While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.

This chapter presents an account of an angrily virtuous, or patient, person informed by research on emotion in empirical and philosophical psychology. It is argued that virtue for anger is determined by excellence and deficiency with respect to all three of anger’s psychological functions: appraisal, motivation, and communication. Many competing accounts of virtue for anger assess it by attention to just one function; it is argued that singular evaluations of a person’s anger will ignore important dimensions of anger that bear (...) on virtue and vice. Thus, possessing excellence with respect to only one function of anger is insufficient for virtue. The account is also extended to the characteristic vices of anger: wrath and meekness. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between the sources of normativity, reasons, and normative conflicts. It argues that common views about how normative reasons relate to their sources have important consequences for how we can understand putative normative conflicts.

Bernard Williams’ integrity objection poses a significant challenge to utilitarianism, which has largely been answered by utilitarians. This paper recasts the integrity objection to show that utilitarian agents could be committed to producing the overall best states of affairs and yet not positively act to bring them about. I introduce the ‘Moral Pinch Hitter’ – someone who performs actions at the bequest of another agent – to demonstrate that utilitarianism cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent maximizes utility by (...) positively acting in response to her duty, and cases in which an agent fails morally by relying upon someone else to perform the obligatory act. The inability to distinguish among these cases establishes a new, reloaded integrity objection to utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be wrong to have someone else make difficult moral decisions, and to act on those decisions, for me. (shrink)

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply “wisdom”) is the intellectual virtue that enables a person to make reliably good decisions about how, all-things-considered, to live and conduct herself. Because wisdom is such an important and high-level achievement, we should wonder: what is the nature of wisdom? What kinds of skills, habits and capacities does it involve? Can real people actually develop it? If so, how? I argue that we can answer these questions by modeling wisdom on expert decision-making skill in complex areas (...) like firefighting. I develop this expert skill model of wisdom using philosophical argument informed by relevant empirical research. I begin in Chapter 1 by examining the historical roots of analogies between wisdom and practical skills in order to motivate the expert skill model. In Chapter 2, I provide the core argument for the expert skill model. I then use the remaining chapters to pull out the implications of the expert skill model. In Chapter 3, I show that the expert skill model yields practical guidance about how to develop wisdom. In Chapter 4, I address the objection, due to Daniel Jacobson, that wisdom is not a skill that humans could actually develop, since skill development requires a kind of feedback in practice that is not available for all-things-considered decisions about how to live. Finally, in Chapter 5, I apply the expert skill model to the question, much discussed by virtue ethicists, of whether a wise person deliberates using a comprehensive and systematic conception of the good life. (shrink)

It seems better to love virtue than vice, pleasure than pain, good than evil. Perhaps it's also better to love virtuous people than vicious people. But at the same time, it's repugnant to suggest that a mother should love her smarter, more athletic, better looking son than his dim, clumsy, ordinary brother. My task is to help sort out the conflicting intuitions about what we should love. In particular, I want to address a problem for the no-reasons view, the theory (...) that love cannot be rationally justified. Since it seems better to love good people rather than evil villains, it appears that there are indeed reasons for (or, at least, against) love. Is it coherent to talk this way and deny that love can be justified? I think so and will explain how. (shrink)

Eudaimonists deny that eudaimonism is objectionably egoistic, but the way in which they do so commits them to eschewing an important insight that has been a central motivation for eudaimonism: the idea that an individual must, in the end, organize her life in such a way that it is good for her. In this paper I argue that the egoism objection prods eudaimonists to make a choice between (what we might roughly call) welfare-prior and excellence-prior eudaimonism, and I make some (...) preliminary remarks on behalf of welfare-prior eudaimonism. (shrink)

I argue for the view that there are important similarities between knowledge and acting for a normative reason. I interpret acting for a normative reason in terms of Sosa’s notion of an apt performance. Actions that are done for a normative reason are normatively apt actions. They are in accordance with a normative reason because of a competence to act in accordance with normative reasons. I argue that, if Sosa’s account of knowledge as apt belief is correct, this means that (...) acting for a normative reason is in many respects similar to knowledge. In order to strengthen Sosa’s account of knowledge, I propose to supplement it with an appeal to sub-competences. This clarifies how this account can deal with certain Gettier cases, and it helps to understand how exactly acting for a normative reason is similar to apt belief. (shrink)

I outline a number of parallels between trust and distrust, emphasising the significance of situations in which both trust and distrust would be an imposition upon the (dis)trustee. I develop an account of both trust and distrust in terms of commitment, and argue that this enables us to understand the nature of trustworthiness. Note that this article is available open access on the journal website.

