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thomblake comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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What Jayson Virissimo said. The simple definition is, "A virtue is a trait of character that is good for the person who has it." - I feel like that must be a direct quote from somewhere, as I fire off those same words whenever asked that question, but I'm not sure where it might be from (though I'm guessing Richard Volkman).
Many theorists believe that virtues are consistent habits, in the sense that they persist. Weakly, this means that exhibiting a virtue in one circumstance should be usable as evidence that the same agent will exhibit the same virtue in other circumstances. In a stronger version, someone who is (for example) courageous will act as an courageous person would in all circumstances.
Many theorists also believe that virtues represent a mean between extremes, with respect to some value (some would even define them that way, but then the virtues arguably lose some empirical content). So for example, fighting despite being afraid is valuable. The proper disposition towards this is 'courage'. The relevant vice of deficiency is 'cowardice', and the vice of excess is 'brashness'.
Most of the above was advocated by Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics.
So the ability to steal without getting caught is a virtue?
I think Vladimir Nesov's response and khafra's response are correct, but there's more to be said.
Even granting for the moment that 'ability to steal without getting caught' can be called a trait of character, there are empirical claims that the virtue ethicist would make against this.
First, no one actually has that skill - if you steal, eventually you will be caught.
Second, the sort of person who goes around stealing is not the sort of person who can cultivate the social virtues and develop deep, lasting interpersonal relationships, which is an integral component of the good life for humans.
Not a valid argument against a hypothetical.
Smoking lesion problem? If developing the skill doesn't actually cause other problems, and instead the predisposition to develop the skill is correlated to those problems, you should still develop the skill.
It's not a valid argument against its truth, but it's a valid argument against its relevance. A hypothetical is useless if its antecedent never obtains.
Like I said, it's an empirical question. For philosophers, that's usually the end of the inquiry, though it's very nice when someone goes out and does some experiments to figure out which way causality goes.
How is it possible to know that with certainty?
Should I understand this question as "What experimental result would cause you to update the probability of that belief to above a particular threshold"? Because my prior for it is pretty high at this point. Or are you looking for the opposite / falsification criteria?
If you're a good enough driver, there's a decent chance you'll never get in a car crash. If you study stealing and security systems enough, and carefully plan, I don't see why you would be likely to be caught eventually. Why is your prior high?
Agreed, with the addition that car crashes are public while stealing is covert, so it's harder to know how much stealing is going on.
I'd call that a skill, rather than a character trait. The closest thing I can think of to a beneficial but non-admirable character trait is high-functioning sociopathy; but that's at least touching the borderline of mental disease, if not clearly crossing it. Perhaps "charming ruthlessness?" But many would consider e.g. Erwin Rommel virtuous in that respect.
If it's good for the person who decides to steal. The first problem is that logical control makes individual decisions into group decisions, so if social welfare suffers, so does the person, as a result of individual decisions. Thus, deciding to steal might make everyone worse off, because it's the same decision as one made by other people. The second problem is that the act of stealing itself might be terminally undesirable for the person who steals.
Parent, grandparent and great-grandparent to my comment were all about "virtues" in virtue ethics.
I see. So you agree that ability to steal without getting caught is a virtue according to the definition thomblake cited, and see this as a reducio of thomblake's definition, showing that it doesn't capture the notion as it's used in virtue ethics.
My comment was oblivious to your intention, and discussed how much "ability to steal without getting caught" corresponds to thomblake's definition, without relating that to how well either of these concepts fits "virtues" of virtue ethics.
Yes, all correct.
How do you think that works as a reductio? What is it about your example of a putative virtue that makes it fit my definition, but not the 'virtues' of virtue ethics? (is it simply the 'stronger' notions of virtue I offered in the same comment?)
But how can there be a vice of excess for making paperclips???
It depends on how good you are at utility-maximization. If you're bad at it, like humans, then you might need heuristics like virtues to avoid simple failure modes.
An obvious failure mode for Clippys is to have excess concern for making paperclips, which uses up resources that could be used to secure larger-scale paperclip manufacturing capabilities.
Thus you must have the appropriate concern for actually making paperclips, balanced against concerns for future paperclips, trade with other powerful intelligent life forms, optimization arms-races, and so forth.
Good point! But that would only be an excess concern for direct paperclip production. That doesn't describe a vice of excess for "making paperclips, accounting for all impediments to making paperclips", such as the impediments you list above.
In any case, what's the word for the vice you described?
Indeed, Aristotle would call that generalized production of paperclips "the greatest good", that towards which all other goods aim, which he called eudaimonia.
Well, that might be a liberal reading of Aristotle.
Aristotle actually makes a lot more sense to a paper clip maximizer, the telos being so well defined and all. The question is, how would you explain Sartre to Clippy? "But obviously essence precedes existence!"
Clippy, for you, the direct production of paper clips is like consumption for a human. So...
That doesn't seem analogous. I mean, I eventually want to be at the point where I will only be doing direct paperclip production, for most of the mass in the universe. In contrast, humans do not want to eventually be at the point where they consume all of the universe.
Clip-gluttony, then, diverges from gluttony in a significant way.
I'm not sure I agree, Clippy. Perhaps my jargon was unclear.
You're right, Clippy, to point out that economic consumption and physical consumption amount to much the same thing for you. To make a paper clip, you have to both convert potential utility to actual utility, and disrupt the pattern of non-paper-clip-shaped matter. And, granted, humans don't necessarily share that trait -- they might be able to economically consume a human good like leisure or company while physically consuming very little in the way of material resources.
Still, even though humans don't want to physically consume the entire universe, like you, we probably do want to reach a point where we are only converting potential utility into actual utility, and doing little or no economic production. We want to reach a state where the existing sources of sustainable human economic production are either (1) maximized, (2) infinite, or (3) sufficient to meet all the demand for human economic consumption. Don't you want something very similar to that, substituting the word "clip" for the word "human"?
Thus, for both you and for us, gluttony means failing to maximize long-term actual utility by economically consuming too much too soon.
Okay, if you want to generalize the concept of gluttony broadly enough that it has an analog for Clippys, then the definition you have chosen suffices for this purpose, and I can recognize that as being a vice, for two reasons:
a) It is certainly undesirable to merely make paperclips directly without concern for how many more paperclips could be made, over the long term, by doing something else; and
b) I do often feel "temptation" to do such behavior, like bending metal wires when machines could do a better job, just as humans have "temptations" toward vices.
Your argument is accepted.
Clippy, how do you overcome this kind of temptation? A human analogy might be refusing to push the fat man, even when it saves more lives, but not everyone considers that a vice.
I typically just do computations on how many more paperclips would be undergoing bending by machines, or observe paperclips under construction.
A better analogy would be human gluttony, in which there is a temptation to consume much more than optimal, which most regard as a vice, I believe.