Are you a virtue ethicist at heart?

Shmi

Disclaimer: I am not a philosopher, so this post will likely seem amateurish to the subject matter experts.

LW is big on consequentialism, utilitarianism and other quantifiable ethics one can potentially program into a computer to make it provably friendly. However, I posit that most of us intuitively use virtue ethics, and not deontology or consequentialism. In other words, when judging one's actions we intuitively value the person's motivations over the rules they follow or the consequences of said actions. We may reevaluate our judgment later, based on laws and/or actual or expected usefulness, but the initial impulse still remains, even if overridden. To quote Casimir de Montrond, "Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good" (the quote is usually misattributed to Talleyrand).

Some examples:

Eliezer in a facebook post linked the article When Doing Good Means You’re Bad, which points out that people taking commission to raise a lot of money for charity are commonly considered less moral than those who raise much less but are not paid to do so ("tainted altruism").
This was brought up at a meetup: a pregnant woman in a dire financial situation who decides to have an abortion because she does not want a burden of raising a baby is judged harsher than a woman in a similar situation whose motivation is to avoid inflicting harsh life on the prospective child.
In real-life trolley problems even the committed utilitarians (like commanders during war time) are likely to hesitate before sacrificing lives to save more.

I am not sure how to classify religious fanaticism (or other bigotry), but it seems to require a heavy dose of virtue ethics (feeling righteous), in addition to following the (deontological) tenets of whichever belief, with some consequentialism (for the greater good) mixed in.

When I try to introspect my own moral decisions (like whether to tell the truth, or to cheat on a test, or to drive over the speed limit), I can usually find a grain of virtue ethics inside. It might be followed or overridden, sometimes habitually, but it is always there. Can you?

Disclaimer: I am not a philosopher, so this post will likely seem amateurish to the subject matter experts.

Some examples:

Eliezer in a facebook post linked the article When Doing Good Means You’re Bad, which points out that people taking commission to raise a lot of money for charity are commonly considered less moral than those who raise much less but are not paid to do so ("tainted altruism").
This was brought up at a meetup: a pregnant woman in a dire financial situation who decides to have an abortion because she does not want a burden of raising a baby is judged harsher than a woman in a similar situation whose motivation is to avoid inflicting harsh life on the prospective child.
In real-life trolley problems even the committed utilitarians (like commanders during war time) are likely to hesitate before sacrificing lives to save more.

From Wikipedia

a consequentialist may argue that lying is wrong because of the negative consequences produced by lying—though a consequentialist may allow that certain foreseeable consequences might make lying acceptable. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any potential "good" that might come from lying. A virtue ethicist, however, would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie said about one's character and moral behavior

Under this schema, it seems like I'd use consequentialism to evaluate my own actions, and virtue ethics to evaluate the moral character of other humans? A person who volunteers time and donates a significant fraction of money which is nonetheless small in an absolute sense is likely kind-hearted. A person who cures a disease or designs a useful product is likely intelligent, but not necessarily kind-hearted, despite doing more good. The point of this is less to judge "better" and "worse" and more to predict future behavior.

One sense in which I'd use virtue-ethics like reasoning on myself would be if I was evaluating my own preferences. Before taking an action, I'd want to evaluate where the drive to take that action is coming from. "So I want to confront them about the behavior...putting possible beneficial consequences aside, that sounds like something a person would want to do when they are angry. Does this option seem attractive because I am angry? If so, will it still seem like a good idea after the anger subsides?"...and so on.

I think the idea of "good" refers both to character judgements and to actual consequences of actions. For example "Hitler's mother was murdered by an evil man, and the world was changed for the better" makes sense, even though "good" as a concept is implicitly used in two different senses.

16

Are you a virtue ethicist at heart?

16

16

16

Are you a virtue ethicist at heart?

16

16