University of Pittsburgh, Summer 1999

Philosophy 1380: Business Ethics

C.L. G13—Mondays, 6 p.m. to 8:55 p.m.

Ben Eggleston—egglestn@pitt.edu

A preview of the final exam

Some of the concepts, issues, and views that you may need to know when you take the final exam are

· consumer protection: the contract, due-care, and strict-liability views

· social responsibilities of business: the shareholder view, the stakeholder view

· regulating business: various forms of self-regulation; also: the free-rider problem

· (and so on, for subsequent topics discussed in the course)

For each of the views, you should know

· its main idea

· its pros and cons

· how it differs from rival views

· its relation to the ethical theories we looked at (e.g., whether utilitarianism, Kantianism, both, or neither would tend to support it)

You might be asked questions like the following:

· Explain the three views on consumer protection that we studied. (Just write a sentence or two on each one.) Which view would utilitarianism support the most, and which view would Kantianism support the most? Explain, in a few sentences, what the connection is between each theory and the view you claim it would support.

· What is the free-rider problem? Why is it of interest to people worried about ethical theory? How it is relevant to the problem of business self-regulation?