Virtue Ethics

Summary

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Virtue Ethics: LSE Forum for European Philosophy

Podcast: LSE Public Lectures and Events
Date: October 15, 2013
Host: Simon Glendinning (A), Director of the Forum
Speakers:

• Brad Hooker (B), University of Reading
• Constantine Sandis (D), Oxford Brookes

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Episode Overview

This episode is a deep-dive into virtue ethics, exploring its historical roots, conceptual challenges, and how it stands in relation to other ethical theories. The discussion is characterized by lively debate, clear examples, and thoughtful audience questions. The focus is on what defines virtue ethics, the challenges it faces, and its place within practical and moral philosophy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Return to Ethics in Philosophy (00:00-05:59)

• Simon Glendinning (A) introduces the new ethics strand at LSE, highlighting a generational shift from "the logic of the language of morals" to more practical concerns about what it means to be a moral human being.
• He points to his own discomfort with the idea of "moral facts" and instead finds it more intuitive to focus on "virtuous people" and the tangible reality of good character.
• Sets up the session with two speakers, Brad Hooker and Constantine Sandis, who will explore virtue ethics.

2. What is Virtue Ethics? – Historical Context and Key Characteristics (05:59-19:32)

• Brad Hooker (B) gives brief historical context:
  • Virtue ethics predominated in ancient times (Plato, Aristotle).
  • Focus shifted to natural law (Aquinas), then to utilitarianism and Kantianism.
  • Term "virtue ethics" only emerged in the 1980s, inspired by Elizabeth Anscombe's seminal paper "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1950s).
• Key Distinction:
  • Interest in virtues vs. having a theory where virtues define morality.
  • Textbook virtue ethics: "A distinct family of theories meant to rival utilitarianism and Kantianism."

"Virtue ethics...as in my little story just a moment ago suggested, is often thought to be a rival of utilitarianism and communism and contractualism and natural law theory and other approaches to ethics." (B, 07:55)

• Critique of Aristotelian Doctrines:
  • The "doctrine of the mean" is oversimplified.
  • The idea of rooting ethics in uniquely human traits is unnecessary.

3. Core Commitments of Virtue Ethics (19:32-26:59)

• Central Claim:
  • "What makes something morally right or wrong...is its relation to what a virtuous agent would either do or not do." (B)
  • Virtue ethics reverses the order: right action defined by the dispositions of the virtuous, not vice versa.
• Example: The familiar conflict between honesty and kindness (e.g., whether to spare someone's feelings by lying).

"A virtuous person has good judgment, has wisdom, and can make the right boundary decision about when one is more important than the other." (B, 19:32)

• Attraction:
  • The approach acknowledges vagueness and the necessity of judgment in morality.
  • Attempts to provide precise rules are often unrealistic.

4. Defining Virtue and its Challenges (26:59-37:57)

• The Challenge:
  • What makes a disposition a virtue?
  • Brad presents Rosalind Hursthouse’s account: virtues benefit the individual and/or the species.
  • Criticisms arise around circularity (e.g., honesty isn't always beneficial, as in Nazi Germany).
• Broader Objections:
  • Why should virtue only benefit our species? Could it benefit others?
  • This broadening leans toward virtue utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism.

5. Aristotle’s Function Argument and the Doctrine of the Mean (37:57-43:58)

• Constantine Sandis (D) elaborates on Aristotle:
  • The function argument: What’s good for a thing is related to its function (purpose, end).
  • For humans, rationality is central.
• Doctrine of the Mean:
  • A "mean" isn't a rigid midpoint (not simply five between zero and ten).
  • What counts as the "mean" varies contextually (patience in different settings).
  • Virtue ethics cannot codify rules as easily as other theories.

"It looks like what counts as patient is going to really vary from one context to another. And what's nice with virtue theory is it doesn't say the patient amount to wait is this." (D, 32:11)

6. Virtue Ethics, Rules, and Rival Theories (43:58-49:02)

• Are there Rules in Virtue Ethics?
  • There are, but they concern character (e.g., "be honest") not specific acts.
  • Virtue ethics appears less in competition with deontology and consequentialism, which prescribe actions.

"Virtue ethics isn't about what to do; it's about what kind of person to be." (D, 41:13)

• Potential Vacuity:
  • Is "do what the virtuous person would do" circular?
  • The challenge echoes the Euthyphro dilemma.

7. Actions vs. Motives: Acting Rightly (49:02-55:14)

• Philosophy of Action:
  • Drawing from Anscombe, it's as much about psychology/intention as about outward actions.
  • Converges with the idea that "acting rightly" (with the right motives) differs from merely doing the right action, as seen in identical charitable acts for different reasons.

8. Threats of Circularity and the Practical Guidance Problem (55:14-62:14)

• Host’s Question:
  • How do you define a virtuous person, except by what they do? Is this circular?
• Responses:
  • Virtue might take priority: "It's about acting honestly," knowing what honesty is, before knowing what action to do.
  • The challenge persists—virtue ethics must define virtues in a way not reducible to how the virtuous behave.

"A virtuous person would presumably not only do the honest thing, but do the honest thing for the right reason." (B, 51:03)

• Example:
  • If a non-virtuous person mimics virtuous behavior (e.g., congratulating a superior player), is it genuine? Sometimes, better to refrain than to feign.

9. Audience Q&A – Flexibility, Social Construction, and Relativism (62:14-84:51)

• Flexibility/Realism:
  • The "advice model": act as the virtuous agent would advise you, given your own flaws.
• Social Construction Objection:
  • Are virtues just social projections?
  • Brad Hooker: Strongly denies; virtues can't be defined just by society’s standards (uses racism as an example).
• Transience of Virtue:
  • Virtues like chastity change status; sometimes with technological or social advances (e.g., contraception).
  • But social attitudes can lag behind practical realities.

"...in that society I grew up in, being racist was widely considered to be permissible...the fact that it was considered good didn't make it good. In fact, it was terrible." (B, 63:13)

• Rooting Virtue:
  • Aristotle’s answer: virtues are tied to human nature and flourishing (biological and rational).
  • But human rationality is only potential—realizing it is the moral challenge.
• Final Arbiter Problem:
  • Is there an authority in ethics? No: unlike law, ethics lacks a "Supreme Court."
  • Absence of final authority makes room for persistent disagreement, but it doesn't entail that "anything goes."

10. Virtue, Motives, and Consequentialism (84:51-89:09)

• Critique from a Utilitarian Perspective:
  • Virtues may be instrumental for maximizing well-being.
  • But motives and intentions matter—virtue ethics captures this; consequentialism struggles if only outcomes count.
  • Two societies might have identical well-being, but one achieved through accidents, the other intentionally: the latter seems better.

"It seems that there's something much better about a world in which people are doing things with the right motives and the right intentions. And that's the bit that I'm not sure consequentialism can easily capture even if the theories converge." (D, 87:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the heart of virtue ethics:
  “What makes something morally right or wrong or permissible is its relation to what a virtuous agent would...do.” (B, 14:56)

• On practical imprecision:
  "You can't...codify how to resolve moral conflicts between competing considerations or competing virtues...You have to use good judgment." (B, 19:32)

• On social constructionism:
  “Whether something is a virtue does not depend entirely on—perhaps not even crucially—on the attitudes of the society, because we all know the attitudes of society can be just as bad as imaginable.” (B, 64:13)

• On motives:
  “…there's something much better about a world in which people are doing things with the right motives and the right intentions.” (D, 87:48)

• Wry self-awareness:
  “Brad, on the other hand, is a sour son of a bitch…” (B, 57:35)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 – Simon’s introduction and rationale for the ethics strand
• 05:59 – Brad’s historical overview and definition of virtue ethics
• 14:56 – What virtue ethics is committed to
• 19:32 – The role of good judgment, conflict of virtues (honesty vs kindness)
• 32:11 – Doctrine of the mean and context-dependence
• 41:13 – Virtue ethics vs deontology/consequentialism
• 47:18 – The circularity challenge
• 51:03 – Motives and acting rightly
• 55:14 – Practical example: faking virtue
• 62:14 – Flexibility ("advice model")
• 63:13 – Social construction challenge and racism example
• 84:51 – Motives versus outcomes; comparison with consequentialism

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Conclusion

The episode masterfully unpacks virtue ethics, acknowledging its intuitive appeal in focusing on character and motives, rather than just rules or outcomes. The discussion does not shy from complex theoretical issues—circularity, relativism, the role of society—and uses vivid examples to illustrate subtle points. While the speakers express some skepticism about whether virtue ethics is ultimately distinct or convergent with other theories, both affirm the enduring importance of character, judgment, and intention in understanding morality.

