This chapter contains sections titled: The Structure of Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology Virtue and Context Virtue and Emotion Virtues and Vices Acknowledgments References.

Abstract: This introduction to the collection Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic addresses three main questions: (1) What is a virtue theory in ethics or epistemology? (2) What is a virtue? and (3) What is a vice? (1) It suggests that a virtue theory takes the virtues and vices of agents to be more fundamental than evaluations of acts or beliefs, and defines right acts or justified beliefs in terms of the virtues. (2) It argues that there are two (...) important but different concepts of virtue: virtues are qualities that attain good ends, and virtues are qualities that involve good motives. (3) Accordingly, vices are qualities that either fail to attain good ends or involve bad motives. Finally, the introduction summarizes the eleven essays in the collection, which are divided into four sections: the Structure of Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology; Virtue and Context; Virtue and Emotion; and Virtues and Vices. (shrink)

It seems to be a phenomenon of contemporary life that we consider goodness embarrassing and rather dull. In contrast, the activities and inner lives of villains are deemed more complex and fascinating than those of good people. This paper attempts to understand the conception of goodness that underlies this phenomenon, and I suggest that informing it is the combination of two ideas, in tension with each other: firstly, a distorted understanding of the ancient conception of full virtue as the (...) absence of all inner conflict; and secondly, the intuition that real goodness is only apparent and generated in inner conflict. In response, I offer an alternative picture of goodness as an ongoing, active and progressive relation to value, and conclude that in order to render goodness attractive again we need more adequate portraits of goodness from both philosophy and art. (shrink)

Our attitude towards cynicism is ambivalent: On the one hand we condemn it as a character failing and a trend that is undermining political and social life; on the other hand, we are often impressed by the apparent realism and honesty of the cynic. My aim in this paper is to offer an account of cynicism that can explain both our attraction and aversion. After defending a particular conception of cynicism, I argue that most of the work in explaining (...) the fault of cynicism can be done by referring not to the cynic’s beliefs about humanity, but to the attitude cultivated as a response to that belief. This attitude is hostile to the virtues of faith, hope and charity, upon which relationships and our sense of moral community depend. In conclusion, I suggest that holding the cynical belief is itself immoral, and that cynicism is disrespectful and destructive of morality. (shrink)

What does it mean to be a good thinker? Which virtues work together in someone who possesses good intellectual character? Although recent research on virtues has highlighted the benefits of individual intellectual virtues, being an excellent thinker is likely a function of possessing multiple intellectual virtues. Specifically, a good thinker would both recognize one’s intellectual shortcomings and possess an eagerness to learn driven by virtues such as love of knowledge, curiosity, and open-mindedness. Good intellectual character (...) may only successfully manifest when individuals possess not just one or a few intellectual virtues, but a larger set of such virtues to different degrees. However, little is currently known about what combination of virtues are necessary for good thinking. We argue that it is important to identify and clarify the nature of the good thinker and outline a profile methodology for achieving this goal. This approach characterizes the good thinker in terms of a profile of multiple intellectual virtues. Understanding this profile can allow greater insight into the extent to which people possess such a profile, and the potential for societal benefits of educating for these qualities. (shrink)

In a chapter of The Methods of Ethics entitled “Ultimate Good”, Henry Sidgwick defends hedonism, the theory that pleasure and only pleasure is intrinsically good, that is, good in itself and apart from its consequences. First, however, he argues against the theory that virtue is intrinsically good. Sidgwick considers both a strong version of this theory — that virtue is the only intrinsic good — and a weaker version — that it is one intrinsic (...) class='Hi'>good among others. He tries to show that neither version is or can be true. Against the strong version of the theory, Sidgwick argues as follows. Virtue is a disposition to act rightly, and right action is identified by the good it promotes. But this means that treating virtue as the only intrinsic good involves a “logical circle”: virtue is a disposition to promote what is good, where what is good is itself just a disposition to promote what is good. Virtue turns out to be a disposition to promote virtue. As Hastings Rashdall notes in a commentary on Sidgwick, one can accept many of this argument's premises yet reject its conclusion. One can agree that right action is identified by its consequences but still hold that virtue is the only intrinsic good. One can do this if one denies that the relevant consequences are good. This is the Stoic view: certain states are “preferred”, and thus supply the criterion of right action, but are not themselves intrinsically good. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century 'virtue' was a word to conjure with. It called to mind heroic predecessors from the Roman Republic such as Cato and Brutus and invoked qualities of personal integrity, selflessness and a concern for the common good, which, though urgently needed, seemed desperately lacking, both in the ruthless party struggles of the age of Anne and subsequently in the all-pervading political corruption of the Walpole administration. When the longed-for political saviour failed to materialize it was (...) increasingly felt that if virtue existed at all then it would have to be sought for among the lower orders of society or else in provincial areas, where simpler and nobler values might still prevail. But with the coming of the French Revolution and Romanticism virtue began to lose its powerful resonances - it now seemed naive and simplistic, all too ready to deny both the complexities of human nature and the possibility of determination by external cultural forces. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle has given a tableau of the desirable virtues and their infringement through the surpassing of their limits. Thus, every virtue is framed or delimited by vices that represent either its excess or its deficiency. However, this type of defining is related to deep, metaphysical reasons: since every being, especially the living one, has its telos. Man’s telos is to practise and fulfil his human specificity, i.e. reason, and reason is the measure/quality of virtue (...) as such; the excess or deficiency in his behaviour perverts and even stops the realisation of the humanity of man. And this humanity is, in turn, in accordance to the telos of nature, the good in and for the preservation of all things. If, hypothetically, persons would not be virtuous at all, this accordance would not be realised and man would be an accident in the logic of nature: and accidents are removed, sooner or later. The criterion of the “quantitative” moral evaluation is thus qualitative: a quality, the good aimed at by mindfulness applied to the concrete particular moral relations and learned from experience. (shrink)

