Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic

Heather Battaly

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444351934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic presents a series of essays by leading ethicists and epistemologists who offer the latest thinking on the moral and intellectual virtues and vices, the structure of virtue theory, and the connections between virtue and emotion.

• Cuts across two fields of philosophical inquiry by featuring a dual focus on ethics and epistemology
• Features cutting-edge work on the moral and intellectual virtues and vices, the structure of virtue theory, and the connections between virtue and emotion
• Presents a radical new moral theory that makes exemplars the foundation of ethics; and new theories of epistemic vices such as epistemic malevolence and epistemic self-indulgence
• Represents one of the few collections to address both the moral virtues and the epistemic virtues
• Explores a new approach in epistemology - virtue epistemology - which emphasizes the importance of intellectual character traits

1

INTRODUCTION: VIRTUE AND VICE

HEATHER BATTALY

The Basics

Elizabeth Anscombe’s infamous 1958 paper “Modern Moral Philosophy” argued that ethical theory should jettison meaningless evaluations of acts, like “right act” and “wrong act,” and instead evaluate the character traits of agents. Radically, Anscombe called for the elimination of deontological and consequentialist theories in ethics. Though few philosophers have embraced her eliminativism, Anscombe is widely credited with ushering in a revival of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics shifts the focus of ethical evaluation away from actions and onto agents. It tells us what it is to be an excellent person, and what qualities excellent people have. In short, virtue ethicists think that moral virtues matter. Many contemporary virtue ethicists employ the work of the ancients, especially Aristotle, in developing their views. Thus, in On Virtue Ethics, Rosalind Hursthouse (1999) argues for an account of the moral virtues that is neo-Aristotelian. In The Morality of Happiness, Julia Annas (1993) explores Aristotelian and Stoic views of the virtues.

Virtue epistemology developed in response to two different sets of concerns. In the 1980s Ernest Sosa introduced the notion of an intellectual virtue in an attempt to circumvent the debate between foundationalism and coherence theory, and to answer objections to reliabilism (see Sosa 1991). In 1996, Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind argued for a virtue theory in epistemology that is analogous to contemporary virtue theories in ethics. Both versions of virtue epistemology shift the focus of epistemic evaluation away from beliefs and onto agents. Virtue epistemology tells us what it is to be an excellent thinker, and what qualities excellent thinkers have. In short, virtue epistemologists think that epistemic virtues matter. “Virtue-responsibilists” like Zagzebski argue for accounts of the epistemic virtues that are based on Aristotle’s account of the moral virtues, whereas “virtue-reliabilists” like Sosa argue that epistemic virtues are qualities that enable us to attain truths.¹

What exactly is a virtue theory in ethics and epistemology? Virtue theories can be contrasted with act-based and belief-based theories. Act—based theories in ethics, like deontology and consequentialism, take right and wrong acts—types of act-evaluation—to be more fundamental than the moral virtues and vices—types of agent-evaluation. Accordingly, act-based theories define the moral virtues and vices in terms of right and wrong acts. Virtue theories in ethics do the reverse. They take the moral virtues and vices—types of agent-evaluation—to be more fundamental than any type of act-evaluation. Accordingly, virtue theories in ethics define right and wrong acts in terms of the moral virtues and vices, rather than the other way around. For instance, Hursthouse explains right action in terms of the virtues as follows: “An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically . . . do in the circumstances” (1999, 28). Analogously, belief-based epistemologies, like evidentialist accounts of justification and truth-tracking accounts of knowledge, take justified beliefs and knowledge—types of belief-evaluation—to be more fundamental than the epistemic virtues and vices—types of agent-evaluation. Accordingly, belief-based theories would define the epistemic virtues and vices (if they addressed them at all) in terms of justified beliefs or knowledge. Virtue theories in epistemology do the reverse. They take the epistemic virtues and vices—types of agent-evaluation—to be more fundamental than any type of belief-evaluation. Accordingly, virtue theories in epistemology define belief-evaluations—justification and knowledge—in terms of the epistemic virtues, rather than the other way around. To illustrate, Sosa argues that knowledge requires true belief that is produced by an intellectual virtue (see Sosa 1991, 2004, 2007), while Zagzebski contends that knowledge is belief that results from acts of intellectual virtue (1996, 271). The first group of chapters in this collection addresses virtue theories in ethics and epistemology. The collection opens with “Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology,” in which Roger Crisp rejects the definition of virtue theory above, and offers an alternative.

