Virtue ethics vs umm...that other type of ethics

[Cain]

Deontological, I think.

Anyway, building on the back of my book review and Cram's rant on virtue, this is something I have been thinking about for a while.  Namely could virtue ethics be not only a more Discordian way of approaching moral dilemmas, but also in some other respects, a far more useful way of thinking about problems?

I should probaby explain the distinction first.  Ethics, as we normally understand it, is kind of like a checklist.  If we want to take an action, we check it against this list we have (based on BIP factors such as education, culture etc) and if it lines up, then it is 'good'.

Virtue ethics, on the other hand, is about the cultivation of a certain mindset or character, who, when faced with an ethical problem will act in accordance with what is right because of their character.  For instance, if there is a car crash, a virtue ethics person who believes in courage and charity will run over and help because its the right thing to do, as an expression of these virtues.  Its about the creation of a person who will act right because of certain inherent traits or instincts, instead of an external, metaphysical morality (this may not be the best description, so do some googling for greater understanding).

Anyway, the former is a very legalistic and structured way of looking at ethics.  As such, it may not be the best way of approaching morality if you not want to compromise a chaotic or discord based ethic.  The latter does have some historical precedent for being a more anti-structural system, embraced as it was by Nietzsche, among others.

Anyway, thats just an introduction, as it were, to get some discussion rolling.  I'll likely add more later, when I have time.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Here follows the opinions of someone without formal education in such things:

Virtue ethics, as you've described it, seems to work better with a discord-oriented mindset.

The 'checklist' variety of ethics is, in some sense, the quintessential "I know what's good, and I've got it all written down right here" ethic. It implies a sort of omniscience that most likely does not exist, and in order to be useful everyone whom these rules will affect must agree that they are good. Thus, they are most useful when we use them as a set of agreed-upon standards that are subject to change as necessary. For example:

Ethical Checklist, concerning the use of blinking text:
1. The "blinking text" attribute is really fucking annoying.
2. Don't use blinking text.

There is no objective, superhuman or supernatural authority to determine this, but almost everyone agrees with the basic premise, and we likewise enjoy the benefits of using this ethical checklist (less blinky text on the interwebs) as a standard to which we adhere. In contrast, some ethical checklists are more controversial:

Ethical Checklist, concerning homosexuality:
1. Homosexuality is bad.
2. Anyone who is homosexual must be convinced of their error.
2a. Any form of coercion is acceptable to achieve this.

Some people insist that this is a standard we must all follow because it is ordained by a Higher Power™, but since we don't all agree on what this Higher Power™ has ordained or even if it exists at all, this checklist gets thrown into contention. Furthermore, even when it is accepted as law or common practice, we do not enjoy the benefits of a "gay-free" society (if there are any). Homosexuals, when persecuted, either deny their orientation and thus become extremely cranky and maligned individuals, or they become politicians who run on the anti-gay ticket and get sadomasochistic pleasure from denouncing gayness publicly and doing dirty things in bathroom stalls.

It seems that this form of ethics is only useful when we acknowledge its limits.

Virtue ethics, since it is entirely subjective and acknowledged as such, is a much freer and chaos-accepting form of ethics. We tend to act in accordance with our beliefs (and this may include conforming to certain arbitrary "ethical checklists," when they are useful), but since it is individualistic we can change our minds and behavior without setting a precedent for everyone to start breaking rules. It permits us to agree to disagree.

[LMNO]

Interesting distinction between morality and ethics, Cain.


I like.

[Cramulus]

I like where this is going...

A Virtuous Discordian



I'll have to chew on that.

[Iron Sulfide]

I think the only way a discordian could be virtuous in some sense would be to take Lyria's lead.

ALWAYS LIE, it's the most honest approach left.

[Cain]

Well, if I understand virtue ethics correctly, you can lie.  Depending on what values you consider necessary to achieving eudaimonia (which I think I have already said elsewhere is suspiciously close to Will, in the western occult tradition).

