Moral Foundations of Politics Coursera Quiz Answers

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Moral Foundations of Politics Coursera Quiz Answers

Week 01 of Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

Mini Quiz – Enlightenment Political Theory

Q1. True or False: Arendt developed the idea of the banality of evil because she thought that Eichmann was a monstrous person.

  • True
  • False

Q2. True or False: Governments sometimes claim that their acts are legitimate even though they are illegal because they believe there is a sufficient moral justification for action.

  • True
  • False

Q3. What is the central question of the course?;

  • What makes government legal?
  • What makes government legitimate?
  • What is morality?
  • How should we interpret ancient philosophical texts?

Q4. This course will explore which 5 of the following traditions of political thought:

a. Ancient Political Thought

b. Utilitarianism

c. Marxism

d. the Social Contract

e. Critical Theory

f. the Anti-Enlightenment

g. Neo-Liberalism;

h. Democratic Theory

  • a, b, c, d, f
  • b, c, d, f, h
  • b, c, d, e, g
  • b, d, e, f, h

Q5. Fill in the blanks: The two basic assumptions of the Political Enlightenment are that, first, ____________________ is the greatest good, and second, ___________________ provides the guiding principles of politics.

  • freedom, biblical interpretation
  • equality, biblical interpretation
  • equality, science
  • freedom, science

Q6. Beginning with the least certain, and in ascending order, how would you order these three propositions according to an early Enlightenment point of view?

1. individuals have a right to own that with which they mix their labor

2. the planets of our solar system orbit the sun

3. the interior angles of a square add up to 360 degrees 1 point

  • 3, 2, 1
  • 3, 1, 2
  • 2, 1, 3
  • 2, then both 3 and 1;

Q7. True or False: Locke’s workmanship ideal is egalitarian because God gave the world to mankind in common, which means that we all have the same claim on the common land.

  • True
  • False

Q8. What is the source of individual rights, according to Locke?

  • The principle of workmanship; we are mini-Gods on earth
  • Human equality: God gave the world to mankind in common
  • We all have access to God’s word in the Bible
  • All of the above

Q9. True or False: One of the distinctive aspects of this course is that it mixes the theory and application of political theory; i.e., the course is not limited to foundational questions, it also explores contemporary politics.

  • True
  • False

Q10. Which government captured Adolph Eichmann and brought him to trial?

  • Israel
  • The United States
  • Argentina
  • Germany

Week 02 Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

Utilitarianism: Classical and Neoclassical

Q1. According to Bentham, the two “sovereign masters” that govern mankind are:

  • Felicity and misery
  • Pain and pleasure
  • Happiness and sadness

Q2. True or False: Because Bentham believed we can make interpersonal comparisons of utility (ICU), he believed it would be possible to compute the merits of a policy by figuring out the suffering and happiness it causes in people and measuring one outcome against another.

  • True
  • False

Q3. The utility monster draws its import from the fact that:

  • Some people have a huge capacity for pleasure while others have almost none
  • Interpersonal comparisons of utility are easily measurable
  • Everyone has the same capacity for suffering

Q4. The Panopticon prison design is meant to maximize which of the following?

  • Efficiency of surveillance
  • Happiness
  • The ease of building a prison

Q5. If the extermination of one minority segment of the society maximizes the greatest happiness of the greatest number, could Bentham’s classical utilitarianism find it acceptable?

  • Yes
  • No

Q6. Bentham was radical because his belief in both diminishing marginal utility and our ability to make interpersonal comparisons of utility would lead him to re-distribute wealth until:

  • Rich people lose most of their wealth
  • Poor people are no longer poor
  • Absolute equality is achieved

Q7. True or False: Bentham was worried that redistribution could make the rich destroy their wealth before giving it away. This reflects the theory of loss aversion.

  • True
  • False

Q8. ‘Emotivist” philosophers argue that rational argument and proof can convince you that a moral proposition is true.

  • True
  • False

Q9. True or False: Bentham’s utilitarianism justifies some Pareto-undecidable redistributions of wealth.

  • True
  • False

Q10. Neoclassical utilitarianism is ______________ politically radical than classical utilitarianism in terms of the redistribution of wealth.