In this chapter I explore what painful art can tell us about the nature and importance of human welfare. My goal is not so much to defend a new solution to the paradox of tragedy, as it is to explore the implications of the kinds of solutions that I find attractive. Both nonhedonic compensatory theories and constitutive theories explain why people seek out painful art, but they have troublesome implications. On some narrow theories of well-being, they imply that painful art (...) is bad for us. Accordingly, we may rightly wonder if it rational for people to watch melodramas or to listen to love songs. One might think that we should generally avoid unpleasant works of art. This implication flirts with absurdity. I show how it can be avoided by making a distinction between well-being and worth. (shrink)

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

Are horror films immoral? Gianluca Di Muzio argues that horror films of a certain kind are immoral because they undermine the reactive attitudes that are responsible for human agents being disposed to respond compassionately to instances of victimization. I begin with this argument as one instance of what I call the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA), and I argue that Di Muzio’s attempt to identify what is morally suspect about horror films must be revised to provide the most persuasive interpretation (...) of the ARA. I then argue that the ARA provides a compelling standard for evaluating the moral permissibility of creating and viewing horror films, yet I note that it is an exceedingly difficult practical task evaluating the risk that these films create for our reactive attitudes. My conclusion is that the ARA provides a useful way or orienting ourselves to the complicated details of evaluating the moral status of horror films. (shrink)

Theories of well-being tell us what makes a life good for the one who lives it. But there is more to what makes a life worth living than just well-being. We care about the worth of our lives, and we are right to do so. I defend an objective list theory of the worth of a life: The most worthwhile lives are those high in various objective goods. These principally include welfare and meaning. By distinguishing between worth and welfare, we (...) can capture the intuitive pull of broad theories of welfare without their liabilities. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka, Simon Keller, and Julia Annas have recently argued that virtue ethics is self-effacing. I contend that these arguments are rooted in a mistaken understanding of the role that ideal agency and agent flourishing (should) play in virtue ethics. I then show how a virtue ethical theory can avoid the charge of self-effacement and why it is important that it do so.

Virtue ethicists argue that modern ethical theories aim to give direct guidance about particular situations at the cost of offering artificial or narrow accounts of ethics. In contrast, virtue ethical theories guide action indirectly by helping one understand the virtues—but the theory will not provide answers as to what to do in particular instances. Recently, this had led many to think that virtue ethical theories are self-effacing the way some claim consequentialist and deontological theories are. In this paper I defend (...) virtue ethics against the charge of self-effacement. I distinguish between modestly self-effacing theories, immodestly self-effacing theories and theories that recommend indirect guidance. Though all self-effacing theories are indirect, not all indirect theories are self-effacing. I argue that virtue ethics is not self-effacing, but rather indirectly action-guiding. The response I articulate draws on the distinctive virtue ethical mode of action-guidance: namely, that thinking hard about virtue and what kind of person one aims to be offers the kind of guidance we want (or should want) as we face practical moral problems. (shrink)

