don’t just name them.)
18. How does Kant’s second formula differ in meaning—not just in wording—from the first?
19. Briefly contrast the contradiction in thought from the contradiction in willing.
20. State and briefly explain Kant’s third formula of his supreme moral principle.
21. What is Kant’s technical reason for rejecting any moral theory based on happiness? Briefly explain how this leads to the formal name of his supreme principle of morality.
22. What is the difference between autonomy and heteronomy?
23. State Kant’s fourth and fifth formulas.
24. Why does Kant equate freedom with autonomy?
25. Briefly, why does Kant claim that we must think of ourselves as belonging both to a “world of sense” and a “world of understanding”?
Essay
A. Choose two of Kant’s “four cases.” Choose and state two of Kant’s formulas of his highest moral principle. Explain how Kant would evaluate each case based on each formula.
B. Consider Mill’s defense of capital punishment. What reasons can be given for questioning his defense based on today’s perspective? (Give at least three reasons and explain how they pose a challenge to Mill’s position.)

Short Answer Questions 1. What does philosophical ethics attempt t...