Chapter 12:
Ethical Theories, Moral Principles, and Medical Decisions
Multiple Choice Questions
1) Who endorses utilitarianism?
a) Ross
b) Rawls
c) Kant
d) Mill
2) Which principle is also called the “greatest happiness principle”?
a) The principle of utility
b) The principle of double effect
c) The pleasure principle
d) The paternalist principle
3) Many critics of utilitarianism argue that it cannot make room for considerations of
a) commensurability.
b) preferences.
c) justice.
d) rules.
4) The view that physicians should always tell the truth to their patients as to do otherwise would
be to fail to respect their autonomy would be best justified by
a) utilitarianism.
b) Ross’s view of prima facie duties.
c) Rawls’s moral view.
d) Kantian ethics.
5) According to Kant, happiness is
a) the supreme principle of morality.
b) not a good at all.
c) a conditional good.
d) a categorical imperative.
6) According to Kant, if I donate a kidney because I wish to be praised for my generosity, my
action can be described in which of the following ways?
a) My action has no inner moral worth.
b) My action is in accordance with duty.
c) My action is not performed from duty.
d) All of these choices
7) What, according to utilitarianism, is intrinsically valuable?
a) Happiness
b) Acting from duty
c) Acting in accordance with duty
d) Autonomy
8) According to Kant, what sort of duty does a physician have to accept someone as a patient?
a) A perfect duty
b) A rational duty
c) A duty of beneficence
d) An imperfect duty
9) Who would hold that public money spent on the allocation of medical resources could be
spent unequally, provided that this inequality worked to the benefit of the least well-off?
a) Ross
b) Rawls
c) Kant
d) Nussbaum
10) Whose view implies that everyone is entitled to healthcare?
a) Ross’s
b) Rawls’s
c) Kant’s
d) Nussbaum’s
11) Which principle holds that cosmetic surgery is morally right only when it is required to
maintain or ensure the normal functioning of the rest of the body?
a) The difference principle.
b) The principle of double effect.
c) The totality principle.
d) The principle of beneficence.
12) Which view would hold that a three month old fetus was a person?
a) Utilitarianism
b) Roman Catholic Natural Law ethics
c) Kantian ethics
d) Rawls’s ethics
13) Which principle is most closely associated with the Hippocratic directive to help?
a) The difference principle
b) The principle of double effect
c) The totality principle
d) The principle of beneficence
14) The principle of need is an extension of which principle?
a) The principle of nonmaleficence
b) The principle of beneficence
c) The principle of equal distribution
d) The difference principle
15) Which principle is informed consent most clearly grounded on?
a) The principle of autonomy
b) The effort principle
c) The contribution principle
d) None of these choices
True/False Questions
1) Utilitarianism focuses solely upon some inherent feature(s) of an action itself and is
unconcerned with the consequences that an action produces.
2) Not all utilitarians accept the principle of utility as the standard for determining the rightness
of an action.
3) Rule utilitarians hold that the principle of utility should be applied to particular acts in
particular circumstances.
4) Act utilitarians maintain that the principle of utility should be used to test rules, which can in
turn be used to decide the rightness of particular acts.
5) One of the most serious objections to utilitarianism is that it may justify the imposition of
great suffering on a few people in order to benefit a great many of people.
6) Immanuel Kant believes that an action is right when it is in accordance with a rule that
satisfies a principle that he calls the “categorical imperative” and thus he believes that the
consequences of an action are morally irrelevant.
7) According to the Principle of Effort, the president of a company should receive a greater
share of social “goods” than his/her file clerk (assuming that they both work equally as hard)
because the president’s contributions to society are inherently more important and difficult.
8) Autonomy is an absolute right and should never be restricted under any circumstances.
9) One problem with virtue ethics is that it provides us with no explicit guidance on how to act
in a particular circumstance.
10) One criticism of feminist ethics is that it is too unified and dogmatic a view to prove useful.
11) Martha Nussbaum endorses a capabilities approach to ethics.
12) The capabilities approach takes health as its primary focus.
13) W.D. Ross rejects pluralistic approaches to ethics in favor of a duty-based approach.
14) If an ethical theory is based solely on intuitions then, Nussbaum claims, it has no relevance to
real problems.
15) Identity-based theorists reject the use of universal moral concepts.