The past couple of decades have witnessed a remarkable burst of philosophical energy and talent devoted to virtue ethical approaches to Confucianism, including several books, articles, and even high-profile workshops and conferences that make connections between Confucianism and either virtue ethics as such or moral philosophers widely regarded as virtue ethicists. Those who do not work in the combination of Chinese philosophy and ethics may wonder what all of the fuss is about. Others may be more familiar with the issues (...) but have doubts about the fruitfulness of this line of inquiry. It is therefore worth asking whether a constructive engagement between Confucianism and virtue ethics is worth turning into a significant, multi-generational research agenda. Most answers to this question will fall somewhere between two poles. At one end is the view that the line of inquiry has run its course, if ever there were a course to run in the first place; at the opposite end is the view that we’re only just getting started. And then there is a wide range of more moderate views falling between these two positions. Far from having exhausted the potential of virtue ethical approaches to Confucianism, I think we are standing on a philosophical gold mine that we’ve only just begun to tap. In what follows I would like to explain briefly why I take this to be the case. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, the logic and functions of character-trait ascriptions in ethics and epistemology is compared, and two major problems, the "generality problem" for virtue epistemologies and the "global trait problem" for virtue ethics, are shown to be far more similar in structure than is commonly acknowledged. I suggest a way to put the generality problem to work by making full and explicit use of a sliding scale--a "narrow-broad spectrum of trait ascription"-- and by accounting for the various uses (...) of it in an inquiry-pragmatist account. In virtue theories informed by inquiry pragmatism, the agential habits and abilities deemed salient in explanations/evaluations of agents in particular cases, and the determination of what relevant domains and conditions an agent's habit or ability is reliably efficacious in, is determined by pragmatic concerns related to our evaluative epistemic practices. (shrink)

An ethical theory is self-effacing if it tells us that sometimes, we should not be motivated by the considerations that justify our acts. In his influential paper 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories' [1976], Michael Stocker argues that consequentialist and deontological ethical theories must be self-effacing, if they are to be at all plausible. Stocker's argument is often taken to provide a reason to give up consequentialism and deontology in favour of virtue ethics. I argue that this assessment is a (...) mistake. Virtue ethics is self-effacing in just the same way as are the theories that Stocker attacks. Or, at the very least: if there is a way for virtue ethics to avoid self-effacement then there are ways for its rivals to avoid self-effacement too. Therefore, considerations of self-effacement provide no reason to prefer virtue ethics to its major rivals. (shrink)

Perfectionist views of well-being maintain that well-being ultimately consists, at least partly, in excellence or virtue. This paper argues that such views are untenable, focusing on Aristotelian perfectionism. The argument appeals, first, to intuitive counterexamples to perfectionism. A second worry is that it seems impossible to interpret perfection in a manner that yields both a plausible view of well-being and a strong link between morality and well-being. Third, perfectionist treatments of pleasure are deeply implausible. Fourth, perfectionism rests on a misunderstanding (...) about the nature of our interest in prudential and perfectionist values. Finally, perfectionism’s appeal seems to depend heavily on a failure to distinguish the notions of well-being and the good life. (shrink)

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant (...) to the virtuous person. I try to do this, using the work of the contemporary social psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the ‘flow experience’. Crucial here is the point that I consider accounts of virtue which take it to have the structure of a practical expertise or skill. It is when we are most engaged in skilful complex activity that the activity is experienced as ‘unimpeded’, in Aristotle’s terms, or as ‘flow’. This experience does not, as might at first appear, preclude thoughtful involvement and reflection. Although we can say what in general the phenomenology of virtue is like, each of us only has some more or less dim idea of it from the extent to which we are virtuous—that is, for most of us, not very much. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (i) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (ii) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value‐link); (iii) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value‐link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption—epistemic teleology—is untenable. (...) Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons‐responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on inquiry yields important results about when it is appropriate to inquire and to what extent norms on inquiry are compatible with other epistemic norms. However, philosophers have been remarkably silent on the matter of what questions we ought to take up in the first place. In this paper, I take up this question, and argue that moral considerations constitute fit-related, right-kind reasons to adopt interrogative attitudes towards, and so inquire about, particular questions. This is a conclusion (...) of more general interest, because – as I explain – we might think that moral considerations are at best wrong-kind reasons for attitudes. If my contentions are right, then there is at least one kind of attitude – namely interrogative attitudes – of which this is not true. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that humility is a dependent virtue: a virtue that depends on another virtue for its value. I consider three views about this relation: Specific Dependence, Unspecific Dependence, and Fittingness. I argue that, since humility cannot uniquely depend on another virtue, and since this uniqueness is desirable, we should reject Specific and Unspecific Dependence. I defend a Fittingness view, according to which the humble person possesses some objectively good quality fitting for humility. I show beyond Slote’s original characterization (...) of the dependence relation that, even if humility’s value depends on having objectively good qualities, humility itself can be one such quality. So, humility can depend on itself. I call this view Bootstrapped Fittingness. (shrink)

