10 Ethics in Public and Applied Life Free Online FlashCards

What does applied ethics examine?

Applied ethics uses moral concepts and theories to assess particular practices, institutions, and policies, taking account of facts, affected parties, uncertainty, and competing values.

How does utilitarian consequentialism assess a policy?

Consequentialism judges actions and policies by their results. Utilitarianism asks which option produces the greatest overall well-being, counting each affected person’s interests impartially.

Why can sentience ground animals’ moral status?

Sentience, especially the capacity to suffer or experience well-being, is one influential basis for treating animals’ interests as morally significant for their own sake.

How do anthropocentric and intrinsic-value approaches differ?

Anthropocentric approaches value environmental protection chiefly for its effects on people. Other approaches attribute intrinsic value to nonhuman life or ecological systems.

Why are technologies not always ethically neutral?

Technologies can shape choices, distribute power, and affect social life. Ethical analysis considers design and control as well as how a tool is used.

What is the aim of public reason?

Public reason holds that rules governing common life should be justifiable, in an appropriate sense, to the people subject to them. People need not agree, but should be able to assess and contest the reasons.

What are the main steps in analyzing an ethical case?

A careful ethical analysis clarifies the decision, establishes facts and uncertainties, identifies affected parties, compares moral reasons, examines power and procedure, and justifies a conclusion with trade-offs and safeguards.

What does a Kantian deontological approach ask?

Deontology emphasizes duties, rights, and constraints. A Kantian approach asks whether a principle could be adopted consistently and whether people are treated as ends, not merely as tools.

What does virtue ethics emphasize?

Virtue ethics asks what a practically wise, just, courageous, and compassionate person or community would do. It emphasizes motives, habits, and the kind of society a practice forms.

What questions guide justice-based ethical reasoning?

Justice-based approaches examine who receives benefits, who bears burdens, whose rights are respected, and whether decisions are fair. They apply to conduct, institutions, laws, and policies.

What does recognizing animals’ moral status not settle?

Recognizing that animals have moral status does not by itself determine exactly how they should be treated or how their interests compare with human interests.

What considerations does consequentialism weigh in intensive animal agriculture?

In intensive animal agriculture, consequentialists weigh food production and livelihoods against animal suffering, environmental effects, and available alternatives.