Cahn, Exploring Ethics

Key Terms

Chapter 1

Ethics: Branch of philosophy dealing with morality, moral problems, and moral
judgments; synonymous with “moral philosophy.”

Normative ethics: Philosophical thinking about what is right, good, or obligatory.

Descriptive ethics: Attempt to describe or explain moral phenomena or to work out a

theory of human nature that bears on ethical questions.

Meta-ethics: Philosophical thinking about the meaning, use, or justification of moral

expressions and value judgments.

Chapter 2

Socrates: Athenian philosopher (469–399 BCE) convicted and sentenced to death by his
peers for threatening society with his probing philosophical questions; wrote nothing
himself but often serves Plato’s dialogues as the spokesman for Plato’s own views.

Crito: Friend of Socrates and namesake of one of Plato’s dialogues, in which Crito tries
unsuccessfully to convince Socrates to escape from prison and avoid his death sentence.

Chapter 3

Asclepius: Ancient god of healing; with his final words, Socrates tells Crito that he owes
a cock to the god and asks his friend to pay off the debt for him.

Chapter 4

Unjust law: According to King, any law that is not in harmony with the moral law or the
law of God and therefore can be violated with moral (although not legal) impunity;
includes any law inflicted by a majority on a minority that the minority had no part in
enacting or creating.

Positive peace: State of human relations characterized not simply by the absence of
violent conflict or tension but also by the presence of justice.

Civil disobedience: Nonviolent resistance to laws thought to be unjust or oppressive; to

be morally permissible, according to King, it must be carried out openly, lovingly, and
with a willingness to accept the legal penalties.
White moderates: Those whites who profess to support the goals of the civil rights
movement but, preferring social order to genuine justice, oppose the methods of
nonviolent direct action and paternalistically urge patience on those struggling for
freedom and equality.

Chapter 5

Moral disagreement: Conflict over something’s moral rightness or wrongness, justice or

injustice; the opposing sides in the conflict cannot both be true.

Disagreement in preference: Difference in the likes and dislikes of two (or more)
people; to state one’s personal preference is not to deny what someone else says when
they state their preference.

Appeal to moral authority: Attempt to resolve moral conflict by discerning the will of
someone who is never mistaken about moral questions (e.g., God); inappropriate,
according to Regan, because the authority’s judgments can be trusted only if verified
against some independent standard of morality.

Chapter 6

Euthyphro: Platonic dialogue in which Socrates reveals the difficulty of basing morality
on God (or the gods) by asking whether an action is right because God says so or whether
God says so because the action is right, a question that finds no satisfactory answer.

Chapter 7

Cultural relativism: Theory holding that there is no such thing as universal truth in
ethics; there are only the various cultural codes, and our own is merely one among many.

Cultural differences argument: Argument that (wrongly) infers from the mere existence
of different moral codes in different cultures that there is no such thing as objective moral
truth.

Moral progress: Change for the better in a society’s moral standards; makes sense only
if cultural relativism’s denial of objective moral truth is incorrect.

Chapter 8

Resentment: Emotion felt in response to being treated inconsiderately or unjustly by

another; implies that others have a reason to consider your interests and, inversely, you
have a reason to consider theirs.

Chapter 9
Gyges: According to a legend recounted in Plato’s Republic, shepherd who used his
power of invisibility (granted by a magic ring) to seduce the queen, murder the king, and
usurp the throne.

Psychological egoism: Descriptive theory of human nature according to which people

never act unselfishly.

Ethical egoism: Normative moral theory according to which people are never under any
obligation to act unselfishly.

Moral skepticism: View, closely linked to egoism, that most people are grossly deceived
about what is or should be the case where morals are concerned.

Altruism: Way of feeling or acting characterized by unselfish concern for others; does
not exist, according to psychological egoism; should not exist, according to ethical
egoism.

Self-interest: Motivation that gives rise to actions benefiting oneself but not necessarily
harming others; not the same as “selfishness,” which implies a blameworthy disregard of
others’ well-being.