‘It is necessary to a Prince to learn how not to be good’. This quotation from Machiavelli’s The Prince has become the mantra of the standard dirty hands thesis. Despite its infamy, it features proudly in most conventional expositions of the dirty hands problem, including Michael Walzer’s original analysis. In this paper, I wish to cast a doubt as to whether the standard conception of the problem of DH—the recognition that, in certain inescapable and tragic circumstances an innocent course (...) of action is unfeasible—fully captures Machiavelli’s message and its terrifying implications. In particular, I argue that the standard DH thesis is inadequately ‘static’: it conceives the conflict between ordinary morality and political morality as a stark, momentary and rare paradox of action—an anomaly disrupting the normality of harmony. As such it misconceives both the extent and the nature of the rupture between morality and politics. In this sense, the argument I shall advance does just involve an exercise in the history of political thought. Rather, I want to suggest that, by virtue of its failure to take Machiavelli’s insights seriously, the standard DH thesis fails to live up to its purported capacity to capture the complexity and fragmentation of our moral cosmos and that, consequently, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled version of the idealism and monism it purports to reject. (shrink)

What makes for a good education? What does one need to count as well-educated? Knowledge, to be sure. But knowledge is easily forgotten, and today's knowledge may be obsolete tomorrow. Skills, particularly in critical thinking, are crucial as well. But absent the right motivation, graduates may fail to put their skills to good use. In this book, Nathan King argues that intellectual virtues-traits like curiosity, intellectual humility, honesty, intellectual courage, and open-mindedness-are central to any education worthy of the (...) name. Further, such virtues are crucial to our functioning well in everyday life, in areas as diverse as personal relationships, responsible citizenship, civil discourse, and personal success. Our struggles in these areas often result from a failure to think virtuously. Drawing upon recent work in philosophy and psychology, King paints a portrait of virtuous intellectual character-and of the vices such a character opposes. Filled with examples and applications, this book introduces readers to the intellectual virtues: what they are, why they matter, and how we can grow in them. (shrink)

This report describes research focusing on virtues and character in teaching, by which we mean the kind of personal qualities professional teachers need to facilitate learning and overall flourishing in young people that goes beyond preparing them for a life of tests. The ‘good’ teacher is someone who, alongside excellent subject knowledge and technical expertise, cares about students, upholds principles of honesty and integrity both towards knowledge and student–teacher relationships, and who does good work . In the (...) Framework for Character Education , we considered the character of teachers to be a crucial ingredient in the development of flourishing children. This new report describes research that examined how teachers thought about, and drew upon, character strengths and virtues in their daily professional lives. (shrink)

In The Virtues of Ignorance the author demonstrates that classical theories of virtue are flawed and developes a consequentialist theory of virtue. ;Virtues are excellences of character. They are traits which are considered to be valuable in some way. A person who is virtuous is one who has a tendency to act well. Classical philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, believed that virtues, as human excellences, could not involve ignorance in any way. On their view, the virtuous agent, when acting (...) well, knows what she is doing under the description which makes the action conform to virtue. For example, the generous person must know that she is, in fact, helping others in need. Yet, there is a class of virtues, the "virtues of ignorance," which essentially involve ignorance. For example, modesty requires that the agent underestimate self worth. In the first portion of the dissertation, this class of virtues is discussed, and problems raised for the traditional theories of virtue. ;In the latter portion of the dissertation, the author outlines a consequentialist theory of virtue. It is argued that the only hope of developing a unified theory of virtue is along consequentialist lines, because attempts at identifying the psychological state which is necessary for virtue have failed. On a consequentialist theory, a virtue is defined in terms of its consequences. Thus, the moral quality of the character trait is determined by how much good it brings about . The virtues of ignorance can easily be accommodated in such a theory because these traits do bring about good, even if the agent possessing the trait acts out of ignorance. (shrink)

Scientific research is supposed to acquire or generate knowledge, but such a purpose would be severely undermined by instances of research misconduct (RM) and questionable research practices (QRP). RM and QRP are often framed in terms of moral transgressions by individuals (bad apples) whose aberrant acts could be made conducive by shortcomings in regulatory measures of organizations or institutions (bad barrels). This notion presupposes, to an extent, that the erring parties know exactly what they are doing is wrong and morally (...) culpable, but had nonetheless proceeded to commit wrongful acts. However, a confession of intent to deceived is often not readily admitted by perpetrators of RM. I posit that beyond the simplistic notion of conscious moral transgression, deficits in epistemic virtues and/or the prevalence of epistemic vices have important roles to play in initiating and driving RM/QRP. For the individual perpetrator, deficits in epistemic virtues could lead to or amplify errors in one’s desperate attempt to be accomplished or to excel, and pushes one across the ethical line or down the slippery slope of misconduct. Likewise, a lack of epistemic virtue within perpetrators’ institution or organization could make it conducive for deceitful acts and suppress indications and warning signs for the former. Furthermore, epistemic vices exhibited by reviewers, editors and journals could also promote RM/QRP. In this view, epistemic failings, rather than widespread moral deficiencies of individuals within the research ecosystem, may underlie the prevalence of RM/QRP. (shrink)

Gerald Dworkin's influential account of Personal Autonomy offers the following two conditions for autonomy: Authenticity - the condition that one identify with one's beliefs, desires and values after a process of critical reflection, and Procedural Independence - the identification in must not be "influenced in ways which make the process of identification in some way alien to the individual" . I argue in this thesis that there are cases which fulfil both of Dworkin's conditions, yet are clearly not cases of (...) autonomy. Specifically, I argue that we can best assess the adequacy of Dworkin's account of autonomy through literature, because it provides a unique medium for testing his account on the very terms he sets up for himself - ie. that autonomy apply to, and make sense of, persons leading lives of a certain quality. The examination of two novels - Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady - shows that Dworkin's explanation of identification and critical reflection is inadequate for capturing their role in autonomy and that he does not pay enough attention to the role of external factors in preventing or supporting autonomy. As an alternative, I offer the following two conditions for autonomy: critical reflection of a certain kind - radical reflection, and the ability to translate the results of into action - competence. The novels demonstrate that both conditions are dependent upon considerations of the content of one's beliefs, desires, values etc. Certain of these will prevent or hinder the achievement of autonomy because of their content, so autonomy must be understood in relation to substantial considerations, rather than in purely formal terms, as Dworkin argues. (shrink)

