These are not meant to be essay questions but if you give small answers you will get a small grade. Make sure you let me know that YOU know what you are talking about.
1. Melissa is a 80 year old woman with advanced dementia living in a nursing home. She has no short-term memory and only sometimes recognizes her daughter who is her only living relative. Her daughter considers her mother’s personhood as finished and currently existing in an undignified life. She seeks medical help to have her mother euthanatized. Is there any difference in how a Kantian and a utilitarian would respond?
2. Would a utilitarian and Martin Luther King Jr. agree or differ over a city’s policy of allowing racist groups to hold a public rally as long as they commit no acts of violence?
3. Consider the case of Mrs. Pamela Munson, who, late in her pregnancy (7 months), was warned by doctors not to take amphetamines, to stay off her feet, to avoid sexual intercourse, and to seek immediate treatment if she began hemorrhaging. Over the next week, she began to bleed, took amphetamines, and had intercourse with her husband. Herchild was born with massive brain damage and died in about six weeks. The District Attorney wanted to prosecute her for murder but settled for child neglect.
(1) Would a Principalist argue that her rights are being violated?
(2) Would an Originalist agree with the Principalist?
(3) Would her actions be considered immoral by the standard of Kant’s Categorical Imperative or by the standards of Natural Law?
4. Consider the case of Dr. Jariee Al-Hafi, an Iranian nuclear physicist who leads a team of scientists working on a project seeking to make Iran capable of building and launching nuclear (and biological) missiles capable of reaching the United States but for more probable use against its near neighbors. The research center where Al-Hafi works is located in one of Iran’s largest cities. Al-Hafi lives with this wife and two children in a large apartment complex within the same city. Both the research center and the apartment complex are well guarded by the Iranian military and not vulnerable to espionage. Assume for the sake of argument that Iran would pose a nuclear threat to the region and to the U.S. Use Anscombe’s just war position (from natural law) and then Mill’s utilitarianism to answer both of these questions.
(1) Would the U.S. be justified in launching an attack on the research center?
(2) Would the U.S. be justified in destroying Al-Hafi’s apartment building when it is certain that he is in it?
