Explain how Matheny reaches his conclusion along with how you think the deer hunt should be evaluated on utilitarian grounds. Do you agree with Matheny’s conclusion in light of your evaluation? Defend your answer.

GMOR 150 – Contemporary Moral Issues

1) Explain how Kant’s “respect for persons” principle would apply to business practices. Can a business genuinely embody the ideals of a Kantian moral community, or are these ideals too demanding? Defend your answer drawing on the reading by Norman Bowie.

2) In his article, “Utilitarianism and Animals”, Gaverick Matheny concludes that we ought to make changes to our institutions and habits, “most immediately, that we become vegetarian or preferably vegan” (p.24). This viewpoint would be shared by the protestors at the Six Nations’ deer hunt described in the Globe and Mail newspaper article
available in the Blackboard learning materials on this subject. Explain how Matheny reaches his conclusion along with how you think the deer hunt should be evaluated on utilitarian grounds. Do you agree with Matheny’s conclusion in light of your evaluation? Defend your answer.

3) Is medical assistance in dying (voluntary euthanasia) a morally acceptable practice in at least some circumstances? Drawing on our course learning materials and discussion of the debate in the present, Canadian context, along with the readings by James Rachels and Thomas Sullivan, explain what you take to be the most persuasive arguments on both sides of this issue and defend a position of your own with respect to it.

(Hint: ‘most persuasive’ means you shouldn’t be summarizing every point raised in the assigned readings – be selective.)