Ethics Essay Essay Example for Free

Ethics Essay Essay There are similarities and differences, which exist between virtue, utilitarianism, and deontological ethical theories. I will provide an explanation of each theory as well as a description of the differences in how each theory addresses ethics and morality. From childhood to adulthood, People have lived through many experiences. I will touch briefly on a personal experience to show the relationship between virtue, values, and moral concepts as they relate to one of the theories. Beginning with Virtue ethics, â€Å"it is also called agent-based ethics. Its position is that we become good when we cultivate excellence (virtue) by pursuing the moderate course between excess and defect† (Boylan, Pg 208, 2009). An example of this is by saying that a person who has a certain job or career can achieve excellence if he or she make the conscious decision to do what it takes to get there. Utilitarianism defined is â€Å"the theory that suggests that an action is morally right when that action produces more total utility for the group as a consequence than any other alternative does.† Utilitarianism has an individual put the entity before his or herself, for the greater good of the team, work-center, or corporation. By understanding one’s position in that entity, realizing at the moment there is someone better suited to fulfill a task, the utilitarian willingly would offer the task to the more qualified person. The Deontological theory, suggest, â€Å"that an agents duty is based up principle. The theory bases its duties on the nature of human reason or on the nature of human action. It asserts the existence of moral facts and so is a moral realist theory.† An example of this theory would be the actions given to the police force. Policemen have a duty to uphold the law even if it means taking another persons life at will. Usually when warranted, the consequences of taking another persons life are justified by their duty to uphold the law. Under virtue theory, ethics and morality are addressed by asking how do we determine if a person is good or not. Do we give ourselves time to get to know a person or do we determine the good in a person based on their acts. Is it fair to judge a person on acts alone? Understanding that some individuals may view things different from others describes morality.  Morality is addressed by virtue to understand what one person thinks is ethically good or not may not be right or wrong to another. Utilitarianism addresses ethics and morality by placing the good of the group at the forefront. Utilitarianism would be a group of citizens believing in the same goal for the good of the team. For this to exist, each citizen in the group has the same beliefs and look for toward the same outcome. There is no question of right and wrong or the greater good. They all follow a set standard for what they perceive to be the best action for the team. Deontology Theory addresses ethics and morality by taking the command action as it asks the question, â€Å"when does recognition of moral duty begin?† (Boylan, Pg. 173, 2009). The commanding task for this theory applies to those with a duty to act upon. For example, the president of the USA has a duty to protect the nation from all enemies. His position would fall into this theory whereas his personal thinking may be as a utilitarian or of virtue. Based on the position there may be a requirement to fulfill a certain duty under the deontological theory. A personal experience that I could relate to one of these theories would be the legalization of abortion. Although I believe a person should have the right to an abortion, I do not believe the act itself is right. I also think it depends on the reason. I went through a situation in which a friend was pregnant and did not want to have an abortion, however, chose to do so because of her financial situation. Ethically she made a choice that was hers to do so but the moral to do so was wrong I feel based on her reasoning. Automatically I would say her values to the situation were about herself only and not about what she was destroying. Comparing the Virtue, Utilitarianism, and Deontology theories provided some similarities and differences. An explanation was given for these theories as well as a description of the ethical and moral differences of each. Last, a personal experience was provided detailing how the relationship between virtue, values, and moral concepts related to the theories. Reference: Boylan, M. (2009). Basic Ethics (2nd ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.

Rumors Essay -- essays research papers

Rumor   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Rumors can be passed easily and are spread on an everyday basis. A rumor is like gossip; some of it true or untrue, and it is passed around by word of mouth. Most rumors start off being true, then when it is being passed from one person to the other, it starts becoming untrue because some people forget details, add new information in, or just change the whole story around. In the rumor experiment conducted in class, a story was told to one person out of four. The first person had to repeat the same story to the next person who of course was waiting outside of the classroom, until it got to the fourth person. The story that the fourth person ended up with was extremely dissimilar from what was initially told to the first person. This is a prime example of how rumors change while they are being said from one person to the other.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There were two rumors in the experiment conducted for the rumor assignment. Both rumors were very different in context but both proved the same thing in the end. Rumor number one was first told to the first individual who was standing outside of the classroom with three other students. Person one listened as the professor said the rumor, and then they had to remember it, and tell the next person (person two) outside the classroom this rumor. The central theme of rumor one was there were two men on the subway who started arguing while many people watched near by.   Ã‚  Ã‚   ...

