9. Anthropocentrism is the view
that humans are what is
ultimately important.
Eco-centrism is the view that
ecosystems are what is
ultimately important.
virtues and actions are not totally separate. Within action ethics, a core question is whether the ends justify the means. In other words, is the important thing the action itself, or the consequences of the action? These three types of ethics – virtue, ends, and means – are the three major types of ethics. They are ways of categorizing and describing specific ethical views. But they do not give us specific guidance, because they don't tell us which virtues, ends, or means we should follow.
Justice
Justice is a very important ethics concept. There are two major forms of justice: distributive and procedural.
Distributive justice emphasizes the distributions of gains and losses across populations. Distributive justice is thus mainly interested in the consequences of our actions, and how these consequences are distributed. Often, distributive justice is concerned with distributions between the rich and the poor, or between the better-off and the worse-off.
Procedural justice emphasizes how decisions are made, instead of what decisions are made. Procedural justice is thus mainly interested in the process for deciding which actions to take, as opposed to the consequences of the actions. A core procedural justice principle is that everyone who is affected by a decision should have some say in how the decision is made. Procedural justice can be either an ends or a means. An ends form of procedural justice could be that we should act towards including everyone's opinion in a decision. A means form of procedural justice could be that we should never act without considering the opinions of everyone who is affected.