In this chapter, after a review of some existent empirical and philosophical literature that suggests that human beings are essentially incapable of changing their mind in response to counter-evidence, I argue that motivation makes a significant difference to individuals’ ability rationally to evaluate information. I rely on empirical work on group deliberation to argue that the motivation to learn from others, as opposed to the desire to win arguments, promotes good quality group deliberation. Finally I provide an overview of (...) some epistemic virtues and vices crucial to the politico-epistemic activities of arguing, debating, and listening to a contrary point of view. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the nascent field of ethics of collegiality may considerably benefit from a symbiosis with virtue and vice epistemology. We start by bringing the epistemic virtue and vice perspective to the table by showing that competence, deemed as an essential characteristic of a good colleague (Betzler & Löschke 2021), should be construed broadly to encompass epistemic competence. By endorsing the anti-individualistic stance in epistemology as well as context-specificity of epistemic traits, we (...) show how the individual vice of a colleague can have a positive epistemic outcome for the team while individual virtue can be damaging if all team members share it, thereby contributing to the negative epistemic outcome. We argue that the evaluation and analysis of collegial relationships should be done through one’s contribution to the team dynamics: without this collectivist perspective, the ethics of collegiality cannot aspire to become encompassing normative theory. (shrink)

... the topic of 'meaning' is the one topic discussed in philosophy in which there is literally nothing but 'theory' - literally nothing that can be labelled or even ridiculed as the 'common sense view'. Putnam, 'The Meaning of Meaning' This book explores some truths behind the truism that experimentation is a hallmark of scientific activity. Scientists' descriptions of nature result from two sorts of encounter: they interact with each other and with nature. Philosophy of science has, by and large, (...) failed to give an account of either sort of interaction. Philosophers typically imagine that scientists observe, theorize and experiment in order to produce general knowledge of natural laws, knowledge which can be applied to generate new theories and technologies. This view bifurcates the scientist's world into an empirical world of pre-articulate experience and know how and another world of talk, thought and argument. Most received philosophies of science focus so exclusively on the literary world of representations that they cannot begin to address the philosophical problems arising from the interaction of these worlds: empirical access as a source of knowledge, meaning and reference, and of course, realism. This has placed the epistemological burden entirely on the predictive role of experiment because, it is argued, testing predictions is all that could show that scientists' theorizing is constrained by nature. Here a purely literary approach contributes to its own demise. The epistemological significance of experiment turns out to be a theoretical matter: cruciality depends on argument, not experiment. (shrink)

In A Treatise on Virtues and Rewards, Dragonetti advances a theory of action based on rewards for virtues. The idea of rewards, especially of awards, relies on the hypothesis that intrinsic motivations drive the actions of good or virtuous citizens. We apply this theory to virtuous entrepreneurs who voluntarily adopt ethical principles as promoted by a recent Italian law. These firms receive an ethical rating by the Italian Competition Authority and can access a set of economic and non-economic benefits. (...) We survey a sample of 152 private companies with an ER and examine their views on the economic and social motivations and benefits as well as the perceived usefulness of the ER for improving ethical behaviour. An exploratory factor analysis detects four categories of motivation and two categories of benefits, which we use in regression models to test Dragonetti’s theory. Overall, respondents see the ER as an effective tool, except in terms of improving economic performance. We also find that entrepreneurs with lower economic and higher responsiveness motivations attain higher ERs. However, in the respondents’ opinions, the ER is not producing any concrete benefits since we find no relationship between the ER and economic or competitive rewards. These findings have implications for the ICA as well as for private companies. (shrink)

According to an influential family of views, agents are virtuous when and because they possess the correct attitudes towards the actual good and bad. But there are multiple ways of conceptualizing the actual good and bad, and attitudes towards some conceptualizations of the good and bad seem to be irrelevant to moral character. It is deceptively difficult to provide a theoretical rationale for distinguishing between those conceptualizations of the good and bad that seem to be relevant (...) and those that do not: I argue that a previous attempt to provide such a rationale fails, as do a number of seemingly promising alternatives. This problem merits further attention not only because it shows that certain theoretical accounts of character are incomplete, but because it is likely to interfere with our ability to evaluate certain real-world agents, who care about the actual good conceptualized in certain ways but not in others. Since a generalized version of the problem of conceptualization also affects other “intrinsic” accounts of virtue and vice, I argue that we must either solve this problem or abandon such accounts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are (...) written from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

[Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.1In the quote above, Hegel claims that cause and effect are only distinct from a particular (...) point of view. A cause only becomes a cause when it has an effect, thus the two apparently opposing terms reverse their roles. The effect is the cause of the cause, and the cause is the effect of its own effect. This article begins with a discussion of what we believe to be .. (shrink)

We study the relationship between values-work and virtue ethics in organizations. Drawing from an ethnographic study of a hospice for the poor in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we demonstrate how organizational practices of values-work are used to combat the disenchantment of modern medical treatment of death. We identify three core sets of practices, _Humility, Sympathetic Impartiality,_ and _Practical Wisdom_, each premised on humanistic virtues used to counteract the totalizing pressures of rationalization and professionalization of modern medicine. We theorize how the Sower (...) Method of organizing a “good death” might be applied to counteract the disenchanting effects of organizing contemporary work. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to untangle the purported connection between moral virtue and flourishing in the context of examining what looks like an unexpected effect of oppression: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing—as Aristotle assumes that it is when he describes eudaimonia as an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” — then members of structurally privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good. However, it is hard to conceive of the privileged as morally (...) good, since their privileges result from unjust social positionings. Thus it appears that they are prevented from leading good lives. This is an odd claim to add to a theory of oppression, which one would expect to explain how the victims of oppression — rather than its beneficiaries — are denied a shot at the good life.While the privileged may enjoy especially ample opportunities to develop certain virtues, I will be thinking here about vices associated with practices of domination, including active or passive acceptance of the benefits that come from occupying positionings that depend upon systems of male dominance, white supremacy, class divisions under capitalism, norms of heterosexuality, and so on. (shrink)

What is a virtue, and how are virtues different from vices? Do people with virtues lead better lives than the rest of us? Do they know more? Can we acquire virtues if so, how? In this lively and engaging introduction to this core topic, Heather Battaly argues that there is more than one kind of virtue. Some virtues make the world a better place, or help us to attain knowledge. Other virtues are dependent upon good intentions like (...) caring about other people or about truth. Virtue is an original approach to the topic, which carefully situates the fields of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology within a general theory of virtue. It argues that there are good reasons to acquire moral and intellectual virtues virtuous people often attain greater knowledge and lead better lives. As well as approaching virtue in a novel and illuminating way, Battaly ably guides the reader through the dense literature surrounding the topic, deftly moving from important specific and technical points to more general issues and questions. The final chapter proposes strategies for helping university students acquire intellectual virtues. Battaly’s insights are complemented by entertaining examples from popular culture, literature, and film, really bringing this topic to life for readers. Virtue is the ideal introduction to the topic. It will be an equally vital resource for students who are encountering the topic for the first time, and for scholars who are deeply engaged in virtue theory. (shrink)