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For listeners new to virtue ethics, this episode provides clarity, frank debate, and memorable illustrations that bring the theory, and its challenges, vividly to life.

Transcript

[A]

Good evening everybody, and welcome to the lsc and welcome to this forum for European Philosophy dialogue on virtue ethics. I'm Simon Glendinning, I'm the director of the Forum and I'm delighted not only to welcome our speakers tonight, but to introduce you to a new event strand for the forum. For many years we tried to draw some of our events into regular strands so that we keep our eye on covering themes and topics that we've been keen to cover. But I felt quite recently that one thing that slipped by the side in that effort has been an engagement with ethics and in a way that reflected, I suppose, a generation before my own, perhaps disappointment with ethics itself. In philosophy, certainly when I was a student, for the most part, the focus in what was going on in moral philosophy was about the logic of the language of morals and the meaning of ethical statements. And it didn't seem to be much as it were, practical reasoning about moral problems going on or something which was giving us a handle on what being moral human beings might be about. There was another dimension to this which troubled me as a student, which was a problem faced in ethics, faced head on in ethics, but in some way didn't seem to leave me in any better position with respect to it, which was that the status of propositions in morals. Normally when people say something, we think that there's, as it were, the world, that it's answerable to the facts, the statements are answerable to the facts. And there seems to be this great difficulty in the moral domain. But the idea of moral facts looked really, really weird. And there didn't seem to be any plausible candidate for, as it were, a fact in the world independent of our judgments that made our value judgments right and wrong. As some one writer put it in the 70s, it looks like statements about morals are not amenable to assessment in terms of being true or false in the way that factual statements are non moral statements. And so people would talk about there being among the assertability conditions of a moral proposition were not truth conditions. The serviceability conditions could be discussed, but they didn't have truth conditions. And so then I just thought that's just completely weird. What are these statements that we make about that seem to be about our world and yet seem to have no reality that they were being answerable to. And I found that very difficult. And what I began to, when it became a theme in philosophy, what I began to like was the idea that what was, as it were, the tangible reality around morality wasn't some dubious domain of moral facts, but virtuous people that that is, as it were, the reality that you can focus on exploring what it is to be a virtuous person, somebody who's generous and trustworthy, for example, rather than the opposite, somebody with fellow feeling and how far that extends and the connections between that kind of character and the possession of rationality and so something deeply involved in being human. And here it seems to me we got hold of something actually of course got hold again because virtue ethics went back a long way, but got hold again on something that seemed to me much more intuitive as something. Yes, this is why there's a special domain of morality because it's speaking about us as human beings and what it is to be a human being. And so the question of exploring the characteristics of the virtuous person seemed to me a root in to questions about morality that had something tractable to it. Well, the whole domain of morality seemed to be slipping away a little bit in the fore of European philosophy. And now we're bringing it back. We're going to have a strand, regular strand on ethics and ethics called Ethics Matters. Sometimes we'll look at theories like virtue ethics, sometimes we'll look at more practical problems and try to look at way different ways, different philosophical approaches might explore them or attempt to understand them. Tonight though, we're going to start with, as it were, not necessarily my favourite, but the one that for me brought ethics back to life when I was a student. And I'm so pleased that we have two people who are going to be able to bring it to life for you at least I hope they are furthest away from me, Brad Hooker from the University of Reading and closest to me, Constantine Sandys from Oxford. Brookes. Constantine used to be at the University of Reading where Brad still is. I used to be at the University of Reading where Brad still is. So it's a bit of a reunion as well. But so now they have 50 minutes to an hour to explore this idea of virtue ethics with you and then that will give another half an hour or so for you to make have questions and contributions after that. So for now I'm going to hand over Brad. Are you opening up to Brad to begin the conversation?

[B]

Thanks Simon. Thank you very, very much for inviting me. I was honored and flattered to get the invitation from you and also I'm honored and flattered to be here at lse. This is a particularly good topic, as Simon said, partly because it's one that's hard to pin down. What actually is virtue ethics? We're going to be Exploring that. But perhaps before getting into the problem of defining the view or theory or approach or whatever we want to call it, I should just give you a little bit of historical context. Just a little bit. I promised Constantine eight sentences of historical context. So here are the eight sentences. Many modern writers actually call themselves virtue ethicists or express loyalty and affinity for the view. But actually the term probably didn't come into existence until the 1980s. So, you know, if you ask, was Aristotle a virtue ethicist? And the answer is probably yes, but he didn't actually use that terminology. But quite often the name of the theory comes along after the theory actually arrives. So virtue ethics was the predominant approach in the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle, and then for a very long time, a view called natural law ethics was predominant, Thomas Aquinas being the leading proponent. And then, as you probably know, utilitarianism grew up in the 1700s, and Kant was in the 1700s. And once utilitarianism and Kant came on the scene, they dominated things until, I don't know, 1970s or 80s or something like that. So you have this picture that once utilitarianism and Kant came up as the major opponents, then what we're going to call virtue ethics didn't seem to be getting so much attention. Now, in the 1950s, Elizabeth Anscombe published a very influential paper called Modern Moral Philosophy, in which she complained about the Kantians, complained about the utilitarians, and seemed to be suggesting a different approach to moral philosophy. And almost all modern virtue ethicists take Anscombe as being immensely inspirational, if not actually laying out a blueprint. Now, I haven't told you what virtue ethics is yet. I've kind of put it in a historical setting, but I actually haven't told you what it is. And actually, some. I should just be very clear right away that we need to distinguish between taking a big interest in the virtues, maybe even within a theory, taking a big interest in the virtues, and thinking that you need a theory about the virtues, what makes them virtues, what to do when virtues conflict with one another? What exactly is the virtue of honesty or loyalty or kindness? Those are all good questions, but that's not. And sometimes that's called virtue theory. So sometimes that's called virtue ethics. So it's ethics concerned with virtue. There's a different thing which is called virtue ethics. And virtue ethics, as in my little story just a moment ago suggested, is often thought to be a rival of utilitarianism and communism and contractualism and. And natural law. Theory and other approaches to ethics. So virtue of ethics, as that term is now used in textbooks, for example, is a distinct, at least family of theories which are meant to be rivals to these other theories. Now, my own view is that the most interesting forms of virtue ethics are not very far away from the most interesting forms of some of the other theories. So that actually the contrast begins to fade when we get to it. But we'll come back to those matters in a moment. Now, virtue ethics is often associated with some Aristotelian doctrines, which it's very often associated with these Aristotelian doctrines. And actually, I guess I myself don't have tremendous respect for these restitution, these particular doctrines. So I'm going to say, look, people often talk about virtue of ethics as if it's committed to a doctrine of the mean, but it's not really as if it's committed to the view that you have to first figure out what's distinctively human and then you have to somehow tie moral philosophy to what's distinctively human. And I don't, I'm going to confess, I don't much have much respect for that view either. I'm going to say why in just a second. And then we get down to what virtue ethics is really committed to. And it seems to me the central claim in virtue ethics that it's really committed to is an extremely interesting one. And it's definitely not obviously wrong. I'm not sure it's right, but it's definitely not obviously wrong. Okay, so the problem of doctrine, the mean. So people often say, oh, look, Aristotle advocated doctrine and that's perfectly good. We know that courage is between, on the one hand, rashness on the other hand, being overly timid and, I don't know, generosity is between being profligate on the one side and being mean on the other, etc. And you say, yeah, but in the case of some things, it doesn't seem that there are means between things. And I'm sure that you all have had the experience of somebody saying, oh, you should compromise and pick the mean. You say, well, that depends on totally on what were picked as the two things which the mean is supposed to be between. So if somebody picks out a very unreasonable position, you might think there's actually there's no virtue in compromising with that unreasonable position by picking the mean between them. So looks like that's not a very plausible picture. Here's what I don't like about the. And I think Constantine agrees with me about this, about the distinctiveness claim. So suppose somebody comes along, as Aristotle said, look, what's distinctive of human beings is rationality. And so what we need to think of as the highest human good is the supreme development of those rational capacities. And ethics takes that as the foundational commitment and then builds up from there. Well, actually, I think I entirely agree that rational capacities are immensely important. And as far as we know on earth. Gotta be a little careful here because of people's religious views. But as far as we know on earth, at least you think that the angels and God aren't on earth, they're somewhere else on earth. The only beings with the ability to do complicated chains of reasoning are human beings. Admittedly, there's some kinds of rationality in some animals, but. But at least the higher kinds of rationality, human beings are the only kind. But I have to confess, I think that. So what if all of a sudden there's some being at the bottom of the sea that turns out to have the same rational capacities? Does that mean that all of a sudden because it's not a distinctively human capacity anymore, that it's not so important? No, the fact that it's unique to human beings seems to be ultimately irrelevant. It's really good. It also happens to be unique to human beings. The important thing is it's really good. Actually, some people say that there's some very bad things that are unique to human beings. I mean, we might argue about what the examples of that are, but perhaps there are some features of human beings that are unique and absolutely awful. Uniqueness doesn't seem to be either, you know, it's just not relevant. So now we turn to the what's distinctive of virtue ethics as that term is technically new. Virtue ethicist proposal is that what makes something morally right or wrong or permissible is its relation to what a virtuous agent would either do or not do or might do. So if the virtuous agent would do it, then it's right. If the virtuous agent wouldn't do it, then it's wrong. And if the virtuous agent might do it, then it's permissible. Might do it as in might or might not. So instead of first figuring out what actions are right and then thinking the virtuous dispositions are the dispositions that someone would have would enable them to do those right actions, we instead say we first pick out or try to understand which are the virtuous or vicious dispositions, and then we determine what's right by reference to those virtuous dispositions. The right act is one that someone with the virtuous dispositions would characteristically do is the usable formula. Perhaps I should Just very briefly. Just this is on the beginning. This is in the very first paragraph of the head. Perhaps I should just say this so it kind of takes it off the table. Another point to take a look, too. I mean, sometimes we use the terms virtues and vices to really just mean good and bad things. So people talk about the virtual virtues of this kind of mobile phone versus that kind of mobile phone, vices of that kind of hoopa versus this kind of hoover really just mean the good things are the bad things about it. But in moral philosophy anyway, what we mean by virtues are desirable, settled dispositions of character. And vices are presumably something like undesirable, settled dispositions of character. Okay, so that's why the stress is mentioned a moment ago on dispositions. Right. Now, here is what seems to me really attractive about that approach. And then what's problematic about that approach. And then I'll shut up and let Konstantin correct me. So here's what's really attractive about the approach. Suppose we do think as probably, I think everybody in this room thinks that kindness is a virtue and that kindness is a moral requirement. You are morally required to be kind. Not on every single occasion in life, but at least regularly. And you're morally required to be honest, and honesty is a virtue. So we have these two requirements and two virtues. Honesty and kindness. Now, we all know that sometimes kindness and honesty conflict with one another. So my mother asks me, how do I look? And the answer is awful, like you're about to die. But kindness prohibits me from saying, gee, mom, you know that far away from.

