Spoiler Alerts
An example from fiction. In the Dark Knight, Batman refuses to kill the Joker. From a consequential point of view, it would save many more lives if Batman just killed the damn Joker. He refuses to do this because it would make him a Killer, and he doesn't want that. Yet, intuitively, we view Batman as virtuous for not killing him.
One could also give this a deontological interpretation: Batman strictly follows "Thou shall not kill". I think, in general, that deontology and virtue ethics have a lot in common: if you follow deontology, you're becoming a person Who Follows A Code, and this viewed as virtuous. Thus, in fiction, we feel sympathetic to criminals who have a code. Examples: every heist movie ever.
Interestingly, we view law-enforcers as good as long as they stick to the deontology. Another example from fiction, in the movie Untouchables, Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) unleashes a huge fury of death and destruction by targeting mobs who violate the Prohibition. At the end, just as he catches Al Capone, the Prohibition is repealed and he is asked by a journalist what he's going to do now. He replies: "I'll get a drink."
Instinctively, I felt that he was a Good Guy. So, clearly he didn't see any intrinsic value to the Prohibition, but he still went about defending it because it was The Law. And people who uphold the The Law are the good guys.
Interestingly, if your Code is Consequentialism, then you don't get much sympathy.
From a consequential point of view, it would save many more lives if Batman just killed the damn Joker. He refuses to do this because it would make him a Killer, and he doesn't want that.
Nitpicking time. I'm not so sure that that's the reason. He's also playing a long game in which Batman is supposed to be a symbol of what is possible. This reasoning produces actions that have short-term potential problems but causes many others to do better over a long time period.
Disclaimer: I am not a philosopher, so this post will likely seem amateurish to the subject matter experts.
LW is big on consequentialism, utilitarianism and other quantifiable ethics one can potentially program into a computer to make it provably friendly. However, I posit that most of us intuitively use virtue ethics, and not deontology or consequentialism. In other words, when judging one's actions we intuitively value the person's motivations over the rules they follow or the consequences of said actions. We may reevaluate our judgment later, based on laws and/or actual or expected usefulness, but the initial impulse still remains, even if overridden. To quote Casimir de Montrond, "Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good" (the quote is usually misattributed to Talleyrand).
Some examples:
I am not sure how to classify religious fanaticism (or other bigotry), but it seems to require a heavy dose of virtue ethics (feeling righteous), in addition to following the (deontological) tenets of whichever belief, with some consequentialism (for the greater good) mixed in.
When I try to introspect my own moral decisions (like whether to tell the truth, or to cheat on a test, or to drive over the speed limit), I can usually find a grain of virtue ethics inside. It might be followed or overridden, sometimes habitually, but it is always there. Can you?