In this commentary, after first summarizing the three major theses of Jeffrey's paper Probability and Falsification: Critique of the Popper Program, and sketching out what I take to be his central argument, I criticize Jeffrey on two grounds. The first is that he has failed to explain why his version of Bayesianism provides us with better theories upon which to make decisions; the second is that he has offered a theory about decision-making that by-passes the important question: How can we (...) make more rational decisions? (shrink)

In this paper I offer a characterization of the intellectual virtue of social inquisitiveness, paying attention to its difference from the individual virtue of inquisitiveness. I defend that there is a significant distinction between individual and social epistemic virtues: individual epistemic virtues are attributed to individuals and assessed by the quality of their cognitive powers, while social epistemic virtues are attributed to epistemic communities and are assessed by the quality of the epistemic relations within the communities. I begin presenting Lani (...) Watson's characterization of the (individual) practice of questioning and its related intellectual virtue, inquisitiveness. While she does not employ normative language, I show that her description can be constructed through four norms. Then, based on an account of epistemic communities, I defend that, while epistemic virtues attributable to individuals have norms regulating cognitive powers, epistemic virtues attributable to epistemic communities have norms regulating social epistemic interactions and shared epistemic responsibility. I then present a robust characterization of the epistemic virtue of social inquisitiveness through its social epistemic norms: DISTRIBUTION, ACCESSIBILITY, SOCIAL SINCERITY, SOCIAL CONTEXT, and FREQUENCY. I respond to two possible objections to my account and conclude by offering suggestions to broaden the scope of the epistemology of questioning. (shrink)

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

Virtues are dispositions that make their bearers admirable. Dispositions can be studied scientifically by systematically varying whether their alleged bearers are in (or take themselves to be in) the dispositions' eliciting conditions. In recent decades, empirically-minded philosophers looked to social and personality psychology to study the extent to which ordinary humans embody dispositions traditionally considered admirable in the Aristotelian tradition. This led some to conclude that virtues are not attainable ideals, and that we should focus our ethical reflection and efforts (...) more on jerry-rigging our environments than on improving our characters. Most virtue ethicists resisted this reorientation. However, much of the scientific evidence on which the controversy was based has failed to replicate, raising the question of how much faith we should place in methodologically suspect studies. In this paper, I assess the state of the debate and recommend best practices for a renewed interdisciplinary investigation of virtues and vices in which philosophical expertise related to conceptualization and theorizing is essentially intertwined with scientific expertise related to operationalization, measurement, and statistics. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

How should we understand good philosophical inquiry? Ernest Sosa has argued that the key to answering this question lies with virtue-based epistemology. According to virtue-based epistemology, competences are prior to epistemic justification. More precisely, a subject is justified in having some type of belief only because she could have a belief of that type by exercising her competences. Virtue epistemology is well positioned to explain why, in forming false philosophical beliefs, agents are often less rational than it is possible (...) to be. False philosophical beliefs are often unjustified—and the agent is thereby less rational for having them—precisely because these beliefs could not be formed by exercising competences. But, virtue epistemology is not well positioned to explain why, in failing to form some true philosophical beliefs, agents are less rational than it is possible to be. In cases where agents fall short by failing to believe philosophical truths, the problem is not that they believe things they shouldn’t, but that they lack beliefs they ought to have. We argue that Timothy Williamson's recent critique of the a priori/a posteriori distinction falls prey to similar problem cases. Williamson fails to see that a type of belief might be a priori justified if and only if, even without any special confirming experiences, agents fall short by failing to have this type of belief. We conclude that there are types of beliefs that are deeply a priori justified for any agent regardless of what epistemic competences the agent has. However, we also point out that this view has a problem of its own: it appears to make the acquisition of a priori knowledge too easy. We end by suggesting that a move back towards virtue-based epistemology is necessary. But in order for this move to be effective, epistemic competences will have to be understood very differently than in the reliabilist tradition. (shrink)

The central subject of Aristotle's ethics is happiness or living well. Most people in his day (as in ours), eager to enjoy life, impressed by worldly success, and fearful of serious loss, believed that happiness depends mainly on fortune in achieving prosperity and avoiding adversity. Aristotle, however, argues that virtuous conduct is the governing factor in living well and attaining happiness. While admitting that neither the blessings not the afflictions of fortune are unimportant, he maintains that the virtuous find (...) life more satisfying than other people do and, with only modest good fortune, they lead happy, enjoyable lives. Combining philological precision with philosophical analysis, the author reconstructs Aristotle's defense of these bold claims. By examining how Aristotle develops his position in response to the prevailing hopes and anxieties of his age, the author shows why Aristotle considers happiness important for ethics and why he thinks it necessary to revise popular and traditional views. Paying close attention throughout to the internalist dimension of Aristotle's approach - his emphasis on how the virtuous view their own lives and actions - the author advances new interpretations of Aristotle's accounts of several major virtues, including temperance, courage, liberality, and 'greatness of soul'. This work sets Aristotle in the broader cultural context of his time, tracing his attemps to accommodate and amend rival views. The author examines literary and historical sources as well as philosophical texts, showing the inherited values and traditional ideals that inform Aristotle's discussions and provide some of the basis for his conclusions. Presupposing no knowledge of Greek or specialized philosophical terminology, the book is designed to be accessible to all students of philosophy or classical antiquity. All quotations from ancient texts are translated. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a prominent and plausible conception of virtues from the Western tradition, apply it to some early Confucian texts, and see where it succeeds and fails. In this way, I hope to be able to show how this conception of virtues needs to be revised. The particular conception of virtues I am starting with is one of virtues as correctives that was made prominent by Philippa Foot in her paper “Virtues and Vices.” On Foot’s account, (...) “the virtues are corrective, each one standing at a point at which there is some temptation to be resisted or deficiency of motivation to be made good.” This conception captures certain aspects of the virtues. However, I demonstrate that virtues that are often thought of as correctives are not best characterized in this way, at least on the general understanding of correctives. I do this in two ways. First I show that being a corrective is only a contingent feature of these virtues. Second, I demonstrate that ‘self-love’, which carries many similarities to other so-called corrective virtues, is a plausible candidate for the status of virtue while not being a corrective, even in a contingent way. This claim about the plausibility of ‘self-love’ as a virtue is one that Foot explicitly denies. In addition, I show that there is another class of virtues that the idea of virtues as correctives completely misses. I will call this class of virtues ‘inclinational virtues.’ Finally, I explain why expecting the notion of a corrective to accommodate the idea of inclinational virtues is unwise. (shrink)

