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Nisan comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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Comments (178)
One caveat: One should, of course, refrain from using virtue ethics to evaluate others' choices. It's best to use consequentialism for that purpose.
Indeed. It's common amongst virtue ethicists to discourage finger-wagging, and emphasize that ethics is about "what I should do".
That seems not biologically realistic. In practice, ethical systems are often about manipulating others not to take actions that some group regards as undesirable.
I don't think biologically realistic is the expression you were looking for.
But ethical systems can be for manipulating others, or for manipulating yourself. In the case of virtue ethics, it's mainly for yourself.
Sure it was. My perspective would be a bit different: all human moral systems have a hefty component of manipulation and punishment. Virtue ethics does so - if anything - more than most - because punishment is often aimed at preventing reoffense (either by acting as a deterrent, or by using incarceration) - and so punishers are often unusually interested in the offending agent's dispositions - despite the difficulty of extracting them.
It's interesting to distinguish between ethics and morality in this manner, as in ethics is for the individual's benefit as opposed to morality which is for the benefit of the group as a whole. Which is why people speak of "medical ethics" or "journalistic ethics", as opposed to "medical morality" and "journalistic morality". Morality is considered as some kind of constant normative prescription, whereas ethics is sensitive to subjective dispositions and thus can vary between professions, individuals, etc.
Actually, that's a different use of the word ethics: the rules of conduct for a group or profession. You can meaningfully say that following the rules of medical ethics is unethical and not to anyone's benefit.
Can you give an example?
An example of what? My point was that that sentence is not a contradiction, because "ethics" in that particular definition just means following established rules of conduct, which does not necessarily coincide with the individual's benefit or the group's benefit.
A rule in medical ethics which is not intended to protect/benefit either the practitioner himself or the purpose of his livelihood.
Doctors established them in order to preserve the legitimacy of their profession. That's my understanding, in any case.
In some cases it was to enforce a cartel (emphasis mine):
Wow... hadn't read the original, interesting. Still, that is the Oath as it was 2k years ago, and as such it is no longer part of established medical ethics. I think it's plausible that in fact the abandonment of that section might have been necessary to preserve the profession's legitimacy! As well as nixing the part where the Oath is consecrated by Apollo, etc.
Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that such a rule existed, just that if one did exist, it would be ethical (in the sense of being a rule of professional conduct) and unethical (in a different sense of the word 'ethical') at the same time. Contrast the second definition on this page with the others.
Well, many professions have established such rules, and presumably, they did so to make their professions more legitimate, as well as to give their members a guide to behavior their committees considered better.
Maybe I wasn't either... are we actually disagreeing here? Heh.
I know the word is used in the sense of definitions 1 and 3. What I'm saying is that I think it's more interesting to forget the moral usage altogether, and just stick with saying that ethics is #2, because when you think about it they are very distinct concepts.
It's worth teasing out a few different definitions. There are at least four distinct concepts:
Rules of professional conduct, which do not necessarily relate to doing the right thing or anyone's benefit at all
A normative prescription
Rules for the individual's benefit
Rules for the group's benefit
Oh, good.