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- Set up the analysis by identifying the agent, describing the action, and listing the key values or virtues at play in the situation.
- Association the action with the agent.
- Describe what the action says about the agent as a person. Does it reveal him or her as someone associated with a virtue or a vice?
Alternative Version of Public Identification
- Does the action under consideration realize justice or does it pose an excess or defect of justice?
- Does the action realize responsibility or pose an excess or defect of responsibility?
- Does the action realize reasonableness or pose too much or too little reasonableness?
- Does the action realize honesty or pose too much or too little honesty?
- Does the action realize integrity or pose too much or too little integrity?
Pitfalls of Public Identification
- Action not associated with agent. The most common pitfall is failure to associate the agent and the action. The action may have bad consequences and it may treat individuals with respect but these points are not as important in the context of this test as what they imply about the agent as a person who deliberately performs such an action.
- Failure to specify moral quality, virtue, or value. Another pitfall is to associate the action and agent but only ascribe a vague or ambiguous moral quality to the agent. To say, for example, that willfully harming the public is bad fails to zero in on precisely what moral quality this ascribes to the agent. Does it render him or her unjust, irresponsible, corrupt, dishonest, or unreasonable? The virtue list given above will help to specify this moral quality.
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