Ethics Conversation – Tyler Brackbill

1. Is it more important to be a good person or to perform good acts (virtue ethics vs. action ethics)?
In a commercial I hear every once in a while when I’m listening to Pandora, the narrator states “Thinking is only as important as action it inspires.” You can be a good person and say that homelessness is a problem but what are you going to do to prevent homeless people from living in boxes under a bridge? My personal approach is to perform good acts that I care about. Dogs or cats need rescued from a shelter? Adopt a dog and a cat. Kids with pediatric cancer? Donate what I can to THON. The idea of virtue vs action is something that gets annoying honestly. Especially in presidential campaign season when candidates get preachy about problems but do not specify how to fix them. Because you don’t perform good acts does not make you a bad person, but problems aren’t solved by just pointing them out. Actions speak louder than words.
2. Does the process by which decisions are made matter more than the outcomes of these decisions (procedural justice vs. distributive justice)?
The outcomes of decisions (let’s just say positive outcomes) are always important. However, the internal procedures that deliver those outcomes need to be handled properly, so the procedural justice is more important. In the sports world, Barry Bonds hit 756 homeruns. It is a great feat if he did it naturally but he didn’t. Baseball fans despise him because the process by which he broke the record was not ethical. Ethics are important obviously and a flawed process or procedure can make bad precedents that end up causing negative outcomes. It’s cool to have a great outcome, say you can make $100 thousand, that’s all well and good, but its different earning that money illegally cooking meth or dealing drugs rather than doing something legal. It’s the basis for all of business, they want to make money and have their name in lights, but for all of the right reasons and while treating everyone fairly.
3. Do ecosystems matter for their own sake, or do they only matter to the extent that they impact humans (ecocentric ethics vs. anthropocentric ethics)?
In my own opinion, ecosystems do matter on their own because they contain their own life, however it often seems that the media cares only about the human impact, but that’s no fault of theirs, they are serving us. When it comes to melting ice caps, the main focus is on the rising sea levels that will slowly take land away and affect coastal towns and cities, but you rarely hear about (at least in my experience) hear about how affects other species. Polar Bears are the only other animal you hear about. Being the creatures we are, everyone wants to know how actions and events affect themselves. It is human nature. So I do believe that the studying of ecosystems is a bit anthropocentric. At the same time it is speciesism. However speciesism is not always a bad thing, humans are smarter and stronger than other species. It goes both ways.

3 thoughts on “Ethics Conversation – Tyler Brackbill

  1. Hi Tyler, My name is Johnna. You post caught my eye because you state that actions speak louder than words, which is very true. However, actions don’t make you a good person. Actions are finite and being a good person is infinite. A good person naturally does good acts and doesn’t even realize it. They don’t need to keep a tally of the good things they’ve done. Also doing good acts doesn’t make you a good person, you’re mind set and attitude does. A person can do a good act and be a horrible person on the inside. I think that being a good person is more important than doing good acts because the good acts come naturally with being a good person.

  2. Hey Tyler, my name is Katy. Your post caught my eye from your example in you paragraph about how ecosystems matter. You states how the media zones in on how the ecosystem degrading will affect us as humans. I did not think about this when I wrote my blog post. I believe it raises a question. Does the media make our culture more anthropocentric? I believe if the media and other sites spent time making us feel and show how we are hurting the welfare of the ecosystem we would be less anthropocentric. I believe if there were more articles, such as the articles about the Polar Bears, humans would have a more ecocentric views. Please read my blog post, https://wp.me/p3RCAy-beO

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