PHIL 190 — Midterm II: Values and Solidarity Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, definitions, and concepts from the PHIL 190 Midterm II study guide on Values and Solidarity.

Principle of utility (Bentham)

The ethical principle that approves or disapproves of every action according to its tendency to promote or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.

Psychological vs. ethical hedonism (Bentham)

The distinction between the descriptive claim that pleasure and pain do in fact govern human behavior versus the prescriptive claim that pleasure and pain should guide what we ought to do.

Fecundity vs. purity (Bentham)

Two of Bentham's seven circumstances: fecundity is the chance of an experience being followed by sensations of the same kind, whereas purity is the chance of it not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind.

The seven circumstances of utility (Bentham)

The variables used to measure pleasure and pain: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent.

Impartial beneficence vs. instrumental harm (Kahane et al.)

The two separable psychological and conceptual dimensions of utilitarian thinking.

Maxim (O'Neill, Kant)

The underlying principle an agent sees themselves as acting on, formulated by stripping away particular names, times, and places.

Formula of the End in Itself (Kant, O'Neill)

The moral imperative to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.

Mere means (O'Neill, Kant)

Involving someone in a scheme or action to which they could not in principle consent.

Deception and coercion (O'Neill)

The two standard ways an agent treats another person as a mere means.

Justice vs. beneficence (O'Neill)

A strict duty never to act on maxims that use others as mere means versus a wide duty to foster others' ends, allowing discretion about whose ends to foster.

Moral worth (Kant)

The moral quality of an action performed strictly from duty, rather than merely in accordance with duty.

Universalizability (Kant)

The deonotological test asking whether an agent could consistently will their maxim to become a universal law.

Corrective (Foot)

The view that a virtue is a disposition of the will that stands as a corrective at a point where human nature tends to go wrong.

In accordance with virtue vs. showing virtue (Foot)

The distinction between an act that merely conforms outward-facing to virtue without requiring it versus an act that genuinely engages the will and requires virtue to perform.

Unalienable rights and consent of the governed (Jefferson)

Inherent rights that cannot be surrendered or given away, the protection of which justifies government authority derived from the consent of the governed.

Equal in standing (Jefferson)

Being equal 'upon the same terms' with respect to rights and authority, rather than possessing equal natural talent, capacity, or fair shares.

Cornerstone (Stephens)

The foundational principle upon which the Confederacy claimed to rest: the supposed natural inequality of races and the subordination of slavery.

Equivocation (in Stephens's argument)

The fallacy of conflating equal capacity with equal standing by arguing against equal talent to falsely infer the denial of equal moral and political standing.

Mourning, 'not light but fire' (Douglass)

Douglass's stance that the Fourth of July is a day of grief for the enslaved, requiring thunder and fire to awaken the nation's conscience rather than intellectual illumination.

Ordo amoris (Vance, Francis)

The 'order of love'; a theological and ethical concept whose structural shape and distribution of obligations is contested between Vance and Pope Francis.

Concentric circles (Vance)

The priority model where compassion expands outward one ring at a time: starting with family, then neighbors, community, fellow citizens, and only finally the broader world.

Elicited vs. commanded love (Francis)

Love that assists an individual across a river (immediate personal rescue) versus love that builds a bridge (commanded institutional structures that secure lasting social fraternity).

Rooted cosmopolitanism and polyhedron (Francis)

An ethical approach universal in scope but rooted in local cultural practice, represented by a polyhedron that preserves particularity while forming unity.

Division of labor and invisible hand (Smith)

Specialization that vastly multiplies productivity, leading individuals seeking only private gain to be led to promote an unintended public benefit.

Mercantilism (Smith)

A state-power economic framework aiming for national enrichment by maximizing exports, minimizing imports, and exploiting colonial monopolies.

Alienation / estranged labor (Marx)

The four structural separations experienced by the worker under private property: separation from the product, the activity of labor, species-being, and other people.

Species-being (Marx)

The distinct human capacity to produce freely, consciously, universally, and in accordance with the laws of beauty, rather than merely for immediate physical survival.

Antinomy (Marx)

A conflict between two equally valid legal rights in market exchange (the buyer's right vs. the seller's right) where only collective force or legal power can decide.