m; Flashcards
What is the distinction between virtue and vice?
If a person acts significantly better than it is reasonable to expect, he/she has virtue. If he/she acts significantly worse, he/she has a vice. If he/she acts as expected, he/she neither exhibits virtue nor vice.
What is virtue?
Virtue is a quality that denotes acting significantly better than is expected, often associated with qualities like honesty, compassion, generosity, and courage.
How do people acquire virtues?
By following the example of persons who possess them. If we acquire these virtues, they guide our decisions about how to act, even in difficult situations.
What abilities do virtuous persons have?
Virtuous persons can empathize, imagine themselves in another person’s shoes, look at issues from other people’s perspectives, and draw upon willpower not possessed by those who compromise their moral principles.
What does virtue ethics focus on?
Virtue ethics focuses on a person’s approach to living rather than on specific choices and actions. It addresses broader questions about how to live, what constitutes a good life, and the compatibility of ethical virtue and genuine happiness.
What are some broader questions posed by virtue ethics?
- How should I live?
- What is the good life?
- Are ethical virtue and genuine happiness compatible?
- What are proper family, civic, and cosmopolitan virtues?
Do ethicists always agree on the virtue ethics approach?
No, ethicists sometimes disagree on whether virtue ethics offers an alternative to utilitarian and deontological approaches to ethical reasoning.
How do utilitarianism and deontology differ from virtue ethics?
Utilitarianism and deontology are hard Universalist theories, each claiming that one ethical principle is binding on all people regardless of time or place. Virtue ethics does not make this claim and focuses on virtues transcending time and culture.
What is a counter-example in reasoning?
A situation that shows an argument can have true premises and a false conclusion.
Why are counter-examples important for reasoning?
They demonstrate that a valid inference must have a conclusion that is true if its premises are true.
What is a counter-example principle?
An acceptable proof of the fact that a statement can be contradicted, such as general claims like “grandmothers have grey hair and give out hard candy” or “knowledge is justified, true belief.”
Can you provide examples of countering in arguments?
- Fierce criticism is countered.
- The union counters with letters rebutting the company’s claims.
- The governor counters with misgivings about the advice given.
- Countering offensives are launched by the Army.
What is skepticism?
Skepticism is the attitude of doubting knowledge claims in various areas. It challenges the adequacy or reliability of these claims by questioning their principles and what they establish. Skepticism questions whether knowledge is possible at all, distinct from specific types of knowledge, such as Cartesian skepticism.
How else can skepticism be defined?
It can be defined as doubt about the truth of something, involving disbelief, mental rejection, and being unsure of something. Skepticism involves the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism. It also includes doubt concerning basic religious principles like immortality, providence, and revelation.
What is subjectivism?
Subjectivism is the doctrine that states our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience, rejecting shared or communal truth and denying external or objective truth.
