The aim of this essay is to test the claim that epistemologists—virtue epistemologists in particular—have much to learn from virtue ethics. The essay begins with an outline of virtue ethics itself. This section concludes that a pure form of virtue ethics is likely to be unattractive, so the virtue epistemologist should examine the "impure" views of real philosophers. Aristotle is usually held up as the paradigm virtue ethicist. His doctrine of the mean is described, and it is explained how that (...) doctrine can provide a framework for an account of epistemic virtue. The conclusion of the essay is that a virtue epistemology based on analogies with virtue ethics, though well worth developing and considering, will face several challenges in fulfilling the significant promises that have been made on its behalf. (shrink)

In recent decades, the idea has become common that so-called virtue ethics constitutes a third option in ethics in addition to consequentialism and deontology. This paper argues that, if we understand ethical theories as accounts of right and wrong action, this is not so. Virtue ethics turns out to be a form of deontology . The paper then moves to consider the Aristotelian distinction between right or virtuous action on the one hand, and acting rightly or virtuously on the other. (...) It is claimed that virtue might play an important role in an explanation of acting virtuously , but that such explanations can be charged with ‘double-counting’ the moral value of the virtues. The paper concludes that, if we focus on the question of the value of virtue, rather than on the notion of right action, there is room for a self-standing and important view which could be described as virtue ethics. (shrink)

The paper begins by noting the widespread disagreement that has existed in philosophy from its very inception until now. It is claimed that Henry Sidgwick was right to see the main debate in ethics as between egoists, consequentialists, and deontologists. This raises the question whether the best approach might be to seek a position based on the different theories rather than one alone. Some clarification is then offered of the main questions asked in ethics, and it is claimed that the (...) primary ethical question is that of Socrates: how should one live? Substantive agreement between our three normative theories is possible, but unlikely; and explanatory agreement is conceptually impossible. More restricted agreement may be possible, though doubts can be raised about Derek Parfit’s ‘triple theory’. One might attempt to combine different elements of the theories, syncretically, but again agreement is unlikely. The paper ends by considering the epistemic implications of disagreement, and with a recommendation of a more eirenic methodology for moral philosophy. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities and challenges of using journalistic exemplars in the digital network to explicate intellectual virtues necessary for flourishing in that network. It seeks to advance media ethics theorizing by drawing together exemplar-based virtue theory, specifically Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, and work on intellectual virtues, in particular Baehr’s delineation of nine intellectual virtues. After a description of theoretical foundations, this article articulates an approach to identifying and explicating intellectual virtues through journalistic exemplars in the digital network. It (...) then applies this approach to the work of two journalists who have frequently and thoughtfully used social media. This exploratory analysis suggests the proposed approach holds promise for explication of individual virtues and identification of patterns among them. The approach also carries challenges and limitations, partly related to the nature and scope of virtual evidence for enactment of virtues by journalists. The authors suggest future research to minimize these limitations and continue advancing theorizing within this framework. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVirtue ethics, a topic of growing interest in media ethics and philosophy more broadly, poses challenges for classroom instruction because it is rooted in long-term development of character. This article explores approaches for incorporating virtue into media ethics instruction and assessing associated student learning, based on an analysis of how students in a journalism ethics class demonstrated their understanding and application of virtues through activities tailored to virtue ethics. The analysis, in addition to suggesting the value of assignments such as (...) an exemplar paper for learning and assessment, highlights several challenges instructors should consider in both teaching and evaluating virtue instruction. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an objection to agent-based accounts of right action. Agent-based accounts of right action attempt to derive moral judgment of actions from judgment of the inner quality of virtuous agents and virtuous agency. A moral theory ought to be something that moral agents can permissibly use in moral deliberation. I argue for a principle that captures this intuition and show that, for a broad range of other-directed virtues and motives, agent-based accounts of right action fail to (...) satisfy this principle. (shrink)

Virtue and deontological ethics are now commonly contrasted as rival approaches to moral inquiry. However, I argue that neither metaethical party should seek complete, solitary domination of the ethical domain. Reductive treatments of the right or the virtuous, as well as projects that abandon the former or latter, are bound to leave us with a sadly diminished map of the moral territories crucial to our lives. Thus, it is better for the two parties to seek a more cordial and equal (...) relationship, one that permits metaethical pluralism, and acknowledges mutual dependence. I do not seek to prescribe how that relationship should look: this essay offers less a positive metaethical position than a prolegomenon to such a position, one that attempts to head off harmful attempts to reduce the territory of the aretaic to that of the deontic, or that of the deontic to the aretaic. (shrink)

