The word excellence is derived from the Latin word excellentia, and it means the quality of being extremely good. Human excellences could be defined as those human qualities that make a person outstanding, exceptional, superior, or, in one word, the best of one's kind in any field of human activities. Frequently, it is synonymously used with the word virtue, narrowly meaning moral excellence.

We examine the following consequentialist view of virtue: a trait is a virtue if and only if it has good consequences in some relevant way. We highlight some motivations for this basic account, and offer twelve choice points for filling it out. Next, we explicate Julia Driver’s consequentialist view of virtue in reference to these choice points, and we canvass its merits and demerits. Subsequently, we consider three suggestions that aim to increase the plausibility of her position, and critically analyze (...) them. We conclude that one of those proposed revisions would improve her account. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with two distinct but related questions: (a) does Deleuzian philosophy offer an account of moral norms (i.e., a theory of normativity)? (b) does Deleuzian philosophy offer an account of moral values (i.e., a theory of the good)? These are important questions for at least two reasons. First, the moral- and value-theoretical aspects of Deleuzian philosophy have tended to be ignored, dismissed, overlooked, or otherwise overshadowed in the literature by the ontological, historical, and political aspects. Second, Deleuze (...) – along with other alleged “postmodernists” such as Foucault and Derrida – has occasionally been accused of moral relativism, skepticism, and even nihilism. The aim of what follows is to demonstrate the value and importance of Deleuze's (and Guattari's) contributions to ethics and to defend Deleuzian philosophy from the charges just mentioned. (shrink)

Someone owes gratitude to God for something only if God benefits her and is morally responsible for doing so. These requirements concerning benefit and moral responsibility generate reasons to doubt that human beings owe gratitude to God for their own moral goodness. First, moral character must be generated by its possessor’s own free choices, and so God cannot benefit moral character in human beings. Second, owed gratitude requires being morally responsible for providing a benefit, which rules out owed gratitude to (...) God because God must do what is best. Both reasons are unpersuasive. I argue that God can benefit morally good character in human beings with and without their free choices. Subsequently, I argue against views of moral responsibility that preclude divine moral responsibility and argue that influential accounts of moral responsibility preserve it. Thus, these two requirements generate no problem for owed gratitude to God. (shrink)

This paper explores the value of benevolence as a cardinal virtue by analyzing the evolving history of virtue ethics from ancient Greek tradition to emotivism and contemporary thoughts. First, I would like to start with a brief idea of virtue ethics. Greek virtue theorists recognize four qualities of moral character, namely, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Christianity recognizes unconditional love as the essence of its theology. Here I will analyze the transition within the doctrine of virtue ethics in the Christian (...) era and afterward since the eighteenth-century thinkers are immensely inspired by this Christian notion of love consider universal benevolence as the cardinal virtue. Later, Hume introduces an emotivist turn by considering the moral worth of sympathetic emotions in his ethical doctrine. In this paper, I aim to discover the cardinality of the virtue of benevolence following the evolutionary history of virtue ethics. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has many times been suggested as a promising recipe for the construction of artificial moral agents due to its emphasis on moral character and learning. However, given the complex nature of the theory, hardly any work has de facto attempted to implement the core tenets of virtue ethics in moral machines. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate how virtue ethics can be taken all the way from theory to machine implementation. To achieve this goal, we (...) critically explore the possibilities and challenges for virtue ethics from a computational perspective. Drawing on previous conceptual and technical work, we outline a version of artificial virtue based on moral functionalism, connectionist bottom–up learning, and eudaimonic reward. We then describe how core features of the outlined theory can be interpreted in terms of functionality, which in turn informs the design of components necessary for virtuous cognition. Finally, we present a comprehensive framework for the technical development of artificial virtuous agents and discuss how they can be implemented in moral environments. (shrink)

