short assignments

Wicked Pleasures

What’s So Bad About Cheating? : Read Reitsma, “What Would Machiavelli Do?” (P), 57-63.

Reading Questionnaire

Please answer the following questions:

(a) in your own words , and

(b) thoroughly (that is, answer these questions in such a way that a person who has not read the article could come to learn what it says from your answer).

#1. What is the author, Dr. Reitsma, going to attempt to accomplish in this essay? {We won’t be able to

tell if “he” succeeds unless we figure out what he’s up to.}

Again, be sure to put your answer in your own words; don’t merely write down long quotations from the essay.

See Other Side.

#2. What, in Reitsma’s terminology, is a “strategic ticky-tacker” and how does he differ from an “honest”

ticky-tacker?

#3. Do you find Reitsma’s analogy between a “Lockean state of nature” and pickup basketball

persuasive (or helpful)?

Be sure, in your answer, both to describe Reitsma’s view and to defend your answer.

All Done!

Regan Lance Reitsma Wicked Pleasures

What’s So Bad About Cheating? : Read Reitsma, “What Would Machiavelli Do?” (P), 63-70.

Reading Questionnaire

Please answer the following questions:

(a) in your own words , and

(b) thoroughly (that is, answer these questions in such a way that a person who has not read the article could come to learn what it says from your answer).

#1. Reitsma argues that—“for at least three general reasons—“first-strike strategic ticky-tacking” is

morally wrong (pp. 61-63). Two questions:

First, describe (again, in your own words, thoroughly) whichever one of the three reasons you find most plausible. (You might find each of them plausible, or none of them; you are being asked to describe the one you think, relative to the others, is strongest.)

Second, do you think this reason is ultimately persuasive? Is Reitsma right—that this reason, this argument, reveals that first-strike ticky-tacking is morally wrong? Why or why not?

See Other Side.

#2. What is the difference, according to Reitsma, between saying that strategic ticky-tacking is “morally

wrong” and saying that it is “contemptible” (that is, fails to meet a standard of “athletic excellence”)?

#3. Ultimately, Reitsma thinks that “first-strike strategic ticky-tacking” is morally wrong, but

(x) “retaliatory” ticky-tacking is, in some circumstances, morally permissible.

What, do you think, is the strongest objection to (x)—or to Reitsma’s arguments for (x)?

All Done!