Review Questions

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Review Questions

Answering these multiple response questions will help you to understand the arguments from this chapter. Each question corresponds to, and will help you answer, a study question in the textbook.

Choose the statements that should be included in a good answer to the question. The computer will suggest correct answers, but the judgment that a statement should be included is sometimes debatable; if you disagree with the suggested answers, formulate in your mind why you disagree, and answer the study question in the way you think best.

Describe Hardin's lifeboat ethics argument that rich countries have no obligations to poor and distant people. (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. Metaphorically, countries are like lifeboats adrift in the ocean.
b. Some lifeboats are well-stocked, others are over-crowded
c. Lifeboats trade with one another in resources and labor.
d. People try to swim from poorly provisioned lifeboats and to climb aboard well-stocked ones.
e. People in comfortable lifeboats will act against their own self-interest if they help poor ones.

[mark all correct answers]

What is the simple libertarian position on the obligations of the rich to poor and distant people? (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. People have positive rights to the assistance of others.
b. Libertarians think that positive rights do not exist.
c. Libertarians think that people have only negative rights to noninterference by others.
d. The rich should not interfere with the poor and distant.
e. The rich have no correlative duty to aid the poor and distant.

[mark all correct answers]

Describe how human rights like those in the UN charter entail obligations of rich countries to poor and distant people. (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. Rich countries have no duties to human beings in poor countries.
b. Human rights include positive rights to assistance.
c. Human beings have an urgent interest in food, clothing, housing, and medical care.
d. Human beings in rich countries are psychological egoists.
e. Rich people are often fair-minded and generous.

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Describe Hardin's ratchet effect argument that rich countries have no obligations to poor and distant people. (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. Given adequate food, the population of human beings will grow exponentially.
b. If a population exceeds its carrying capacity, then there will be a dieback.
c. People in poor and distant countries have no moral standing in utilitarianism.
d. Food aid will increase the size of future diebacks of population in poor countries.
e. Utility is maximized by not encouraging poor countries to exceed their carrying capacity.

[mark all correct answers]

Describe Singer's drowning child example and explain how he uses it to argue that we have obligations to poor and distant people. (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. Poor and distant people will be drowned by rising sea levels caused by climate change.
b. There is an analogy between people watching a child drown and refusing to aid distant famine victims
c. We can save a child drowning in a puddle at the cost of getting our shoes wet.
d. Utility increases if we save a drowning child but get our shoes wet.
e. Utility increases if we give money that we do not really need to famine relief.

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Explain why international distributive justice apparently applies to economic relations between rich countries and poor countries. (Choose all the statements that are relevant to giving a good answer.)

a. Distributive justice involves treating people differently only for morally relevant reasons.
b. Citizenship is, without question, a morally relevant feature of people.
c. Countries are entirely self-sufficient, and their citizens do not cooperate economically.
d. Citizenship is morally arbitrary.
e. Distributive justice arises only from a social contract between citizens of a country.

[mark all correct answers]

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Environmental Ethics

Chapter 9: Understanding Arguments

Review Questions