During the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial Intelligence. Despite this conceptual richness, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what Responsible AI entails on both conceptual and practical levels. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethical dimension of responsibility in Responsible AI with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role for (...) the concept of moral responsibility. The paper starts by highlighting the important difficulties in assigning responsibility to either technologies themselves or to their developers. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to moral responsibility are then contrasted, as we explore how they could inform debates about Responsible AI. We highlight the limits of the former ethical approaches and build the case for classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. We show that two building blocks of Aristotle’s ethics, dianoetic virtues and the context of actions, although largely ignored in the literature, can shed light on how we could think of moral responsibility for both AI and humans. We end by exploring the practical implications of this particular understanding of moral responsibility along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers. (shrink)

Aristotle defined the ethical and intellectual virtues which are recognized even nowadays as fundamental. Contemporary virtue ethics still takes into account Aristotelian virtues. The modern moral philosophers have tried to find new ethical values in a society in which religions are in decline and the old values lost their meaning. The starting point of their research has been Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” which has remained the most important work in ethics influencing the philosophical thinking until nowadays. This paper seeks to explain (...) the actual importance of the cardinal Aristotelian virtues and how they are seen today. Keywords: virtue; reason; wisdom; moral virtues; intellectual virtues. (shrink)

Reflectivists consider reflective reasoning crucial for good judgment and action. Anti-reflectivists deny that reflection delivers what reflectivists seek. Alas, the evidence is mixed. So, does reflection confer normative value or not? This paper argues for a middle way: reflection can confer normative value, but its ability to do this is bound by such factors as what we might call epistemic identity: an identity that involves particular beliefs—for example, religious and political identities. We may reflectively defend our identities’ beliefs rather than (...) reflect open-mindedly to adopt whatever beliefs cohere with the best arguments and evidence. This bounded reflectivism is explicated with an algorithmic model of reflection synthesized from philosophy and science that yields testable predictions, psychometric implications, and realistic metaphilosophical suggestions—for example, overcoming motivated reflection may require embracing epistemic identity rather than veiling it (à la Rawls 1971). So bounded reflectivism should be preferred to views offering anything less. (shrink)

The article concerns the specificity of contemporary Virtue Ethics, its main problems and its main streams.

According to many virtue ethicists, one of Aristotle’s important achievements was drawing a clear, qualitative distinction between the character traits of temperance and self-control. In an influential series of papers, John McDowell has argued that a clear distinction between temperance and self-control can be maintained only if one claims that, for the virtuous individual, considerations in favor of actions that are contrary to virtue are “silenced.” Some virtue ethicists reject McDowell’s silencing view as offering an implausible or inappropriate picture of (...) human virtue, but they argue that virtue can still be clearly distinguished from self-control by the absence of motivational conflict alone. In this paper, I argue that this criticism of McDowell is at most half right. If the silencing view is false, so that virtue can have a cost and the virtuous person can justifiably feel negative emotions in response to that cost, there is no principled reason why the virtuous person cannot also have motivational conflict. So, if one rejects the silencing view, then one must allow that the distinction between virtue and self-control is at most a matter of degree. (shrink)

Philosophy is a reflective activity. So perhaps it is unsurprising that many philosophers have claimed that reflection plays an important role in shaping and even improving our philosophical thinking. This hypothesis seems plausible given that training in philosophy has correlated with better performance on tests of reflection and reflective reasoning has correlated with demonstrably better judgments in a variety of domains. This article reviews the hypothesized roles of reflection in philosophical thinking as well as the empirical evidence for these roles. (...) This reveals that although there are fairly reliable links between reflection and philosophical judgment among both laypeople and philosophers, the role of reflection in philosophical thinking may nonetheless depend in part on other factors, some of which have yet to be determined. So progress in research on reflection in philosophy may require further innovation in experimental methods and psychometric validation of philosophical measures. (shrink)

One of the few points of unquestioned agreement in virtue theory is that the virtues are supposed to be excellences. The best way to understand the project of "virtue ethics" is to understand this claim as the idea that the virtues always yield correct moral action and, therefore, that we cannot be “too virtuous”. In other words, the virtues cannot be had in excess or “to a fault”. If we take this seriously, however, it yields the surprising conclusion that many (...) traits which have been traditionally thought of as “virtues” fail to make the grade. The most prominent solution to the problem, reminiscent of Aristotle's view, is found to generate more problems than it solves. -/- Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 49-60, March 2022. (shrink)

