Kantianism
• Act only for moral rules that you can at the same time "will" to be universal moral laws.
• Act so that you alwasys treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves, and never only as a means to an end. (i.e., it is wrong to "use" another person.

Act utiliarianism
• An action is right (or wrong) to the extent it increases (or decreases) the total happiness of the affected parties.

Rule utiliarianism
• We ought to adopt those moral rules, which, if followed by everyone, will lead to the greatest increase in total happiness.

Social contract theory
• Morality consists in the set of rules, governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others follow those rules as well.

From Quinn, Ethics for the information age

Is copying a CD wrong?

Kantianism, rule utilitarianism, social contract theory all say that breaking the law is wrong unless there is a strong overriding moral obligation. Copying a disk to save a buck or to help out a friend does not involve an overriding moral obligation.

In act utilitarinism, it's pretty easy to come up with particular circumstances where copying a CD is the right thing to do. A blanket prohibition against copying cannot be morally justified.

Questions (from Quinn)
• Students are asked to take a quiz posted on the course web site. Here are the rules: students are to do their own work, they are free to consult their lecture notes and the textbook while taking the quiz, in or to get credit, they must correctly answer at least 80 percent of the questions. If they don't get 80 percent, they may retake the quiz as often as they wish.

  A and B are both taking the quiz and they are sitting next to each other. A asks for for help with one of the questions. A says, "What's the difference if you tell me the answer, I look it up in the book, or I find out from the computer that my answer is wrong and retake the quiz? In any case, I'll end up getting credit for the right answer." B tells A the right answer.

  What is the morality of B's action?

• A worm is a self-contained program that spreads through a network using security holes in the computers connected to the network. In 2003, the Blaster worm infected many computers running Windows 200, Windows NT and Windows XP. The Blaster worm would cause infected computers to reboot every few minutes.

  Soon another worm was exploiting the same security hole in Windows to spread through the Internet. However, the purpose of the new worm, Nachi, was benevolent. Since Nachi took advantage of the same security hole as Blaster, it could not infect computers that were immune to Blaster. Once Nachi gained access with the hole, it located and destroyed copies of Blaster. It also automatically downloaded from Microsoft a patch the the OS that would fix the secutity problem. Finally, it used the computer as a launching pad to seek out other Windows machines.

  Was the action of the person who released Nachi right or wrong?

• A state is considering replacing a curvy stretch of highway that passes along the outskirts of a large city. Would building the highway be a good acion?
• Carla is a single mother working hard to complete her college education while taking care of her daughter. She has a full time job and is taking two evening courses per semester. If she passes both classes this semester, she will graduate. Her child will benefit if she can spend more time at home.

  One of her classes requires midterm, final exam and four length reports -- more than the usual amount of work required for a class.

  Carla eans an A on each of her first three reports. At the end of the term, she has to put in a lot of overtime on her job. She's out of time. She uses the Web to identify a company that sells term papers. She purchases a report from the company and submits it as her own work.

  Was the action morally justifiable?