Across time and cultures, envy is widely regarded as a vice. This paper provides a theory of viciousness that explains why envy is a vice. First, it sketches an account of the trait of envy, utilizing some of the social psychology literature on social comparisons. Second, it considers some theories of vices—including Neo-Aristotelian, Kant’s, and Driver’s consequentialism—and briefly argues that they are not adequate in general or with regard to envy. Lastly it articulates a theory of viciousness on which a (...) trait’s degree of viciousness is determined by its disposition to produce actions and attitudes that are of disvalue; it then applies this theory to envy. (shrink)

Unlike its moral and intellectual counterparts, the virtue of aesthetic humility has been widely neglected. In order to begin filling in this gap, I argue that Kant’s aesthetics is a promising resource for developing a model of aesthetic humility. Initially, however, this may seem like an unpromising starting point as Kant’s aesthetics might appear to promote aesthetic arrogance instead. In spite of this prima facie worry, I claim that Kant’s aesthetics provides an illuminating model of aesthetic humility that sheds light (...) not only on the self- and other-directed attitudes it involves, but also on how aesthetic humility can serve as a corrective to the vices of aesthetic arrogance and aesthetic servility. In addition to revealing the ways in which Kant’s aesthetics prizes humility rather than arrogance, I aim to show that the Kantian model of aesthetic humility can enrich our understanding of humility more generally and contribute to the on-going effort in aesthetics to analyse specific aesthetic virtues and vices. (shrink)

My aim is to discuss the impact of higher-order evidence on aesthetic appreciation. I suggest that this impact is different with respect to aesthetic beliefs and to aesthetic affective attitudes (such as enjoyment). More specifically, I defend the view that higher-order evidence questioning the reliability of one’s aesthetic beliefs can make it reasonable for one to revise those beliefs. Conversely, in line with a plausible account of emotions, aesthetic affective attitudes are not directly sensitive to this type of higher-order evidence; (...) they are sensitive only to those features of objects that make such attitudes (un)fitting. Thus, I argue, there are cases of non-defective recalcitrant aesthetic attitudes where the subject has both a non-defective, fitting aesthetic affective attitude and a reasonable belief questioning the fittingness of this attitude. I further discuss whether, in this type of case, the subject has decisive reasons to try to change her recalcitrant attitudes—say by trying to modify her aesthetic affective dispositions. My answer is negative. Even granting that subjects always have aesthetic reasons to try to avoid aesthetically unfitting attitudes, these can be outweighed by further reasons not to do so—perhaps including aesthetic reasons related to the construction of valuable aesthetic identities or to the value of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

According to one tradition, the virtues and vices should be understood in terms of their relation to value. But inside this tradition, there are three distinct proposals: virtues are intrinsically valuable; virtues are instrumentally valuable; or a hybrid proposal on which virtues are either intrinsically or instrumentally valuable. In this paper, I offer an alternative proposal inside this tradition. I propose that virtues and vices should be understood in terms of the degreed properties of being virtuous and being vicious, which (...) I analyze in terms of the value and disvalue of actions and attitudes. I defend my proposal as the best inside this tradition by showing how it is immune from standard problems the other three proposals face. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship on the ethics of autonomous vehicles. Yet the ethical discourse has mostly been focusing on the behavior of the vehicle in accident scenarios. This paper offers a different ethical prism: the implications of the autonomous vehicle for human well-being. As such, it contributes to the growing discourse on the wider societal and moral implications of the autonomous vehicle. The paper is premised on the neo-Aristotelian approach which holds that as human beings, our well-being (...) depends on developing and exercising our innate human capacities: to know, understand, love, be sociable, imagine, create and use our bodies and use our willpower. To develop and exercise these capacities, our environments need to provide a range of opportunities which will trigger the development and exercise of the capacities. The main argument advanced in the paper is that one plausible future of the autonomous vehicle—a future of single-rider autonomous vehicles—may effectively reduce the opportunities to develop and exercise our capacities to know, be sociable and use our willpower. It will therefore be bad for human well-being, and this provides us with a moral reason to resist this plausible future and search for alternative ones. (shrink)