Chapter 10

Immoralist: Someone who does not allow moral considerations to become a hindrance to
the pursuit of self-interest; incapable of true happiness according to Murphy and many
classical philosophers, but not according to Cahn.

Happiness: According to Murphy, the satisfaction one takes in having a personality

wherein all elements required for a fully realized human life are harmoniously integrated;
according to Cahn, something like untroubled (even smug) contentment with one’s
situation.

Kierkegaard: Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and religious thinker who sees the
pursuit of eternal, ethico-religious goals as the only path to true happiness; those who
think themselves happy in the pursuit or possession of temporal goods are self-deceived.

Crimes and Misdemeanors: Woody Allen film depicting a physician who gets away with
murder and seems to end up better off for it; cited by Cahn as lending plausibility to the
idea of a happy immoralist.

Chapter 11

Disagreement in belief: Conflict that occurs when one person believes one thing and
another believes something contradictory or incompatible; open to resolution by the
empirical methods of science.
Disagreement in attitude: Conflict that occurs when one person is in favor of something
and another is against it; not always rooted in disagreements in belief, and therefore not
necessarily open to resolution by empirical methods; predominant form of disagreement
in ethical conflicts.

Chapter 12

Moral worth: An action’s quality of being morally praiseworthy or blameworthy;

determined solely by the principle that motivates the action and not by any of the
consequences that potentially or actually follow from it.

Hypothetical imperative: Command of reason that recommends some action as

necessary to achieve some desired objective.

Categorical imperative: Supreme command of reason that directs the will absolutely or
unconditionally, irrespective of anyone’s particular desires; given multiple formulations
by Kant.

First formulation of the categorical imperative: Act only in accordance with that
maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.

Second formulation of the categorical imperative: Act in such a way that you use
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same
time as an end, never merely as a means.

End in itself: Something that has absolute worth, that possesses value in its own right
rather than mere usefulness as a means of achieving some goal external to itself.

Chapter 13

Maxim: Principle according to which one sees oneself as acting.

Intention: Conscious motivation of an action; used by O’Neill as equivalent to Kant’s

“maxim,” because given any intention, a corresponding maxim can be formulated by
omitting reference to the particular situation.

The Formula of the End in Itself: O’Neill’s term for Kant’s second formulation of the
categorical imperative, which O’Neill interprets as a command never to involve someone
in a scheme to which he or she could not in principle consent.

Chapter 14

Utilitarianism: Moral theory holding that actions are right to the extent that they
promote as much happiness as possible and wrong to the extent that they promote
unhappiness, each person counting equally.
Happiness: According to Mill’s utilitarianism, pleasure and the absence of pain, the only
intrinsically desirable goods.

Higher pleasures: Intellectual and moral pleasures, which are superior to lower, merely
bodily pleasures not because of their intrinsic nature but because of their circumstantial
advantages, such as greater permanence, safety, and inexpensiveness.

Chapter 15

Act utilitarianism: Moral theory holding that an act is right if and only if it results in as
much good or utility as any available alternative.

Rule utilitarianism: Moral theory holding that an act is right if and only if it is required
by a rule that is a member of a set of rules whose acceptance would lead to a greater
utility than any available alternative.

No-rest objection: Argument that utilitarian morality is too demanding because it

requires me constantly to consider whether I might be able to better promote utility by
sacrificing my rest and my enjoyment of life.

Integrity objection: Argument that utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory because

it can sometimes require us to violate our most central and deeply held principles.

Justice objection: Argument that utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory because it

can sometimes require us to violate the rights of individuals.

Chapter 16

Happiness: According to Aristotle, an activity of the soul exhibiting moral and

intellectual virtue over the course of a complete life.

Virtue: Synonymous with “excellence” in Aristotle; comes in two forms in humans:

intellectual virtue, which is acquired by birth and teaching, and moral virtue, which
comes about by habituation.

