I've always been suspicious of virtue ethics. It seems to draw too much from the intrinsic human need for status, and ends up saying "what is good" is suspiciously close to "what makes me an easily admired person." Even if the admiration is coming from yourself rather than others, the basic motivation seems to me the same.
That has some good points. I'm sure it uses the native architecture much better than consequentialist ethics. Maybe it even provides better motivational power than consequentialism. I could see running a virtue ethicist bubble within a consequentialist framework, the same way act utilitarianism is a deontologist bubble within a consequentialist framework, and maybe that's what you're doing.
Anything beyond that, though, and it basically sounds like saying "Screw the rest of the world, I'm doing what makes me feel good about myself". This is a very subtle kind of hedonism, and one that simulates a lot of the actions of an altruist, but it's still hedonism. Keep in mind that Aristotle's conception of a perfect transhuman being spent all its time in contemplation of how great it was. We can do better!
That book excerpt you cited contrasts the tradition of solving ethical dilemmas with the tradition of building character. I see where it's coming from - having a clever solution to the trolley problem is useless if you're just fundamentally a bad person - but the opposite is also true. Some of the worst atrocities in history were committed by people trying to be especially virtuous and show off their virtue, and who just had no idea (or didn't care) that it would lead to horrible results. You need both sides.
But the character side is almost a cliche. "You should, like, be a better person with more virtues" is true but useless. That's the kind of thing that went on in morality class in the Japanese schools where I taught; everyone came out with a warm glow from having signalled their commitment to morality, but no one learned anything.
The advantage of the method of teaching moral dilemmas is that they shows you how to be a good person. It's technical in the Eliezer sense - it actually distinguishes between different hypotheses so that you leave the classroom knowing more than you did when you went in.
Virtue ethics can't actually solve moral problems. If I support abortion, and you oppose abortion, I'm sure we could both come up with virtues that support our own position. I could say that I'm supporting the virtue of compassion, or mercy. You could say you're supporting the virtue of respect, or justice, or whatever. We both can say whatever the heck we wanted before we thought about ethics, we can both leave feeling righteous and like we've gained status from the interaction, and the only people we don't help are the ones actually trying to figure out whether to get an abortion or not, who are just as lost as before.
This may be one of those tragedy of the epistemic commons things like in that recent post, where virtue ethics is more personally useful but consequentialism is more useful for society-running type things.
I agree that self-improvement is interesting. I don't think I'd call it moral, though, unless it was for a moral goal. Just interesting.
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Date: 2010-05-28 12:01 am (UTC)I've always been suspicious of virtue ethics. It seems to draw too much from the intrinsic human need for status, and ends up saying "what is good" is suspiciously close to "what makes me an easily admired person." Even if the admiration is coming from yourself rather than others, the basic motivation seems to me the same.
That has some good points. I'm sure it uses the native architecture much better than consequentialist ethics. Maybe it even provides better motivational power than consequentialism. I could see running a virtue ethicist bubble within a consequentialist framework, the same way act utilitarianism is a deontologist bubble within a consequentialist framework, and maybe that's what you're doing.
Anything beyond that, though, and it basically sounds like saying "Screw the rest of the world, I'm doing what makes me feel good about myself". This is a very subtle kind of hedonism, and one that simulates a lot of the actions of an altruist, but it's still hedonism. Keep in mind that Aristotle's conception of a perfect transhuman being spent all its time in contemplation of how great it was. We can do better!
That book excerpt you cited contrasts the tradition of solving ethical dilemmas with the tradition of building character. I see where it's coming from - having a clever solution to the trolley problem is useless if you're just fundamentally a bad person - but the opposite is also true. Some of the worst atrocities in history were committed by people trying to be especially virtuous and show off their virtue, and who just had no idea (or didn't care) that it would lead to horrible results. You need both sides.
But the character side is almost a cliche. "You should, like, be a better person with more virtues" is true but useless. That's the kind of thing that went on in morality class in the Japanese schools where I taught; everyone came out with a warm glow from having signalled their commitment to morality, but no one learned anything.
The advantage of the method of teaching moral dilemmas is that they shows you how to be a good person. It's technical in the Eliezer sense - it actually distinguishes between different hypotheses so that you leave the classroom knowing more than you did when you went in.
Virtue ethics can't actually solve moral problems. If I support abortion, and you oppose abortion, I'm sure we could both come up with virtues that support our own position. I could say that I'm supporting the virtue of compassion, or mercy. You could say you're supporting the virtue of respect, or justice, or whatever. We both can say whatever the heck we wanted before we thought about ethics, we can both leave feeling righteous and like we've gained status from the interaction, and the only people we don't help are the ones actually trying to figure out whether to get an abortion or not, who are just as lost as before.
This may be one of those tragedy of the epistemic commons things like in that recent post, where virtue ethics is more personally useful but consequentialism is more useful for society-running type things.
I agree that self-improvement is interesting. I don't think I'd call it moral, though, unless it was for a moral goal. Just interesting.