Assignment task:
- Your answers must demonstrate your engagement with the course materials textbook, specifically the lectures. Answers that fail to demonstrate this engagement with the ideas discussed in the lecture will get a failing grade.
- Answer them in two hundred and fifty words to three-hundred words.
- Use textbook: Shafer-Landau, R. (2020). A Concise Introduction to Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190058173
1. Your friend Tom has made you the executor of their estate, which means that if he dies, then you will be in charge of distributing his assets. Unfortunately, Tom dies of complications due to Crohn's disease. He leaves $100 000 for his adult daughter Milada. But you happen to know that Milada is already a self-made millionaire. She doesn't need the money, but you do. What would ethical egoism appear to advise you to do with the money that Tom has left Milada? Based on our discussion in class, what would Plato and Hobbes say about this (what would they counsel you to do)? Compare both of their answers.
2. Natural law theorists hold that actions are right because they are natural. Explain three different ways of understanding what it means for human action to be 'natural' that we discussed in class, and based on our discussion in class, explain why on each understanding of 'natural', we might have reason to doubt that the naturalness of actions makes them morally right, or their unnaturalness makes them morally wrong.
3. Based on our discussion in class, what do you think is the most compelling threat to morality: psychological egoism, ethical egoism, cultural relativism, nihilism, or the possibility that God doesn't exist? That is, which one is the biggest threat (even if you don't ultimately think it is successful)? Your answer must give a good reason why one of these things is the biggest threat to morality, one that draws on at least one argument we discussed in class and a response to that argument.