(a) Design and conduct a study of Lincoln University students that could either confirm or disconfirm the following claim by Kathleen Tsubata and evaluate the results in the light of these two readings from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (i.e. use these two readings, below, to evaluate the results).

"Teaching abstinence goes beyond preventing disease and unwanted pregnancy. It helps kids improve in the areas of self-esteem, academic attainments and future careers. It increases refusal skills toward drugs, alcohol and smoking. It equips teens with tools that they will use successfully throughout life, especially in their eventual marriage and family life. In other words, it has a positive ripple effect both in terms of their current and future life courses." Kathleen Tsubata

(b) Present and evaluate the professional code of ethics from your major, in the light of these two readings from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (i.e. use these two readings, below, to evaluate the code of ethics in the profession you are majoring in). If there is no professional code of ethics in your major, create one and evaluate it in the light of these two readings.

1. Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873. Rendered into HTML on 12 April 1998, by Steve Thomas for The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded- namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.

2. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804. This edition edited by Glyn Hughes © 2002

FIRST SECTION: TRANSITION FROM THE COMMON RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF MORALITY TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, courage, resolution, perseverance, power, riches, honour, even health, are undoubtedly good; but these gifts may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which makes use of them is bad. It is the coolness of a villain which not only makes him far more dangerous, but also more abominable in our eyes.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself. Even if, through the disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, good will should yet achieve nothing, then, still, like a jewel, it would shine by its own light. Its usefulness or fruitfulness can neither add nor take away anything from this value.

We have then to develop the notion of a will which deserves to be highly esteemed for itself. In order to do this, we will take the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will.

The second proposition is: That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined. In what, then, can their worth rest? It cannot rest anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action.

The third proposition, which is a consequence of the two preceding, I would express thus: Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law.

But what sort of law can that be, that this will may be called good absolutely and without qualification? There remains nothing but the universal conformity of its actions to law in general, which alone is to serve the will as a principle, ie., I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law. For example: May I, when in distress, make a promise with the intention not to keep it? The shortest way, and an unerring one, to answer this question, is to ask, "Should I be able to say to myself, "Every one may make a deceitful promise when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot otherwise extricate himself?"" Then I presently become aware that while I can will the lie, I can by no means will that lying should be a universal law. For with such a law there would be no promises at all, since such would pay me back in my own coin. Hence my maxim, as soon as it should be made a universal law, would necessarily destroy itself.

SECOND SECTION: TRANSITION FROM POPULAR MORAL PHILOSOPHY TO THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS

Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is according to principles, ie., have a will. Since the deduction of actions from principles requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason.

The conception of an objective principle, in so far as it is obligatory for a will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative.

All imperatives are expressed by the word ought (or shall). They say that something would be good to do or to forbear, but they say it to a will which does not always do a thing because it is conceived to be good to do it.

Now all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. If the action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as good in itself, then it is categorical.

Now arises the question, how are these imperatives possible? We shall therefore have to investigate a priori the possibility of a categorical imperative.

When I conceive a hypothetical imperative, in general I do not know beforehand what it will contain until I am given the condition. But when I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For as the imperative contains besides the law only the necessity that the maxims [a subjective principle of action] shall conform to this law, while the law contains no conditions restricting it, there remains nothing but the general statement that the maxim of the action should conform to a universal law, and it is this conformity alone that the imperative properly represents as necessary.

There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Since the universality of the law according to which effects are produced constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (as to form), the imperative of duty may be expressed thus: Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.

We have established at least this much, that if duty is a conception which is to have any import and real legislative authority for our actions, it can only be expressed in categorical and not at all in hypothetical imperatives.

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws.

Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must be always regarded at the same time as an end.

Man necessarily conceives his own existence as being so. But every other rational being regards its existence similarly. Accordingly the practical imperative will be as follows: So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only. We will now inquire whether this can be practically carried out.

The conception of the will of every rational being as one which must consider itself as giving in all the maxims of its will universal laws leads to a very fruitful conception, namely that of a kingdom of ends.

By a kingdom I understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws. A rational being must always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as sovereign in a kingdom of ends which is rendered possible by the freedom of will.

Morality consists then in the reference of all action to the legislation which alone can render a kingdom of ends possible. This legislation must be capable of existing in every rational being and of emanating from his will, so that the principle of this will is never to act on any maxim which could not without contradiction be also a universal law and, accordingly, always so to act that the will could at the same time regard itself as giving in its maxims universal laws. If now the maxims of rational beings are not by their own nature coincident with this objective principle, then the necessity of acting on it is called practical necessitation, ie., duty. Duty does not apply to the sovereign in the kingdom of ends, but it does to every member of it and to all in the same degree.

We can now end where we started at the beginning, namely, with the conception of a will unconditionally good. That will is absolutely good which cannot be evil- in other words, whose maxim, if made a universal law, could never contradict itself. This principle, then, is its supreme law: "Act always on such a maxim as thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law".

It follows incontestably that, to whatever laws any rational being may be subject, he being an end in himself must be able to regard himself as also legislating universally in respect of these same laws. Therefore every rational being must so act as if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends. Morality, then, is the relation of actions to the relation of actions will, that is, to the autonomy of potential universal legislation by its maxims. An action that is consistent with the autonomy of the will is permitted; one that does not agree therewith is forbidden. A will whose maxims necessarily coincide with the laws of autonomy is a holy will, good absolutely.

We have shown that neither fear nor inclination, but simply respect for the law, is the spring which can give actions a moral worth.

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