We have controversial intuitions about the rightness of retributive punishment, keeping promises for its own sake, and pushing the heavy man off of the bridge in the footbridge trolley case. How do these intuitions relate to ethical theories? Should ethical theories aim to fit with and explain them? Or are only uncontroversial intuitions relevant to explanatory ethical theorising? I argue against several views that we might hold about the relationship between controversial intuitions and ethical theories. I then propose and defend (...) the view that ethical theories should only aim to fit with and explain the intuitions that almost all people (who minimally understand the relevant issues) share. I argue that this view has interesting and important implications for ethical theorising and theorising about justice and equality. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s account of the animal organism as it is presented in the Philosophy of Nature, with a special focus on its normative implications. I argue that the notion of “organisation” is fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity. The paper starts by showing how a Hegelian approach takes up the scientific image of organism and assigns a basic explanatory role to the notion of “organisation” in its understanding living beings. Moving from this premise, the paper turns to (...) the group of accounts in contemporary theoretical biology known as “organisational accounts”, which offer a widely debated strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity in organisms. As recent scholarship recognizes, these accounts explicitly rely on insights from Kant and Post-Kantianism. I make the historical and conceptual argument that Hegel’s view of the organism shares several basic commitments with OAs, especially regarding the notion of “organisational closure”. I assess the account of normativity that such accounts advance and its implications for how we approach Hegel. Finally, I argue that the notion of “organisation” is more fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity than the Aristotelian notion of “Gattung” or “species”, which by contrast appears derivative – at least in the Philosophy of Nature and the Lectures – and does not play the central role in his account maintained by some scholars. (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)

Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Midgley discussed Aristotle's ethics as an alternative to modern moral philosophy. This idea is best known from Anscombe's 1958 paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. The main...

This paper introduces a new form of virtue ethics—patient-centered virtue ethics—and argues that it is better placed to compete with Contractualism, Kantianism, and Utilitarianism, than existing agent and target-focused forms of virtue ethics. The opening part of the paper draws on T.M. Scanlon’s methodological insights to clarify what a theory of narrow morality should aim to accomplish, and the remaining parts argue that while familiar agent and target-focused forms of virtue ethics fail to meet those criteria, patient-centered forms promise to (...) do better. In addition, the paper rebuffs some prominent objections to virtue ethics that don’t adequately take into account the distinction between giving an account of the nature and importance of moral rightness and wrongness and giving an account of what makes acts right and wrong. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend the theoretical framework of an empirical model to describe people’s fundamental moral attitudes (FMAs) to animals, the stratification of FMAs in society and the role of FMAs in judgment on the culling of healthy animals in an animal disease epidemic. We used philosophical animal ethics theories to understand the moral basis of FMA convictions. Moreover, these theories provide us with a moral language for communication between animal ethics, FMAs, and public debates. We defend (...) that FMA is a two-layered concept. The first layer consists of deeply felt convictions about animals. The second layer consists of convictions derived from the first layer to serve as arguments in a debate on animal issues. In a debate, the latter convictions are variable, depending on the animal issue in a specific context, time, and place. This variability facilitates finding common ground in an animal issue between actors with opposing convictions. (shrink)

The decades-old trade of exporting nonhuman mammals by ship from Australia became a major political issue in 2011, when video taken by animal rights group Animals Australia was broadcast on television, showing Australian cattle being appallingly abused in Indonesian abattoirs. Taking its cue from the unprecedented response from Australians to the 2011 footage, many of whom were haunted by the video images, this article argues that the live export trade may be seen to wrong nonhuman animals according to several key (...) ethical frameworks. (shrink)

The military's purpose centrally includes fighting its nation's wars, serving as the nation's sword. The dominant approach to military ethics today, which I will call the ?sword approach?, focuses on this purpose and builds an ethic out of the requirements the purpose imposes on soldiers. Yet recently philosophers such as Shannon French and Nancy Sherman have developed an alternative that I will call the ?shield approach?, which focuses on articulating a warrior code as a moral shield that can safeguard soldiers? (...) humanity through the stresses and losses of war. Arguably, the sword approach is, if necessary, insufficient: the claims of the shield approach must be taken into account. It may seem that a military ethicist could simply employ both approaches in parallel. I will show, however, that the real possibility of conflict between the two approaches, due to their disparity of focus, calls for a more careful reconciliation. I will argue that conceiving military service as a practice in Alasdair MacIntyre's sense makes possible the integration of the central claims of the sword and shield approaches into one coherent and comprehensive military ethic. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that an ethical relationship with nature is analogous to Aristotelian friendship. Aristotle claims that friends are valuable principally in virtue of providing reflections of ourselves; yet extant accounts of environmental friendship do not explain how nonhuman organisms can satisfy this role. Recent work in neo-Aristotelian metaethics delineates a theory of value that underscores the similarities between the biological evaluations we make of living things and the moral evaluations we make of ourselves. I argue that these similarities (...) help us make sense of the claim that nonhuman organisms can be reflections of ourselves and thus the object of a relationship skin to friendship. I conclude by suggesting that Aristotle's conception of goodwill may be even more appropriate than friendship as a model for a virtuous relationship with nature. (shrink)