[C]

Death.

[B]

I have to temper it, like, well, till you look better, I don't know. But anyway, I can't just tell it. You think kindness prohibits me from telling her the absolute truth, which is that she looks awful. Now you think, okay, well, look, is it the case that honesty is always more important than kindness? No. Is it the case that kindness is always more important than honesty? No. I presume we all think that. Really, we. You don't think that honesty is so important that in every circumstance you should tell the truth, even if it pushes someone to suicide? And on the other hand, we don't think that kindness is always so important that you should just go around telling people what they want to hear all the time. But now we try to say, well, okay, but where exactly is the balance? Exactly how much does someone's welfare have to matter before it's worth telling a lie. How important does a lie have to be before it's too important a lie to tell? Even when people would benefit a lot from hearing it? So you've got these kind of variables going on. Sort of the importance of a lie or a piece of truth, the amount of welfare, let's say, at stake for other people if you tell a lie or tell the truth, but two variables going on and it looks like it's not going to be plausible to come out with any precise specification. Perhaps not even. Not only not plausible, not even possible to come out with a precise specification for exactly under what circumstances you should tell a lie or not for the sake of benefiting others? I mean, you know, you could imagine an economist who came in here and tried to do it and you just think, oh yeah, but this is just artificial phony precision and abstraction that, you know, really, it's not like that. Moral reality isn't like that is what you think. Now the brain emphasis comes along and says, that's right. You can't, you know, there's a degree of indeterminacy and vagueness and imprecision in the moral life.

[C]

Life.

[B]

And you kind of, perhaps you try to hide this from children when they're very little because otherwise it's too depressing. But at some point you say to them, yeah, look, it's just tough. You know, there are these competing things and you have to use judgment to decide which is more important. And you think a virtuous person has good judgment, has wisdom and can make the right boundary decision about when one is more important than the other, the other is more important than one. And then when the virtue emphasis says, and the right action is the one that the virtuous agent would do, you would say, well, yeah, that's about as. That's about as precise as we can be, really. I know that doesn't sound very informative. It doesn't sound very helpful, maybe. But actually anything more precise and exact and specific is likely to be. Be just implausible or even unrealistic. I think that thought that there's a sense in which we can't codify how to resolve moral conflicts between competing considerations or competing virtues. We can't codify the resolution of those conflicts into any determinate, limited set of rules or principles. But instead we have to say something as vague as you have to use good judgment to decide which of these is more important than the other. That thought is one that many moral philosophers, I think, seem driven to. And it's one that the virtue ethics position is central to the virtue of. That's what I think really makes the position attractive. Now here's the difficulty, it seems to me, with the position. And let me just say I'm cutting to the chase, if you see what I mean. So we have plenty of time for discussion. There's lots of interesting things to talk about. Maybe they'll come back. But cutting to the chase. So here's the problem, for example. So then you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that sounds all good. Still, you owe us an account, you virtue ethicists. You owe us an account of what makes a disposition of virtue or vice. Most of us think nowadays, for example, that kindness is a virtue and honesty is a virtue, but that chastity is irrelevant. Right? Well, if you ask people, you know, 150 years ago about that, they certainly would have thought chastity was one of the most important virtues. Now, why is it that chastity, if it was a virtue 150 years ago, why was it and why is it not now? Or if it wasn't a virtue 150 years ago, why were they so wrong about it? Okay, that's a good question. And as different virtue ethicists actually give us somewhat different answers in reply to that question, what makes something virtue? And probably the most widely discussed answer nowadays is Rosalind Hursthouse's. Rosalind is a New Zealander who now works in Auckland, but was for a long time at the Auckland University here in Britain, lived in Oxford, but worked at Bjokman University and was a student of. A student of Philippa Foote. And Philippa Foote was a great friend of Elizabeth Anscombe. So there's a kind of a family story going on here. But anyway, Rosalind published a book called on virtue ethics in 1999, and that's probably the most discussed now virtue ethics theory. She put forward an account which actually goes back a bit to Aristotle, but also a bit to Hume, of what makes something a virtue. And she says, well, I'm going to again simplify a bit, that something is a virtue if it benefits the individual and. Or the species. Individual and. Or the species. Now, the problem with laying focus on the individual, she explicitly admitted, she said, well, look, honesty is a virtue.

[C]

But.

[B]

What about in Nazi Germany? Was honesty a virtue in Nazi Germany? Well, most of us would tempt to be saying yes. Well, did it benefit an individual to be honest, a Nazi Germany? The answer is probably no. I mean, unless they were Nazis. But suppose they weren't Nazis. Suppose they were in Nazi Germany, but they weren't Nazis. They thought that this was all an abomination. They thought this was absolutely awful what was going on. But it wouldn't have benefited that individual, to be honest about it, because the person probably frog went straight to the gas chamber. So she says, oh, yeah. She says, okay, what about want to say is that virtues are beneficial, Virtues are beneficial to the individual in favorable circumstances. Then you think, well, wait a minute. Favorable circumstances just are circumstances in which the virtues are regularly rewarded and the vices are punished. I mean, that looks circular really. Okay, so let me say set aside the benefit beneficial to the individual and turn to beneficial to the species. So I think, and actually, I think, you know, under pressure, Rosalind would admit this, the species just looks like too narrow. Why is it just the species? Why couldn't something be a virtue because it benefited some group other than the species? You know, again, suppose we find that there are these rational. This rational species at the bottom of the sea or the top of the mountain, down some hole or on a foreign planet, from a foreign planet. This is rational species. And there would be various dispositions in us that would benefit that species, but they're not human. Well, it surely could still count as a virtue. The fact that it's not benefiting humans, it's benefiting some other species, doesn't seem to count against its being a virtue. Okay, so it looks to me like you need to broaden out the group that matters from just our species to a broader group, not just our species. How broad is a further question. But at least in principle, it shouldn't just be at the border of our species. As I say, interesting questions about how much further. But not just at the border of our species. But once you do that, once you say, well, what makes something a virtue is that people having dispositions of this kind benefits not just our species, but this broader group. And presumably this is an impartial assessment, then it looks like we're going in the direction of a kind of virtue utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism. And since that's a view that I myself am particularly interested in, they seem to be not regrettable, but others might have different views. So I'm going to shut up and let Constantine take over.

