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All the ethical theories we've tocused on so tar are called act-based theories: their tocus or moral evaluation is the act performed by an agent
All the ethical theories we've tocused on so tar are called act-based theories: their tocus or moral evaluation is the act performed by an agent or person. However, by now you may wonder whether there's more to the moral life than just doing the right things and avoiding doing the wrong things. For one might wonder whether the character of the agent or person who is performing the action also matters. Ethical theories whose focus of moral evaluation is the character of the person are called agent-based ethical theories, and the main agentvbased theory in the history of ethics is virtue ethics. One motivation for virtue ethics is that it seems that actvbased theories can't account for moral imposters: people who do all the right things, but for all the wrong reasons and motivations. So, for example, suppose you know that your neighbor visits her grandmother after school every day, cooks for her, and keeps her company. Suppose further, however, that you Ieamed that she did these things not because she loves her, and not because persons have intrinsic value [think Kant}, but merely because it will increase her chances of getting into her will to receive her inheritance. It seems that on act-based theories, we should conclude that the woman is a moral person for taking care of her grandmother, and yet we think there is something in the woman that is morally flawed: her character. For this reason and others, a number of ethicists think that, at the very least, act-based ethical theories must be supplemented with the agentvbased account of the ethical life found in virtue ethics. On the other hand, a number of ethicists aren't persuaded. For example, they think that recent work on human behavior and psychology indicate that humans are incapable of developing virtuous character traits that can withstand temptation (on this see, especially, John Doris' book,_d' Lack of Chardcterd'l. Others think the criticisms of virtue ethics are too weighty to think it's a viable ethical theory. For this post: {i} Read the selections from Aristotle's Nicomochean Ethics linked to in the Modules folder. {ii} Read the chapter on virtue ethics in our textbook. {iii} State whether you think your preferred ethical theory so far can account for our intuitions about moral imposters, or whether they need supplementation by virtue ethics, and include an explanation of your answer. {iv} Kindly, graciously raise a question orworry for at least one fellow student's answer to {iiiJ
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