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.
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.