Jack comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Will_Newsome 04 June 2010 04:08PM

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Comment author: Blueberry 04 June 2010 08:51:27PM 3 points [-]

Ideal consequentialist would push the fat man in the standard trolley scenario. I was asking whether an ideal virtue ethicist does

You are confusing ethics and metaethics. Consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue ethicists all might or might not push the fat man, but they would all analyze the problem differently.

It's not true that all possible consequentialists would push the fat man. A consequentialist might decide that one pushed death would be a worse consequence than X train deaths. Consequentialists don't necessarily count the number of deaths and choose the smaller number; they just choose the option that leads to the best consequence.

Comment author: Jack 06 June 2010 03:13:44PM 4 points [-]

This criticism is exactly right except that both the form question (rules, consequences or character traits) and the content question (pleasure, preference, the Categorical Imperative, Aristotle's list, etc.) are part of normative ethics (what I assume you mean by 'ethics'). Metaethical questions are things like "What are we doing when we use normative language?" and "Are there moral truths?"

Comment author: Blueberry 06 June 2010 06:03:11PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the correction: I didn't realize that. Are there better terms for expressing the difference between form and content in ethics?

Comment author: Jack 06 June 2010 09:40:57PM 0 points [-]

Not that I know of, I'm afraid. In fact, I may have invented the form and content language.