  • Less
  • More

Q11. Why does Mill say “It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”?

  • Because he rates humans above animals in importance
  • Because he thinks that happiness is more than contentment, and pleasure is more than just physical
  • Because he thinks it would be horrible to be a pig

Q12. For Mill, Freedom leads to utility by promoting _____________________.

  • Pleasure
  • Happiness
  • Truth

Q13. True or False: Bentham is less sure about the truth of scientific principles than Mill.

  • True
  • False

Q14. In the negligence model of adjudicating harm, the _________________ allocate(s) externalities while in the strict liability model, the _________________ allocate(s) externalities.

  • market and common law, government
  • government, market and common law

Q15. True or False: Mill was a libertarian

  • True
  • False;

Week 03 Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

Marxism, Its Failures and Its Legacy

Q1. Marx was an Enlightenment thinker, committed to the twin goals of science and individual freedom.

  • This statement is true.
  • This statement is false.
  • This statement is true, according to Professor Shapiro, though some scholars interpret Marx differently.

Q2. The opposite of freedom for Marx is what?

  • Capitalism
  • Exploitation
  • Revolution

Q3. Division of labor causes which condition, according to Marx?

  • Alienation
  • Progress
  • Communism

Q4. What theory does the following statement describe: When labor is purchased as a commodity (i.e. I buy the time of a worker), the consumption of this commodity (i.e. the worker creates something for me) leads to the creation of fresh exchange-value, which is where profit comes from.

  • Labor theory of value
  • Labor theory of surplus value
  • Law of supply and demand
  • Utilitarianism

Q5. What do Locke and Marx have in common?

  • They are both against the use of money
  • They both support majority rule
  • They both endorse a version of the workmanship ideal
  • They are both Liberal thinkers;

Q6. True or false: A member of the working class (the proletariat), works for someone else by selling their labor for a wage, and they work out of necessity.

  • False
  • True

Q7. If you think you are bourgeois, but you are really in the working class, you suffer from which condition, according to Marx?

  • False-consciousness
  • Denial
  • Hope

Q8. What is the formula for exploitation?

  • (labor value)/(surplus labor value) = rate of exloitation
  • (surplus labor time)/(necessary labor time) = rate of exploitation
  • (wage)/(labor time) = rate of exploitation

Q9. Working-class consciousness comes about when

  • Workers realize that their share in the surplus of society is going down
  • Workers get poorer, and closer to subsistence
  • Conditions in the work-place become more and more unbearable

Q10. How does Marx think welfare should be distributed in a communist society?

  • From each according to his profits, to each according to his necessary labor time
  • From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs
  • From each according to his whimsy, to each according to what we can scrape together;

Q11. Which element of Marx’s macro theory of crisis was correct?

  • Liquidity crises in capitalist economies inevitably lead to great crisis
  • The rate of profit in capitalist economies declines
  • Monopolies will gradually make industry decreasingly competitive
  • Under-consumption makes capitalist economies prone to depressions
  • Rising class-consciousness will make laborers pit themselves against the bourgeoisie
  • All of these elements of his macro theory are subject to counter-arguments that make them dubious

Q12. True or false: Marx underestimates the ability of the state to step in during crises in order to save capitalism from itself.

  • False
  • True

Q13. What is wrong with the theory of labor value?

  • It doesn’t explain the important value that is contributed from dead labor, capitalists, and those that support laborers (like family members)
  • Marx was wrong that laborers contribute value to the products of capitalism; it is only the capitalists that create value in the product

Q14. Marx’s commitment to the workmanship ideal, i.e. a person’s entitlement to the product of her work is expressed in which part of his theory?

  • The labor theory of value
  • His macro-theory explaining crises of capitalism
  • His commitment to animal rights

Q15. Marx’s theory of labor and exploitation is useful to us today is because:

  • His micro-theory of labor and value was correct
  • His understanding of freedom turns our attention to power relations in society
  • It is not useful;

Week 04 Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

The Social Contract Tradition

Q1. Which of the following is of primary importance to Robert Nozick?