Today, many philosophers write on topics of contemporary interest, such as emerging technologies, scientific advancements, or major political events. However, many of these reflections, while philosophically valuable, fail to contribute to those who may benefit the most from them. In this article, we discuss our own experience of engaging with nursing researchers and practicing nurses. By drawing on the field of philosophical phenomenology, we intervene in a longstanding debate over the meaning of “empathy” in nursing, which has important implications for (...) nursing research, training, and practice. However, our intention is not only to introduce and discuss this philosophical intervention. Rather, we present this intervention as a model for how philosophers might successfully engage with the field of nursing, and perhaps with other fields as well, with the aim of effecting positive change in research or practice. The article proceeds in five parts. First, we introduce the problem of conceptual clarity in nursing and explain why many nursing concepts are still in need of refinement. Second, we discuss the origins of the concept of empathy in nursing and outline the challenges associated with borrowing theory from other fields. Third, we explain how nurses tend to conceptualize empathy today, drawing upon the psychological distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy. Fourth, we discuss our intervention in this debate and explain how we attempt to resolve existing conceptual confusions by developing the concept of empathy from the ground up. Fifth, we conclude by briefly reflecting upon some of the challenges of interdisciplinary engagement and providing some recommendations based upon our own experience. (shrink)

Several philosophers, known as situationists, have argued that evidence in social psychology threatens to undermine Aristotelian virtue ethics. An impressively large amount of empirical evidence suggests that most people do not consistently act virtuously and lack the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Since possessing moral virtues requires these features, situationists have argued that Aristotelianism does not accurately describe the character traits possessed by most people, and so the theory cannot lay claim to various theoretical advantages such as (...) explanatory power and egalitarian character education. In contrast to previous defenses which either downplay the relevance of psychological evidence or revise philosophical conceptions of virtue to fit the data, this paper appeals to previously neglected psychological evidence on self-efficacy and mental contrasting in combination with “non-idealized” interpretations of Aristotelian moral virtue to support the view that the available empirical evidence is compatible with widespread possession of virtuous character. These “non-idealized” interpretations of virtuous character allow for serious deviations from virtuous conduct, especially in the contexts described by the psychology experiments. Furthermore, decades of research on mental contrasting and self-efficacy suggest that subjects in the psychology experiments acted for reasons and possessed the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Hence, situationists are mistaken in thinking that, based on the empirical data, Aristotelianism is deprived of various theoretical advantages. (shrink)

Is prostitution immoral? In this book, Rob Lovering argues that it is not. Offering a careful and thorough critique of the many―twenty, to be exact―arguments for prostitution's immorality, Lovering leaves no claim unchallenged. Drawing on the relevant literature along with his own creative thinking, Lovering offers a clear and reasoned moral defense of the world's oldest profession. Lovering demonstrates convincingly, on both consequentialist and nonconsequentialist grounds, that there is nothing immoral about prostitution between consenting adults. The legal implications of this (...) view are also brought to bear on the current discourse surrounding this controversial topic. (shrink)

Moral particularism is often conceived as the view that there are no moral principles. However, its most fêted accounts focus almost exclusively on rules regarding actions and their features. Such action-centred particularism is, I argue, compatible with generalism at the level of character traits. The resulting view is a form of particularist virtue ethics. This endorses directives of the form ‘Be X’ but rejects any implication that the relevant X-ness must therefore always count in favour of an action.