Characteristic function: That function the performance of which defines a being as the
kind of being it is; humans’ characteristic function is an activity of soul involving reason.

Mean: In Aristotle, the virtuous intermediate state between the two extremes of excess
and defect in passions (feelings) and actions.

Chapter 17
Ethics of character: Moral theory such as Aristotle’s that focuses primarily on what kind
of person it is good to be, what kinds of traits it is good to embody; an ethics of Being as
opposed to an ethics of Doing.

Ethics of principle: Moral theory, such as Kantianism or utilitarianism, that focuses

primarily on what kind of action it is right to do; an ethics of Doing as opposed to an
ethics of Being.

Moral exemplar: Heroes and saints we strive to imitate or be like, with varying degrees
of success.

Chapter 18

Ethics of care: Relatively young moral theory that focuses on the importance of
attending to the needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility; rooted in
a vision of human interdependence, it values emotion as a potential guide to
understanding and implementing what morality recommends and stresses the cooperative
well-being of self and other together.

Care: Both a practice of responding to the needs of particular others and a value
manifested in relationships of mutual trust and consideration.

Chapter 19

War: For Hobbes, the natural condition of human life in the absence of strong
government; exists not just during explicit fighting but at any time when people are
disposed to use violence against one another in the struggle for wealth, security, or honor;
human existence in this natural state is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Right of nature: Individuals’ liberty to use their power to protect their lives in whatever
way seems most prudent.

Liberty: Absence of external impediments to our power to do as we please.

Law of nature: General rule, discovered by reason, forbidding us to do what is

destructive of our own lives and obligating us to do whatever best preserves them; for
example, we ought to try to make peace, insofar as we have hope of obtaining it; when
we cannot obtain it, we ought to defend ourselves by any means necessary.

Social contract: Implied agreement among individuals relinquishing the right to do

whatever they please in exchange for all others’ limiting their own rights in a similar
manner.

Chapter 20
Justice: The social arrangement that rationally self-interested, free individuals would
agree on if they were deliberating from a hypothetical state of perfect equality.

Original position: Hypothetical state of perfect equality among those who undertake the
deliberative search for the principles of justice; corresponds in Rawls to the “state of
nature” in traditional social contract theory.

Veil of ignorance: Hypothetical mechanism by which those in the original position have
no knowledge of their own social status, class positions, or even natural abilities and
inclinations; guarantees that no one can advocate principles that would be to their own
special advantage.

Injustice: Inequalities that are not to the benefit of all, especially the least advantaged.

Chapter 21

Violinist analogy: Thought experiment used by Thomson to support her argument that
considering the fetus a human person does not necessarily entail the moral
impermissibility of abortion; the violinist, like the fetus, has a right to life but no right to
use another’s body to preserve that life.

Good Samaritans: Named after the hero of the famous gospel story, those who go above
the call of duty to help someone in need, at some personal cost to themselves; for
Thomson, to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is in many cases to be a Good
Samaritan, which may be praiseworthy but is not morally obligatory and should not be
required by law.

Minimally Decent Samaritans: Those who are willing to help those in need by taking at
least basic measures that do not impose significant sacrifices on themselves; in certain
circumstances, Minimally Decent Samaritanism may require the carrying of a pregnancy
to term, but the question cannot be settled in advance.

Chapter 22

Genetic humanity: Biological membership in the human species; not sufficient,

according to Warren, to merit the status of personhood and the full membership in the
human moral community that comes with it.

Moral humanity: Full-fledged membership in the human moral community; human

personhood.

Personhood: Possession of at least some of the following characteristics, none of which

are possessed by the fetus: sentience, emotionality, reason, capacity to communicate,
self-awareness, and moral agency.
Potential personhood: The fact that a fetus, if nurtured and allowed to develop, may
eventually become a person; not sufficient grounds for granting the fetus a strong right to
life, according to Warren.

Chapter 23

Standard anti-abortion argument: The claim that, because life begins as soon as
fetuses possess some characteristic such as a genetic code that is both necessary and
sufficient for being human, abortion is morally akin to murder.

