However, it might be that the ends towards which virtue is a means aren’t ethical ends. Somebody might care about consequences, but reserve their moral judgement for the process by which people try to achieve their consequences. It might be that people are good or bad, but states of the world are just desirable or undesirable.
For example, let’s suppose it’s desirable to be wealthy. This can happen in several ways., One individual, A, got wealthy through hard work, thrift, and the proper amount of risk-taking. Another, B, got lucky and winning the lottery.
Both A and B wind up with the same amount of money, but A got there by exhibiting virtue, and B didn’t. A virtue ethicist can say “A is a better person than B”, even though the consequence was the same.
I suppose you could say “A and B’s choices have the same consequence for their bank balance, but different consequences for their own personal identity, and we have ethical preferences about that” But at this point, you’re doing virtue ethics and wrapping it in a consequentialist interface.
I suspect all these different strands of ethical thought are really disagreeing about what to emphasize and talk about, but can be made formally equivalent.
B didn’t choose to win the lottery; B choose to play the lottery. Surely when considering whether an action would be good to take, one would have to consider all the attempts that didn’t lead to success?
Yes. Presumably a consequentialist should consider the probabilities of various outcomes. This is potentially problematic, since probability is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s not clear who the right beholder is. Is it B? Is it an ideal rational agent with the information available to B? An ideal but computationally limited agent?
My sense is that in the real world, it’s hard to second-guess any particular decision. There’s no good way to account for the difference between what the actor knew, what they could or should have known, and what the evaluator knows.
Nothing you say is false, and yet it strikes me as somewhat confused. For one thing, I’m not aware that anybody has ever said that only the actual consequences of an action matter for its moral status. That’s is not what consequentialism means.
The thing is that consequentialism and deontology are fundamentally about the moral status of actions, whereas virtue ethics is about the formal status of persons. They’re not formally equivalent.
If you have a system for actions, then you can derive the status of the person (by looking at the actions they are, by habit, predisposed to perform). Maybe an action that is not particularly good, viewed in isolation, is excusable because it was done out of a habit that is generally good. But you have to start with the actions, because if you want to start with the person and try to derive the value of actions from that—how do you do that? You have no way of assessing the moral status of a person independently of their actions.
This is why you can and should build virtue ethics on top of an ethical system for actions, and why it’s meaningless in isolation.
The thing is that consequentialism and deontology are fundamentally about the moral status of actions, whereas virtue ethics is about the formal status of persons. They’re not formally equivalent.
I think they can be made formally equivalent, in the sense that you can write a {consequentialist, virtue ethics, deontological} statement that corresponds to any given ethical statement in some other formalism.*
For a given virtue-ethics view, you can say “act as a virtuous person would act”, or “act in a way that achieves the same consequences as a virtuous person.” For example, law is full of deontological rules, but we often have to interpret those rules by asking “how a reasonable person would have judged the situation”, which is essentially using an imaginary virtuous person as a guide.
I agree that different ethical theories talk in a different language and that these distinctions are relevant in practice. However, I would ignore the form of the sentences and focus on which parts of the ethical theory do the real work.
if you want to start with the person and try to derive the value of actions from that—how do you do that? You have no way of assessing the moral status of a person independently of their actions. The thing that matters about virtue ethics isn’t that it talks about persons, it’s that it gives a substantive specific account of what makes people good or bad, rather than giving a substantive account about goals.
You have to assess people based on their actions, but it might be that we assess actions in a way that isn’t particularly consequentialist or even formalized; we can use non-ethically-relevant actions to judge people’s characters. For example, if somebody seems impulsive and thoughtless, I will judge them for that, even if I don’t observe their impulsivity causing them to take actions with likely bad consequences.
There’s a big chunk of my brain that’s optimized for evaluating how I feel about other people. When I use that part of my brain, I don’t look at individual actions people take and ask about the probable consequences; rather, my overall experiences with the person and hearing about the person get tabulated together. I use that part of my brain when I form ethical judgements, and I think of philosophical ethics as a tool for training that part to work better.
* I suspect there may be some edge cases where this works badly; I am only concerned with the sort of ethical statements that tend to come up in practice.
For a given virtue-ethics view, you can say “act as a virtuous person would act”, or “act in a way that achieves the same consequences as a virtuous person.”
This is precisely the circularity that I was talking about. Where do you get the substance from? How do you know which person is virtuous? Unlike “act as maximises average expected utility” (some form of consequentialism) or “don’t do X” (primitive deontology), “act as a virtuous person would” is an empty statement.
For example, if somebody seems impulsive and thoughtless, I will judge them for that, even if I don’t observe their impulsivity causing them to take actions with likely bad consequences.