In this chapter, I philosophically reflect on the management of corporate responsibility in the case of innovation. I first set the scene by contrasting responsibility in corporate social responsibility and innovation ethics, and arguing that classical conceptualizations of backward and forward looking responsibility are inappropriate in the case of innovation. Next, I introduce the concept of responsible innovation as a lens to understand the management of corporate responsibility in the case of innovation and show that the notions of virtue ethics (...) and practical wisdom are inappropriate for understanding what is at stake in innovation ethics, because the notion of practical wisdom is at odds with the nature of innovation. I conclude this chapter by proposing a concept of action-based responsible management of corporate innovation, which will be framed in terms of innovation as ethos. (shrink)

Would the virtuous person eat animals? According to some ethicists, the answer is a resounding no, at least for the virtuous person living in an affluent society. The virtuous person cares about animal suffering, and so, she will not contribute to practices that involve animal suffering when she can easily adopt a strict plant-based diet. The virtuous person is temperate, and temperance involves not indulging in unhealthy diets, which include diets that incorporate animals. Moreover, it is unjust for an animal (...) to be killed for food when this is unnecessary. By contrast, I argue that the virtuous person in an affluent society would eat animals, at least sometimes. I explain how the very virtues thought to motivate “virtuous modest veganism”—compassion, temperance, and justice—motivate the virtuous person to consume some animals. (shrink)

It has previously been argued that Schopenhauer is a distinctive type of virtue ethicist (Hassan, 2019). The Aristotelian version of virtue ethics has traditionally been accused of being fundamentally egoistic insofar as the possession of virtues is beneficial to the possessor, and serve as the ultimate justification for obtaining them. Indeed, Schopenhauer himself makes a version of this complaint. In this chapter, I investigate whether Schopenhauer’s moral framework nevertheless suffers from this same objection of egoism in light of how he (...) conceives of the relationship between morality and ascetic 'salvation'. Drawing upon his published works and letters, I argue that Schopenhauer has the resources to avoid the objection. Because of his idiosyncratic metaphysics, I argue that Schopenhauer can also avoid the problem of self-effacement which may result from the way in which he avoids the egoism objection. The discussion thus intends to establish further nuance to Schopenhauer’s conception of virtue and its value. (shrink)

Are there limits to what it is morally okay to imagine? More particularly, is imaginatively inhabiting morally suspect perspectives something that is off-limits for truly virtuous people? In this paper, I investigate the surprisingly fraught relation between virtue and a familiar form of imaginative perspective taking I call empathy. I draw out a puzzle about the relation between empathy and virtuousness. First, I present an argument to the effect that empathy with vicious attitudes is not, in fact, something that the (...) fully virtuous person can indulge in. At least one prominent way of thinking about the psychology of the virtuous person excludes the possibility that the virtuous could emotionally apprehend the world in a less than virtuous way, and empathizing with vicious outlooks does seem to run afoul of that restriction. Then, I develop an argument that runs in the contrary direction: virtue in fact requires empathy with vicious outlooks, at least in some situations. There is reason to think that a crucial part of being virtuous is ministering effectively to others’ needs, and there is also reason to think that other people may need to be empathized with, even if their emotional outlooks are at least minorly vicious. Finally, I outline two different solutions to this puzzle. Both solutions hold some promise, but they also bring new challenges in their train. (shrink)

Financial misconduct has come into the spotlight in recent years, causing market regulators to increase the reach and severity of interventions. We show that at times the economic benefits of illicit financial activity outweigh the costs of litigation. We illustrate our argument with data from the US Securities and Exchanges Commission and a case of investment misconduct. From the neoclassical economic paradigm, which follows utilitarian thinking, it is rational to engage in misconduct. Still, the majority of professionals refrain from misconduct, (...) foregoing economic rewards. We suggest financial activity could be reimagined taking into account intrinsic and prosocial motivations. A virtue ethics framework could also be applied, linking financial behavior to the quest for moral excellence and shared flourishing. By going beyond utilitarian thinking and considering alternative models, we offer a fuller account of financial behavior and a better perspective from which to design deterrence methods. (shrink)