Standard pro-choice argument: The claim that, because fetuses are not persons (or
rational agents, social beings, etc.), abortion is not wrongful killing.

Loss of a valuable future: What killing inflicts on the killed, depriving them of the
activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments that they otherwise would have had;
inflicting this loss is what makes killing wrong, according to Marquis; because a fetus has
a valuable future, killing it—abortion—is immoral.

Chapter 24

Human reproductive facts: Familiar facts, known to most human societies past and
present, about the natural origin, unfolding, and outcome of pregnancy; distinguished
from the uncertain metaphysical status of the fetus, which, unlike the biological facts, is
not deemed relevant to the morality of abortion by Hursthouse.

Virtue- and vice-related terms: Terms of moral praise and blame applied to individuals
and their feelings, actions, and practical reasoning; in applying them, we inevitably rely
on certain premises about what is intrinsically worthwhile and important in human lives.

Chapter 25

1973 American Medical Association statement: Affirmed the traditional opposition to

the intentional termination of the life of one human being by another; declared it
permissible to cease using extraordinary means of preserving life when there is
irrefutable evidence that biological death is imminent and the patient or immediate family
wishes to stop treatment.

Passive euthanasia: Rachels’s term for a physician’s decision to withhold treatment at

the request of a terminally ill patient or the immediate family, so that the patient might be
allowed to die.

Active euthanasia: Directed action taken by a physician, at the request of a terminally ill
patient or the immediate family, to kill the patient to spare him or her needless suffering,
sometimes referred to as “mercy killing”; according to Rachels, not necessarily different
in any morally relevant way from passive euthanasia.
Chapter 26

Intentional termination of life: “Mercy killing” or euthanasia. Steinbock includes both

active and passive euthanasia when she uses this phrase.

Cessation of life-prolonging treatment: A doctor’s or patient’s choice to stop treatment.

Steinbock points out that there are situations when stopping treatment is not the same as
intending to terminate life. For example, the doctor may realize that the treatment is not
improving the patient’s condition, and is making the patient uncomfortable.

Ordinary care or treatment: The level of care a doctor would normally be expected to
provide. Withholding this level of care is considered negligent.

Extraordinary care or treatment: Unusual, expensive, burdensome, or “heroic”

measures to attempt to keep a patient alive. In some cases, a doctor may choose to
withhold this level of care, if there is no reasonable hope of success.

Chapter 27

Obligatory: Quality of an act that it would be wrong not to do, such as giving money
away to help famine victims, according to Singer; applies to duties.

Supererogatory: Quality of an act that it would be good to do but not wrong not to do,
for example, giving money away to help famine victims, according to relief agencies that
thank donors for their “generosity”; synonymous with “charitable.”

Thomas Aquinas: Medieval monk and philosopher cited by Singer as sharing his view
that whatever material wealth we have in excess of our needs is owed by natural right to
the poor for their sustenance.

Level of marginal utility: Level at which, by giving any more to the needy, one would
cause as much suffering to oneself or one’s dependents as one would relieve by that gift;
the strong version of Singer’s principle requires that we give up to this level, and the
moderate version does not.

Chapter 28

Greater moral evil rule: Singer’s principle holding that if it is in our power to prevent
something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable
moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

Negative right: Right of noninterference (i.e., moral or legal entitlement to be left alone);
for example, right not to be killed, right to property, right to privacy, right to exercise
religious freedom.
Positive right: Right of recipience (i.e., moral or legal entitlement to receive some good);
for example, children’s rights to be fed, clothed, and housed by their natural or adoptive
parents; strangers in need normally do not possess positive rights to our surplus wealth,
according to Arthur.

Desert: Entitlement to the reward or punishment one has earned through one’s actions or
omissions; those in need do not necessarily deserve the surplus wealth of the affluent,
according to Arthur; giving it to them could conceivably violate fundamental values such
as fairness, justice, and respect for persons.