Nobody says you look only at actual actions. You’re concerned with actions that the person is predisposed to. The non-ethically-relevant action that you observe is still evidence that that person has a temperament that disposes them to ethically relevant and unfavourable actions.
“act as a virtuous person would” is an empty statement.
It’s an empty statement until you tack on a concrete description of virtue. But that’s not hard to do. Aristotle, for instance, gives a long discussion about bravery and prudence and wisdom and justice and so forth in the Ethics—and he does it without having a full account of what makes an action good or bad.
I suspect that what you are viewing as vacuous is really an implicit appeal to widely shared and widely understood norms that determine what makes people admirable or blameworthy.
You’re concerned with actions that the person is predisposed to. The non-ethically-relevant action that you observe is still evidence that that person has a temperament that disposes them to ethically relevant and unfavourable actions.
Yes. But why is it easier to talk about good and bad actions than about good and bad temperaments? I agree there has to be a substantive account somewhere. But I don’t actually know how to define utility in a moral sense, and it seems like a very hard problem. It’s not pleasure or the emotion of happiness. When consequentialists start talking about “human flourishing,” I feel like a virtue ethics is being smuggled in the back door.
But why is it easier to talk about good and bad actions than about good and bad temperaments?
I’m not saying one is easier than the other, I’m saying one is more fundamental than the other. Bravery is nothing but a disposition to actions, and prudence and wisdom, to the extent that they are not dispositions to actions, are not morally relevant. They’re intellectual virtues, not moral virtues.
But I don’t actually know how to define utility in a moral sense, and it seems like a very hard problem.
That’s a completely different issue.
When consequentialists start talking about “human flourishing,” I feel like a virtue ethics is being smuggled in the back door.
No, the other way around: when virtue ethicists talk about “human flourishing”, consequentialism is being smuggled in through the back door.
I’m not saying one is easier than the other, I’m saying one is more fundamental than the other. Bravery is nothing but a disposition to actions, and prudence and wisdom, to the extent that they are not dispositions to actions, are not morally relevant.
I happen to agree with you here, but I think you’re confusing an epistemological point with an ontological one. It may be that actions are epistemically more fundamental than character, insofar as they’re our basis of evidence for saying things about people’s characters, but it doesn’t follow from this that actions are more fundamental full stop. Virtue ethics is, at least a lot of the time, the thesis that dispositions of character are ethically fundamental. Not actions, even if actions are our only epistemic ground for talking about character.
As I said, I agree with you that actions are ethically fundamental, but this isn’t a critique of virtue ethics, it’s just a denial of it.
My point is intended to be neither epistemic nor ontological, but conceptual. Dispositions of character cannot be conceptually prior to actions because they are defined in terms of what actions they are dispositions towards.
Admittedly, you can have some a back-and-forth—the same action could be virtuous depending on whether it was done out of habit or just accidentally or through effort and force of will. But you still have to start with actions in order to determine which habits it is that have the power to confer moral value onto the actions they give rise to.
Yes.
However, it might be that the ends towards which virtue is a means aren’t ethical ends. Somebody might care about consequences, but reserve their moral judgement for the process by which people try to achieve their consequences. It might be that people are good or bad, but states of the world are just desirable or undesirable.
For example, let’s suppose it’s desirable to be wealthy. This can happen in several ways., One individual, A, got wealthy through hard work, thrift, and the proper amount of risk-taking. Another, B, got lucky and winning the lottery.
Both A and B wind up with the same amount of money, but A got there by exhibiting virtue, and B didn’t. A virtue ethicist can say “A is a better person than B”, even though the consequence was the same.
I suppose you could say “A and B’s choices have the same consequence for their bank balance, but different consequences for their own personal identity, and we have ethical preferences about that” But at this point, you’re doing virtue ethics and wrapping it in a consequentialist interface.
I suspect all these different strands of ethical thought are really disagreeing about what to emphasize and talk about, but can be made formally equivalent.
B didn’t choose to win the lottery; B choose to play the lottery. Surely when considering whether an action would be good to take, one would have to consider all the attempts that didn’t lead to success?
Yes. Presumably a consequentialist should consider the probabilities of various outcomes. This is potentially problematic, since probability is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s not clear who the right beholder is. Is it B? Is it an ideal rational agent with the information available to B? An ideal but computationally limited agent?
My sense is that in the real world, it’s hard to second-guess any particular decision. There’s no good way to account for the difference between what the actor knew, what they could or should have known, and what the evaluator knows.
Nothing you say is false, and yet it strikes me as somewhat confused. For one thing, I’m not aware that anybody has ever said that only the actual consequences of an action matter for its moral status. That’s is not what consequentialism means.
