09 Nov Prima Facie Deontology
Prima Facie Deontology Essay Test
Consider the following thought experiment:
You are the district attorney for New York. Recently you have acquired evidence proving a Wall Street Executives guilt over manipulating the market in his favor. His behavior risks a severe economic recession, if not a full-blown depression. Though the evidence is air tighti.e. undoubtableit turns out that the police obtained it without a search warrant. If you do nothing, then the Executives behavior will continue, which will make another economic crash a certainty, given enough time. Clearly, you have a duty to prevent a crime of this magnitude. However, bringing the Executive to justice requires you to forge a search warrant, which you have a duty to refrain from doing.
Now, respond to the following prompts:
- In between 1 3 paragraphs, give me a general description of Prima Facie Deontology. Your description should include:
- An explanation of the pluralistic nature of the theory.
- A description of the various prima facie duties.
- A brief description of how prima facie deontology operates in practice (hint: what does it mean to prioritize duties?)
- Make sure you cite any quotations or paraphrases in the MLA Format. Im expecting you to quote or paraphrase at least a couple times in these paragraphs.
- Now that youve done that, give me 1 paragraph where you apply prima facie deontology to the above thought experiment.
- In other words, what duties are relevant for this dilemma, and which duty, ultimately takes priority? Why?
- Lastly, consider some of the criticisms of the theory that you have encountered in our classeither from my lectures or from the class readings.
- Pick one of these criticisms.
- In at least one paragraph, explain this criticism. How and why is the criticism you have chosen a problem for prima facie deontology?
- Make sure to cite any quotations or paraphrases in the MLA format. Im expecting you to quote or paraphrase at least a couple of times here.