  • Equality of outcome
  • Individual rights
  • Protecting individuals from the “war of all against all” in the state of nature

Q2. Which of the following philosophers had the greatest influence on both Rawls and Nozick?

  • René Descartes
  • Jeremy Bentham
  • Immanuel Kant

Q3. In Nozick’s theory of the minimal state, how are “independents” compensated for having their rights violated by being forcibly incorporated into the state?

  • Money
  • Tax deductions
  • Special laws permitting militias
  • None of the above

Q4. Considering Nozick’s philosophy, which of the following are true?

  • Compensation is backward looking, focused on harms that must have occurred for a state to be created.
  • Compensation is forward looking, geared to anticipating future harms to non-members of the society
  • Compensation aims to establish a just overall pattern of distribution in the society

Q5. Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain example, which captures the idea that “liberty upsets patterns,” is meant to illustrate which of the following points:

  • When people are free to engage in transactions, they will make foolish decisions.
  • Even if we start off with a just distribution, allowing voluntary transactions will likely erode it.
  • It is unjust for one person to have so much more money than others, as Wilt Chamberlain did.

Q6. Whose state of nature does Nozick most directly draw from?

  • Hobbes
  • Locke
  • Rousseau

Q7. What is the conception of justice that Nozick builds upon?

  • Justice in acquisition
  • Justice in transfer
  • Justice in reification of past injustices
  • All of the above
  • E) None of the above

Q8. What is closest to Nozick’s conception of the state?

  • Site of redistribution through taxation
  • Individuals who consent to be governed
  • Natural monopoly pf coercive force

Q9. What kind of level of government infringement on individual rights does Nozick imagine?

  • Minimal
  • Intermediate
  • Heavily involved

Q10. What drives the state to incorporate independents?

  • Quest for power
  • Fear
  • Resource acquisition

Week 05 Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

Anti-Enlightenment Politics

Q!. True or false: Anti-Enlightenment thought is more of an outlook or disposition than a systematic theory.

  • True
  • False

Q2. Anti-Enlightenment thought is marked by:

  • Hostility to scientific theories of politics
  • Deemphasizing the individual in favor of the community
  • A commitment to overturning traditions
  • A and B are correct
  • A, B, and C are correct

Q3. True or false: All conservatives are reactionaries.

  • True
  • False

Q4. According to Edmund Burke, where do liberties come from?

  • Philosophical reasoning
  • We inherit them
  • Natural law

Q5. True or false: Burke supported the American Revolution.

  • True
  • False

Q6. Which of the following is the biggest problem with Lord Devlin’s idea that laws should reflect the dominant culture and morality of a society?

  • Minorities and those outside the dominant culture might be penalized unfairly.
  • There is no such thing as a dominant culture and morality of a society.
  • The man on the Clapham omnibus might lie about his values.

Q7. True or false: MacIntyre believes that current debates in the public sphere cannot be resolved because we have lost the assumptions and philosophical underpinnings that once gave moral arguments their coherence.

  • True
  • False

Q8. Which of the following philosophical tradition(s) did MacIntyre directly grapple with, and reject, in his career?

  • A The Enlightenment tradition
  • Marxism
  • Aristotelianism
  • A and C
  • A and Bif(typeof ez_ad_units!=’undefined’){ez_ad_units.push([[728,90],’networkingfunda_com-large-leaderboard-2′,’ezslot_10′,550,’0′,’0′])};__ez_fad_position(‘div-gpt-ad-networkingfunda_com-large-leaderboard-2-0’);

Q9. MacIntyre believes that we live in an emotivist culture. Which of the following might be philosophical symptoms of that?

  • Rawls’s idea of the “fact of pluralism”.
  • Neo-classical utilitarianism’s denial of our ability to make interpersonal comparisons of utility
  • Nozick’s libertarian conception of rights as side constraints
  • A and B
  • All of the above

Q10. True or false: Practices, as conceived by MacIntyre, are determined by members all agreeing on how to cooperate and work together, much like a social contract.

  • True
  • False

Q11. What is MacIntyre’s choice between Aristotle and Nietzsche?