Veritists hold that only truth has fundamental epistemic value. They are committed to explaining all other instances of epistemic goodness as somehow deriving their value through a relation to truth, and in order to do so they arguably need a non-instrumental relation of epistemic value derivation. As is currently common in epistemology, many veritists assume that the epistemic is an insulated evaluative domain: claims about what has epistemic value are independent of claims about what has value simpliciter. This paper argues (...) that the insulation approach to epistemic value is incompatible with non-instrumental epistemic value derivation. Veritsts who want to avail themselves of this important explanatory resource should therefore abandon the insulation approach. (shrink)

The fact that our attitudes change poses well-known challenges for attitude-sensitive wellbeing theories. Suppose that in the past you favoured your adventurous youthful life more than the quiet and unassuming life you expected to live as an old person; now when you look back you favour your current life more than your youthful past life. Which period of your life is better for you? More generally, how can we find a stable attitude-sensitive standard of wellbeing, if the standard is in (...) part defined in terms of unstable attitudes? In this paper, I introduce an ‘attitudinal matrix’ framework that will help us clear up the problems posed by changing attitudes across time. In particular, it will help us see what is at stake, which principles that can or cannot be combined, and what might be the best solution. I defend a very plausible candidate constraint on a solution to the challenge of changing attitudes, which I call ‘diagonalism’. It is argued that among the three main forms of substantive attitude-sensitive wellbeing theories – the attitude-version, the object-version, and the satisfaction-version – it is the satisfaction-version that can both satisfy diagonalism and provide the best account of temporal and lifetime wellbeing. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

What are the fundamental divisions in ethics? Which divisions capture the most important and basic options in moral theorizing? In this article, I reject the ‘Textbook View’ which takes the tripartite division between consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics to be fundamental. Instead, I suggest that moral theories are fundamentally divided into three independent divisions, which I call the neutral/relative division, the normative priority division, and the maximizing division. I argue that this account of the fundamental divisions of ethics better captures (...) the main concerns that normative ethicists have when assessing moral theories. It also helps us make progress in comparative ethics and makes visible theoretical possibilities obscured by the Textbook View. (shrink)

I argue that all reasons for actions and attitudes consist in reasons for preferences; call this view RP. According to RP, reasons for A to believe that p just consist in reasons for A to prefer their believing that p to their not believing that p, and reasons for A to have a pro-attitude or perform an action just consist in reasons for A to prefer that she has that attitude/performs that action. I argue that we have strong reason to (...) accept RP because we can explain a correlation between reasons for prefer- ences and other reasons only if we accept RP. I argue that no objections undermine RP and that RP has interesting implications for the reasons for attitudes there are and for reasons fundamentalism. (shrink)

Sometimes inquirers may rationally pursue a theory even when the available evidence does not favor that theory over others. Features of a theory that favor pursuing it are known as considerations of promise or pursuitworthiness. Examples of such reasons include that a theory is testable, that it has a useful associated analogy, and that it suggests new research and experiments. These reasons need not be evidence in favor of the theory. This raises the question: what kinds of reasons are provided (...) by pursuitworthiness considerations? Are they epistemic reasons or practical reasons? I argue that pursuitworthiness considerations are a kind of non-evidential epistemic reason, which I call an inquisitive reason. In support of this, I first point out two important similarities between the traditional pursuitworthiness considerations discussed in philosophy of science, which I call promise reasons, and certain social epistemic reasons that I call social inquisitive reasons. Specifically, both kinds of reason (1) favor pursuing a theory in a non-evidential way, and (2) concern promoting successful inquiry. I then propose recognition of a new category of normative reason: inquisitive reasons. This category contains both promise and social inquisitive reasons. Finally, I argue that inquisitive reasons share three essential features with previously recognized epistemic reasons: a connection to epistemic aims, explanatory independence, and the presence of a specific right-kind/wrong-kind reasons distinction. Each of these features have been used to argue that evidence should be treated as part of a distinct, independent domain of epistemic normativity. Since inquisitive reasons share these features, they too should be considered part of this independent epistemic domain. Thus, inquisitive reasons, including pursuitworthiness considerations, are epistemic reasons. (shrink)

