An excellent way to provide good reasons is to apply a moral theory directly to a case and see what action the theory would prescribe or to see how the theory would evaluate an action that has already been performed.

When attempting to resolve complex moral dilemmas, we need to be able to give good reasons to support the conclusions that we draw. It is not enough to say that something is wrong, we must show why it is wrong.
An excellent way to provide good reasons is to apply a moral theory directly to a case and see what action the theory would prescribe or to see how the theory would evaluate an action that has already been performed. To do this well, one should spend some time justifying why we are using this theory instead of any other theory we may have chosen instead.
To justify a theory, one needs to explain why this theory is the best way to resolve our contested moral issues. For example, “We should use X moral theory to resolve this issue because Y is the most important consideration when evaluating moral actions. Y is the most important consideration for reasons Z and A.” Your task for this paper is to choose one moral theory from this list: utilitarianism, Kantianism, or virtue ethics, justify it, and apply it to the case study below to tell us what course of action the theory would recommend. After your analysis, reflect on your theory’s results – do you personally agree with the verdict? Why? Are there any important considerations ignored by your theory?
If so, what are they? What objections can be raised against your theory? How might those objections be overcome? The Case: In a small farming community, a businessman and entrepreneur buys the biggest local pond in the region and sells rights to it to local farmers for irrigation and to the local town for residential water.
He increases his profits this way and proceeds, over the years, to buy-up all the other ponds in the region. Since the area is very remote and completely dependent on the local water supply, the businessman then decides to increase the price of water-rights by fifteen times, which effectively makes water-rights too expensive for farmers and most residents of the region. Some of them have other places to go to find work, but most will wind-up in complete poverty or starvation with nowhere to turn.
The Businessman is perfectly OK with this, as he wants to buy the bankrupt farmer’s land and use it for other business ventures. Nor does he care that this will be depopulating most of the community, as he plans on buying-up their lands as well and using those too. The businessman has done nothing illegal and feels that it is his right to do what he pleases with his own property. Is the businessman doing anything immoral in this case? Apply one moral theory (utilitarianism, Kantianism, or virtue ethics) to this case and determine if the businessman’s actions are morally acceptable, according to the theory you chose).

The post An excellent way to provide good reasons is to apply a moral theory directly to a case and see what action the theory would prescribe or to see how the theory would evaluate an action that has already been performed. appeared first on Versed Writers.