The needless proliferation of virtues is a possible pitfall of the explosion of work in virtue ethics. I discuss two positions on proliferation and offer my own. Russell takes the first approach, arguing that virtue ethical right action is impossible unless we adopt a finite and specifiable list of the virtues. I argue against this. Hursthouse offers a second perspective, looking first to standard Aristotelian virtues, and adding virtues only when the standard list fails to capture something of moral importance. (...) Like Hursthouse, I believe that questions arising from applied ethics present the real challenge to the adequacy of traditional lists of virtues. These challenges are becoming increasingly urgent. Technologies are not only shaping our conceptions of ourselves, the human good, and virtues, but also, through germline gene editing, have the potential to change human nature. My position takes its cue from Hursthouse but goes beyond her by arguing for an “anthropological turn” in virtue ethics. The anthropological turn examines forms of life, especially those influenced by technology and science, and how they affect articulations of the human good and the virtues needed to attain it. Any new virtues, I argue, should be identified through study of how dispositions conducive to human good arise organically within forms of life. In this way, virtues remain grounded in what is good for humans, yet the anthropological turn recognizes that what counts as human good is now in flux because of science and technology. (shrink)

Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) are two of the most commonly used health measures to determine resource prioritization and the population burden of disease, respectively. There are different types of problems with the use of QALYs and DALYs for measuring health benefits. Some of these problems have to do with measurement, for example, the weights they ascribe to health states might fail to reflect with exact accuracy the actual well-being or health levels of individuals. But (...) even if these weights represent accurately the well-being levels of individuals, there is room for questioning whether these measures capture everything that we care about in these cases, or whether there are important issues that they leave out, including considerations of fairness or equality. In this regard, the measures have been criticized for treating the aggregation of small benefits as greater than the aggregation of fewer but bigger benefits,1for disregarding fair chances in favor of utility maximization,2and for raising problems when applied in the context of variable population size.3Perhaps one of the most pervasive ethical issues that has been associated with the use of these measures is the fact that they seem to discriminate against disabled people.4Since the measures assume that disabled people have lower well-being and a shorter life span, treating a disabled person’s medical condition contributes less to the maximization of years of life with good health than treating a non-disabled patient’s medical condition. (shrink)

Tosi and Warmke discuss cases where the speaker intends for the audience to take their expressions as evidence of good moral character. However, another possibility exists that similarly exploits the social communicative architecture. A contribution to public moral discourse may also attempt to strut by demonstrating evidence of bad moral character, by purposely failing to meet the evaluative standards of its audience—or, paradigmatically for my purposes, a particular section of its actual or notional audience. I call this kind (...) of communication vice signaling. On their face, virtue signaling and vice signaling may seem to be opposites, since the labels imply that they are signaling opposite things. But certain cases of vice signaling are in fact also cases of virtue signaling. These are the cases where someone flaunts the standards of an out-group in order to demonstrate solidarity, seriousness, or some other virtue to their in-group. In this paper I attempt to describe these cases and point out the moral risks and opportunities they present. (shrink)

The Jedi are “keepers of the peace.” Just as they protect the galaxy, Jedi are called upon to keep the peace within themselves by aligning their wills to the Force. This requires self‐restraint, abstinence from worldly pleasures, a virtue‐driven mindset, incorruptible fearlessness, and total belief in following the will of the Force. The principles of the Jedi Order closely mirror the “hard life” maxims of a school of philosophy known as Stoicism, represented by the slave‐turned‐philosopher Epictetus. For both Jedi and (...) Stoics, philosophy is a way of life, not just a subject for study. A central claim of Stoic ethics is that only virtues and virtuous activities are good, and only vices and vicious actions are evil. A Jedi's strength of mind has greater value than the ability to execute a Force push. The ultimate goal for Jedi is to decipher the will of the Force and conduct themselves accordingly. (shrink)

First paragraph: It is worth distinguishing two kinds of role that ideas of virtue and vice might play in the criminal law (or in our theoretical understanding of the criminal law). Each kind admits of a range of variations; each can be more or less ambitious in scope and aim: but although there are of course quite close connections between the two kinds, we can usefully sketch them as two different ways of developing a virtue jurisprudence of criminal law. Both (...) kinds of role are connected to views of the proper aims of a system of criminal law: in the first case, a view of the further goods that criminal law should aim to achieve; in the second case, a view of the proper objects of criminal liability. (shrink)

This article explores the respective roles that medical and technological cognitive enhancements, on the one hand, and the moral and epistemic virtues traditionally understood, on the other, can play in enabling us to lead the good life. It will be shown that neither the virtues nor cognitive enhancements (of the kind we have access to today or in the foreseeable future) on their own are likely to enable most people to lead the good life. While the moral and (...) epistemic virtues quite plausibly are both necessary and sufficient for the good life in theory, virtue ethics is often criticised for being elitist and unachievable in practice for the vast majority. Some cognitive enhancements, on the other hand, might be necessary for the good life but are far from sufficient for such an existence. Here it will be proposed that a combination of virtue and some cognitive enhancements is preferable. (shrink)

In this book Daly attempts to forge a new ethical approach to issues of social structures, an area of thought deficient in traditional Catholic ethics. Daly argues that the concept of the structures of virtue and vice provide the best ethical lens with which to scrutinize the effects of social structures on personal character and the well-being of the community. His argument relies on two premises: First, he considers the nexus between structures and individual moral agency - arguing that (...) Catholic ethics has failed to account for these realities adequately. The second premise concerns virtue theory, once again emphasizing the importance of accounting for the individual when approaching societal ethics. With the establishment of these premises, Daly furthers the book's ultimate goal: the development of ethical concepts capable of scrutinizing social structures regarding how they shape personal moral character, as well as how they causally impact the well-being of people and groups. Drawing on the works of Thomas Aquinas as well as social theories such as critical realism, Daly fills a lacuna in Catholic ethics that addresses the structure-agency problem that has plagued this field of study. (shrink)