The public and scholars alike largely consider envy to be reprehensible. This judgment of the value of envy commonly results either from a limited understanding of the nature of envy or from a limited understanding of how to determine the value of phenomena. Overcoming this state requires an interdisciplinary collaboration of psychologists and philosophers. That is, broad empirical evidence regarding the nature of envy generated in psychological studies must inform judgments about the value of envy according to sophisticated philosophical standards. (...) We conducted such a collaboration. Empirical research indicates that envy is constituted by multiple components which in turn predict diverse outcomes that may be functional for the self and society. Accordingly, the value of envy is similarly nuanced. Sometimes, envy may have instrumental value in promoting prudentially and morally good outcomes. Sometimes, envy may be non-instrumentally prudentially and morally good. Sometimes, envy may be bad. This nuanced perspective on the value of envy has implications for recommendations on how to deal with envy and paves the way toward future empirical and theoretical investigations on the nature and the value of envy. (shrink)

In response to prominent criticisms of virtue ethical accounts of right action, Daniel Russell has argued that these criticisms are misguided insofar as they rest on an incorrect understanding of what virtue ethicists mean by ‘right action’, drawing on Rosalind Hursthouse’s influential account of the term. Liezl van Zyl has explored, though not fully-endorsed, a similar approach. The response holds that virtue ethicists do not embrace a strong connection between (i) right action and (ii) what any given agent ought to (...) do in a given set of circumstances. Rather, ‘right action’ is a matter of action assessment, and indicates that a given action is morally excellent and praiseworthy. More generally, the proposed account of rightness emphasizes both (i) an agent’s past and how she came to be in certain circumstances - is it a result of her own vice or wrong actions? and (ii) the agent’s own future happiness and well-being - will an action be so terrible that her life is marred and ruined? The narrative structure of an agent’s life thus plays a significant role in determining whether an action is right. This revisionary conception of right action is the focus of the current chapter. (shrink)

The fact that real-world decisions made by artificial intelligences (AI) are often ethically loaded has led a number of authorities to advocate the development of “moral machines”. I argue that the project of building “ethics” “into” machines presupposes a flawed understanding of the nature of ethics. Drawing on the work of the Australian philosopher, Raimond Gaita, I argue that ethical dilemmas are problems for particular people and not (just) problems for everyone who faces a similar situation. Moreover, the force of (...) an ethical claim depends in part on the life history of the person who is making it. For both these reasons, machines could at best be engineered to provide a shallow simulacrum of ethics, which would have limited utility in confronting the ethical and policy dilemmas associated with AI. (shrink)

In his recent book on skill and virtue, Matt Stichter provides an account based on work in empirical psychology, specifically on self-regulation. In this paper I wish to argue that while this account is novel and well informed, it falls short. I present several examples that I believe Stichter’s view cannot explain and I try to identify the reasons for that. I argue that while trying to avoid the completely anti-intellectualist account of skill especially when it comes to virtue, Stichter (...) may have inadvertently presented an account that is too intellectualist. To clarify my claims, I start with a brief explanation of Stichter’s account of skill as self-regulation, a quick discussion of how he sees this as applying to virtue and then I turn to objections. I present cases in which the skill one acquires was never set as a goal to be achieved as Stichter’s picture would suggest, but simply comes as a byproduct of either aiming at developing a different skill or behaving in ways that don’t involve any goals at all. To this end, I discuss cases with no set goal and cases of transferable skills both in the moral and non-moral domains. I conclude that by defining virtue as self-regulation with a specific moral standard, Stichter may have violated one of the original motivations for the return to virtue ethics, namely that other views tend to over-intellectualize our moral behavior. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalism purports to show that moral evaluation of human action and character is an evaluation of natural goodness—a kind of evaluation that applies to living things in virtue of their nature and based on their form of life. The standard neo‐Aristotelian view defines natural goodness by way of generic statements describing the natural history, or the ‘characteristic’ life, of a species. In this paper, I argue that this conception of natural goodness commits the neo‐Aristotelian view to a problematic (...) anti‐individualism that results in the wrong assessment of individuals with uniquely adaptive adjustments. I then offer an alternative account of natural goodness that avoids this problem. Instead of relying on generic statements about a species, my account defines natural goodness based on counterfactual conditionals describing the modal properties of a single individual. I argue that this modal‐explanatory account gives a conception of natural goodness that is more intuitively plausible and better suited to capture the diversity and plasticity distinctive of life. (shrink)

