Reference no: EM13775401

Question 1. According to Jeremy Bentham (as described by Singer) what should determine whether a being's interests should be taken into account?

• Whether they have the faculty of discourse
• Whether they can reason
• Whether they can suffer
• Whether they are capable of love

Question 2. Which of the following statements is the strongest evidence that the person saying it is a utilitarian?

• Ginny: "Violations of rights are very serious, from the moral point of view."
• Helen: "I agree. It is always immoral to violate someone's rights."
• Ginny: "Well, I wouldn't say ‘always'. It's o.k. to violate rights whenever the good you can produce by doing so outweighs the harm you do by violating the person's rights."
• Kate: "I disagree with both of you. The notion of rights is just a mechanism for the lesser members of society to maintain control over those capable of greatness."

Question 3. What is Peter Singer's point about performing vivisection on mentally disabled human infants?

• That if we say that it would be wrong to perform experiments on such humans but not on non-humans then we are showing bias based upon species alone
• That a good speciesist would not perform experiments on any being
• That we should test upon mentally disabled human infants because the results would be more reliable than tests on animals
• That anyone who would consider testing on a human infant is a monster

Question 4. What is Tom Regan's position about the use of animals in research and agriculture?

• Animals should be used whenever it can be proven that the human benefits outweigh the harms caused to the animals
• Animals should never be used for medical research or commercial agriculture
• Animals should only be used for medical research shown to be beneficial to humanity, never for agriculture
• Animals should be used in both medical research and agriculture but should be treated as humanely as possible

Question 5. Which of the following does not describe how egg-laying hens are treated in factory farms?

• They are allowed to scratch through dirt and grass looking for seeds and bugs in the fresh open air.
• They are kept in such tight confinement that they cannot lift their wings
• They are starved into a period of ‘forced molting'
• They have their beaks painfully seared off

Question 6. Which of the following does not happen to pigs on today's factory farms in the "Meet Your Meat" video?

• They are raised in extreme confinement so dense that they can't turn around
• They are castrated and have tails chopped without pain killers
• They are slaughtered quickly and painlessly
• Many are quite conscious while being slaughtered

Question 7. According to John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism takes into account the happiness of:

• only the agent.
• only the agent and those the agent cares about.
• everyone, but weights the happiness of the agent more heavily.
• everyone, and weights everyone's happiness equally.

Question 8. According to Tom Regan, what is fundamentally wrong with our current system?

• It mistreats animals in captivity
• It does not adequately reduce the number of experiments to only what is medically necessary
• It treats animals as resources; as though they exist for us
• That it doesn't utilize animals enough for beneficial purposes

Question 9. What is Tom Regan's main criticism of the contractarian approach to ethical duties?

• It works fine for humans without problems, but it has not yet been applied to animals
• It ignores the importance of pain and suffering when it comes to ethics
• It would allow all kinds of human injustice if a stronger group is able to oppress the members of a weaker group of people
• He does not criticize it; he things that contractarianism, if properly understood, represents the most rational approach to ethical problems

Question 10. What is the point of Regan's discussion about Aunt Bea and utilitarianism's respect for human life?

• Utilitarianism feels that human life is paramount and not to be sacrificed under any circumstance
• Utilitarianism would say that God's law that "thou shalt not kill" will have very few exceptions
• Utilitarianism says that human life has not much value at all, a person can be killed for relatively minor reasons, like stealing their money
• Because utilitarianism is aggregative, one individual's right to life can be overridden in order to save many other people's lives

Question 11. What is speciesism?

• The view that all animals should be treated equally regardless of their abilities
• The view that endangered species have the right to exist
• Allowing the interests of one's own species to override the greater interests of members of other species
• Protecting endangered species from extinction regardless of economic costs

Question 12. Which of the following does not describe the ways that chickens and turkeys are treated on factory farms, according to the video "Meet Your Meat"

• They are raised in their own excrement among corpses of other birds
• Some are so crippled from unnatural growth that they are unable to move
• They are given ample space to roam and to express their own natural behavior.
• They are often beaten with metal rods, which is considered legal by the industry

Question 13. What does Tom Regan say is the source of inherent value in an individual?

• Individuals have equal inherent value by virtue of being experiencing subjects of a life, i.e. conscious beings whose lives matter to them
• We have equal inherent value if we are able to experience pain and pleasure, suffering and misery
• We do not all have inherent value; only those that live and abide by moral principles have inherent worth
• Different societies have different views about what is right and wrong, so the ‘inherent value' of individuals is relative

Question 14. According to Mill, utilitarian morality holds that:

• If each individual strives to maximize their own happiness, the happiness of all will follow.
• Each individual is required to sacrifice their own individual happiness for the happiness of all.
• With the right social arrangements and education, individuals can come to associate their own individual happiness with the happiness of all.
• Neither the happiness of the individual nor the happiness of all is worth pursuing, since neither is attainable in this life.

Question 15. Peter Singer's "basic principles of equality" applied to animals means:

• Animals should be given all the same rights as human beings.
• Animals are not entitled to not all the same rights but to an equal consideration of interests.
• Animals should not be given the same moral consideration because they are do not have the same power to reason as humans.
• Animals do not have rights unless they can demonstrate the same abilities as humans.

Question 16. What does Singer say about other philosophers' attempts to argue that only humans have moral worth?

• That they give a good way to determine who has rights in a way that includes all humans and no animals
• That they all say that animals should have rights too
• That they come up with unjustified methods to include all humans while excluding all animals from moral consideration
• That animals do not have rights because they are not as smart as humans are

Question 17. Which of the following makes it difficult to calculate the utility of an act

• the time frame of the consequences
• disagreements about the meaning of pleasure or happiness
• determining what constitutes the greatest good
• all of the above

Question 18. According to Tom Regan, which of the following should compel us to accept the equal rights of animals?

• Sentiment - our feelings for the welfare of animals
• Law - legal regulations requiring us to respect the rights of animals
• Reason - this theory has the best reasons on its side
• Religion - the laws of God mandate human compassion

Question 19. What does Peter Singer say about the history of liberation movements?

• They tend to become narrower in scope ... zeroing in on the exact class that deserves moral consideration.
• They tend to become wider in scope ... with people learning to apply moral principles to groups previously not considered.
• They tend to become more discriminatory ... giving fewer and fewer rights to the less privileged.
• They tend to discover that the original concepts in the past were superior and it is a mistake to veer from traditional wisdom.

Question 20. 20. What does Tom Regan say about the cruelty/kindness approach to animal ethics?

• The best way to explain animal ethics is in terms of our obligation to be kind and not cruel to animals
• It is inadequate because it is possible to do wrong while being kind, and it is possible to do wrong without being deliberately cruel
• It has no relevance to animal ethics because animals are cruel to each other
• You have to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure