For all you philosophy business majors. Please answer this question if ur aware of the answer. THANKYOU?

Big Burger Town is a multi-million dollar a year fast food company. Millions of customers , adults, children and families, across the east coats enjoy eating the inexpensive french fries, hamburgers and sodas that the restaurant provides. Recent studies have shown that eating a diet high in calories and in the trans-fats contributes significantly to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Big Burger Town鈥檚 products are very high calorie and contain these ingredients. The company heavily advertises in prominent locations and on television. The nutritional information for all of the food items on the menu is available online and on request in the restaurants. In light of these facts, analyze the ethical aspects of this case based on the following ethical theories, (in one paragraph per theory):

a) Kantianism

b) Utilitarianism

c) Virtue EthicsFor all you philosophy business majors. Please answer this question if ur aware of the answer. THANKYOU?
Basically I'm going to briefly explain possible answers, and then you can do some research and just flesh them out a little.



So the main point I guess here is working out the ethical questions and dilemmas which the fast food company is dealing with. In my opinion these include:

1. Is it morally right for the company to be advertising this unhealthy food and lifestyle?

2. Is it morally right for the company to be selling the unhealthy food at such a low price to so many people?

And possibly 3. Is it right for them to only be displaying the nutritional information online or on request?



Kantianism:

In Kantianism, there are a number of maxims, or principles, upon which people, Kant believes, should act. Therefore it is an absolutist theory (as opposed to relativist). The most important of these is to act only upon that maxim which can be universalised. Therefore the rational being (which all humans intrinsicly are, according to Kant), must imagine what the world would be like if EVERYONE behaved in this way.

So to answer question one of our proposed moral dilemmas, a Kantian approach would ask "Is it morally right for the company to be advertising this unhealthy food and lifestyle?", i.e. if all unhealthy fast food chains advertised their bad food as something desirable, then everyone would be enticed to eat it, and everyone would become fat and ill, therefore everyone would die. Well that's no good. Therefore the fact that the company advertises in the way that it does is morally wrong.

The same applies to question #2 - is it wrong to be selling them all the food? No, because if all the companies were to sell their bad food to all the people, then those people would become ill as well.



Utilitarianism:

Utilitarianism acts upon whatever principle is most useful to society and its growth. It is a relativist theory. When faced with a moral dilemma a utilitarianist would think of all possible outcomes to all possible choices and act on whichever one they think benefits society most.

Therefore question #1 - is it useful for society if this fast food company advertises unhealthy food? A possible answer is no, because it is not useful to society if people want to eat bad food and then get ill.

Question #2 - is it useful for society if the company sells people the food? No, because, as before, it is not good for a society if people consume bad food and get ill for obvious reasons.

Question #3 could be looked at here also: Is it useful to society if the information about the food is only available on the website or on request? One could argue no it is not, because the less people are informed, the less they will be able to make a ration choice about whether or not to eat the food. If they are unaware, some might not even question what is in it. Therefore they are still eating the food, and still could potentially get ill and die.



Virtue ethics:

Virtue ethics is based around the idea that every human should strive to reach 'eudaimonia' or supreme happiness by doing what is morally right. Aristotle believed everything has a purpose (i.e. a good knife is one that cuts well), and this meant that a good human reaches eudaimonia. Good people develop good character by acting on virtue ethics, and getting into the habit of acting upon these virtues (a generous person behaves generously). There are set virtues which a person can follow, and these are usually the middle way between two extremes. They include for example: courage, temperance, big-heartedness, generosity, high-mindedness, right ambition, patience, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty, righteous indignation. Therefore we can apply these to our little dilemma.

#1 - when asking if it is morally right for them to be advertising the unhealthy food, one might look at how it relates to particular virtues. The virtue of temperance - the practice of moderation - can be challenged here. It is not behaving moderately if you are advertising something which is actually bad just to get money - this would be greed, which is one of the extremes that I mentioned earlier. They are also advertising bad food as good, which is against the virtue of truthfulness. Therefore the advertising is morally wrong.

#2 - Is it wrong to be selling the bad food? Well you could look at the virtues of temperance again here and you would get the same outcome as above.

#3 - well it can be seen as going against the virtue of truthfulness once again becuase they are hiding something from the people which should actually be shown to them, especially if they are advertising it as a good thing.

And in the same way, the virtue ethics approach would ask 'is it courageous? is it generous? is it modest?' and with most of these questions the answer is 'no'.



That should help a little. Like I said, it might need fleshing out, and there's a tone of stuff that can be said to counter all that, but I thought I'd leave that to you.For all you philosophy business majors. Please answer this question if ur aware of the answer. THANKYOU?
I won't attempt to answer this as I am not a "philosophy business major". But I will ask what happens to such people when they finish their education. Surely they don't go into business?For all you philosophy business majors. Please answer this question if ur aware of the answer. THANKYOU?
if BBT is (or is not) a publicly traded company there are sets of ethical compositions regarding the influence of their product on the health of society.

if the ethical considerations are broken into supply sided considerations as opposed to demand supply considerations (or versa visa) then the ethical percepts will vary.

your question appears to presuppose that someone has the authority (or responsibility) to act (or not act) to do some action based on your percepts to this question of corporate culpability. would that be the responsibility of government through legislation or one of it's agencies?

would the possible exposure to litigation be a consideration as to the appropriateness of a product.



bottom line is your question isn't a complete question and deserves an incomplete anser.

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