As science has grown in size and scope, it has also presented a number of ethical and moral challenges. Approaching these challenges from an ethical framework can provide guidance when engaging with them. In this article, I place science within a virtue ethics framework, as discussed by Aristotle. By framing science within virtue ethics, I discuss what virtue ethics entails for the practicing scientist. Virtue ethics holds that each person should work towards her conception of flourishing where the virtues enable (...) her to realize that conception. The virtues must become part of the scientist’s character, undergirding her intentions and motivations, as well as the resulting decisions and actions. The virtue of phronêsis, or practical wisdom, is critical for cultivating virtue, enabling the moral agent to discern the appropriate actions for a particular situation. In exercising phronêsis, the scientist considers the situation from multiple perspectives for an in-depth and nuanced understanding of the situation, discerns the relevant factors, and settles upon an appropriate decision. I examine goods internal to a practice, which are constitutive of science practiced well and discuss the role of phronêsis when grappling with science’s ethical and moral features and how the scientist might exercise it. Although phronêsis is important for producing scientific knowledge, it is equally critical for working through the moral and ethical questions science poses. (shrink)

Inspired by the debate about character between situationism and virtue ethics, I argue that John Doris's idea, ‘local trait’, offers a fresh insight into contemporary character education. Its positive variant, ‘local virtue’, signals an inescapable relay station of the gradual development of virtue, and serves as a promising point of departure for advanced growth. The idea of converting local virtues to more global ones is accordingly proposed to represent an empirically more realistic way of conceiving how to approach the ethical (...) ideal of global virtues. It helps to direct our gaze to the great intermediate developmental stages of virtue, which mark out a whole spectrum of virtues of varying degrees that fall short of full virtue. This new notion works together with the traditional Aristotelian account to provide a full account of how to effectively undertake the age-old educational business of the inculcation of virtues. (shrink)

Elizabeth Swann: Wait! You have to take me to shore.According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren—.

We tend to think that the difficulties in bioethics spring from the novel and alarming issues that arise due to discoveries in the new biosciences and biotechnologies. But many of the crucial difficulties in bioethics arise from the assumptions we make about ethics. This paper offers a brief overview of bioethics, and relates ethical ‘principlism’ to ‘ethical fundamentalism’. It then reviews some alternative approaches that have emerged during the second phase of bioethics, and argues for a neo-Aristotelian approach. Misconceptions about (...) ethical principles and ethical reasoning not only distort our views of the business of bioethics, but they also prevent us from facing up to the formidable problems posed by ethical pluralism in so-called liberal societies. (shrink)

Though we cherish freedom and equality, there are human relations we commonly take to be morally permissible despite the fact that they essentially involve an inequality specifically of freedom, i.e., parental and fiduciary relations. In this article, I argue that the morality of these relations is best understood through a very old and dangerous concept, the concept of status. Despite their historic and continuing abuses, status relations are alive and well today, I argue, because some of them are necessary. We (...) must therefore carefully specify the conditions in which such status relations may morally obtain, as well as the duties of virtue and duties of right to which all parties are subject when it does (including a duty of care) to clearly articulate the ways in which these putatively moral status relations that essentially involve an asymmetry of autonomy (status relations) can go well or badly even within the context of the Kantian tradition from which our current legal and social practices arose. To this end, I offer Kant's own concept of status as a promising one because in Kant's theory, status is a nexus of virtue and right that is reducible to neither property nor contract but akin to each in familiar ways. Once status is admitted as an alternative to property and contract, status may be extended beyond Kant's domestic paradigm, most perspicuously to institutional ethics. In this article, I sketch a status-based theory of stakeholding that locates environmental impact, institutional oppression, and other significant features of our moral landscape within a Kantian framework of duties rich enough to more accurately characterize the complexities of stakeholding than current tradition has allowed. (shrink)

