Applicability of Virtue Ethics

ABSTRACT In the present study, we examined how the perceived attainability and relatability of moral exemplars predicted moral elevation and pleasantness among both adult and college student participants. Data collected from two experiments were analyzed with Bayesian multilevel modeling to explore which factors significantly predicted outcome variables at the story level. The analysis results demonstrated that the main effect of perceived relatability and the interaction effect between attainability and relatability shall be included in the best prediction model, and thus, were (...) deemed to predict the outcome variables significantly. The main effect of relatability as well as its interaction with attainability positively predicted elevation and pleasantness. We discussed educational implications of the findings in terms of how relatability may be the first point of emphasis for moral educators to focus on and attainability can then bolster the effectiveness. These relatable and attainable moral exemplars can be sources for moral elevation and pleasantness, which promote motivation to emulate moral behavior presented by the exemplars. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique Wessel Reijers and Bert Gordijn’s paper Moving from value sensitive design to virtuous practice design. In doing so, it draws on recent literature on developing value sensitive design (VSD) to show how the authors’ virtuous practice design (VPD), at minimum, is not mutually exclusive to VSD. This paper argues that virtuous practice is not exclusive to the basic methodological underpinnings of VSD. This can therefore strengthen, rather than exclude the VSD (...) approach. Likewise, this paper presents not only a critique of what was offered as a “potentially fruitful alternative to VSD” but further clarifies and contributes to the VSD scholarship in extending its potential methodological practices and scope. It is concluded that VPD does not appear to offer any original contribution that more recent instantiations of VSD have not already proposed and implemented. (shrink)

Michael Stocker’s “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” attacks versions of consequentialism and deontological ethics on the grounds that they are self-effacing. While it is often thought that Stocker’s argument gives us a reason to favour virtue ethics over those other theories, Simon Keller has argued that this is a mistake. He claims that virtue ethics is also self-effacing, and is therefore afflicted with the self-effacement- related problems that Stocker identifies in consequentialism and deontology. This paper defends virtue ethics against (...) this claim. Although there is a kind of self-effacement invol- ved in the exercise of virtue, this is quite different from the so-called schizophrenia that Stocker thinks is induced by modern ethical theory. Importantly, manifesting virtue does not require one to embrace mutually inconsistent moral commitments, as is at times encouraged by consequentialists and deontologists. This paper also considers a reading of the virtue-ethical criterion of right action that is encouraged by Bernard Williams’s distinction between a de re and a de dicto interpretation of the phrase “acting as the virtuous person would.” I argue that such a reading addresses concerns that a virtue-ethi- cal criterion of right action inevitably generates a problematic form of self-effacement. (shrink)

An on-going question for virtue ethics is whether it stands as a truly distinctive approach to ethics. In particular, there has been much discussion of whether virtue ethics can provide a viable understanding of right action, one that is a genuine rival to familiar consequentialist and deontological accounts. In this chapter I examine two prominent approaches to virtue ethics, (i) qualified agent and (ii) agent-based virtue ethics, and consider whether either can provide an adequate account of right action. I begin (...) with a presentation of their accounts of right action, including consideration of what is meant by the term “right action”. With this groundwork in place, I turn to a series of important objections that have been raised against these accounts, and consider some of the more prominent and promising responses that these objections have inspired. (shrink)

In addition to the traditional reliance on rules and codes in regulating the conduct of military personnel, most of today’s militaries put their money on character building in trying to make their soldiers virtuous. Especially in recent years it has time and again been argued that virtue ethics, with its emphasis on character building, provides a better basis for military ethics than deontological ethics or utilitarian ethics. Although virtue ethics comes in many varieties these days, in many texts on military (...) ethics dealing with the subject of military virtues the Aristotelian view on virtues is still pivotal. Developing virtues is by some authors seen as the best way to prevent misconduct by military personnel, it being considered superior to rules or codes of conduct imposed from above. The main argument these authors offer is that these solutions are impotent when no one is around, and lack the flexibility often thought necessary in today’s world. Finally, rules and codes try to condition behavior, leaving less room for personal integrity. At first sight, then, there is a great deal to say in favor of virtue ethics as being the best way of enhancing the chances of soldiers behaving morally. However, this preference for steering conduct by means of promoting certain desirable dispositions is not without any problems that, as it stands, are hardly ever addressed. To begin with, there are a few practical concerns. For instance, even if we assume that military virtues can assist military personnel to do their work in a morally sound manner, it is still not clear to what extent virtues can, in fact, be taught to them. It is an assumption of virtue ethics that they can, but is this really the case? And if so, how should they be taught? – virtues are supposedly developed by practicing them, yet how much room is there for practicing virtues in for instance the ethics education as followed in military academies and school battalions? Secondly, it appears that the traditional military virtues, such as honor, loyalty, courage, and obedience, are, especially in their common interpretation, mainly beneficial to colleagues and the organization, not so much to the local population of the countries military personnel are deployed to. Changes in the military’s wider environment have led to a shift from traditional of self-defense tasks to new, more complex tasks, and especially in today’s missions one could expect that the proper virtues are not necessarily solely the more martial ones. (shrink)