1. act must be morally permissible (good or neutral, not evil in itself)

2. must intend good effect (not bad effect)

3. (proportional) good results must outweigh bad ones

-Argument from nature. (NL&NR)

-Argument from self-interest. (egoism)

-Practical Effects.

-Misplaced benevolence.

-No moral differences.

-Down Syndrome Children.

-Smith v. Jones.

-Is motive the key.

- Japanese culture vs. Buddhist teaching

- Subjects with rights or objects of the attention of others?

- Manner of dying is important/suicide is not an escape

- Suicide not inherently right or wrong; equanimity or preparedness of mind is the issue

- Example of the rope

-Personhood of fetus.

-granting that the fetus is person from moment of conception is not sufficient to prove all abortions are impermissible.

-Example of violinist.

-right to life v. duty of others.

-Splendid/Good/Decent Samaritan.

-Symmetries lead to interminable details.

-Prima Facie.

-Does not entail that contraception is wrong.

-What makes killing wrong?

- 1& 2: not “speciesism” (not necessarily wrong to kill only beings that are human, whether aliens or non-human animals)

- does not entail that active euthanasia is wrong

- does entail that it is wrong to kill children and infants

- Ethics vs. etiquette

- (Why) does sexuality define us morally?

- Slave vs. master morality?

- Techniques vs. morals?

- Moral meaning of sex: experience of eros, creativity

- Meanings of “natural” and “unnatural”

* Emotional (disgust for the unconventional, untraditional)

* Artificial

* Function (do body parts have merely one function?) - Role of religion

* Jesus does not mention it

* OT story of Sodom about hospitality, not homosexuality * OT prohibitions are interpreted/applied selectively - Orientation: choice vs. discovery - Capacities, actualization, and flourishing

* Should not rob people of “richness of life;” right to pursue “human flourishing”

- Does disagreement over equality of opportunity vs. equality of results account for disagreement over quotas?

- Quotas do not aim to achieve equal results; quotas prevent discrimination and secure equality of opportunity

- Past discrimination tends to keep reproducing itself such that past discrimination is not past; it is ongoing in the present (it perpetuates itself)

- Hard to stop discrimination because it is hard to see (we may not notice it or recognize ourselves doing it); is it shallow or deep, transparent or opaque?

- Examples of the land of the giants and the land of curbs; world appears normal to those who have made it and those for whom it has been made; do not see the way it privileges them and disadvantages others

- Institutions of the world are suffused with inhospitality to blacks, women, etc.

- Ideal of citizenship: equal before the law (rule of law as equality in the midst of inequalities of wealth, talents, etc.) - Moral ideal: demand that citizenship be extended to all and include the entire human race (equality of sexes and persons of “different colors”)

- Moral ideal is dependent or “parasitic” upon the political virtue

- Therefore, justice is equal treatment under the law of all citizens; discrimination or favoritism is unjust

- Ergo, all discrimination is prima facie wrong because it violates justice

- If we agreed that discrimination needed to be corrected by reverse discrimination, there would be two problematic results:  

*Pursuing affirmative action will fragment us into competing special interest groups

*It will be impossible to agree at what point restitution will have been made and injustice corrected

- Reality of the death penalty: deliberate judicial killing is so serious that the burden of proof is on those who want to justify the death penalty, not those who want to abolish/oppose it

*Legal errors—procedural as well as convicting/executing the innocent  

*Way death penalty is imposed is arbitrary and disproportionately on defendants who are black or poor

- Arguments offered as justification for the death penalty (which Amsterdam rejects)

*Retribution (eye for an eye)

*Moral reinforcement  

*Isolation/specific deterrence (this perpetrator will never kill again)  

*Deterrence (Supreme Court ruled inconclusive)

- The death penalty is a “dying institution”  

*Other industrialized nations are abolishing or have abolished it

- Distribution

*Unequal distribution is a problem  

*But not unjust to those who deserve and receive the punishment (even if others who deserve the punishment don’t receive it)

- Miscarriages of justice  

*Society does not and cannot renounce all practices that may lead to the death of an innocent person (utilitarian/consequentialist cost-benefit analysis)

- Deterrence  

*Not conclusive death penalty is effective deterrent

*Opponents would still oppose death penalty even if it were a deterrent  

*Van Den Haag would still support death penalty even if it were not a deterrent (retributitvist position)

- Incidental issues: cost, relative suffering, brutalization

*Cost are trumped by the importance of doing justice - Justice, excess, degradation