This paper sets out to explore apparent contradictions between claims or assumptions to the effect that: (i) teaching is a profession; (ii) good teaching involves the cultivation of positive personal relationships with pupils; (iii) professional relationships should be of an essentially formal or impersonal nature. It is argued that the very real contradictions to which teaching as a professional occupation is prone are a function of fundamental tension between the essentially deontic character of professional principle and regulation, and the inherently (...) 'virtue ethical' nature of teaching as a form of pre-theoretical and non-technical moral association. The paper concludes by identifying and offering some comment on three such areas of tension. (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)

This paper adopts justificatory moral pluralism – a multilevel framework for justifying the choice by different agents of the most appropriate norms and values to guide their decisions and actions – to climate change. Its main objective is to investigate how ethics may effectively help achieve a better result in deciding how to mitigate, adapt, or compensate by enhancing the moral acceptability of the available policies or actions that are most likely to counter the effects of climate change. JMP presents (...) agents – individuals, nonstate, and state – with a thorough yet flexible process of matching policies and actions with ethical theories, raising the robustness of moral reasons for politically efficient and individually motivating courses of action against climate change. JMP triggers climate responsibility and sensibility in agents, engaging them in discussing and finding out individually and collectively the most acceptable paths for the decarbonisation transition that is fast approaching. (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)

This paper pursues a value-based evaluation of a variety of character traits which philosophers have identified with humility, and it proposes a novel account of a character trait not implausibly identified with humility which has a unique kind of value. I begin by explaining why a value-based evaluation of various traits identified with virtues is preferable to the more common contemporary counterexample-based evaluation of these traits. I then undertake a value-based evaluation of various traits which have been identified with humility, (...) showing that thus far none of these traits have a particular kind of value that humility might reasonably be thought to have—a nonameliorative value not based in epistemic, affective, or behavioral accuracy. I conclude by developing an account of a character trait not implausibly identified with humility which does have this kind of value. The trait in question is a disposition to prefer promoting the good of others to one’s own good when these goods are equal or incommensurable. (shrink)

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo-Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross-pollination from a variety of disciplines is a (...) strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today. (shrink)

The Confucian philosopher Mengzi believes that ‘extending’ one's kindness facilitates one's moral development and that it is intimately tied to performing morally good actions. Most interpreters have taken Mengzian kindness to be an emotional state, with the extension of kindness to centrally involve feeling kindness towards more people or in a greater number of situations. I argue that kindness cannot do all the theoretical work that Mengzi wants it to do if it is interpreted as an emotion. I submit that (...) Mengzi's notion of extending kindness is best understood as the exercise of a capacity for intelligently performing kind actions. (shrink)

J. E. Grunig's seminal work on excellence theory and subsequent works by other scholars advance the two-way symmetrical model as a best-practice approach to public relations. In part, two-way symmetry is preferred because of an assertion that it is the most ethical form of practice. However, only within a means-based deontological framework do two-way symmetry and the principle of dialogue emerge as universally ethical. Taking an ends-based utilitarian standpoint makes the potential ethical flaws of two-way symmetry apparent. Issues of moral (...) luck, hegemony, and the limitations of dialogue also pose problems for the moral primacy claims surrounding two-way symmetry. The analysis that follows points toward a need for a more relative and contingent approach to PR ethics, and by extension to PR practice itself. (shrink)

My aim is to vindicate two distinct and important moral categories – ideals and aspirations – which have received modest, and sometimes negative, attention in recent normative debates. An ideal is a conception of perfection or model of excellence around which we can shape our thoughts and actions. An aspiration, by contrast, is an attitudinal position of steadfast commitment to, striving for, or deep desire or longing for, an ideal. I locate these two concepts in relation to more familiar moral (...) concepts such as duty, virtue, and the good to demonstrate, amongst other things, first, that what is morally significant about ideals and aspirations cannot be fully accommodated within a virtue ethical framework that gives a central role to the Virtuous Person as a purported model of excellence. On a certain interpretation, the Virtuous Person is not a meaningful ideal formoral agents. Second, I articulate one sense in which aspirations are morally required imaginative acts given their potential to expand the realm of practical moral possibility. (shrink)

Implicit intergroup biases have been shown to impact social behavior in many unsettling ways, from disparities in decisions to “shoot” black and white men in a computer simulation to unequal gender-based evaluations of résumés and CVs. It is a difficult question whether, and in what way, agents are responsible for behaviors affected by implicit biases. I argue that in paradigmatic cases agents are responsible for these behaviors in the sense that the behavior is “attributable” to them. That is, behaviors affected (...) by implicit biases reflect upon who one is as a moral agent. (shrink)

