I would say, rather: Approaches like virtue ethics are collections of heuristics that can be used to verify a utilitarian ethics. A utilitarian approach that does not match up with these collections, does not conform to any common human ethical system.
That doesn’t make virtue ethics superior. It’s more observational (empirical), while a utilitarian approach can be more theoretical. A utilitarian approach has more coverage. Anyone trying to deal with the future will find utilitarian approaches more valuable than will people studying the past.
(The human ethical system is attached to reality—but is it attached in a normative way?)
I would say, rather: Approaches like virtue ethics are collections of heuristics that can be used to verify a utilitarian ethics. A utilitarian approach that does not match up with these collections, does not conform to any common human ethical system.
There is another important point: a utilitarian may conclude that given imperfect information and limited ability to predict the consequences of acts reliably, it’s usually impossible to do meaningful explicit utility calculations, so that the best way to guide one’s action are heuristics such as virtue ethics (which corresponds closely with the intuitive folk ethics that everyone uses in real life anyway). I had this in mind when I wrote about utilitarianism “reducing” (probably not a good choice of word) to other ethical systems.
(The human ethical system is attached to reality—but is it attached in a normative way?)
I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “attached in a normative way” here.
This might be a misunderstanding then. What I meant by “detached from reality” is that attempts to do explicit utilitarian calculations for practical problems almost invariably end up working with unrealistic models and thus producing worthless and misguided conclusions, even if we agree that theoretical premises of utilitarianism are sound (not that I do). In contrast, the regular folk virtue ethics does produce workable guidelines in practice, and in this regard it is attached to reality. But what does the qualifier “attached [to reality] in a normative way” add to that observation?
I would say, rather: Approaches like virtue ethics are collections of heuristics that can be used to verify a utilitarian ethics. A utilitarian approach that does not match up with these collections, does not conform to any common human ethical system.
That doesn’t make virtue ethics superior. It’s more observational (empirical), while a utilitarian approach can be more theoretical. A utilitarian approach has more coverage. Anyone trying to deal with the future will find utilitarian approaches more valuable than will people studying the past.
(The human ethical system is attached to reality—but is it attached in a normative way?)
There is another important point: a utilitarian may conclude that given imperfect information and limited ability to predict the consequences of acts reliably, it’s usually impossible to do meaningful explicit utility calculations, so that the best way to guide one’s action are heuristics such as virtue ethics (which corresponds closely with the intuitive folk ethics that everyone uses in real life anyway). I had this in mind when I wrote about utilitarianism “reducing” (probably not a good choice of word) to other ethical systems.
I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “attached in a normative way” here.
The opposite of whatever you meant when you said “detached from reality”.
This might be a misunderstanding then. What I meant by “detached from reality” is that attempts to do explicit utilitarian calculations for practical problems almost invariably end up working with unrealistic models and thus producing worthless and misguided conclusions, even if we agree that theoretical premises of utilitarianism are sound (not that I do). In contrast, the regular folk virtue ethics does produce workable guidelines in practice, and in this regard it is attached to reality. But what does the qualifier “attached [to reality] in a normative way” add to that observation?