The thesis investigates the implications for moral philosophy of research in psychology. In addition to an introduction and concluding remarks, the thesis consists of four chapters, each exploring various more specific challenges or inputs to moral philosophy from cognitive, social, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 explores and clarifies the issue of whether or not morality is innate. The chapter’s general conclusion is that evolution has equipped us with a basic suite of emotions that shape our moral judgments in (...) important ways. Chapter 2 presents and investigates the challenge presented to deontological ethics by Joshua Greene’s so-called dual process theory. The chapter partly agrees with his conclusion that the dual process view neutralizes some common criticisms against utilitarianism founded on deontological intuitions, but also points to avenues left to explore for deontologists. Chapter 3 focuses on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s suggestion that utilitarianism is less vulnerable to so-called evolutionary debunking than other moral theories. The chapter is by and large critical of their attempt. In the final chapter 4, attention is directed at the issue of whether or not social psychology has shown that people lack stable character traits, and hence that the virtue ethical view is premised on false or tenuous assumptions. Though this so-called situationist challenge at one time seemed like a serious threat to virtue ethics, the chapter argues for a moderate position, pointing to the fragility of much of the empirical research invoked to substantiate this challenge while also suggesting revisions to the virtue-ethical view as such. (shrink)

Part of understanding the meaning and power of algorithms means asking what new demands they might make of ethical frameworks, and how they might be held accountable to ethical standards. I develop a definition of networked information algorithms as assemblages of institutionally situated code, practices, and norms with the power to create, sustain, and signify relationships among people and data through minimally observable, semiautonomous action. Starting from Merrill’s prompt to see ethics as the study of “what we ought to do,” (...) I examine ethical dimensions of contemporary NIAs. Specifically, in an effort to sketch an empirically grounded, pragmatic ethics of algorithms, I trace an algorithmic assemblage’s power to convene constituents, suggest actions based on perceived similarity and probability, and govern the timing and timeframes of ethical action. (shrink)

I discuss three features of Matt Stichter’s new book The Skillfulness of Virtue. The thesis of the book is that virtue is best conceptualized as a type of skill, and the chapters of the book explore the implications of this thesis for our understanding of moral development, social psychology and comparisons of virtuous agents with agents who exhibit familiar types of non-moral expertise. The features of the book that I examine are (1) Stichter’s rejection of an ability to articulate reasons (...) for acting as a necessary condition for acting virtuously; (2) his comparison of expertise and virtue with respect to apt motivations and practical wisdom; and (3) whether his thesis invites a comparison of virtue and familiar non-moral expertise that is ultimately unfavourable to the adoption of virtue ethics as a normative ethical theory. I present no devastating objections, for I agree with most of what Stichter presents in the book. Rather, my aim is to raise points of clarification that might further the stimulating discussion of virtues and skills that Stichter’s book already provides. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is often understood as a rival to existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. But some have disputed the position that virtue ethics is a genuine normative ethical rival. This chapter aims to crystallize the nature of this dispute by providing criteria that determine the degree to which a normative ethical theory is complete, and then investigating virtue ethics through the lens of these criteria. In doing so, it’s argued that no existing account of virtue ethics is a complete (...) normative ethical view that rivals existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. Moreover, it is argued that one of the most significant challenges facing virtue ethics consists in offering an account of the right-making features of actions, while remaining a distinctively virtue ethical view. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Meng Zi’s idea of yi as a virtue. In it, I first briefly examine two influential interpretations of yi – the “appropriateness” approach that views yi as a disposition to do what is fitting in a given situation and the shame-centered approach that understands yi as a disposition to avoid what is shameful in the moral life. The first approach is too thin to distinguish yi from acting properly in general and the second reading confines the (...) definitive feeling involved in yi to a too moralized understanding of shame. Moreover, both fail to pay enough attention to the reliance of yi on social norms to receive its content. Through textual analysis, I show that in addition to a sense of shame, respect as an attitude of prioritizing other persons in the way specified by the relevant norms also serves as an important emotional core of yi as a virtue. In the end, I highlight the potential contribution of the Mengzian idea of yi to virtue ethics. The two-faceted structure of yi points to a way to account for rule-related virtues – virtues that have rule-conformity as a component. Equipped with thick descriptions of rule-related virtues, virtue ethics will be in a better position to guide actions. (shrink)