[D]

Thanks very much. I can't stand for medical reasons, so this isn't kind of disrespect to your Brad. So I'm going to sit down. You've made so many points, I don't know where to start. And part of the trouble is I Agree with quite a lot of them, but maybe. So Brad started with these sort of worries about Aristotle's view of virtue ethics. And it still seems to be the most popular form of virtue ethics. So even though people like Hume, who he briefly mentioned also had something that might be called virtue ethics, arguably Nietzsche did as well. Most contemporary vertices seem to go back to Aristotle. And I think I'm in agreement with Brad on both the points. So one was about the mean and the other was about whether rationality was a distinctive feature of human nature and whether it mattered whether it was or not. But I thought I could add sort of a little bit of context to maybe make Aristotle gene not sound completely sort of crazy or why would we even be tempted by such a view, though I don't want to defend it, actually. So what happens in Aristotle is that we have a view that probably neither of us agree with, but that Brad hasn't mentioned, which is that what's good for a thing is related to its function or something like that, where that might be understood as an end or a purpose. And it's sort of quite controversial how to understand function with things that aren't artifacts, like the function of a knife, which you might think is Descartes, where in a sense the designer gives it its function. And there's a lot of sort of controversy, think about debates over creationism or, or whatever, whether natural things have function. And there's been a lot of work trying to show that Aristotle, in talking of function, isn't committed to creationism. So if you think the function of the heart is to pump blood, maybe there's a kind of naturalistic way of understanding that. And so he starts by asking what's the function of all living things? And it may be that plants can grow, for example. So what's good for a plant is to flourish. But if plants don't have sensations and don't feel pleasure or pain, then it can't be good for them to feel pleasure or something like that. And so then you have the next a wider group of living things. Well then you have animals. And like plants, it's good for them to grow. So non human animals, it's good for them to sort of flourish and live maybe to a good age, but they also have sensation. So it's good for them to feel maybe pleasure and not to feel pain. This may sounds a bit too utilitarian, but Aristotle and I think here already Brad and I are probably not an Aristotle side, but Aristotle had a fairly negative view of animals and that he thought none of them could reason at all. Some of his students sort of argued against him. So rationality doesn't seem to be part of the function of a non human animal. And then we get to humans and they have sensations and it's good for them to grow and flourish. But now part of what's good for them is to live in accordance with reason. And I guess he just doesn't sort of think of what about Martians? What about something like that? But I don't know what he'd say if he came across an animal that could reason. But it's. But it looks like if you've got this kind of view, then you might think, especially if you think virtues are things that must be good for the individual, if not the species, then you must think they must be tied to this function in this way. So that's where the stuff about rationality comes from. But I think all these worries do arise. A what if other things were turned out to be rational? Whether they're some animals or whether they're kind of beings we've not discovered yet. And then there's also the worry about what if there are distinctive aspects of human nature that are bad things? And in relation to sort of how stable a virtue must be, I think one interesting question, and I'd be interested to hear what you think of it, one interesting question is whether human nature is itself something that can evolve not as quickly as to solve the chastity case, but sort of over far longer periods of time. So if our nature changes sort of biologically over very, very long periods of time, does that mean that what would be good for us and what would be a virtue would change? And I think that's possible. And that's the sense in which I think there's something right in Aristotle, which is that as we change, what happens is our capacities and our limitations change over long periods of time. And that could influence what would be count as a virtuous disposition. So in that sense, I don't think he's completely wrong, but I do agree with Brad's criticism. The mean. Mean is maybe an unfortunate term because it sort of makes it sound like, you know, we get, we have 0 and 10 and with any kind of question the answer is going to be five. And then it just looks completely implausible. Like Brant suggested that we should always be exactly in between 0 and 10. But I think it's not obvious that that's Aristotle's view. I mean, I don't think you were saying that was Aristotle's view. But one might be tempted to think that initially. And so the view is sort of slightly more plausible than that. And so it could be that from one, and it relates to what Brad said was one of the virtues of virtue theory. So from one context to another, what counts as the right degree can shift. So if you take something like patience, for example, it might be that if you're waiting to find out which university you get into, waiting a number of months is patient, and it's impatient to want to know half an hour after you fill in your application and put it in the post box or something. Whereas if you're waiting for the bus, maybe, you know, half an hour, it starts being acceptable or maybe earlier to be inpatient. So it looks like what counts as patient is going to really vary from one context to another. And what's nice with virtue theory is it doesn't say the patient amount to wait is this. I mean, that would be absurd for any kind of theory to say it's 34 minutes or something. Right. And maybe for some things it's years, and for other things it's seconds. I mean, if I sort of stop talking, you know, maybe after 10 seconds, you might think, okay, how long are we going to wait? Half an hour. Right. So even though I think there's still a problem of how do we understand the mean, how do we get to know what the mean is? Maybe part of the point relating to what Brad was saying was a good thing about virtue ethics is the very point that we can't codify it. So we can't come out with a kind of algorithm for caucating the mean because it will vary from one case to another. And so that goes back to the thought, if photoethics is competing with these other theories, how can it guide us if it can't ever tell us you should never lie, to use that example. So if some theories are saying you should never lie, or even they might say you should never lie unless X, Y and z, so they won't be so absurd as to not have, you know, a few qualifications. But they'll say, you know, unless it's this kind of situation or that kind of situation, you shouldn't lie. And it looks like virtue ethics can't do that. So then the question is, can it have rules at all? And some people, when they write about virtue ethics, they make it sound like another, a more recent view called moral particularism, which denies that there are moral rules. It doesn't deny moral truth, so it thinks there are truths about what we ought to do. But there are no rules, so they can't be codified. So in one situation, lying may be a good thing, in another, it may be a bad thing. In a third, it may not matter either way. But it seems to me virtue, I think, does have rules, but they're not about actions, they're about character traits and dispositions. So it looks like the rules don't they say be honest, not tell the truth? And that's something. It may sound paradoxical because you might kind of think, how can someone who lies be honest? And then we can enter debates, how many lies do you have to tell before you're not honest anymore? And again, we're not going to have a rule, right? It's not going to be 36. And you know, if you say on the 37th lie, you're a dishonest person. So it looks like, again, we can't codify in relation to action, but it does look like if we think of these things as dispositions, then maybe the honest disposition is to tell the truth in certain circumstances, in the right circumstances. So just like in other ways, the analogy breaks down very early. But if you think something has an object, has a fragile disposition, it's not that it will break no matter what. So if you drop it on a pillow, it won't it break, but if you drop it on marble, it might. So you might think that we're a bit like that. I mean, I don't want to suggest that actions come out quite as automatically as that, but it might be that the honest person is someone who.

[B]

Tells.