An important caveat may have to be included though.  Aristotle, MacIntyre and others generally agree you can only achieve eudaimonia within a human society, a polis or state, in which case the values are subordinated to social and political authority.  A Discordian may have to look higher or lower for their sources of values.

[Cain]

I'll copy what I believe are the relevant parts of the Wikipedia article.  Hopefully that will stimulate some thought.



Virtue ethics is a branch of moral philosophy that emphasizes character, rather than rules or consequences, as the key element of ethical thinking. In the West virtue ethics was the prevailing approach to ethical thinking in the ancient and medieval periods. The tradition suffered an eclipse during the early modern period, as Aristotelianism fell out of favour in the West. Virtue ethics returned to prominence in Western philosophical thought in the twentieth century, and is today one of the three dominant approaches to normative ethics (the other two being deontology and consequentialism).

Although concern for virtue appears in several philosophical traditions, notably the Chinese, in the West the roots of the tradition lie in the work of Plato and Aristotle, and even today the tradition's key concepts derive from ancient Greek philosophy. These concepts include arête (excellence or virtue), phronesis (practical or moral wisdom), and eudaimonia (flourishing).

A system of virtue ethics, having offered an account of the good life, then identifies those habits and behaviours that will allow a person to achieve that good life: these habits and behaviours are the virtues (arête). In the course of one's activities one will have opportunity to practice these virtues. Sometimes these virtues will be, or will seem to be, in conflict with one another: a common dilemma is the apparent conflict between honesty and compassion, when telling a friend the truth (about his appearance, say) would hurt that friend's feelings. In such cases the agent must exercise her practical wisdom (phronesis) to resolve the conflict. Ultimately, a lifetime of practicing these virtues will allow the agent to flourish and live the good life (eudaimonia). In fact, in most accounts, practicing the virtues partially constitutes eudaimonia rather than being merely a means to that end.

This schema of the moral life strongly differs from those offered by virtue ethics' predominant rivals, deontological and consequentialist ethics. These systems aim to articulate principles or rules that provide an agent the ability to decide how to act in a given situation. Consequentialist and deontological ethics often still employ the term 'virtue', but in a restricted sense, namely as a tendency or disposition to adhere to the system's principles or rules. These very different senses of what constitutes virtue, hidden behind the same word, are a potential source of confusion.

This disagreement over the meaning of virtue points to a larger conflict between virtue ethics and its philosophical rivals. A system of virtue ethics is only intelligible if it is teleological: that is, if it includes an account of the purpose (telos) of human life, or in popular language, the meaning of life. Obviously, strong claims about the purpose of human life, or of what the good life for human beings is, will be highly controversial. Virtue ethics' necessary commitment to a teleological account of human life thus puts the tradition in sharp tension with other dominant approaches to normative ethics, which, because they focus on actions, do not bear this burden.

Eudaimonia is a state variously translated as "happiness" or "human flourishing". The latter translation is more accurate; eudaimonia is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life, irrespective of the emotional state of the person experiencing it. According to Aristotle, the most prominent exponent of eudaimonia in the Western philosophical tradition, eudaimonia is the proper goal of human life. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality-- reason-- as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of eudaimonia was an activity that could only properly be exercised in the characteristic human community-- the polis or city-state.

Although eudaimonia was first popularized by Aristotle, it now belongs to the tradition of virtue ethics generally. For the virtue ethicist, eudaimonia describes that state achieved by the person who lives the proper human life, an outcome which can be reached by practising the virtues. A virtue is a habit or quality that allows the bearer to succeed at his, her, or its purpose. The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues of a racehorse is speed.

Non-Western moral and religious philosophies, such as Confucianism, also incorporate ideas that may appear similar to those developed by the ancient Greeks. Like ancient Greek ethics, Chinese ethical thought makes an explicit connection between virtue and statecraft. However, where the Greeks focused on the interior orientation of the soul, Confucianism's definition of virtue emphasizes interpersonal relations.

As with all other schools of ethical theory, there are objections to virtue ethics.

