- An airliner is hijacked by terrorists who threaten to blow up the plane and all its passengers if your nation does not release from custody certain convicted criminals. If it was your responsibility to decide how your nation would respond, what would your decision be? Why? (Are there any basic moral principles involved in the criteria for your decision?)
- The gods of Greek myth were invented by the people in an attempt to rationalize and explain the world around them. Before people can feel secure in their worlds, they must orient themselves therein; i.e., they must tentatively define what they believe to be the nature of the world so that they may develop a pattern of behavior which is the logical and practical consequence of their beliefs. What, then, are your basic metaphysical assumptions?
- Thrasymachus claimed that "might makes right." While most civilized people decry such a position, historically we have resorted to the use of might in solving problems probably more frequently than we have any other one solution. When this is done, it is usually followed immediately by a complex moral justification. What is your position on the moral justification for using power (threat, force) to achieve personal or national ends?
- Gorgias asserted that objective perception is impossible. Socrates agreed that it is highly unlikely, but claimed that through knowledge of the self, through knowing where we individually are most likely to distort data, we can come ever closer to perceiving what is truth. With this in mind, what are your subjectivities, biases, prejudices, tastes, etc.? Which have the greatest possibility of distorting your perceptions?
- Consider your own means of arriving at specific decisions concerning the "rightness" or "wrongness" of certain activities. Are you more of a moral "relativist" or "absolutist" in this process? (Note: this is a question more of process than of specific moral issues though you may wish to refer to specific activities for examples.)
- Do you believe that there should be any effort to legally control the presentation of "news" by newspapers and television? Damage has been done to individuals as a result of loosely controlled media reports.
- Lurid reporting of crime (especially bizarre ones) seems to trigger further incidents (e.g., skyjackings, snipings, sex crimes).
- Different networks or newspapers have reported events of national importance totally differently from each other. For example, during the 1972 Democratic Convention in Chicago, one network showed dirty, vulgar, hippie-type protesters crudely abusing the fine family men of Chicago's police department; while another network showed a metropolitan Gestapo mistreating beautiful, young Americans exercising their heritage of lawful protest. Yet, our concept of government necessitates that citizens be informed in order to put proper pressure on legislators.
- Reporting of shortages (gas and toilet paper) tended in some cases to actually create more of a shortage by causing panic buying.
- Kate's Conundrum: Kate, a liberal and well-to-do holder of a graduate degree in social work, decides that she can do the most good in the social services department of a rural county in a southern state.
- In a few years she has established relationships of trust with her clients. Now two of those clients are posing a problem for her. A young girl in one of her families is pregnant. The girl and her sister are both in their early teens and have left school as "uneducable." The family is grindingly poor and virtually illiterate; the father has a problem with alcohol.
- Kate has started discussing with the family their plans to care for the baby, which they want, and sent the girl to the clinic for evaluation. Now she has learned that the county health officials have arranged for both girls to be hospitalized and sterilized, without their knowledge or consent.
Involuntary, uninformed sterilization is legal in her county, and her fellow workers keep mentioning swollen welfare rolls. But Kate keeps remembering her professional and personal commitment to the value and dignity of human life. She wants to talk with the family, to allow them to choose, but she is told that she is too idealistic. What should Kate do?
- Who are you? Double assignment: 700 words.
- Aristotle makes a case for the legitimacy of "instrumental ends," i.e., acts that are done as a means to other ends, as an ethical concept if they help man fulfill his function as a man. This notion has a direct relationship to the oldest of moral issues: Are there some goals (ends) so important that they justify any means used to achieve them? (e.g. winning a war; throwing people out of overcrowded lifeboats; lying, cheating, stealing, even killing for a good cause; selective cannibalism; etc.)
- State Law: Any adult found guilty of having sex with a minor must serve a mandatory jail sentence of three years. A girl's father found out, through her diary, that she was having sexual relations with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend; she is only fourteen. The girl's father makes the D.A. prosecute the boyfriend. You are on the jury and you have no doubt of a sexual relationship between the adult and the minor. The judge reminds you that if you believe them guilty you are obligated by law to say so. How, and why, do you vote?
- A local ruffian has been terrorizing your five teen-aged girls with possible intent to harm or to kill. The police are unable to help until he is actually caught committing a crime. You are one of the parents with roots in the community; to move elsewhere would disrupt the family and their lifestyles. What do you do? And, are you willing to bet your daughters' lives on your plan?
- What makes life worthwhile? Thomas Hobbes claimed that survival is basic in nature and, therefore, should be primary as we consider our relationship to government. To the rhetorical question, "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?", Hobbes would have responded: "Absolutely--everything is better than being dead." How precious is "life itself"? Are there some things without which life would not be worthwhile to you? What would you risk your life for? What would you give it for?
- "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet 1.5.175-6). Indeed, throughout the entire recorded history of humankind, events have been reported that our best scientific minds could not explain. How do you tend to respond to reports of events such as encounters with ghosts, psychic phenomena, UFO sightings, etc.? If you give any credence to any such stories, how do you reconcile this with your general view of the nature of the world? How do you integrate these thoughts with your religious views?
|