[D]

The truth in certain circumstances, maybe the majority of circumstances, but maybe not in Nazi Germany, for example. And so the view starts to sound like it does have a set of rules. And different virtue ethics will have different rules. So some will have Beach Haste and some will have other ones. If you go back to sort of Homeric Greece, they all seem to be related to battle, for example. So that's another way in which these things have changed. But it looks like the rules aren't about action. And so then I think it's not that I think it's obvious that virtue ethics isn't a rival view, but I think it's an open question. And also the sense in which it's a rival view to deontology and consequentialism is also an interesting question to explore because it looks like, on the face of it, deontology and consequentialism tell you perform these actions or perform those actions, and then they have rival methods of how we get to which actions are permissible, which are obligatory, et cetera, as Brad hinted it may be. And sort of one of the best known moral philosophers alive today, Derek Parfit, recently tried to argue that when it comes to the best version of each of these view, they converge. So it may be that they end up prescribing exactly the same actions, but for different reasons. So one question is, does it matter? Does the reasons for which an action is deemed right? Is that an important question? But it also looks like these views are in competition because their views about what to do. And it seems to me, and I think to Brad, that virtue ethics isn't about what to do, it's about what kind of person to be. And so it's not obviously in competition. Now, there is this view, and it's particularly central to Rosalind Hurst's House, who Brad mentioned, which is that. And she makes a big effort to say that virtue ethics is a rival view. And so the thought is what you ought to do is whatever the virtuous agent would do something. And so that's the kind of way in which it becomes a rival. But many critics of virtue ethics sort of think this is either kind of vacuous or maybe circular because you might think it's a bit like the kind of famous Euthyphro dilemma about whether God does things because they're right or whether they're right because God does them. You might start to wonder, well, sure, are they just right because the virtuous person would do it, or shouldn't the virtuous person do them because that's the right thing? So there are those kind of worries creep in, and then there are. We can have discussions about other ways of tinkering with this view. I know Simon said at the start there's preoccupation with sort of questions about language rather than ethics that we sort of overcome. And I don't want to go back. I mean, I have some syntheses with some of these people. But one distinction made in sort of philosophy of language is between truth makers and truth conditions. So between what makes a sentence or proposition true and conditions under which it's true. So to use the kind of favorite example, if you. You think snow is white if and only if snow is white. There was a kind of debate about what is this? Is this just telling us conditions for a sentence being true? And so you might think that of course we ought to do whatever the virtuous agent would do. But it's not obvious that it follows that the reason why we ought to do it is because the virtuous agent would do it, that that's what makes a judge. After all, it may be that the virtuous agent has her own reasons for why she would do it, and they may vary from context to context. So why should I do this? Maybe it's because it would be the kind thing to do. Maybe it's just because she's in pain or something like that. So it looks like if these are the reasons to act, then what makes an action right should just be whatever reason in the context makes it right, rather than that the virtuous agent would do it. So I think that's an interesting question to explore, hopefully without talking about language for too long. And I think I'll just say one more thing and then maybe see what Brad thinks. The famous paper by Elizabeth Anscombe that Brad mentioned, part of what it was trying to do, other than say, oh, there's this stuff in Aristotle which seems to have been ignored for a long time. She was trying to do maybe too many things in that paper. And that's a problem with the paper. Sometimes it sounds like what she wants to do is tell us we shouldn't use the word or. Or obligation anymore, whereas a lot of virtue ethics since then is happy to use it. So that's again a question about did she think this was a rival view if it wasn't a view of what we ought to do, or at least a distinctively moral ought, but something else she goes on about is that we need more what she called moral psychology and what is also sometimes called philosophy of action.

[B]

Now.

[D]

Now moral psychology since then has become very empirical and there's a question mark as to. Is that what Anscombe had in mind or whether what she had in mind was maybe more conceptual and to do with asking what is it to intend something? And so she wanted to know if purpose and reason and intention and motive were crucial to ethics, then we need to ask questions about these very things. So almost like philosophy of psychology, something like that. And I think, and that for her included philosophy of action. She's maybe most famous for a book called Intention, about the relation of action to intention and whether they're completely separate entities. But recently, and this isn't in Anscombe, but a lot of people influenced by Anscombe doing philosophy of action have come to distinguish between different things that we might call actions. And one distinction might be between doing the right thing and acting rightly. And you might think, what's the difference? And the difference may Lie in the reason or the motive or intention. So suppose the right thing to do is to give an X amount of money to a certain charity. When you weigh everything, maybe even from a consequentialist point of view. But suppose Brad does it for these consequentialist, maybe rule utilitarian reasons and I do it to impress Simon. Right, but we both do exactly the same thing. We give the same amount of money to the same charity. It looks like maybe from a consequential point of view, we've both done the right thing, but I've not acted rightly. And the thought that goes back to Anscombe is that my actions can be redescribed, so my act of giving to the charity can be redescribed as showing off, whereas Brad's can't. So again, it might look like virtue ethics if it's a theory of right action, it's a theory of not what the right thing to do is, but what it is to act rightly. And it's not, I guess it's just not obvious to me that deontology and consequentialism are theories about this. I'm not saying they're not, but that's another thing to explore. But I think I should shut up now.

[A]

Can I just push you both on one thing that's come up more than once now, though? The threat of some kind of circularity that how are you going to define the virtue as a person except in terms of the way they behave and what it is to behave? Well, is to behave as a virtuous person behaves. There's a circle worry there and it'd be nice to have a word on that. But also the other worry in relation to the virtuous person that you've raised is how do they think about judgment? If they are already the virtuous person or meant to be, do they have to refer to a more ideally virtuous person in which to make sense of the virtues of their actions, the circularity and also the thinking of the virtuous person.

[D]

Can I try this first question? Just because I think the way I think about it ties in with the very last thing I said. So. So it seems to me the secularity is worse if the view is about you should do the things that the virtuous agent would do. And that's precisely because it might not be virtuous to do these things if you do them with the wrong motive. So I think what virtue ethics is committed to is that it's not about, it's about acting honestly. So in a sense there isn't a thing you do that's honest. It's you're doing certain things that you, you can do them honestly or you can do them non honestly. Maybe the very same thing. And so I think if virtue ethics, if there's truth, you know, at least an important degree of truth in virtue ethics, it's got to be that it says things like act honestly. And then you need to know what honesty is to act honestly. And the theory, the theory of honesty will have to be more basic in a sense than the theory of the right action. So in a sense you need to understand what the virtues are to know how you should act. Even I was tempted to say to know what to do. So in that sense, I think it's got to be that the virtue comes before the action. Whether that blocks circularity, I don't know. But I think it suggests that a virtue ethics that says that this is really a theory about right action is going to have more trouble with circularity. But I don't know.

[B]

So.

[D]

Right.

[B]

So I. Just. So that we're all on the same page, so to speak. Not only on the same page, but in the same paragraph and the same sentence, you can imagine a theory which said the right thing to do. Let's just take the simplest theory or a simple theory. Suppose you had a theory and the theory said the right thing to do is always to maximize impartial utility. And then the person said, okay, now, then we start thinking, okay, now what should a moral agent be like? Should our moral agent just be only focused on one thing, maximizing utility? Just go around trying to calculate the utilities of all the different possible things that she might do and then pick the one that maximizes utility. And you might think, as in fact Mill did and Sidgwick did and every other utilitarian has, that that would not maximize utility. The way for somebody to maximize utility is in fact to have settled dispositions to tell the truth, keep their hands off other people's property, keep their promises, etc. Now admittedly, those settled dispositions and those things might sometimes need to be overridden because extreme certain circumstances arise. But in general, the way to actually choose the acts which will maximize utility, or at least not choose acts that will be grossly bad in terms of utility, is to have these settled dispositions. Now on that utilitarian story I just told you, have an independent account of right action. And then the virtues or these dispositions are all really instruments to promoting utility. Right. That is a model. Virtue ethics says, no, that's wrong. You can't first pick out which are the right actions and then make the virtues just instruments to doing that. Instead you have to go in exactly the opposite order. You have to first figure out what are the virtues. And in fact the only specification we can give of right action is the only true specification we can give a right action is that the acts are right if they're what a virtuous person would do. So if they stick to that story, then I don't think they're circular because they've got an independent account of the virtues. Let's say the virtues are, for the sake of argument, settled dispositions of character that will promote the flourishing of intelligent species. How about that? Or sentient species, species perhaps even broader. Or okay, so you've got an account of what the virtues are and then you've got a quite vague and indeterminate and you might think hard to apply view. But then the view would say, and then actions are right if they're what a virtuous person would do. Now, a virtuous person would presumably not only do the honest thing, but do the honest thing for the right reason. So tell the truth and not tell the truth to impress people, but because it's what honesty requires. Right? So I'm absolutely with Constantine that in virtue ethics it's terribly important what motives the person acts from, not just what physical actions they do, but also the motives and indeed the character and the intention. That's absolutely right. So I left that out of my presentation. That was a fault. Absolutely. That's terribly important. And I mean, I think we all can recognize that's right. We have much more confidence in and admiration for and praise for someone who not only is honest and not only does honest things and kind things and just things, but also is motivated by the right considerations. Not just showing off to other people or impressing other people or getting more clients or whatever, but the right considerations. Now, what exactly the right considerations are? It's a slightly different matter. Simon asked a very good question which is from inside the virtuous agents perspective, what comes up as salient?

