For question one, I believe it is more important to perform good acts (action ethics).  My reasoning is because a person who performs good acts is actually making a difference, where as someone who is a good person, could be a good person but does not do anything to be better.  Moreover, I believe if you perform good acts, you naturally are a good person.  I suppose there are certain situations that could otherwise sway this reasoning.  One example I can think of is someone or a group of people who take the initiative to eliminate all the mosquitos in the world, since they can carry the disease malaria.  By eliminating all the mosquitos, you can nearly eliminate malaria, and in turn, prevent many deaths.  On the other hand, by killing off the mosquito population you shorten the food supply of other animals.  This could lead to the deaths of one species, to another species, to eventually a species that maybe humans rely on hunting for food.  Thus, by killing all the mosquitos and eradicating malaria, you are performing a good act by saving the lives of other humans.  At the same time, you could be making life harder for other humans who need the natural food chain to remain intact to survive.

In response to question two, I think that both the ends and the means must be considered.  Like my mosquito example for question one, you are given a choice to eradicate a deadly disease and save lives, but possibly kill off another species which in turn could change the lifestyle of others.  A more easily understood example, and probably more commonly heard would be sacrificing the life one person to save the lives of 1,000 others.  Depending on the situation, I think other concepts like wildlife management and nature conservation can affect how we make these decisions.  If I had to choose which is more important, I would have to choose the means.  I think it is more important to consider the consequences before taking an action.  After all, the consequences do (or at least they should) influence the actions we take living our everyday lives.  It only makes sense that they are the main reason for our actions.

My answer to question five is that the pleasure and pain of non-human animals should matter as much as humans.  As the course lesson discussed, if we care about human welfare, then we should also care about the welfare of other species.  Obviously, as a human who lives in a developed society, I know that we do harvest animals for a food source.  At this point in time, it would be impossible to treat all species equal to humans.  Society would not be able to function as it currently does.  I think it is important however that we consider the limits of how much we can harvest a species for our own welfare and also that we respect all animals.  A rather sad example for when humans lacked the respect for a species is the dodo bird.  Native to a small island called Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, these birds were killed off by humans during the 17^th century.  Although not all the dodo birds were killed by humans directly, by introducing other animals to the island (especially pigs) and destroying the habitat in which the dodos resided, they eventually went extinct.  The lack of respect for the dodo bird is ultimately what lead to its demise.