For Julia Driver, some virtues involve ignorance. Modesty, for example, is a disposition to underestimate self-worth, and blind charity is a disposition not to see others’ defects. Such “virtues of ignorance,” she argues, serve as counterexamples to the Aristotelian view that virtue requires intellectual excellence. But Driver seems to face a dilemma: if virtues of ignorance involve ignorance of valuable knowledge, then they do not merit virtue status; but if they involve ignorance of trivial knowledge, then they do not preclude (...) intellectual excellence. So, either there are no _virtues_ of ignorance, or there are no virtues of _ignorance_ – at least not the sort of ignorance that precludes intellectual excellence. Virtues of ignorance therefore fail as counterexamples to Aristotelian virtue theory. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles —and accidents they are involved in—attest to the urgent need to consider the ethics of artificial intelligence. The question dominating the discussion so far has been whether we want AVs to behave in a ‘selfish’ or utilitarian manner. Rather than considering modeling self-driving cars on a single moral system like utilitarianism, one possible way to approach programming for AI would be to reflect recent work in neuroethics. The agent–deed–consequence model :3–20, 2014a, Behav Brain Sci 37:487–488, 2014b) provides a (...) promising descriptive and normative account while also lending itself well to implementation in AI. The ADC model explains moral judgments by breaking them down into positive or negative intuitive evaluations of the agent, deed, and consequence in any given situation. These intuitive evaluations combine to produce a positive or negative judgment of moral acceptability. For example, the overall judgment of moral acceptability in a situation in which someone committed a deed that is judged as negative would be mitigated if the agent had good intentions and the action had a good consequence. This explains the considerable flexibility and stability of human moral judgment that has yet to be replicated in AI. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the ADC model and how the model could inform future work on ethics of AI in general. (shrink)

Is disgust morally valuable? The answer to that question turns, in large part, on what we can do to shape disgust for the better. But this cultivation question has received surprisingly little attention in philosophical debates. To address this deficiency, this article examines empirical work on disgust and emotion regulation. This research reveals that while we can exert some control over how we experience disgust, there’s little we can do to substantively change it at a more fundamental level. These empirical (...) insights have revisionary implications both for debates about disgust’s moral value and for our understanding of agency and moral development more generally. (shrink)

Situationists (e.g., Doris in Lack of character: personality and moral behavior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; Harman in Proc Aristot Soc 99:315–331, 1999. 10.2307/4545312), with reference to empirical work in psychology, have called into question the predictive and explanatory power of character traits and on this basis have criticized the empirical adequacy of moral virtue. More recently, Alfano (Philos Q 62(247):223–249, 2012; Character as moral fiction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013) has extended the situationist critique from virtue ethics to virtue (...) epistemology. On the line he advances, virtue responsibilism—the view that intellectual character traits play an important part in traditional and untraditional epistemological inquiries—is criticized as empirically inadequate in light of the extent to which individuals are shown to be susceptible to seemingly trivial and epistemically irrelevant situational influences. Alfano’s attempted redeployment of the situationist challenge to virtue responsibilism is on closer inspection not as straightforward as he claims. It is granted that the empirical adequacy of virtue responsibilism will be eventually threatened if it can be shown that virtuous motivation is, in light of situational factors, causally ineffective. As it turns out, various psychological studies which situationists have overlooked, suggest that virtuous motivation is causally efficacious in a way that favours the position of the virtue responsibilist over the situationist. In the first part of this paper, I outline the hard core of virtue theory: both a rich motivation requirement, and a commitment to the inherent relation between virtue and a good life; then I assess whether these are undermined by situationist criticism. I address the confusion of the existing debate, and the conclusion drawn is that virtue theory ultimately remains unscathed. In the second part of my paper I defend the empirical adequacy of virtue theory based on self-determination theory. When we afford closer attention to studies on the orientation of our motivation, it becomes clear how the dynamics of our motivation have a tremendous influence on desirable behavioural outcomes: a good life. (shrink)