Chapter 29

Terrorism: On Walzer’s definition, random murder of innocent people, intended to

frighten a population into demanding that their governments negotiate for their safety.

Revolutionary “code of honor”: Rules followed by radical movement (wrongly branded

“terrorists”) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that forbade the targeting of
nonmilitary persons not directly involved in administering policies thought to be
oppressive.

Assassination: Politically motivated killing of officials or agents of regimes thought to

be unjust; distinct from terrorism, which is by definition indiscriminate in its killings.

Chapter 30

The “dominant view” of terrorism: Belief held widely by philosophers and the general
public that terrorism is always egregiously immoral.

Terrorism: On McPherson’s nonmoral definition, deliberate use of force against

ordinary noncombatants, which can be expected to cause wide fear among them, for
political ends.

Article 51 (5) (b) of the 1977 Geneva Protocol I: Portion of the Geneva Conventions
that forbids the use of force “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian
life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would
be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

Proportionality principle: Rule against using excessive force in the conduct of war,
especially against noncombatants; one of the central elements of just war theory.

African National Congress: Organization led by Nelson Mandela and others devoted to
bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa; accepted the use of violence and
even, briefly, terrorism as measures of last resort.

Chapter 31
Terroristic torture: Torture inflicted primarily for the purpose of intimidating people
other than the victim; the dominant form of contemporary torture, according to Shue.

Interrogational torture: Torture inflicted primarily for the purpose of extracting

information from the victim.

Standard philosopher’s example: Frequently invoked example of morally permissible

torture, in which a fanatic has set a nuclear device to explode in the heart of a major city,
leaving no time for authorities to evacuate the population; the only possibility of saving
the city is to torture the perpetrator into revealing the location of the device and the way
to deactivate it; Shue finds the example unhelpful, given the extraordinary unlikelihood
of circumstances exactly like the ones it describes in every morally relevant respect.

Chapter 32

(P): Hill’s abbreviation for the general moral principle at the basis of his argument,
according to which it is never permissible intentionally to inflict pain or severe harm on
someone unwilling, unless the pain/harm is intended (i) for their benefit, or (ii) as a
punishment, or (iii) as part of the pursuit of a legitimate war, or (iv) to prevent the
individual from causing severe pain or severe harm to innocents.

Analogy with self-defense: Analogy often drawn between inflicting pain on an unwilling
victim to prevent him or her from harming innocents and certain cases of interrogational
torture; judged superficial by Hill, who concludes that no case of torture is morally
equivalent to cases of self-defense.

Positive duties: Duties to perform certain acts of causation.

Negative duties: Duties not to perform certain acts of causation.

Chapter 33

Anger: According to Berns, the emotion you express when someone has acted in a way
you think is unjust, and you think they should be held accountable.

Moral community: Community whose members trust one another to obey the laws.

Chapter 34

Desert: What a person deserves. Spelled like “desert”—the climate where it doesn’t rain
much—but pronounced like “dessert”—the sweet course you get at the end of a meal.
(Philosophers. Go figure.)

Moral monsters: People who commit extraordinary atrocities, outside the bounds of
“normal” crime, such as Hitler or Stalin.
Chapter 35

Indirect duty view: The idea that we have no duties directly to animals themselves; our
wrong acts involving animals are wrong acts done to people who own the animals or care
about them in some way.

Contractarian view: One type of indirect duty view, according to which animals are
protected by the rules that make up the social contract (which they obviously cannot sign
themselves) because they are, like children, objects of the sentimental interest of people.

Cruelty-kindness view: In the context of animal rights, view recognizing that we have
direct duties to be kind and not be cruel to animals; inadequate, according to Regan,
because although kindness is a virtue and cruelty a vice that can play parts in human
emotion, the presence of kindness or the absence of cruelty themselves are not sufficient
to guarantee that an action is right.

Egalitarianism: In the context of animal rights, the idea that every individual—
regardless of species membership—has interests that count just as much as the interests
of every other individual.

