Name: Domingo, Jobert Brian F.

Program & Section: AB – PHILO - 1-1N

Subject: Introduction to Philosophy

Guide Questions 2

Instructions: Read each item carefully and provide a comprehensive answer with a minimum of

6 sentences per item. You may cite direct quotations from any reference material to support your

claim, provided that the quotation is followed with and/or preceded by an explanation.

1) Utilitarianism upholds the “greatest good for the greatest number” principle. Recalling

the thought experiment (as discussed) concerning a healthy person entering a hospital

room with patients in need of organ transplant, how does the thought experiment criticize

utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism is something that you offer your own self, giving love or maybe

sacrificing your possessions or ownership for the common good of the people, regarding

to the experiment it shows that the healthy person really applies or believes in

utilitarianism if he or she will donate his/her organ to the patients who’s in need of

transplant, but the consequence is he/she might lose his/her life, with that utilitarianism is

a philosophy that would aim for the betterment of society as a whole.

2) Why are normative statements often used in ethics? How do they differ from descriptive

statements? (Elaborate with examples)

1
 A normative statement is one that makes a value judgment, and ethics is somehow

related to the moral values or principles that control’s person’s behavior, such a judgment is

the opinion of the speaker; no one can “prove” that the statement is or is not correct, in short

it provokes the disagreement for the purpose of fairness and morality, for example:

Hardworking laborers should have more benefits because of their labor, while descriptive

statements is a non-evaluative observation it’s just like what you saw, what you read or act,

you state it, you just simply describe it for example, He has a handsome face just like an

artwork in the museum, with regard in ethics descriptive statements may be applied if you

want to show evidences, describe happenings, or state an idea far way beyond to the

normative statement that it is most often used because it’s the main statement you need to

address in terms of ethics.

3) In the discussion on aesthetics, we talked about the problem concerning the “ontology” of

art (how artworks exist). In your understanding, in what way do artworks exist (physical,

mental, beyond physical, or all)?

How do artworks exist? For me it is all, meaning what an artwork reflects about is

its owner, regardless with what he/she paints or drew, its his/her expression of art to

showcase his/herself physically, mentally or beyond physical. Artwork exist endlessly,

even if the painter dies, artwork remains alive to the people, and still recognizable, just

like Juan Luna – with his artwork spolarium, we all know that it is a masterpiece, with

that artwork exist not just in our physical selves but it’s universal or something beyond

physical.