Some claim a problem with the theory is the difficulty of establishing the nature of the virtues. Different people, cultures and societies often have vastly different opinions on what constitutes a virtue. For example, many would have once considered a virtuous woman to be quiet, servile, and industrious. This conception of female virtue no longer holds true in many modern societies (see also cultural relativism). Proponents of virtue ethics sometimes respond to this objection by arguing that a central feature of a virtue is its universal applicability.

Other proponents of virtue ethics, notably Alasdair MacIntyre, respond to this objection by arguing that any account of the virtues must indeed be generated out of the community in which those virtues are to be practiced: the very word 'ethics' implies 'ethos'. That is to say that the virtues are, and necessarily must be, grounded in a particular time and place. What counts as virtue in fourth-century Athens would be a ludicrous guide to proper behaviour in twenty-first-century Toronto, and vice-versa. To take this view does not necessarily commit one to the argument that accounts of the virtues must therefore be static: moral activity-- that is, attempts to contemplate and practice the virtues-- can provide the cultural resources that allow people to change, albeit slowly, the ethos of their own societies.

Another objection to virtue ethics is that the school does not focus on what sorts of actions are morally permitted and which ones are not, but rather on what sort of qualities someone ought to foster in order to become a good person. In other words, while some virtue ethicists may not condemn, for example, murder as an inherently immoral or impermissible sort of action, they may argue that someone who commits a murder is severely lacking in several important virtues, such as compassion and fairness.

Some virtue ethicists, like Phillipa Foot, might respond to this overall objection with the notion of a "bad act" also being an act characteristic of vice. That is to say that those acts which do not aim at virtue, or stray from virtue, would constitute our conception of "bad behavior". Although not all virtue ethicists agree to this notion, this is one way the virtue ethicist can re-introduce the concept of the "morally impermissible".


Thats the meat of the article.

[Xooxe]

I honestly don't think I understand, but I've never felt like I understand morals, ethics and virtue anyway.

Right now I'm trying to think of a way to elaborate but I'm not sure how. Every time someone tries to explain them to me they go straight out of the other ear. 

[Iron Sulfide]

redux:

pop philos= Ends and Means (which takes precedence?)

Alternative = Virtue Ethics

which requires a definition (of some sort) of the purpose of life/meaning of life/what constitutes a well lived life.

a bunch of eastern philosophies have this characteristic.

reverse engineered: you take an effective personality (say...) and observe the characteristics it possesses to achieve the desired results and base those as criteria for the Ethics or Virtuous Behaviours.

in this sense, Machiavelli was using virtue ethics (for what he considered would be the most effective type of leader/ruler, in the case of The Prince...)

or am i missing something?

[Cain]

No, you're right.  Machiavelli is very much the archtypal political virtue theorist, and it is very similar to the philosophy of Warring States China in particular.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I just picked up a book called "On Virtue Ethics"... assuming that its interesting I'll post stuff from it.

[Friar Puck]

Deontological, I think.

Anyway, building on the back of my book review and Cram's rant on virtue, this is something I have been thinking about for a while.  Namely could virtue ethics be not only a more Discordian way of approaching moral dilemmas, but also in some other respects, a far more useful way of thinking about problems?

I should probaby explain the distinction first.  Ethics, as we normally understand it, is kind of like a checklist.  If we want to take an action, we check it against this list we have (based on BIP factors such as education, culture etc) and if it lines up, then it is 'good'.

Virtue ethics, on the other hand, is about the cultivation of a certain mindset or character, who, when faced with an ethical problem will act in accordance with what is right because of their character.  For instance, if there is a car crash, a virtue ethics person who believes in courage and charity will run over and help because its the right thing to do, as an expression of these virtues.  Its about the creation of a person who will act right because of certain inherent traits or instincts, instead of an external, metaphysical morality (this may not be the best description, so do some googling for greater understanding).

Anyway, the former is a very legalistic and structured way of looking at ethics.  As such, it may not be the best way of approaching morality if you not want to compromise a chaotic or discord based ethic.  The latter does have some historical precedent for being a more anti-structural system, embraced as it was by Nietzsche, among others.