Fluency Reading Plan Essay

Brief Synopsis- The story takes place on Manor Farm and has a third person perspective. The animals on the farm are unhappy with their current conditions. Led by a few pigs they revolt against the farmer that housed them. They hope to form a utopian farm for all animals. However, Napoleon (one of the pigs that started the revolution) starts to manipulate the animals and the humans around the farm. The farm starts to resemble its former self and Major begins to resemble the villainous farmer. This book is basically depicting communism in an interesting way. Overview of the Unit Reading fluency is an extremely difficult area to assess and instruct. In general, there are three areas that are addressed that make up fluency phonemic awareness (being able to say words and understand the construct of the letters that make up the word), grammar and comprehension. These three areas formed together help a teacher assess the students they have. However, it is still very difficult to classify since fluency seems to come natural to many students especially by grade 8 (Rasinski, 2004). Keeping all of this in mind there still needs to be a definitive gauge for assessment. This unit is based around some reading aloud in class. After the students have read on their own time, having them reread the various passages out loud will help to increase their fluency. According to the book Classrooms that Work, â€Å"repeated readings is a way to help students recognize high-frequency words more easily, thereby strengthening their ease of reading† (Addison-Wesley 1998). This will also allow for the next area of significance to become a link in the fluency chain-vocabulary. The student’s readings will provide opportunities to ask them about the various vocabulary words in this unit. The unit will stress various vocabulary words and a higher order of thinking to gain comprehension. As they read, the teacher can pick out these words and engage the students to see if they comprehend what is being said. If the students do not understand the words, the next step cannot happen which is comprehension. Comprehension and fluency are forever linked. One cannot happen without the other. The easiest way to label it is students must be able to understand what they read. That is why in many younger grades, grade levels are not simply based on the student being able to read the words, but to what degree they understand what they are reading. The main construct of the lesson is to expand the knowledge of the students and have them reading something outside of their normal realm. Students should always feel they are learning something new (Grabe, 2010). This book and unit will allow for that to happen. Reading aloud by the students, by the teacher, and discussions about various vocabulary and plot themes will make this lesson successful. The students will read a great book that is a classic and they will gain an understanding of some high school level vocabulary and thought processes. References Cunningham, P. M. & Allington, R. L. Classrooms That Work: They Can All Read and Write. Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. 1999 Rasinski, T. (2004). Creating fluent readers. Educational Leadership, 61(6), 46-51. Grabe, W. (2010). Reading in a second language. Ernst Klett Sprachen.

Prosody and the Music of Speech

In phonetics, prosody (or suprasegmental phonology)  is  the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey information about the structure and meaning of an utterance. Alternatively, in literary studies prosody is the theory and principles of versification, especially in reference to rhythm, accent and stanza. In speech as opposed to composition, there are no full stops or capital letters, no grammatical ways in which to add emphasis as in writing. Instead, speakers utilize prosody to add inflection and depth to statements and arguments, altering stress, pitch, loudness and tempo, which can then be translated into writing to achieve the same effect. Further, prosody does not rely on the sentence as a basic unit, unlike in composition, often utilizing fragments and spontaneous pauses between thoughts and ideas for emphasis. This allows more versatility of language dependent on stress and intonation. Functions of Prosody Unlike morphemes and phonemes in composition, features of prosody cannot be assigned meaning based on their use alone, rather based on usage and contextual factors to ascribe meaning to the particular utterance. Rebecca L. Damron notes in Prosodic Schemas that recent work in the field take into consideration such aspects of interaction as how prosody can signal speakers intentions in the discourse, rather than relying solely on semantics and the phrasing itself. The interplay between grammar and other situational factors, Damron posits, are intimately connected with pitch and tone, and called for a move away from describing and analyzing prosodic features as discrete units. As a result, prosody can be utilized in a number of ways, including segmentation, phrasing, stress, accentuation and phonological distinctions in tone languages — as Christophe dAlessandro puts it in Voice Source Parameters and Prosodic Analysis, a given sentence in a given context generally expresses much more than its linguistic content wherein the same sentence, with the same linguistic content may have plenty of different expressive contents or pragmatic meanings. What Determines Prosody The determining factors of these expressive contents are what help define the context and meaning of any given prosody. According to dAlessandro these include the identity of the speaker, her/his attitude, mood, ages, sex, sociolinguistic group and other extralinguistic features.   Pragmatic meaning, too, help determine the prosodys intended purpose, including the attitudes of both the speaker and audience — ranging from aggressive to submissive — as well as the relationship between the speaker and the subject matter — his or her belief, confidence or assertiveness in the field. Pitch is a great way to also determine meaning, or at least be able to ascertain the beginnings and endings of thought. David Crystal describes the relationship in Rediscover Grammar wherein he states we know whether [the thought] is complete or not by the pitch of the voice. If the pitch is rising ... there are more items to come. If it is falling ... there is nothing further to come. In any way you use it, prosody is pivotal to successful public speaking, allowing the speaker to convey a broad range of meaning in as few words as possible, relying instead on context and cues to the audience in their speech patterns.