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Ethics and Morality Paper

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Ethics and Morality Paper
Michael R. Zukoski
ETH/316
Monday 30, 2014
Professor Cherrie Barnes

Ethics and Morality Paper My discussion is going to comprise the variants between virtue, and utilitarianism theories, plus deontological ethics and include an explanation of how each one addresses ethics and morality. I will talk about a personal experience to explain how the relationship between virtue, values, and moral concepts are related to one of the three theories. Virtue theory can be a list of character traits that you can associate with moral people. These character traits can be good, or bad, and even somewhere in-between. Character traits are habit-like tendencies that are deeply ingrained or rooted, which are more second nature type tendencies. An example is we are not born always to tell the truth or lie, but we choose to do so by repeatedly doing one or the other. They can fall into these categories: moral, which is the actions judged as right or good, honest, and virtuous, or immoral that’s used to describe behaviors or actions opposite those of moral reasoning (Manias, Monroe, & Till, 2013, p. 25). We can use the example of a truthful person will usually tell the truth, not for fear of the negative consequences of being found out, but because it is the right thing to do. Utilitarianism is the view that we ought to do morally in producing the greatest “good or benefit” possible to any number of people (Manias, Monroe, & Till, 2013, p. 127). Over time, the principle of utilitarianism has expanded and cultured so there are different variations of the principle. Jeremy Bentham uses terms like benefits and harms and describes or refers to them as pleasures and pain. In today’s Unitarian terms of benefits and harms are associated with satisfaction of personal preference or purely economic terms. Utilitarian’s can

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