University of Kansas, Spring 2003
Philosophy 161: Introduction to Ethics, Honors
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu
Test Questions—Meta-ethics
The test will be given in class on Wednesday, February 26, and will consist
of 100 points’ worth of the following questions: three 20-point questions and
four 10-point questions. There may also be a bonus
question or two, not listed here.
- (20 points:) What is cultural relativism? What is one statement or belief
that people might associate with cultural relativism, but that is not actually
equivalent to that view?
- (10 points:) What is the cultural-differences argument? What is one
of Rachels’s objections to this argument?
- (10 points:) What is one implication of cultural relativism that Rachels
mentions as an objection to that view?
- (20 points:) What is simple subjectivism, and what is emotivism? What is
the main difference between them?
- (10 points:) What are the two objections to simple subjectivism that
Rachels mentions?
- (10 points:) What standard, if any, does emotivism provide for what counts
as a reason in support of a particular moral judgment?
- (20 points:) What are two independent interpretations of the concepts of
the natural and the unnatural that might be used to try to
derive moral principles from statements about what is natural and what is
unnatural? What criticisms can be offered against attempts to derive morality
from nature that are based on these two interpretations of these concepts?
Why, in general, is it so hard to derive moral principles from statements
about nature?
- (10 points:) What point is Hume making in the passage in which he writes,
“I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of
propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is
not connected with an ought, or an ought not”?
- (20 points:) What is the main point of Stevenson’s paper “The Emotive
Meaning of Ethical Terms”? What would Stevenson say to someone who says, “You
promised to mow my lawn; now you are just being irrational if you fail to see
that it would be wrong for you not to mow my lawn”?
- (10 points:) What are the two standard interpretations of the
divine-command theory?
- (20 points:) What two objections to the first interpretation of the
divine-command theory does Rachels offer?
- (10 points:) What is psychological egoism? What is one statement or belief
that people might associate with psychological egoism, but that is not
actually equivalent to that view?
- (20 points:) Suppose someone were to say that psychological egoism is true
because people don’t do things they don’t want to do, and wanting is an
inherently self-interested state of mind. What can be said against this
argument for psychological egoism?
- (10 points:) What is the relevance, to psychological egoism, of the
notion of a theory’s being verifiable?