Speciesism: Term coined by Peter Singer to designate systematic discrimination based on

species membership; meant as an analogy to such terms as “racism” and “sexism,” which
denote other forms of systematic discrimination against members of particular groups.

Inherent value view: Account of animal rights that sees all conscious individuals,
regardless of species and irrespective of particular characteristics or abilities, as
possessing equal value in their own right and hence as deserving to be treated with
respect.

Subject of a life: Any experiencing creature (human or nonhuman) having an individual

welfare that has importance to it, regardless of its usefulness to others; creature that
wants, prefers, believes, recalls, expects, and so on.

Chapter 36

Rights: Claims or potential claims that one party may exercise against another, be it a
single person, a group, or a community; can be legal, moral, or both; can arise only
among beings who actually do or potentially can make moral claims against one another,
which means that they are necessarily human, according to Cohen.

Autonomous: Self-legislative, or capable of laying down the law (nomos) for oneself
(auto); attribute of human beings, by virtue of which they and they alone possess rights.

Chapter 37
Rationality: The ability to reason, and to change one’s behavior based on reasons. This
is morally relevant because it allows people to work together and resolve conflict
nonviolently.

Chapter 38

Monocultural agriculture: Food production methods in which a single crop is grown

year after year on the same land, which is never left to lie fallow; requires extensive use
of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides to be viable.

Carcinogen: Cancer-causing substance; many chemicals used in modern food production

are known carcinogens.

Acid rain: Environmentally destructive and human-health-damaging rainfall produced

when sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides emitted into the air combine with water vapor
and fall to the earth when it rains or snows.

Anthropocentrism: Moral vision according to which human interests are the measure of
all earthly value; implies that neither animal species nor ecosystems have any intrinsic
worth, any value not reducible to the degree to which they satisfy human needs and
desires.

Chapter 39

Holism: In the context of environmentalism, refers to the value placed on whole species,
communities, or ecosystems rather than on the individual organisms of which they are
composed.

Animal liberationist: Someone who argues that we should take the suffering of sentient
animals into account in ethical deliberation; typically appeals to some form of
utilitarianism to make the case for “widening the ethical circle” in this way; often
diverges with environmentalism over such issues as the value of endangered versus
nonendangered species or the ethical status of nonsentient objects such as mountains and
marshes.

Ignorance argument: Argument for preserving species whose value to us is unknown in

order to avoid closing off the possibility of discovering and exploiting some future use;
fatally flawed argument, according to Sober, because we cannot make rational decisions
in complete ignorance of values.

Slippery slope argument: Argument holding that to take a single step on a “slope”
leading to an undesirable end is inevitably to slide all the way down to that end; in
environmentalism, often takes the form of an insistence that every single species is utterly
indispensable—for if we allow that some species matter only a little, we invite the
wholesale, disastrous impoverishment of some ecosystem.
Preference utilitarianism: Version of utilitarianism that says that an object’s having
interests, needs, or preferences gives it ethical status.

The demarcation problem: The challenge confronting every ethical theory to provide
principles that describe and justify which objects matter for their own sakes and which do
not.

Chapter 40

Procedural affirmative action: Measures taken to eradicate all racial, religious, ethnic,
and sex discrimination from the workplace.

Preferential affirmative action: Programs that pay attention to group-identity criteria to

increase numbers of women and minorities in the workplace.

Executive Order 10925: 1961 order issued by President Kennedy establishing the
Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity with the intention of ending
discrimination in employment by the government and its contractors; first call for
“affirmative action” in the context of civil rights; led to procedural, not preferential,
affirmative action.

Revised Order No. 4: 1971 order of the Nixon administration requiring all federal
contractors to implement affirmative action programs intended to bring the numbers of
women and minority employees into proportion with their availability in the workforce;
beginning of preferential affirmative action in the United States.

