Jill Daniel
Tammie Foltz
Phil 105: Introduction to Ethics
March 1, 2016
Virtue ethics
The topic that I have chosen for this paper is identity theft. According to the article online it is a crime that is affecting more than 12 million people and that 16 billion has been stolen in one year. According to the article there is a new victim every 2 seconds of that year. That is just unbelievable to me that people could continue to perpetrate this amount of fraud against other people. These people would be the opposite of virtuous because they continue to act fraudulent. These people are actually vicious.
As we will see virtue ethics is about whether the person acting is showing good character (virtues) or not. Virtue is a middle ground or "mean”, …show more content…
We need to be able to judge whether the person's motives were appropriate (whether they were excessive or deficient). We can rarely be certain that a person is vicious or virtuous on the basis of one action alone, viewed from outside. We should be able to specify what type of vice or virtue is shown in the action. In this case I would say that greed is the vice. To be sure if a person has virtue or not we really should follow them over time. The right or moral act is the act that under the same circumstances a virtuous person would do.
An objection to virtue theory is that they do not focus on what sorts of actions are morally permitted and which ones are not. Instead they focus on qualities a person should have in order to be or become a good person. I think that this is a huge problem with this theory. I believe that actions should be looked at individually to decide morality. And the people that are using identity theft as a means to gain money they have not earned is an act that is morally wrong.
In this example it is clear to me that the perpetrators are not virtuous because they are lacking in the important virtues that they
Tammie Foltz
Phil 105: Introduction to Ethics
March 1, 2016
Virtue ethics
The topic that I have chosen for this paper is identity theft. According to the article online it is a crime that is affecting more than 12 million people and that 16 billion has been stolen in one year. According to the article there is a new victim every 2 seconds of that year. That is just unbelievable to me that people could continue to perpetrate this amount of fraud against other people. These people would be the opposite of virtuous because they continue to act fraudulent. These people are actually vicious.
As we will see virtue ethics is about whether the person acting is showing good character (virtues) or not. Virtue is a middle ground or "mean”, …show more content…
We need to be able to judge whether the person's motives were appropriate (whether they were excessive or deficient). We can rarely be certain that a person is vicious or virtuous on the basis of one action alone, viewed from outside. We should be able to specify what type of vice or virtue is shown in the action. In this case I would say that greed is the vice. To be sure if a person has virtue or not we really should follow them over time. The right or moral act is the act that under the same circumstances a virtuous person would do.
An objection to virtue theory is that they do not focus on what sorts of actions are morally permitted and which ones are not. Instead they focus on qualities a person should have in order to be or become a good person. I think that this is a huge problem with this theory. I believe that actions should be looked at individually to decide morality. And the people that are using identity theft as a means to gain money they have not earned is an act that is morally wrong.
In this example it is clear to me that the perpetrators are not virtuous because they are lacking in the important virtues that they