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Cyan comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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This is a claim that consequentialism is incorrect and deontology is correct. It's insufficient to merely make this claim -- you have to actually argue for it.
(The prevailing view around here is consequentialism, although if I recall correctly we have at least one deontologist and one virtue ethicist among the long-time members.)
Hallo.
Salut?
Yup.
I asked Alicorn for an intro to virtue ethics appropriate for Less Wrongers or toddlers and she said to ask you. The Wikipedia article on virtue ethics explains deontology and consequentialism but not virtue ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia article is better but unclear on what virtues are or do. Where's Virtue Ethics 101?
I think those are actually pretty good intros, and I'm not aware of another one that's available online. Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists here on Less Wrong is pretty good. That said, I can provide a short summary.
I've noticed at least 3 things called 'virtue ethics' in the wild, which are generally mashed together willy-nilly (I'm not sure if anyone has pointed this out in the literature yet, and virtue ethicists seem to often believe all 3):
A 'virtue' is a trait of character. It may be a "habit of action". A virtue is good for the person who has it. A good human has many virtues.
Traditionally, it is thought that any good can be taken in the right amount, too much, or too little, and virtue is the state of having the proper amount of a good, or concern for a good. Vice is failing at virtue for that good. So "Courage" is the proper amount of concern for one's physical well-being in the face of danger. "Cowardice" is too much concern, and "Rashness" is too little. For fun, I've found a table of virtues and vices from Aristotle here.
'Virtue' is also used to describe inanimate objects; they are simply the properties of the object that make it a good member of its class. For example, a good sword is sharp. Whether "Sharpness" is a good or a virtue for swords is left as an exercise to the reader.
Thanks! How do you pick virtues, though? (A virtue is what for the person who has it?) And how do you know when you have the proper amount of courage? And what's wrong with never getting angry anyway?
If you go by the traditional view, any good (or category of goods) has an associated virtue. So one could own a virtuous amount of horses, but just how many that is probably depends on many accidental features. Virtues are subject-sensitive; I might need more horses than you do. But something specific like "proper concern for the amount of horses you have" is usually covered under a more general virtue, like Temperance. (Of course, "Temperance" is about as helpful a description of virtue, under this model, as "non sequitur" is as a description of a logical fallcy).
A more modern approach is use an exemplar of virtue, a paragon of human goodness, and inspect what qualities they have. You could construct a massive database of biographical information and then use machine learning techniques to identify clusters. This of course could lead to cargo-cult behavior.
Courage is always the proper amount, by definition, on the common view. Whether you have a particular virtue is a hard question, and I don't think anyone has proposed a systematic way of assessing these things. I think the usual advice is to be wise, and then you'll know.
That's an empirical question. If getting angry is just bad, then it's not a good and doesn't have an associated virtue. I'd guess that for humans, there are a lot of situations that you'll handle better in practice if you get angry. Anger does seem to motivate social reforms and such. Remember that virtues are defined with respect to a subject, and if human nature changes then so might the virtues.
Of course, I've answered these with my Philosopher's hat on, and so I've made the questions harder rather than easier. I might reflect on this and give more practical answers later.
Okay, so to know what virtues are, you need to know what things are good to have in the first place. So its use is not to figure out what you care about, it's to remind yourself you care about it. Like, a great swordsman insults you, you're afraid but you remember that courage and pride are virtues, so you challenge him to a duel and get killed, all's fine. But you can't actually do that, because then you remember that rashness and vanity are vices, and you need to figure out on which side the duel falls. How is any of this virtuous mess supposed to help at all?
The theory is an attempt to explain the content of ethics. I'm not sure it's any use to "remind yourself you care about it".
In general, one should proceed along established habits of action - we do not have the time to deliberate about every decision we make. According to virtue ethics, one should try to cultivate the virtues so that those established habits are good habits.
Suppose you're sitting down in your chair and you decide you'd like a beer from the refrigerator. But you need to pick a good path to the refrigerator! The utilitarian might say that you should evaluate every possible path, weigh them, and pick the one with the highest overall net utility. The Kantian might say that you should pick a path using a maxim that is universalizable - be sure not to cause any logical contradictions in your path-choosing. The virtue ethicist would suggest taking your habitual path to the refrigerator, with the caveat that you should in general try to develop a habit of taking virtuous paths.
And importantly, the previous paragraph was not an analogy, it was an example.
So the impression I get is that virture ethics is very similar to rule utilitarianism?
There is virtue theory in utilitarianism, that works out very similarly, yes. Note that "rule utilitarianism" usually refers to an ethical system in which following rules is valued for itself - I forget the name for the view amongst utilitarians that following rules is high-utility, which is what I think you mean to refer to.
I think a rule utilitarian might say that I should evaluate various algorithms for selecting a path and adopt the algorithm that will in general cause me to select paths with the highest overall net utility. Which, yes, is similar to the virtue ethicist (as described here) in that they are both concerned with selecting mechanisms for selecting paths, rather than with selecting paths... but different insofar as "virtuous" != "having high net utility".
I'm under the impression that Aristotle argues the very opposite (in NE I.10, for example). Can you cite a passage for me?
Yeah, I think I was remembering his intermediate conclusions more than the final one. I was just about to cite that passage before realizing it's the one you meant.