This paper argues that relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust) contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. -/- Love is important for the quality of human life. Not only do everyday experiences and analyses of pop culture and world literature attest to this; scientific research does as well. How exactly does love contribute to well-being? This chapter discusses the suggestion that it not only matters for the experiential quality of life, or for successful agency, but (...) that it actualizes our nature as “relational selves” (Chen, Boucher & Kraus 2011). I defend a hybrid or pluralist theory, which sees humans not only as subjects of experiences, or agents, or valuers, but also as relational selves. Expanding from love to other interpersonal relations, thriving relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust), contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. The paper will start by putting forward the proposal (Section 2), and then discussing it in relation to important alternatives. The focus is on alternatives which hold that love, and other forms of mutual recognition, are important for well-being, but only indirectly. One kind of challenge against the constitutive role of relations to others for well-being comes from the traditional theories that accommodate relations in some indirect ways (Section 3). A second kind of challenge admits that perhaps love is central to well-being in a direct way, but do we have reason to believe that other forms of mutual recognition are as well? (Section 4) Yet another kind of challenge is that love matters for the quality of lives in some other way than contributing to its prudential value: love is good, but is it good for us? (Section 5) A fourth kind of challenge concerns what we are, and the nature of “essentialism” involved in the approach stressing relational selfhood: cannot, say, motherhood contribute to one’s good life even if motherhood is contingent and not essential? (Section 6). In debates on recognition the idea that mutual recognition is also relevant for well-being has been put forward, for example in Axel Honneth’s (1992, ch.9 ) ”formal” theory of good life. Whatever else constitutes good life, relations of recognition form its backbone (cf. Ikäheimo 2014). Surprisingly little however is written about mutual recognition and well-being in detail, or recognition in comparison to traditional theories of well-being. This chapter aims to fill some of that void, and at the same time defend the view that well-being is one of the normative notions with which mutual recognition has a constitutive relationship. (shrink)

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)

Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from recognizably caring about one another in our productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is both exclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entails that efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient market behavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency because doing so serves (...) the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless have significant opportunity costs. The discussion yields a range of desiderata for non-alienated economic organization. (shrink)

Some people want their lives to possess importance on a large scale. Some crave fame, or at least wide recognition. And some even desire glory that will only be realised after their death. Such desires are either ignored or disparaged by many philosophers. However, although few of us have a real shot at importance and fame on any grand scale, these can be genuine personal goods when they meet certain further conditions. Importance that relates to positive impact and reflects our (...) agency answers a distinctive existential concern for one's life to matter. And since what is important merits wide appreciation, the step from wanting to be significant and wanting that significance widely appreciated is small. Still, desires for importance and fame can take a more vicious character when they are not properly structured, and when they are not dominated by more impartial aims. If we accept the personal value of importance and fame, it is hard to see why that value cannot extend beyond our death. The temporal distribution of glory is actually irrelevant to its value. But it is also a mistake to identify a concern with posthumous glory with the wish to leave a trace after our death. (shrink)

Nagasawa has argued that the suffering associated with evolution presents a greater challenge to atheism than to theism because that evil is incompatible with ‘existential optimism’ about the world – with seeing the world as an overall good place, and being thankful that we exist. I argue that even if atheism was incompatible with existential optimism in this way, this presents no threat to atheism. Moreover, it is unclear how the suffering associated with evolution could on its own undermine existential (...) optimism. Links between Nagasawa's argument and the current debate about the axiology of theism are also explored. (shrink)