Diversity: Intended goal of many preferential affirmative action programs, rooted in the
belief that society as a whole benefits from encouraging expression of the varied
experiences, outlooks, and values of members of different groups; criticized by Cahn for
being excessively vague (Why privilege certain kinds of diversity—e.g., sexual, racial,
ethnic—over others—e.g., religious or ideological?) and for requiring that preferential
affirmative action become permanent.

Chapter 41

Role-model argument: Case made in favor of preferential affirmative action on the

grounds that having members of a particular race, sex, or ethnicity in positions of
prominence usefully exemplifies to other members of those groups the possibility of
success and also demonstrates the falsehood of certain racist or sexist beliefs.

Counterfactual argument from qualifications: Case made against preferential

affirmative action on the grounds that those hired under affirmative action programs must
be less qualified than those who are not, on the assumption that the programs would be
unnecessary if the affirmative action appointees were the most qualified in the first place;
rejected by Thomas for discounting the effect of bias on hiring decisions.
Intellectual affirmation: Praise and constructive criticism offered by teachers to their
students; to be effective, must take place in context of mutual trust that, in a society still
marked by racism and sexism, is often difficult, if not impossible, to forge between
minority or women students and their white male professors.

“Ole boy” network: (Also called “old boy.”) In academia, system of hiring that relies on
established social interactions rooted in the gratitude, trust, and loyalty that naturally
exists among professors and their colleagues and students; can unwittingly serve racist
and sexist ends, Thomas argues, even when grounded in nonracist or nonsexist patterns
of feeling.

Chapter 42

Reverse discrimination: A misuse of affirmative action in which qualified white male

candidates are passed over, and unqualified nonwhite or female candidates are hired.
Note that it is only reverse discrimination if the minority candidate really is unqualified,
not if he or she is only perceived as less qualified due to prejudice.

Chapter 43

Paternalism: An insultingly overprotective attitude. Banning all romantic relationships

on campus “for the students’ own good” might be seen as paternalism, for example,
because the students could argue that they are perfectly capable of making their own
decisions about who to become involved with romantically.

Chapter 44

Moral luck: According to some people, the moral outcome of your actions can be
affected by luck, as well as by your choices. This is why an attempted murder is punished
differently from a successful murder. The attempted murderer is not as guilty, because he
or she had the good moral luck to not succeed in the murder.

Chapter 45

Hypothetical: A “what-if” story. Ethicists like to tell stories that get to the heart of the
exact moral point they want to make, so they often use hypothetical, invented stories that
can sound far-fetched. A “real-life” story might have a commonsense solution that
wouldn’t force us to think about the exact moral principle that Thomson wants to focus
on.

Chapter 46

Ceteris paribus: Latin for “other things being equal.” (The “c” is often pronounced with
a “k” sound as if it was spelled “keteris.”) A ceteris paribus principle means that there
might be exceptions to the principle.
Chapter 47

Death: Unequivocal and permanent end of our existence (Nagel brackets the question of
life after death); understood not as a state of being but as the deprivation or loss of the
positive good of life.

Lucretius: Ancient Roman poet and philosopher who argued that our nonexistence after
death is the mirror image of our nonexistence before birth; just as no one is disturbed by
the latter, we should not fear the former; Nagel counters that the time after death is
importantly different, since it is a time death deprives us of, whereas birth does not entail
that loss of anything.

Chapter 48

Meaningless existence: A life of endless pointlessness, of toil that never comes to

anything.

Sisyphus: According to ancient myth, man who betrayed divine secrets to mortals and, as
punishment, was condemned to role to the top of a hill a stone, which would immediately
roll back to the bottom of the hill, where Sisyphus would have to take up his labor again,
on and on for all eternity; perfect image, according to Taylor, of meaningless existence.

Chapter 49

Active engagement: Feeling involved, excited, and passionate about what you are doing.

Projects of worth: Projects or activities that are valuable or worthwhile, not just
enjoyable. Somewhat controversial as to exactly what should count!

Chapter 50

Enigmatic: Mysterious.