SUMMARY1 The rational soul becomes the constant and dimensionless Euclidean point in all experience - defining the situations in which it finds itself, but itself undefined and undefinable in any situation. It is in nature but not of nature. Just as the dimensionless Euclidean point can occupy infinite positions on a line and yet remain unaltered, so the immortal, active intellect remains unaffected by the world in which it finds itself. It is not influenced by age, sense data, sickness or (...) death. It is the knower whose nature is pure knowing or reason. This is in great part the basic assumption that runs through the history of Aristotelean and modern symbolic logics24.The rational soul grasps identity, reasons consistently, and knows objectively for though it is in the world it is not of the world. Thus it is unnecessary and impossible to relate its truth to time or place or condition. As the source of understanding it need not be understood. It understands in that it knows. It is this which places the objective knower and observer outside of all systems of knowledge that it creates in philosophy, science and theology, and frees it from subjective interpretation. It is the absolute observer beyond self-observation.252 Language, values, and meanings reflect the absolute viewpoint of the dimensionless observer beyond the necessity of observation. The task of this observer is to know trie world just as the task of the animal and plant soul is motion and reproduction. The rational soul performs its task beyond nature as surely as animals and plants perform their tasks in nature. This is why it is possible to discuss the necessary evolution of living organisms in nature, but unnecessary to discuss the necessary or unnecessary nature of the evolution of this discussion. This is one of the reasons why determinism or predestination which seem so clearly applicable to nature, need not be applied to theories of determinism and predestination. These are principles grasped in reality beyond nature and totally inapplicable to the non-natural spirit that comprehends their essences. Thus self-reflexive questions about the questioner are as irrelevant as would be questions historically of “in what sense might the definition of dimensionless point itself be dimensioned or dimension-less?”26 Questions, on the other hand, that relate to the observed world are important for they can be truly answered (where questions as to the nature of the questioner cannot). In this view reality is not nature, but rather it is from reality that the objective observer, philosopher, scientist, and theologian understands and controls nature.3 Logic, the science of reason, is the science of all sciences. It reflects the pure and innate rational nature of the knowing intellect or soul. It is pure form beyond nature. Its realm is that of first principles or axioms. These too are in the world but not of it, as with Plato's eidos and Aristotle's universals. They are clear, true and self-evident. This explains the on going use of axiomatized revelations in studies in the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. In symbolic logics, natural languages are in and of the world, but meta-languages are the constructs of pure intellectual activity and thus not natural. The abstract tends to become the more real, the less it can be found in nature. Rational souls, however, share a common reality that is as universal for Frege as it was for Aristotle.274 The occidental object tradition in general breaks out of the nature continuum by withdrawing into reality where the intellect knows and manipulates the world in philosophy, science, and theology from its position in and understanding of reality. Nature is a sub-set of reality and not vice versa. Axioms are the laws and determinants of nature and logic, but they are not nature.28 This means that at the basis of the occidental continuum of nature there is a qualitative and irreducible dichotomy of reality vs. nature. This has been most useful in the history of occidental science, but it produces a world view in which nature may lose the race with reality. SUMMARY IIIn the first portion of my paper, I discussed the implications of the Euclidean egg for philosophy and science as nature is understood and manipulated from reality. I shall now turn to what I see as the implications of the three-legged chicken view that the human intellect is in and of nature and that reality is a perspective in nature and is not simply the other of an irreducible qualitative dichotomy. Although there are an endless number of such implications that I could explore, the following, it seems to me are the most important:1 In the natural continuum there is no “dimensionless real” which can serve either as the locus of an external observer or a fixed position in nature. There is no perspective which is not an aspect of that upon which it is a perspective. The Chinese sage, for example, is one who sees himself/herself as one with or within natural process. This is expressed in a number of ways. Fung Yu-lan speaks of the difference between having no knowledge and having no-knowledge.34 Within such a continuum there can be no abstracting out of the absolute and unchanging. The nameless is the source of the named. First principles are the process itself and these principles are the alternation of opposites:“The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;The Named is the mother of all things.Therefore let there always be non-being so we may see their subtlety, And let there always be being so we may see their outcome. The two are the same.“352 An empty mind is not a blank mind. Where Aristotle viewed the mind as a blank tablet at birth to be filled by sense experience, Hsun Tzu speaks of its emptiness. It is the emptiness of the Tao itself:“The mind is constantly storing up things, and yet it is said to be empty. The mind is constantly marked by diversity, and yet it is said to be unified. The mind is constantly moving, and yet it is said to be still. Inevitably it will see things for itself. And although the objects it perceives may be many and diverse, if its acuity is of the highest level, it cannot become divided within itself.”36The nature in which and of which the mind is both perspective and aspect remains a totality. Being a totality, it is empty of itself just as any part of a whole, while a part of the whole, is empty of the whole. My ideas of myself are both of myself and empty of myself. This point can be illustrated with the simple example of knowing and speaking about two hands – one of which is mine, and the second of which belongs to someone else. 1 can objectify the second hand and fill my blank mind with information and observations about it, but I continue to remain outside of it –the arbiter in my statements of its nature and reality. However, in knowing my own hand, the hand known is also the knower and what I know represents a perspective upon an aspective of a totality of which “I–my–hand” are aspects. Being an aspect of the whole is being empty of the whole. If mind is in and of nature, any perspective on nature is an aspect of the whole. A blank mind is an unnatural mind outside of nature, filling up with impressions of nature. An empty mind is nature viewing nature as aspect and perspective. The occidental would be ashamed to reach old age and still have a blank mind. The Chinese sage would be ashamed to reach old age and still not recognize that the mind is empty.3 If mind is in nature and like nature, then language too reflects natural flow and change and process. It is one thing for me to talk about myself and another for me to talk about someone else. In the case of the latter, I may insist that objectively this other subject fits into this or that category and even administer tests to determine that it does do indeed so. But when I talk about myself, the speaker and the object of speech are one and the same. The terms I select do represent a dichotomy of sorts, but it is one of aspect and perspective and not subject and object. When I say “this is my hand” for example, the words create distinctions which are aspects of awareness but do not create an / that is or is not my hand. Language does not model or even represent reality as opposed to nature. It makes reality possible as something that nature says or thinks. Reality through language is an aspect of nature and thus a perspective upon itself as aspect. This is an important distinction that translators often miss.4 Logic in this natural continuum is concerned with distinctions in a very different sense. As a consequence of the unity of nature and mind, three kinds of distinction in experience are manifested: (a) Those distinctions which come into being as aspects of the changing world.The 10,000 things are in this sense aspects and not separate “identities” as some philosophers and scientists presuppose.37 (b) Those distinctions which come into being as aspects of the human mind. These are impressions of and thoughts about the infinite distinctions of which the restless mind is capable, (c) Those distinctions which come into being by way of the mind's use of symbols. These are the distinctions which permit us to stabilize and store our experiences, preserve the answers to our questions, and name the world into compartments and relationships.Implicit in these three assumptions which connect the distinguishing mind to the unity of a nature of'10,000‘ aspects, is an inferential process of aspect to perspective to knowledge to understanding to attitude to action/response. The reasoning mind synthesizes some aspect of experience in nature with a perspective upon this aspect. This synthesis, in turn, is an aspect of mind and the reasoning process proceeds from it to a perspective upon it which is knowledge and understanding. Knowledge and understanding in turn are aspects of thinking and the reasoning process proceeds from them to a perspective upon them which is an attitude. Attitude in turn is an aspect of thinking and the reasoning process proceeds from it to a perspective upon it which is reflected in the reasoning individual's actions and responses. This inferential process is a continuum which proceeds from aspects of experience to perspectives in thought to action and response. In this sequence an aspect is always connected by a perspective which becomes an aspect, until action/non-action, response occurs. This is as applicable to the details of life as it is to mastering life as a whole. When this inference process is incomplete many problems may result, ranging from action without understanding to the confusion of aspect and perspective with one another or to “obsession with distinctions.”38In practice this is a logic of paradox. The human being is aware that he or she is a living-dying aspect of nature, but an aspect which is also a perspective upon nature's aspects of living and dying. This paradox is the process around which a profound logic of aspect/perspective is developed by the sage. This view of logic within a continuum does not mean that there is no principle of identity, contradiction or excluded middle present – as some Chinese and European philosophers assume.These principles are also implicit in the knowing of my hand versus the knowing of the hand of another. However, the content, meaning, and application of these principles may vary just as when I say propriety, I mean propriety, and when the Chinese says li he means li but the context, meaning and application of the term may differ in each case.5 Aspect logic as it relates mind to nature in a cosmological totality is a series of syntheses in a cyclic continuum organizing thinking in phases. Each phase is an aspect/perspective synthesis which becomes an aspect of a further aspect/perspective synthesis. This progression might be described thusly: The synthesis of nature/human which is Tao (non-being) translates into the aspects of being (the 10,000 things), and as such is a synthesis of aspect and perspective. This synthesis of aspect and perspective translates into an aspect of ideas and as such is a synthesis of perception and conception. This synthesis of perception and conception translates into an aspect of knowledge, and as such is a synthesis of knowledge and understanding (understanding is a perspective upon knowledge) i.e., no-knowledge. This synthesis of knowledge and understanding translates into an aspect of purpose, and as such is a synthesis of purpose and action. The perspective here on action is aesthetic and/or moral. This synthesis of purpose and actions translates again into an aspect of nature and as such is a synthesis beyond individual aspects and perspective, i.e. Tao. Thus there is a cyclic dynamic in the system which remains open to further development.Tai Chen in his Inquiry Into Goodness connects this cycle of syntheses with wisdom and benevolence:Because there are mind and intelligence, the superior man knows that the perfection of the Way of Man depends completely upon nature. When he looks at the signs of the natural (Cheng), he knows the beginning of things; when he cherishes the virtue of supreme illumination, (Shen-ming), he knows the end of things. Proceeding from mind and intelligence to the attainment of the virtue of supreme intelligence, [the superior man] in his treatment of things in the world will cause the world to return to [the principles of] benevolence; and in his treatment of the capability inherent in things, he will cause the world to follow wisdom (Chih).39. (shrink)

Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person--the sort of person on whom one's fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology--how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer--and education--how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue theory according to which being an (...) intellectually dependable person is distinctively a matter of possessing a suite of neglected virtues called "the virtues of intellectual dependability" that are themselves distinctively concerned with promoting epistemic goods in others' inquiries. After defending the existence and educational significance of these virtues as a group, the book turns toward the project of identifying and conceptualizing several specific instances of these virtues in detail. Virtues discussed include intellectual benevolence, intellectual transparency, communicative clarity, audience sensitivity, and epistemic guidance. In each case, an interdisciplinary treatment of the nature of the virtue and its relationship to other virtues, vices, and personality features is offered, drawing especially on relevant research in Philosophy and Psychology. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to identifying distinctive ways these virtues of intellectual dependability are manifested when it is inquiring communities, rather than individuals, that occupy the position of intellectual dependence. By directing attention to the ideal of intellectual dependability, the book marks a novel turn of scholarly interest explicitly toward a neglected dimension of the ideal inquirer that will inform both epistemological theorizing and educational practice. (shrink)

[Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.The Logic of Hegel, Translated from ““The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,”” 3rd ed., trans. William (...) Wallace, §153; hereafter cited as ““Lesser Logic”” parenthetically in the text by section number. Similarly, in the Science of Logic Hegel writes: ““Cause is cause only in so far as it produces an effect, and cause is nothing but this determination, to have an effect, and effect is nothing but this, to have a cause. Cause as such implies its effect, and effect implies cause; in so far as cause has not yet acted, or if it has ceased to act, then it is not cause, and effect in so far as its cause has vanished, is no longer effect but in indifferent actuality””. See also Hegel’s discussion of rain and wetness, color and pigment, and act and motion in ibid., 560–61. (shrink)

The exponential digitization of medical data has led to a transformation of the practice of medicine. This change notably raises a new complexity of issues surrounding health IT. The proper use of these communication tools, such as telemedicine, e-health, m-health the big medical data, should improve the quality of monitoring and care of patients for an information system to "human face". Faced with these challenges, the author analyses in an ethical angle the patient-physician relationship, sharing, transmission and storage of medical (...) information, setting pins to an ethic for the digitization of medical information. Drawing on good practice recommendations closely associated with values, this model is developing tools for reflection and present the keys to understanding the decision-making issues that reflect both the technological constraints and the complex nature of human reality in medicine. (shrink)