Anyway, thats just an introduction, as it were, to get some discussion rolling.  I'll likely add more later, when I have time.

If virtue is subjective, it would reduce virtue ethics wholly to the individual level, with problems occurring when personal and public interests conflict; a standard must be set of some sort under which the society could feasibly detain harmful people. Aristotle believed that eudaimonia was only possible in a society. Thus we have to assume that Aristotle meant virtue to be something externally defined and assimilated into the self to the point where the self becomes the external values. These external values were assigned by the biotic status of the individual [human/animal/plant] and the society. Who has the right to deciding right and wrong? Consensus, social contract, iron rod authority, a philosophical law? Aristotle certainly seemed to favor the latter [the golden mean].

One of the largest problems facing virtue ethics is that it can be reduced to absurdity in offending our intuitions of right/wrong [which is really not a huge problem if one is sympathetic to subjectivity]. This is possible because it seems nearly impossible to define just what a virtue is. Virtues become situational, and some things would be praised by virtue ethics that would be shunned in nearly every other virtue theory, such as killing and looting the neighbors to feed one's family when resources run low. What qualities does a virtue possess that a vice does not?

Additionally, it would seem that people who act consistently according to their own thoughts of 'best' are not necessarily being ethical. Thing is, the core meaning of eudaimonia is not directly translatable into any language I speak, it being interpreted flourishing or happiness. Flourishing seems the best in my mind, which leaves us with a quandry, which party's flourishing do we weight, the individual or the group? Shall we choose another end to which ethics should aim, should we discard a goal entirely?

Here is a dude currently working out a system of virtue ethics:
http://askesisphilosophyandcarnivorism.blogspot.com/

[LMNO]

My head's still a bit fuzzy, but if virtue ethics is based around someone's character, then do we run into the same arguments about moral relativism?

That is, one behaves morally because it's their nature, and conversley the amoral cannot be blamed for amoral actions.


That's a crappy way of explaining it, but I hope I got some point across.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

My head's still a bit fuzzy, but if virtue ethics is based around someone's character, then do we run into the same arguments about moral relativism?

That is, one behaves morally because it's their nature, and conversley the amoral cannot be blamed for amoral actions.


That's a crappy way of explaining it, but I hope I got some point across.

Virtue Ethics don't seem to bother with assigning blame to other people, but appear more as a personal ethical system...

"I choose to do X because it lines up with one of the Virtues I hold as important."

It says nothing about what someone else does, nor their virtues. At least not that I've found yet.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Maybe Aristotle didn't mean that eudaimonia was impossible outside of society but that it is essentially meaningless unless it occurs within a society that can see it an agree that it is eudaimonia. Aristotle's basis for morality was society.

But I guess I'm not really seeing a practical difference between Virtue Ethics and the others. Its motivation is to achieve eudaimonia; the others' motivation is to avoid some kind of catastrophe. But in both cases you have a list, either of rules or "virtues," and you measure your actions against that list. Beyond that the only differences I see are only semantics.

Admittedly I'm not an expert in philosophy, especially the ethics/morality discussion. My approach to ethics has always been striving to recognize my motives, and to whatever extent I can, discovering how aware others are of their own motives. The mechanical workings that people use to determine what action they produce at the end of their thought process has always been a moot point for me, because once a proposed action enters a person's chain of ethical thought, whether they elect to do it or not is almost always predictable.

I've known a lot of people, and they definitely have not all had the same basis for determining their own personal ethics. But after getting to know them, it was always easy to tell whether they'd be up for something or what kind of thing they were going to suggest. Whether it was consequentialism/virtue ethics or whatever else driving their moral compass, the end result was always the same.

If you're thinking about declaring a superior ethical system you're thinking about short-circuiting the process of interpersonal relationships, since when two people know each other the question of ethical systems becomes background noise.

When people don't know each other, communication doesn't occur at the ethical level anyway. It occurs at the motivational level.

I'm not really adding anything.