[D]

Right.

[B]

So that's terribly important. I mean, it's widely recognized, I think, that the virtuous person, by I don't mean universally recognized, but I think wisely recognize that a virtuous person would often not think of the situation in virtue terms. Okay. And I mean, so a kind person would think she needs help, not in order to be kind. I've got to Help her. So they're thinking of it, you see what I mean? They're not even using the concept of kindness in the thinking. It's she needs help. Help her. In order to be kind, I've got to help her. Or in order to be fair, I've got to do this, or in order to be honest, I've got to do that. But rather, it's the truth, I better tell it, or it's my promise I've got to keep. In order to be a virtuous person, I've got to do these things. That's the kind of. If I were thinking that way, then I really wouldn't be virtuous. I would be sort of concerned with my own moral status rather than the things I should be concerned with, which is the promises I've made to others and other people's needs, et cetera. And I think there is one exception to that often made, which is in the case of justice, this is a point Fernand Williams noted. The virtuous agent would actually, when thinking about justice, think about it in those terms justice requires. Therefore, I have to. It's very difficult to reconfigure that out so that you take the virtue of justice out of the thinking of the virtuous agent. Maybe when you was right about that, maybe he was wrong. Most people had swallowed it and thought that that sounded right. The virtuous agent wouldn't think about situations in virtue terms except in the case when justice comes into play. But in the case when honesty and kindness and other virtues come into play, those wouldn't feature in their thinking.

[A]

So if the virtuous person from the inside is not thinking through things in terms of virtues, but in terms of just. Of the.

[B]

Let me. Can I give you an example?

[A]

Where does the judgment of their being virtuous reside? So is it. How do we identify the virtuous?

[B]

Good question. So that's a good question, right? So let me give you an example which is meant to illustrate how this goes. Suppose that Constantine, Simon and I play a little round robin of squash. So we each play each other. And Simon is way better than the two of us, and Constantine's way better than I. And so Simon is now to be congratulated for slaughtering the two of us. Me worse than Constantine, but he's beaten us, rounding both of us. So now it's time to congratulate. And Constantine goes up and thinks, gosh, Simon played really well. He just outfoxed us and outperformed us in every respect. And he walks up and shakes Simon's hand and he's thinking to himself, Simon deserves congratulations for playing so well and to be applauded for his acumen and prowess. So he doesn't think about it as virtue requires that I do this. He just does it thinking, perhaps thinking about what? Simon's thinking about Simon's talents and admirable qualities. That's what constitutes. Now Brad, on the other hand, is a sour son of a bitch. A sour son of a bitch. And he said he's a son of a bitch. He's come to Diane fitter than I am and he not even nice enough to give me a few points. So I'm just seething with hostility. Now you think, well, Brad, look, okay, so you don't have the kind of good nature to go over and congratulate Simon because he deserves it and because he played so well. In fact, you're not focusing on his good qualities, you're focusing on how mad you are at it. Right? Right. So, so now what should I do? Well, it sounds like a virtue. Ethicists are committed to thinking that what I should do is go over and congratulate him, smiling as hard as I can and try to be nice. Right? Because why? Well, even if I don't have this good nature in myself, I should at least try to pretend that I have a good nature. Okay, now this raises an objection. People have often pointed out the virtue ethics, which I think is actually practically quite important, which is why I'm going on about it. It's not just a philosophical problem, it's actually a practical problem. So if I say to you, you should do this as virtuous agent would do and you think, well, virtuous agents are temperate and kind. They're not bad tempered and they're not bad natured and they're not jealous and they're not greedy and maybe at least I'm sure you are much less than I am. But I am jealous and greedy of bad nature, bad tempered. Quite often if I tried to behave like a virtuous agent, what I would do is I would go over there thinking, I've got to shake his head, I've got to shake his hand. I've got to shake his hand and I'd smash his head out of rage.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So people often say against virtue ethics. Look, for many of us anyway, if we try to behave like a virtuous agent, actually it will backfire because we don't have the good nature that's needed to do that. What we should instead do is say, okay, Well, I can't do the best thing which would be to shake his hands and be nice. So I. But I at least should keep away from you. So in danger in this context and that problem about. In a way virtue ethics is committed to a kind of idealization of the agent and then tells you to behave like an ideal agent would behave. Well, if you are way far short of being an ideal agent, then maybe sometimes you shouldn't try to behave like an ideal agent should behave. You should try to do something else that in a way acknowledges your own weaknesses and. And incapacities and bad temperament. Like in my case.

[A]

Very good. Okay, right now hands are throwing up even before I've said you feel free handout. So goodness me not. Let's start there, then we'll come over here.

[B]

The question for me is that the definition, exact definition of virtuous person because we. For the. The fact that you're talking about something subjective is objective. You're talking about morality. When it comes into practice. There are hundred different kinds of types of definition and understanding. I believe what virtue it says. It just gives us the word. We just mentioned something ideal which. Doing that is very good, but not doing that is not. Why say this? Support my argument by saying that. Just go back to your example, what you said. You say it's a good thing to shake his hand, but my reason says no because it defeats me. It's not good. Why should I do that? And there are so many other things into it. My nature, my genetic. So many other. My psychology of my actions. So just by sitting here and saying that no, it's good to shake his hand, it doesn't resolve the issue. I think it's good if I could have done that, but it's not horrible if I don't.

[A]

Okay, Brad, so part of the point here is that perhaps the virtue ethicist can be flexible enough with your later.

[B]

Yeah, maybe they can. I mean just complete my question. Is it right to say that virtuous essence, the person who always refers to the reason. Is this the right answer to this always to use just finger as a rationale. Would it be a solution?

[A]

Right, that's.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

So Brad, your flexible. Your flexible virtue ethicist who keeps away from me rather than coming up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is. Is remaining as it were a rational agent.

[B]

Yeah, rational agent. And then go back to the first point you said okay, human beings are rational. So what? Yes, so what? Because we can make a judgment according to situation and that would make me virtuous. This Right.

[A]

Thank You.

[B]

I think the way virtue ethicists have responded to the problem of the tennis racket, I mean the squash racket came from Gary Watson. That example came from a philosopher named Gary Watson. The way they responded to it is precisely to try to be flexible and say, well, the ideal thing to do would be to, with a good nature, walk up and shake his hands. But the second best thing to do for people who don't have a good nature is in fact to think, ah, I better not do that, but instead stay away. So they, in effect they want to have a kind of here's the right action for somebody who really did have the right dispositions to do, and here's the right action for somebody who realizes that they're imperfect in various ways and perhaps doesn't have the capacity to do it led to.

[D]

It was popular for a while. I don't know what it's taken sort of now, but what was called the advice model.

[B]

Exactly.

[D]

So people thought you shouldn't do what the virtuous agent would do, but what the virtuous agent would advise you or me with all my vices.

[B]

But the thing is that virtuous person, who is that virtuous person?

[A]

You can't give it to me. Well, okay, we've got that problem. But that is an interesting variation to build your flexibility by looking for that advice. So we weren't here. I think it was you.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

One thing that seems to me self evident about virtues is that virtues are social constructs. Right? You mentioned chastity being a virtue 200 years ago. You know, military courage, increase, etc. So basically it seems to me that virtue is basically a social projection of desirable behavior. It's a sort of social expectation what society expects us to do. You know, Greeks were expected to be courageous, good Christians were expected to not have sex outside marriage, etc.

[B]

Etc.

[D]

And if we grant this, it would basically whole virtue ethics would turn out to be good is what society considers to be good.