Aristotle’s conception of vice is notoriously problematic. On the one hand, it appears as the antithesis of virtue; as such, it may seem, like virtue, to rest on principles, except that in the case of vice the principles are bad ones. On the other hand, vice may be something more like the privation or absence of virtue: not the negative pole or opposite of virtue but the condition of not being at all guided by rational principles or logos. As (...) a way of approaching Aristotle’s notion of vice, I propose to examine two disapproved qualities that Aristotle mentions briefly in his Rhetoric, and which are adduced as the opposites of emotions. The two qualities are ingratitude, which is represented as the opposite of feeling grateful, and shamelessness, the opposite of the emotion shame. Both ingratitude and shamelessness have the appearance of vices, even though they are contrasted here not with virtues but with passions or pathê. Examining the logic of these pairings will, I hope, shed light not only on ingratitude and shamelessness but also on the complex and unstable nature of vice itself. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s book Epistemic Injustice calls attention to an important sort of moral and intellectual wrongdoing, that of failing to give others their intellectual due. When we fail to recognize others’ knowledge, or undervalue their beliefs and judgments, we fail in two important respects. First, we miss out on the opportunity to improve and refine our own sets of beliefs and judgments. Second—and more relevant to the term “injustice”—we can deny people the intellectual respect they deserve. Along with describing (...) the wrong of epistemic injustice, Fricker proposes that epistemic justice is a virtue we “can, and should, aim for in practice”. But I argue that there are two major problems. First, it is not clear that it is reasonable to imagine there is any such stable disposition—that is, any such virtue—as the sort of justice she imagines. Second, even if there could be such a virtue, her theory of epistemic justice does not provide good guidance for avoiding epistemic injustice. While it could.. (shrink)

This paper is about how we should evaluate our tendencies to find - or fail to find - different meanings in the natural world. It has three aims: (1) to show that some virtues and vices can be exhibited in our tendencies to find or to overlook the meanings of natural things, even if it is unclear whether any can only be exhibited in our relations with such things; (2) to categorise some of the relevant virtues and vices; (...) and (3) to refute the objection that meaning-focused approaches to environmental philosophy, of the sort adopted by writers such as Alan Holland and myself, cannot adequately account for nature's independence from human concerns. (shrink)

This paper provides a general philosophical groundwork for the theoretical and applied normative evaluation of information generally and digital information specifically in relation to the good life. The overall aim of the paper is to address the question of how Information Ethics and computer ethics more generally can be expanded to include more centrally the issue of how and to what extent information relates and contributes to the quality of life or the good life , for individuals and (...) for society. To answer that question, the paper explores and provides by way of a theoretical groundwork for further research, the concept of wisdom understood as a type of meta - knowledge as well as a type of meta - virtue , which can enable one to both know in principle what a good life is and how to successfully apply that knowledge in living such a life in practice. This answer will be based on the main argument presented in this paper that the notion of wisdom understood as being at once a meta - epistemological , meta - axiological and meta - eudemonic concept, provides the essential conceptual link between information on the one hand and the good life on the other. If, as we are told, this is the Age of Information, both the theoretical examination and analysis of the question of how information relates to the good life and the provision of an adequate answer to that question are essential for developing a deeper understanding of how to evaluate the theoretical and practical implications and ramifications of information for the good life, for individuals and societies generally. (shrink)

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the _Analects_. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows _whom _he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him (...) and the _Analects'_ authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way _why _pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtues, Obligations, and the Prophetic VisionRoy Branson (bio)Ethics at its best is only bad poetry—that is, it seeks to help us see whatwe see every day but fail to see rightly...If ethicists had talent, they might be poets,but in the absence of talent, they try tomake their clanking conceptual anddiscursive chains do the work of art.—Stanley HauerwasThe speaker was so severely bent over that his congenitally deformed back had (...) to be supported. He was a young Ph.D. in history. We were some 50 physicians, lawyers, health care administrators, and ethicists studying the ethics of organ transplants. Before he arrived, the conference had discussed different understandings of equal access and the nuances of federal policies governing organ transplant distribution. 1 In his lecture, our guest matter-of-factly described his own condition. He then pointed out that not only in ancient civilization but in American history as well, the disabled had been killed just because they were disabled. Indeed, even now, he said, they were not being allowed to live.In the question and answer session, he was immediately challenged by nationally prominent transplant surgeons. He responded by asking the surgeons: If two people could avoid death and anticipate significantly prolonged life from receiving an organ transplant and the only difference between them was that one was disabled and the other not, who would receive the life-saving transplant? The surgeons’ initial, spirited defense of excluding the significantly disabled person died down as they began to realize that, as far as they were concerned anyway, they might not have allowed the lecturer to live. They were stunned by the realization that they had not felt the disabled were fully persons. In the silences between their sentences, the participants sensed that they had passed beyond the discussion of economic, medical, and legal terms to glimpse new horizons of responsibility. [End Page 361]The conference was experiencing the truth of William F. May’s claim that moral quandaries must be placed within “a fresh and liberating vision of the world;” within “metaphysical horizons” (May 1983, pp. 15, 19).Pastoral VirtuesIn the late sixties, André Hellegers, the dynamic physician and Catholic layman who founded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and who claimed that he had invented the word bioethics, focused bioethics elsewhere—on virtue. “As the caring branches of medicine were gradually pushed aside by the curing ones,” Hellegers said, “there seemed to be less use for the Christian virtues.” We must, he declared, “recapture the Christian virtues of care” (cited in McCormick 1985, p. 111). In a subsequent essay on the conceptual foundation of bioethics, Hellegers, writing with Albert Jonsen, did not invoke the word pastor, but he did argue that the codes drawn up for the ethical practice of medicine were, among other things, guides for the cure of physicians’ souls (Jonsen and Hellegers 1976, pp. 35–36).In 1969, at the same time that André Hellegers was in the process of establishing the Kennedy Institute, Edmund Pellegrino, then a medical school dean, led in the founding of humanities programs within American medical schools. Pellegrino, like Hellegers, a physician and Catholic layman, also focused on virtue. Obligations are not irrelevant for Pellegrino, but in biomedical ethics “one starts always with one’s commitment to be a certain kind of person and then approaches clinical quandaries, conflicts of values, and patient interests as a good person ought” (Pellegrino 1988, p. 123). Pellegrino knows that the classical and Christian tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, a tradition with which he identifies, is concerned with the whole gamut of ethics. But for Pellegrino, that tradition teaches that “no matter to what depths a society may fall, virtuous persons will always be the beacons that light the way back to moral sensitivity” (p. 123). He freely acknowledges that “a virtue-based ethics is inherently elitist, in the best sense, because its adherents demand more of themselves than does the prevailing morality” (p. 123).Hellegers and Pellegrino added to the need of physicians acquiring professional skills their responsibility to become the embodiment of the moral ideal in the patient-physician relationship by caring for the patient... (shrink)