The past is deeply important to many of us. But our concern about history can seem puzzling and needs justification. After all, the past cannot be changed: we can help the living needy, but the tears we shed for the long dead victims of past tragedies help no one. Attempts to justify our concern about history typically take one of two opposing forms. It is assumed either that such concern must be justified in instrumental or otherwise self-centered and present-centered terms (...) or that our interest in history must be utterly disinterested and pursued for its own sake. But neither approach can fully explain, or justify, our concern about the past. I propose a third approach, on which the past matters because it contains much that is of value—all those past people and the things they did or had endured—and this value calls for our fitting response. In short: the significance of the past is past significance. (shrink)

What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existing insights concerning the nature (...) of appreciation and the constraints to which it is subject. In closing, I note some limitations on the analogy between aesthetic appreciation and morally worthy action. (shrink)

It is widely held that for an agent to have any intellectual character virtues, they must be fundamentally motivated by a love of epistemic goods. In this paper, I challenge this ‘strong motivational requirement’ on virtue. First, I call into question three key reasons offered in its defence: that a love of epistemic goods is needed to explain the scope, the performance quality, or the value of virtue. Secondly, I highlight several costs and restrictions that we incur from its acceptance. (...) In so doing, I show that my titular question is more than just a question about the nature of virtuous motivation or the structure of intellectual virtue. Ultimately, it is a question about the very function of virtue epistemology itself. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a conceptual model to improve moral sensitivity in human resource development (HRD) to assist human resource (HR) practitioners in contending with moral challenges in HRD. The literature on the relationship between ethics and HRD suggests that the organizational and employee development discipline deals with ethical issues at three different levels: Individual, organizational and communal, and international levels. In section I, we elaborate on moral challenges facing HRD. In section II, we conceptualize moral sensitive HRD, proposing (...) a conceptual model in virtue of some essential ethical theories and concepts that assist HRD in grappling with those problems. We will show how each theory and concept can help HRD to deal with relevant problems. In section III, we elaborate on practical approaches to implement moral sensitivity in HRD. We put forward some strategies that help HRD bring those theories and concepts to bear on the ethical problems facing this discipline. Finally, we discuss moral education through learning theories to cultivate moral concepts and ethical dimensions in HRD education. (shrink)

When one is going through a personal hardship, it is often comforting, or emotionally helpful, to hear from someone else who has gone through something similar. This is a common, familiar human phenomenon, but this chapter argues that it is philosophically puzzling. Unless one is in some sort of moment of vice, one would not want the other person to have suffered the hardship, and one should be pained to hear that they have. And yet the phenomenon is that hearing (...) about their similar hardship makes one feel better, rather than worse. Why is that? The chapter considers a range of intuitive replies. It argues that while each might be part of the story, none resolves the puzzle. There remains a question as to why the phenomenon does not reflect a vice of insufficient care or concern for others. It then considers two possible answers, drawing on ideas from Adams and Bommarito, but argues that neither are satisfactory. The aim of the chapter is to bring out the puzzle and show that it is difficult to resolve. But it ends with a suggestion for a resolution. (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)

On a widely accepted view, what gives meaning to our lives is success in valuable ground projects. However, philosophers like Kieran Setiya have recently challenged the value of such orientation towards the future, and argued that meaningful living is instead a matter of engaging in atelic activities that are complete in themselves at each moment. This chapter argues that insofar as what is at issue is meaningfulness in its primary existential sense, strongly atelic activities do not suffice for meaning. Instead, (...) finding one’s life meaningful is warranted both by sustainable success in valuable prospective (future-oriented) projects, and by success in reflexive projects that aim to promote or realize a practice-dependent value that can be realized at each moment, but never for good. The latter kind of activities are only weakly atelic, since their aim remains distinct from the activity, and individual actions gain significance from serving a long-term commitment. Thus, whether our ground projects are prospective or reflexive, what we do at each moment contributes to leading a meaningful life only when it’s connected in the right way to what we do at other moments. (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)

Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don’t just trust one another’s aesthetic testimony; we trust one another’s aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic sincerity. We trust in another’s aesthetic sincerity when (...) we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons — rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience’s needs. Why do we care so much about an artist’s sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination. (shrink)