The thing is that consequentialism and deontology are fundamentally about the moral status of actions, whereas virtue ethics is about the formal status of persons. They’re not formally equivalent.
If you have a system for actions, then you can derive the status of the person (by looking at the actions they are, by habit, predisposed to perform). Maybe an action that is not particularly good, viewed in isolation, is excusable because it was done out of a habit that is generally good. But you have to start with the actions, because if you want to start with the person and try to derive the value of actions from that—how do you do that? You have no way of assessing the moral status of a person independently of their actions.
This is why you can and should build virtue ethics on top of an ethical system for actions, and why it’s meaningless in isolation.
I think they can be made formally equivalent, in the sense that you can write a {consequentialist, virtue ethics, deontological} statement that corresponds to any given ethical statement in some other formalism.*
For a given virtue-ethics view, you can say “act as a virtuous person would act”, or “act in a way that achieves the same consequences as a virtuous person.” For example, law is full of deontological rules, but we often have to interpret those rules by asking “how a reasonable person would have judged the situation”, which is essentially using an imaginary virtuous person as a guide.
I agree that different ethical theories talk in a different language and that these distinctions are relevant in practice. However, I would ignore the form of the sentences and focus on which parts of the ethical theory do the real work.
You have to assess people based on their actions, but it might be that we assess actions in a way that isn’t particularly consequentialist or even formalized; we can use non-ethically-relevant actions to judge people’s characters. For example, if somebody seems impulsive and thoughtless, I will judge them for that, even if I don’t observe their impulsivity causing them to take actions with likely bad consequences.
There’s a big chunk of my brain that’s optimized for evaluating how I feel about other people. When I use that part of my brain, I don’t look at individual actions people take and ask about the probable consequences; rather, my overall experiences with the person and hearing about the person get tabulated together. I use that part of my brain when I form ethical judgements, and I think of philosophical ethics as a tool for training that part to work better.
* I suspect there may be some edge cases where this works badly; I am only concerned with the sort of ethical statements that tend to come up in practice.
This is precisely the circularity that I was talking about. Where do you get the substance from? How do you know which person is virtuous? Unlike “act as maximises average expected utility” (some form of consequentialism) or “don’t do X” (primitive deontology), “act as a virtuous person would” is an empty statement.
Nobody says you look only at actual actions. You’re concerned with actions that the person is predisposed to. The non-ethically-relevant action that you observe is still evidence that that person has a temperament that disposes them to ethically relevant and unfavourable actions.
It’s an empty statement until you tack on a concrete description of virtue. But that’s not hard to do. Aristotle, for instance, gives a long discussion about bravery and prudence and wisdom and justice and so forth in the Ethics—and he does it without having a full account of what makes an action good or bad.
I suspect that what you are viewing as vacuous is really an implicit appeal to widely shared and widely understood norms that determine what makes people admirable or blameworthy.
Yes. But why is it easier to talk about good and bad actions than about good and bad temperaments? I agree there has to be a substantive account somewhere. But I don’t actually know how to define utility in a moral sense, and it seems like a very hard problem. It’s not pleasure or the emotion of happiness. When consequentialists start talking about “human flourishing,” I feel like a virtue ethics is being smuggled in the back door.
I’m not saying one is easier than the other, I’m saying one is more fundamental than the other. Bravery is nothing but a disposition to actions, and prudence and wisdom, to the extent that they are not dispositions to actions, are not morally relevant. They’re intellectual virtues, not moral virtues.
That’s a completely different issue.
No, the other way around: when virtue ethicists talk about “human flourishing”, consequentialism is being smuggled in through the back door.
I happen to agree with you here, but I think you’re confusing an epistemological point with an ontological one. It may be that actions are epistemically more fundamental than character, insofar as they’re our basis of evidence for saying things about people’s characters, but it doesn’t follow from this that actions are more fundamental full stop. Virtue ethics is, at least a lot of the time, the thesis that dispositions of character are ethically fundamental. Not actions, even if actions are our only epistemic ground for talking about character.
As I said, I agree with you that actions are ethically fundamental, but this isn’t a critique of virtue ethics, it’s just a denial of it.
My point is intended to be neither epistemic nor ontological, but conceptual. Dispositions of character cannot be conceptually prior to actions because they are defined in terms of what actions they are dispositions towards.
Admittedly, you can have some a back-and-forth—the same action could be virtuous depending on whether it was done out of habit or just accidentally or through effort and force of will. But you still have to start with actions in order to determine which habits it is that have the power to confer moral value onto the actions they give rise to.