[B]

I think in your very first sentence you said something which I really don't agree with, and that is that what's virtuous is what society thinks is virtuous. And let me just give you a little autobiography. I grew up, as you can tell, in the United States. Can you tell what part of the United States? I grew up in the southern part of the United States, which really was a society with absolutely vicious racism and vicious homophobia and actually vicious, vicious misogyny. So in that society that I grew up in, being racist was widely considered to be in the sun I grew up in, being racist was widely considered to be permissible, at least maybe even obligatory. The fact that it was considered good didn't make it good. In fact, it was terrible. So just consider somebody in the 1960s in Alabama, in the 1960s who, who was in fact not racist. Absolutely. I mean, in the way that many people nowadays aren't racist at all. Not racist at all, not homophobic at all, not misogynist at all. That person had a set of dispositions which were unpopular in the society, widely condemned in the society, in fact, even could have got them lynched in the society, but they were still virtues. Whether something is a virtue does not depend entirely on. On perhaps not even crucially on the attitudes of the society. It's got to depend on something else, because we all know the attitudes of society can be just as bad as imaginable.

[A]

But one of your own objections was the sort of transience of the virtue.

[B]

Of people's views of people's views of people's views about the virtues. Yeah, I mean, you might say, and this is very possible, you might say in the case of chastity, that actually there has been not just a change in view, but a change in circumstances because it was pre contraception and then post contraception, or not post contraception, but pre contraception and post the invention of contraception, and that chastity changed status and went from virtue to non virtue or virtue to irrelevance by the invention of contraception. I mean, you could take that view. Many people, I think, would. But. But the crucial thing in my view is that if you told that story, if you thought that chastity was a virtue when contraception was impossible and chastity was no longer a virtue once contraception was widely available. But look, there was a difference. Contraception became widely available when in the 30s, isn't that right? In the 1930s in England. I think that's right. You all don't even know. Okay. I think it became. It started to become available Pre World War I, but it did become widely available in the 1930s and even more. I mean, of course, but there was a long lag in attitudes between when it became available and when chastity was no longer considered a virtue. So my view is, even if you told this story according to which chastity was a virtue when there wasn't contraception, but as soon as contraception became widely available as no longer a virtue, you'd then say, yeah, but social attitudes didn't change until roughly the 60s. See what I mean, okay, so I think you've got to be very careful about what people's attitudes are and whether something really was a virtue or not.

[D]

I just wanted to take up on this point. It's more of a question for Brad, trying to discuss it already.

[B]

But I think if you did think.

[D]

That virtuosity distinctive category, I think one of a virtue essayist might first respond by saying this kind of partner inquiring.

[B]

Response, which is probably one of my forward responses.

[D]

But it's kind of. If we think that virtue is sensitive.

[B]

To context in some ways, like time.

[D]

Might think culture or other social circumstances, this objection could easily have a.

[B]

Well, hold on. I didn't mean that as an objection. Sorry, I didn't mean it as an objection. All I was doing was rejecting the view that you could plausibly say that virtue and vice is just conventional or dependent on. It's a sociological fact about social attitudes. All you have to do is look at a really bad society and say, no, you. We don't want to say that it's a virtue to be racist or a virtue to be Anti Semitic, etc.

[D]

My point was that if you could say that about that, then we can also say that these attitudes could possibly extend to ideas about what happiness consists.

[B]

Of or what the right rules to follow.

[D]

Maybe even more so in some cases. You might think that the attitudes are probably more uniform.

[B]

It comes to describing RA in terms.

[D]

Of virtues rather than happiness.

[B]

I was just thinking, if that is.

[D]

A problem.

[B]

Why is it more of.

[D]

A problem for talking about in terms.

[B]

Of virtues rather than in utilitarian or theological ways? I think I might. Perhaps I didn't. Obviously I didn't express myself very well. I don't think I've come up with a decisive objection to virtue ethics. I don't think I've come up with one. I certainly don't think I've expressed one today. All I meant to do is say, look, here are some possible objections. You might think these possible objections are quite strong. The objection that I was most focused on on was the one that we need an account of what makes things virtues and vices. And I can't say, I mean, I can't see how virtue ethicists can plausibly deny that they have to come up with an account why these things are virtues and those things are vices. But once they do, it's not so clear that there's that big a difference between that view and some other views. But that wasn't meant to be hostility to them. It Was meant to be, as Constantine suggested, convergence. Yeah.

[A]

Okay, over there.

[C]

If people's views of vicious possibly felt different, how can it possibly know what vicious person is?

[A]

That's right. So a related question. If you are going to acknowledge any kind of transience in what socially gets acknowledged as a virtue, how are you going to get hurt hold of any content whatsoever of a sort of socially social independent value of the virtue of the virtuous.

[D]

So I thought that was not that it's the right view, but that was what was attractive in Aristotle was that it did it sort of, I guess biologically rather than sociologically. So it said let's look at human nature. Let's see what's good for us, say from our nature, not from a sort of social point of view, but from a biological point of view. Now that might be the wrong.

[A]

Because I think it is a very important point because although you're talking about biology, the biology here is the biology of a rational animal, right. And so what we're talking about first of all is the human as an inherently rational creature. And we often in the history of humanity have not been flourishing as rational creatures that we've got these rational capacities, but they're potentials only. And so what you're looking at is the possibility of a way of living for the human in which these flourish. And just as you have flowers which they're as telos to flourish, so for a human being, its end, its purpose.

[D]

Is to flourish, to go from potentiality.

[A]

To actuality to actuality. Now does that answer the question when what's in view there is the potential flourishing of the human in its nature, which is as a rational creature to hold off a worry that the sense of virtue at any time is going to be the only thing you can refer to to make sense of virtue at all. I think it does because you've got an idea of the rational. But do you have any. You don't have a non historical idea of the rational. So how do you do you just have to become a Platonist of somehow there is this sort of ideal out there of what the ideally rational person would be. And so now we what the ideally virtuous life would be.

[D]

So I thought that at least for Aristotle, the thought is that the rational thing to do will be the thing that turns out to be good for you in this sort of semi biological sense. So for example, and this won't just include moral things. So for example, if it's prudent to brush your teeth because otherwise your teeth will rot for Example. So that's not a sort of sociological thing. It's not because other people will avoid you and you don't want that. It's that it's bad for you to have rotten teeth independently of what people think. I don't know if that.

[A]

I don't know. It was your question. I'd rather took it over. But does a reference to.

[B]

As it.

[A]

Were, like something like your nature as a human being begin to answer it?

[C]

If you live in a society where racism is seen as a virtue, even if it's not an actual virtue, you're seeing it as race.

[B]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I lived in a society in which many people thought racism was a virtue. Virtue. I never thought it was a virtue.

[C]

Okay, you didn't, but other people wouldn't. They might have seen the ideal person as actual, the vicious person as racist.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So they tie their idea of the good.

[B]

Sorry.

[D]

I think the point that's coming across is if you're a virtue ethicist but have the wrong theory of the virtues, you might be a terrible person even if you completely do what the virtue ethics. But that would be true of consequentialism as well. So if you think you should maximize the good, but you've got a wrong view of what goodness is. So it's a very kind of parallel.

[A]

Yes, but in this case, you've tied your idea of what the good is to what a virtuous person does, and you've got no further court of appeal, as it were. And if you're in a society.

[B]

Hold on. Suppose I'm in a society. I mean, this was, you know, this was true in the fairly recent method. Suppose we're in a society and we agree that, you know, we agree, but we're in a bigger. We agree that the welfare of homosexuals matters as much as the welfare. Welfare of heterosexuals. But the society in which we live does not think that's true. They think that homosexuals are inherently less important and valuable than heterosexuals and therefore things should be arranged so as to benefit heterosexuals, not homosexuals. Okay, but we just think they're mistaken about that. So our conception of virtue, of virtues, we're assuming our conception of virtues is that in fact, no distinction should be made between homosexuals and heterosexuals. But we accept that we are a minority in a society in which other people don't share our views and we might be persecuted for these things.

[A]

We think our view is in better shape than theirs. Right. And I think all the worries about how does a Virtue ethicist give any sort of content to the idea of one view being in better shape than another? All you've got?

[B]

No, no, that's right. Fair enough. So suppose that the answer is that I say, well, look, a society in which there's tolerance for people with different gender preferences, a society in which there's tolerance for that is going to be a better society, one where people flourish more than a society in which there's discrimination and oppression. And I accept that people disagree with me about that. But, you know, we disagree about. Well, that's why, that's why, that's why I think that when you start, when you. It's very tempting, it's very, very tempting to try to assess what things count as virtues and vices in a consequentialist way.

[A]

I've got loads of questions, one here, then while the back and then one down here.

