Reference no: EM132277193

Question: 1. Rights play an important role in limiting how people can be treated even in the pursuit of consequences that are good, like saving lives. Discuss this limiting function of the concept of a right in relation to Australia's mandatory detention policy. Would utilitarians and deontologists approach this question differently?

2. How does a cost-benefit analysis of public policy decisions embody a utilitarian approach to moral reasoning? How would the application of Rawls' Difference Principle differ from the cost-benefit analysis approach? You may wish to illustrate your answer with an example.

3. Suppose that Joanne helps one needy stranger, and James helps another. Joanne does so because she reasons that the assistance she gives to the stranger does more to make the world a better place than anything else she could do at that moment. But she's not sentimental about it and feels no particular sympathy for the stranger. James, by contrast, feels sympathy and acts at least in part on the basis of that feeling. Suppose further that their differing emotional states have no further consequences for anything in the remaining history of the world. How and why would a utilitarian and Aristotle differ in their evaluations of the two helpers?