  • Unless we return to Aristotelian ethics, we will follow the road of emotivism all the way to Nietzschian nihilism.
  • Unless we embrace Nietzsche’s ethics, we will be stuck in a mode of Aristotelian nihilism.
  • It is not a choice. For MacIntyre, Nietzsche and Aristotle are very similar.

Q12. Which of the following are characteristics of practices, according to MacIntyre?

  • Practices contain internal goods
  • We can obtain virtue by realizing the goods that are external to practices
  • We can obtain virtue by realizing the goods internal to practices
  • A and B
  • A and C;

Q13. According to MacIntyre, how should practices change ?

  • Practices should not be subject to change
  • From within
  • From without

Q14. For communitarians,________________.

  • The individual comes before the community
  • The group comes before the individual
  • Individuals don’t matter, and there is only a community

Q15. According to MacIntyre, what is one reason why the Enlightenment Project fails?

  • Enlightenment thinkers do not seek rational precepts to guide morality.
  • Enlightenment thought is “emotivist.”
  • Enlightenment thought lacks a “teleological” account of how humans might be transformed into people who can achieve their potential.;

Week 06 Moral Foundations of Politics Quiz Answers

Democracy

Q1. Which of the following did Alexis de Tocqueville assert to be the greatest danger to American democracy?

  • The tyranny of the majority
  • Federalism
  • The Bill of Rights

Q2. The Federalist Papers were written to:

  • Stir up anti-British sentiments in America before the Revolution
  • Generate support for the American Constitution, which needed to be ratified
  • Generate support for the Declaration of Independence

Q3. Which of the following problems, faced by democracies, most concerned James Madison?

  • Factions will pursue their interests at the expense of others, which is particularly dangerous in the case that one faction represents the majority.
  • Representation makes a democracy only indirectly ruled by the people.
  • Private campaign spending makes elections unfair

Q4. Why might “cross-cutting cleavages” be beneficial to a democracy?

  • They stop the formation of radical political parties.
  • They make a permanent majority faction difficult to form, and so minorities have the chance to gain power in coalitions.
  • They help majority parties keep smaller factions out of power.

Q5. True or false: Madison thought that larger democracies (republics) were more prone to the “tyranny of the majority”.

  • True
  • False;

Q6. “Veto points”, such as the separation of powers, a bill of rights, or supermajority requirements, are most important to which of the following types of government?

  • Democracy
  • Republicanism
  • Aristocracy

Q7. Which canonical thinker do we turn to for his idea of the “general will”?

  • James Madison
  • John Locke
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Q8. True or false: Condorcet’s paradox shows us that the aggregation of preferences through voting cannot yield collectively rational results.

  • True
  • False

Q9. Which of the following is an important difference between Rawls and Habermas:

  • Habermas believes in the importance of rational deliberation while Rawls does not.
  • In his “political, not metaphysical” mode, Rawls only asks that we agree on outcomes, while Habermas wants us to agree on the reasoning for the outcomes as well.
  • Rawls draws influence from Immanuel Kant while Habermas does not.

Q10. According to Professor Shapiro, has the problem of finding and measuring the general will been solved?

  • Yes
  • No

Q11. Schumpeter’s theory of democratic competition most resembles whose conception of deliberation/argument?

  • Jürgen Habermas
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Q12. The median voter theorem tells us that with single member districts, all else equal:

  • In national elections, party platforms will become more radical.
  • In national elections, party platforms will converge towards the middle of the political spectrum.

Q13. What is one advantage of having two large diverse political parties?

  • Small parties cannot have a disproportionate influence on governments decisions.
  • Large diverse parties are more representative of the constituencies in the electoral stage.

Q14. Why can’t you “wring the politics out of politics”, according to professor Shapiro?

  • Philosophers are unwilling to acknowledge their political biases.
  • All knowledge is provisional, so we will always have something to debate over.
  • Every system of government is flawed, so we will never find the absolute best answer to the problem of governance.
  • All of the above
  • Only B and C are correct

Q15. Why are independent opposition parties important for democracy?

  • They help uncover corruption and facilitate the pursuit of truth through competition with those in power.
  • Independent opposition is not an indispensable component to a strong democracy.
  • Opposition parties successfully encourage court justices to rule in favor of minority rights.

 

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