Following John Rawls, writers like Bernard Williams and Christine Korsgaard have suggested that a transparency condition should be put on ethical theories. The exact nature of such a condition and its implications is however not anything on which there is any consensus. It is argued here that the ultimate rationale of transparency conditions is epistemic rather than substantively moral, but also that it clearly connects to substantive concerns about moral psychology. Finally, it is argued that once a satisfactory form of (...) the transparency condition is formulated, then, at least among the main contenders within ethical theory, it speaks in favor of a broadly Aristotelian approach to ethical theorizing. (shrink)

According to the commonsense view of civic virtue, the places to exercise civic virtue are largely restricted to politics. In this article, I argue for a more expansive view of civic virtue, and argue that one can exercise civic virtue equally well through working for or running a for-profit business. I argue that this conclusion follows from four relatively uncontroversial premises: (1) the consensus definition of “civic virtue”, (2) the standard, most popular theory of virtuous activity, (3) a conception of (...) the common good widely shared by liberal political philosophers, and (4) the mainstream economic theory of for-profit business. (shrink)

What is the nature of human well-being? This paper joins the ancient debate by rejuvenating an ancient claim that is quite unfashionable among moral philosophers today, namely, the Aristotelian claim that moral virtue is (non-instrumentally) necessary for human well-being. Call it the Aristotelian Virtue Condition (AVC). This view can be revived for contemporary debate by a state-of-the-art approach that we might call constructivist experimental philosophy, which takes as its goal the achievement of a reasonable constructivist account of well-being and takes (...) the investigation of actual folk intuitions as the central means to achieving that goal. The paper motivates this approach and challenges the commonplace philosophical rejection of AVC by arguing (1) that folk intuitions should count as evidence in the debate, especially if we aim at a constructivist account of well-being, (2) that folk intuitions can be accurately elicited through a thought experiment (the “Crib Test”), and (3) that there is some reason (subject to experimental confirmation) for thinking that folk intuitions, thus elicited, support AVC. Aristotelian ethics, and indeed the entire virtue ethics tradition, has come under fire recently by empirically informed philosophers who question the empirical adequacy of the postulation of robust character traits, but regardless of how that debate turns out, other parts of this tradition might be empirically supported rather than undermined. This paper sketches a promising, empirically informed way of supporting Aristotelian views of well-being. (shrink)

A continuous objection to virtue ethics has been its alleged inadequacy in providing a distinctive account of right action and determinate action guidance. The virtue ethical criterion “An action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e., acting in character) do in the circumstances,” has been claimed by some to give wrong results in some cases, and thus doomed to failure. However, I argue that the opponents who raise these objections overlook an important (...) distinction between “action assessment” and “action guidance” in virtue ethics. Once this distinction which is alien to other dominant moral theories is taken into consideration, I show that virtue ethics can supply a distinctive theory of right action and sufficient action guidance. Moreover, I will demonstrate that this distinction allows us to see that virtue ethics has some structural advantages that enable it to provide multiple guidance strategies to different agents with differential cognitive and moral developmental levels. Finally, I will argue that while theories that tell moral agents what to do by providing exact answers might affect moral agency in negative ways by frustrating the development of an integrated moral character, virtue ethics also avoids this effect. (shrink)

Roger Silverstone proposed media hospitality as an important element of media ethics. I agree that media hospitality can make a valuable contribution to media ethics. However, I have doubts about grounding media hospitality in what has been referred to as the “deductive abstractions and absolutist language of much media ethics theorizing” founded on Enlightenment assumptions. Despite his own reservations about Enlightenment theorizing, I propose that Silverstone's account ultimately suffers from these problems of abstraction and absolutism, as seen most clearly from (...) the vantage point of Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics. (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)

Doernberg and Truog (2023) offer a “spheres of morality framework” (11) to illuminate ethical conflicts and improve ethical decision making in healthcare. A sphere of morality is the collection of...

