1. Is it more important to be a good person or to perform good acts (virtue ethics vs. action ethics)?

I think it is more important to be a good person over performing good acts. I believe this because I think if everyone was a good person it would benefit the world more than if everyone performed good acts. When you are a good person you go about every single daily task with certain mindset of being good. Just by being a good person you’ll tend to perform good acts throughout your day. While on the other hand people may perform good acts sometimes, but other times they may be doing something bad. For a real life example Al Capone, the famous mobster, would perform good acts by going to poor neighborhoods and giving out money to families in poverty and other charities. However since he wasn’t necessarily an overall good person he made a lot of this money by manufacturing and pushing drugs into those same streets that he was giving money too. Although he performed the good act of giving out money to families in poverty he was hurting them in the end by being a bad person and providing drugs. Even if I perform a good act by helping someone in need, if I was an overall good person I probably would have helped that person anyways. Sometimes people perform these good acts just to make themselves look better which isn’t something a good person would do.

1. Do the ends justify the means (ends ethics vs. means ethics)?

I think the debate of ends ethics vs. means ethics is a very difficult question to give one straight answer to. I believe that this debate could never be decided as a whole but instead would depend on every single scenario individually. Even on an individual basis the answer to this question would depend on the person answering it as well as that person’s’ values and beliefs. In some cases the ends absolutely justify the means. For example killing someone is almost never a justifiable means of accomplishing something, but an example in which these means do justify the ends would be in a case of self defense. I believe that if someone is attacking you then you should be able to stand your ground and defend yourself even if the end that means you killing someone attacking you if you feel your own life is threatened. A very debated example of this would be the idea of torture. I think that the ends do justify the means in cases in which one person’s suffering could cause the saving of many innocent lives.

1. Do the pleasure and pain of non-human animals matter as much as the pleasure and pain of humans (speciesism)?

I think this is a very interesting questions, but shouldn’t be grouped together all as one. I believe the pain of animals lives doesn’t matter as much as pain of humans. The main example that comes to my head that makes me believe this is in the case of an animal who poses a threat or is currently attacking a human. If an animal attacks a human I absolutely believe that the human is of higher importance than the animal and whatever is necessary should be done to stop the human pain such as killing or wounding an attacking animal. As for the second part I don’t believe the pleasure of humans is worth more than the pleasure of animals. I don’t think animals homes should be wrecked in order for any type of entertainment source for humans to be placed there instead. This is why I don’t think these two questions should be grouped as one because they involved a different set of ethics.