Ethical expertise and the articulacy requirement

Synthese 193 (7):2035-2052 (2016)
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Abstract

Recently virtue ethicists, such as Julia Annas and Matt Stichter, in order to explain what a moral virtue is and how it is acquired, suggest modeling virtue on practical expertise. However, a challenging issue arises when considering the nature of practical expertise especially about whether expertise requires articulacy, that is, whether an expert in a skill is required to possess an ability to articulate the principles underlying the skill. With regard to this issue, Annas advocates the articulacy requirement, while Stichter denies. Stichter raises two objections to Annas’s requirement: first, Annas provides no argument for the requirement; second, there exist counterexamples in which there are experts who cannot articulate what and why they did in skilled performance. In this paper I shall show that Annas did provide an argument and can respond to the counterexamples; however, her argument and response are not convincing. Instead, I construct a new argument for the articulacy requirement by which I call the argument from success-conduciveness. The main idea involved in this new argument, i.e., articulacy is success-conducive, supports further that ethical expertise requires articulacy due to the seriousness of morality.

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Cheng-hung Tsai
Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Citations of this work

Wisdom as Knowing How to Live Well: An Epistemological Exploration.Cheng-Hung Tsai - 2023 - Soochow Journal of Philosophical Studies 47:33-64.
Beyond Intuitive Know-How.Cheng-Hung Tsai - forthcoming - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-14.
Habit: A Rylean Conception.Cheng-Hung Tsai - 2022 - Philosophies 7 (2):45.

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References found in this work

A virtue epistemology.Ernest Sosa - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Intelligent Virtue.Julia Annas - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Knowing Full Well.Ernest Sosa - 2010 - Princeton University Press.

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