[C]

I wanted to go back to Simon's question and when we got to the flexible example and I was thinking that it was all about what judgment meant. Now for the flexible example, it looked as if it meant something more like a rationale, something a conception and the word might do, an X would actually make sense, but then we sort of.

[B]

Lose.

[C]

The virtues in a way because we could have conceptions or like we could act for reasons that actually make sense and that which actually makes sense, but they may not be.

[B]

The ones we're looking for.

[C]

So I was just trying to understand a bit more. So what I understand is good judgment. We can't.

[B]

What you can't do is say the good judgment is. It's good because it gets the right answer. Because we can't say that if we're virtue ethicist, because the right answer is determined by the good judgment.

[D]

Was the worry about the content of the good judgment or just what it is to be a good judge?

[C]

Well, it could be a rationale.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

So you couldn't provide a rationale, a conception, that which might do in expert actually make sense. But that seems to separate us from what we were thinking as being virtuous because it could make sense as a conception for me to do something. Actually it's not virtuous. So it's sort of like end up in a problem.

[B]

Here's why I think the virtue ethicist is not in quite such a bad state about that. So suppose we've got three cases and in the first case kindness is more important than honesty. In the second case they're dead equal and in the third, whatever that means. And in the third Case, honesty is more important than kindness. Right. And suppose that Constantine faces these three cases and in the first case he decides in favor of this, and the second case he decides, well, they're equally important in the third case it decides in the other one. And then you ask, okay, Constantine, can you provide a rationale? And I take it that the virtue ethicist, and in indeed theorists of other kinds, would have to say, actually the only rationale I can provide you is that it seemed to me that in this case this consideration was more important than that one. In this case they were equal or roughly equal. And in this case it's the other way around.

[D]

I don't know, they could say, they could give further reasons about why it seemed so in one case rather than the other. So you might think, you might say, you know, my mother is particularly sensitive, whereas yours isn't. So, I mean, it's not just that you say, oh, in this case it just seemed to me. So you point to a further fact. But what will be tricky is to. If someone keeps asking, why did this further fact make the difference? At some point, I suppose you're going to want to think it's self evident. So if the person doesn't understand why being sensitive was a relevant feature, I'm sounding like a particular. At some point you'll hit a kind of rock bottom. But I think you can point to further features.

[B]

What I meant to be suggesting is that you're not providing a principle.

[D]

Yeah, you're not providing a principle, but you're not just appealing to. It seemed to me to be right. You're appealing to a consideration which mattered.

[A]

Okay, right up at the back. And it's there if, when discussing virtues.

[B]

A great deal is. Yes, but is there such a thing as a final arbiter? A final arbiter of. In the sense of who or what makes the final decision.

[D]

On what is or isn't virtuous?

[B]

No, I think, I guess I would say there is no. In ethics generally, there's no final arbiter in the sense of an agent with authority.

[D]

Can I just say something? Because this sort of question is a kind of clearer version of something that's been coming from other people as well. And it sounds like an objection to virtue ethics, but in fact it was one of the key claims in that Anscombe paper. So when we briefly mentioned that she thought there was no such thing as a moral ought, she gives this. It's ironically almost Nietzschean, but she gives this kind of very quick history of the concept of ought. And she basically says that if you. You can have aught in religion because you've got God and so the obligation, you know, you've got the final arbiter. And you can have aught, say, in a monarchy if the king is going to chop your head off if you don't. So that there's a power where the ought is coming from. And then she thought that secular ethics wasn't entitled. And so she thought we'd inherited this concept of ought from these sort of judo, Christian, ultimately legalistic, but then religious kind of models. And then we sort of brushed that away and said, this isn't about man's law or God's law. It's about the moral law. And she thought that that notion of a distinct moral ought to was, I guess, bankrupt. My question wasn't supposedly dismissive. It was actually quite. Oh, okay, so you.

[A]

It was just the idea that it.

[D]

Does seem relative, doesn't it, in if.

[A]

You don't have a moral ought, everything becomes relative.

[D]

Well, no, the thought is that you have an ought that. I mean, that will depend on from one virtue theory to another, an ought that's either tied to human nature or. Or animal nature. I mean, Hume's version of the ought isn't about rationality, but about sentiments that we share with other animals even. But it won't be a kind of moral ought.

[B]

I mean, I guess I do think that the relationship between ethics and law is fascinating. And I confess I often think of ethics as much like law, roughly has the same purpose, et cetera. But there's this huge difference. It's plausible in the case of law to think that there's a final authority. The Supreme Court, maybe, I don't know. There's a final thought, and what the final authority says is it. That just isn't the case in ethics, nor is it the case in philosopher generally. I mean, on metaphysical questions or epistemological questions or logical questions, there is no.

[D]

The chair is the final thought.

[B]

Okay, sorry, sorry.

[A]

Although you wanted to praise it, I don't think you were praising it in the same terms because you also wanted it to push back onto this idea of a relativity of. Of the virtues that in different societies or different people have these different judgments of virtue. And I think both of you have been trying to resist that movement from a sense of the absence of the moral authority to a slide right down and saying, well, then anything goes. You know, whatever anybody says at some time is the virtuous, is the virtuous. So it's a tricky job There trying to. But appeal to rationality is one. Appeal to moral sentiments would be another. I don't know if there's any other typical sort of slider stops social conviction probably. No, but that's not, that's not, that's.

[B]

That'S not what I want.

[A]

That's exactly all they don't want.

[B]

Yeah, acceptability by society.

[A]

No, exactly. Not.

[B]

See, I mean it seems to me anybody who's grown up in a bad society is not going to be keen to say that morals is determined by the society or by the convention or by the shared sentiments because they grew up in a society where in fact those were all absolutely awful. So they think, oh no, it's got to be something else, can't be that. And we hold up as heroes people who opposed, I mean, you know, Martin Luther King for example, who opposed the social attitudes of their time.

[A]

Okay, one cliff.

[C]

I grew up thinking about utilitarianism and so on. And so this is where I come from. It seems to me that a lot of this is all but as you said, very, very circular. But if you've got to appeal to what it is in society which makes morality, I mean obviously you can't have morality without society. Really it means other people. So what it is about other people, it's other people's well being. You talked about a dreadful society in the South. Well, because they didn't think about each person as individuals. They thought about some people better than others, which is clearly not a moral position. But you don't need to have virtues. I mean a lot of the words about the virtues like we heard about courage. Well, courage is not circumstance. If you're courageous and situation, there's no value in it. If you're courageous, you're going to save a child from drowning. You're doing something because you're benefiting other people the child. And if we all behave in a way that we take into account other people, we don't have to call it what you have to say, well, what would the virtuous person do? What is the virtue? It's a question of what ends individuals do in the course of benefiting other people. I mean it is a sort of a soppy type of utilitarianism because I can't define the right. I mean there are a lot of arguments against the old versions of utilism. But it's something about the well being of other individuals in our society. There's one man on an island really popping the eyes. You know, morality doesn't exist, doesn't matter whether he's virtuous. Not virtuous, what the person would do, what he shouldn't do. Obviously he could clean his teeth. There's nothing to do with morality cleaning one's teeth or doing something in your own interest. Nothing to do with morality looking after your body, looking after yourself. That's actually a selfish attitude.

[B]

It's not a real question.

[C]

It is a depth of. So it seems to me that I don't know whether either of you really believe in virtue. I think I would like you to say each other.

[A]

Okay, well do you believe it?

[B]

We.

[A]

Yes. Okay, let's leave it. Have you end on that. Although we're going to be a bit generous. Do you believe it?

[D]

Can I say why? So I think Brad agrees with this actually. So imagine it goes back to the stuff about intention I suppose. Imagine that we've got the society with other people and there's a certain degree of well being. And you might think what matters is that we have as much well being as possible in a society. But suppose there are two societies with the same amount of well being but in one case it's been created via maybe a series of accidents or. Or something or you know, so I intend. People in that society intend to harm others but it all goes wrong and they end up helping them through accident. Well, but I mean the thought is I might try and do something bad to Brad and I end up benefiting him or I might intentionally do something good for Brad but the end result is the same. So in both cases he ends up with exactly the same good. It seems that there's something much better about a world in which people are doing things with the right motives and the right intentions. And that's the bit that I'm not sure consequentialism can easily capture even if the theories converge.

[A]

Very nice, but I think you. Right. Okay, thank you. Well done. So just leaves us to thank two virtuous gentlemen. Brad.