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)

This paper discusses whether the collateral harm of imprisonment to the close family members and children of prison inmates may give rise to special moral obligations towards them. Several collateral harms, including decreased psychological wellbeing, financial costs, loss of economic opportunities, and intrusion and control over their private lives, are identified. Two competing perspectives in moral philosophy are then applied in order to assess whether the harms are permissible. The first is consequentialist and the second is deontological. It is argued (...) that both of them fails and therefore it is hard to defend the position that allowing for these harms would be morally permissible, even for the sake of the overall aims of incarceration. Instead, it is argued that these harms imply that imprisonment should only be used as a last resort. Where it is necessary, it should give rise to special moral obligations. Using the notion of residual obligation, these obligations are defended, categorized and clarified. (shrink)

A basic challenge to naturalistic moral realism is that, even if moral properties existed, there would be no way to naturalistically represent or track them. Here, the basic structure for a tracking account of moral epistemology is given in empirically respectable terms, based on a eudaimonist conception of morality. The goal is to show how this form of moral realism can be seen as consistent with the details of evolutionary biology as well as being amenable to the most current understanding (...) of representationalist or correspondence theories of truth. (shrink)

There is a difference between an object's being good simpliciter and an object's being good of its kind, and the vast majority of philosophers have supposed that it is the former variety of goodness that is relevant to ethics. I argue that one may be a meta-ethical realist while employing the notion of good of a kind to the exclusion of good simpliciter; I call such a view kindism. I distinguish between two varieties of kindism, explicate the details of one (...) of those varieties, and defend kindism against possible objections. (shrink)

The most long-standing criticism of virtue ethics in its traditional, eudaimonistic variety centers on its apparently foundational appeal to nature in order to provide a source of normativity. This paper argues that a failure to appreciate both the giving and taking of reasons in sustaining an ethical outlook can distort a proper understanding of the available options for this traditional version of virtue ethics. To insist only on giving reasons, without also taking (maybe even considering) the reasons provided by others, (...) displays a sadly illiberal form of prejudice. The paper finds and criticizes such a distortion in Jesse Prinz’s recent discussion of the ‘Normativity Challenge’ to Aristotelian virtue ethics, thus highlighting a common tendency that we can helpfully move beyond. (shrink)

This paper concerns the prospects for an internal validation of the Aristotelian virtues of character. With respect to the more contentious trait of patriotism, this approach for validating some specific trait of character as a virtue of character provides a plausible and nuanced Aristotelian position that does not fall neatly into any of the categories provided by a recent mapping of the terrain surrounding the issue of patriotism. According to the approach advocated here, patriotism can plausibly, though qualifiedly, be defended (...) as a virtue, by stressing its similarities to another loyalty-exhibiting trait about which Aristotle has quite a bit to say: the virtue of friendship. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, at least, and presumably under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, certain advocates of Aristotle’s ethics have insisted that a proper validation of the virtues of character must proceed only from within, or be internal to, the particular evaluative outlook provided by possession of the virtues themselves. The most influential advocate of this line of thinking is arguably John McDowell, although Rosalind Hursthouse and Daniel C. Russell have also more recently embraced it. Here I consider whether a (...) distinction between the ‘substantive virtues’ and the ‘virtues of will power’ ultimately threatens that way of thinking about Aristotle’s ethics. If so, it would encourage a different reading of Aristotle’s ethics, one that McDowell has described as a “historical monstrosity”. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of moral expertise in the contemporary philosophical debate, with a focus on three accounts discussed across moral epistemology, bioethics, and virtue ethics: an epistemic authority account, a skilled agent account, and a hybrid model sharing key features of the two. It is argued that there are no convincing reasons to defend a monistic approach that reduces moral expertise to only one of these models. A pluralist view is outlined in the attempt to reorient the discussion (...) about moral expertise. (shrink)

This paper proposes the idea of thinking about practical rationality in terms of self-regulation and defends the thesis that self-regulation is a virtue, insofar as we have reason to think it is our highest form of practical rationality. I argue that understanding self-regulation as a virtuous form of practical reasoning is called for given the kinds of limitations we face in developing agency and pursuing our goals, and presents us with several advantages over traditional understandings of practical rationality.

Julia Annas argues that Aristotle's understanding of the phenomenological experience of the virtuous agent corresponds to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of the ?flow,? which is a form of intrinsic motivation. In this paper, I explore whether or not Annas? understanding of virtuous agency is a plausible one. After a thorough analysis of psychological accounts of intrinsic and extrinsic states of motivation, I argue that despite the attractiveness of Annas? understanding of virtuous agency, it is subject to a serious problem: all (...) virtuous activities are not ones that we take pleasure in independently of their connection to ?virtue.? Moreover, somewhat sadly, we have no compelling reason to think that they can become so. Our psychology is not constituted to find the exercise of virtue, in all of its extensions, interesting and enjoyable, apart from its connection to virtue. (shrink)