This paper sheds light on the views of Mulla Sadra about virtue and action. The main question is how he explains the relationship, if any, between virtue and action. Mulla Sadra defines moral virtue as a settled inner disposition by which one acts morally, without need for any reflection or deliberation. This study seeks to explain how, according to Mulla Sadra, a virtue motivates the agent and leads him to do the right action easily. Is virtue the reason for or (...) cause of action? Is there a semantic link between action and virtue? Can we regard an action as right if it is not motivated by a virtue? Another question is about the role of action in the development of moral character. Is virtue acquired through the practice of corresponding actions? If we divide virtues into moral and intellectual, we should ask about the relationship between an epistemic action and intellectual virtues as well. In addition, since Mulla Sadra is a Muslim religious thinker, explaining the role of faith and religious rituals in forming moral character and also the relationship between faith and moral action is important. This paper will show that Mulla Sadra accepts the semantic, metaphysical, and psychological relationships between virtue and action. (shrink)

Mildly modified reprint of a chapter originally appearing in The Handbook of Virtue Ethics (2012).

The Stoic understanding of virtue is often taken to be a non-starter. Many of the Stoic claims about virtue – that a virtue requires moral perfection and that all who are not fully virtuous are vicious – are thought to be completely out of step with our commonsense notion of virtue, making the Stoic account more of an historical oddity than a seriously defended view. Despite many voices to the contrary, I will argue that there is a way of making (...) sense of these Stoic claims. Recent work in linguistics has shown that there is a distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives, with the absolute variety only applying to perfect exemplars. I will argue that taking virtue terms to be absolute gradable adjectives – and thus that they apply only to those who are fully virtuous – is one way to make sense of the Stoic view. I will also show how interpreting virtue theoretic adjectives as absolute gradable adjectives makes it possible to defend Stoicism against its most common objections, demonstrating how the Stoic account of virtue might once again be a player in the contemporary landscape of virtue theorizing. (shrink)

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where either (...) human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)

My aims are exegetical rather than critical: I offer a systematic account of Hursthouse's ethical naturalism with an emphasis on the normative authority of the four ends, and try to correct some misconceptions found in the literature. Specifically, I argue that the four ends function akin to Wittgensteinian hinge-propositions for our practice of ethical reasoning and as such form part of a description of the logical grammar of said practice.

In this paper we offer an argument against supererogation and in favour of moral perfectionism. We argue three primary points: 1) That the putative moral category is not generated by any of the main normative ethical systems, and it is difficult to find space for it in these systems at all; 2) That the primary support for supererogation is based on intuitions, which can be undercut by various other pieces of evidence; and 3) That there are better reasons to favour (...) perfectionism, including competing intuitions about the good-ought tie-up, and the epistemic preference for theoretical simplicity. (shrink)

This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and (...) their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face. (shrink)

Agent-based virtue ethical theories must deal with the problem of right action: if an action is right just in case it expresses a virtuous motive, then how can an agent perform the right action but for the wrong reason, or from a vicious motive? Some recent agent-based accounts purport to answer this challenge and two other related problems. Here I assess these accounts and show them to be inadequate answers to the problem of right action. Overall, it is shown that (...) the most recent and promising attempts at squaring agent-based virtue ethics with commonsense morality are flawed, and so, the case for agent-basing in general that much dimmer. (shrink)

In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master-concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical role in this conceptual shift. Once we understand that (...) our narrow, reductionist focus on “thin” ethical concepts is a contingent historical development, we are, I claim, in a much better position to evaluate it. (shrink)