What is a virtue? Roughly, virtues are qualities that make a person excellent. Which qualities make a person excellent? Arguably, there are two important but different ways to answer this question, both of which are employed in the literature. First, one might contend that virtues are qualities that attain good ends. Specifically, they are qualities that enable a thing to attain good ends or perform its function well. This concept of virtue begins with the intuition that good ends matter, and that the virtues are qualities that reliably attain good ends. Hence, to be virtuous, one must be effective at attaining the good—attaining the good is necessary for virtue. Attaining the good is also sufficient for virtue—any quality that reliably attains good ends counts as a virtue. This concept of virtue is employed by Plato in book I of the Republic and by Aristotle in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. In contemporary virtue ethics, it is employed by Julia Driver (2001), who contends that the moral virtues are traits of character that systematically produce good consequences. On her view, virtuous motivations are neither necessary nor sufficient for being morally virtuous. Good consequences are all that matter. Thus, caring about others is not enough for benevolence, if one consistently fails to help others. Nor is caring about others required for benevolence, since one might consistently succeed in helping others without caring about them. In contemporary virtue epistemology, Sosa and the virtue-reliabilists employ this concept of virtue. Sosa explicitly contends that there is “a ‘sense’ of virtue … in which anything with a function—natural or artificial—does have virtues” (1991, 271). He argues that since our primary epistemic function is attaining truths, the epistemic virtues are whatever qualities enable us to do that, be they natural faculties or acquired skills. He takes reliable vision, memory, induction, and deduction to be paradigmatic epistemic virtues. For him, the epistemic virtues require neither virtuous actions nor virtuous motives. Reliably getting the truth is all that matters.

Second, one might contend that virtues are qualities that involve good motives. Specifically, virtues are acquired traits of character that involve appropriate motivation, action, emotion, and perception. This concept of virtue begins with the intuition that motives matter. Attaining good ends is not enough (or not even required) for virtue, since one can attain good ends, and even perform appropriate actions, but have vicious motives. This concept of virtue is more popular among virtue ethicists than the previous concept, and is famously endorsed by Aristotle in book II of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle there argues that moral virtue is “a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by … that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it” (1998, 1006b36–39). To illustrate, courage is a disposition to fear and yet to face the appropriate things, at the appropriate times, in the appropriate ways, and with the appropriate motivations. Courage lies in a mean between a vice of excess (foolhardiness) and a vice of deficiency (cowardice). Aristotle argues that the moral virtues are not natural faculties, because, unlike natural faculties, the moral virtues are praiseworthy. He thinks that the moral virtues are not skills (partly) because the virtuous person, but not the skilled person, must have a specific motivation in acting: the virtuous person must choose the appropriate acts for their own sakes.

In contemporary virtue ethics, this concept of virtue is employed by Rosalind Hursthouse (1999), who argues that the moral virtues are entrenched dispositions of appropriate motivation, action, emotion, and perception. For example, the honest person is motivated to do what she thinks is right, reliably tells the truth, is distressed and angry when others lie, and notices who is or is not trustworthy. Using Aristotle’s notion of the phronimos (practically wise person), Hursthouse argues that the honest person’s motivations, actions, emotions, and perceptions match those of the phronimos. In contemporary virtue epistemology, Zagzebski and the virtue-responsibilists employ this concept of virtue. Zagzebski (1996) argues that the epistemic virtues are acquired character traits that involve appropriate epistemic motivations, appropriate epistemic actions, and reliable success in attaining true beliefs. She thinks that attaining good ends is required, but not enough, for being virtuous. (In contrast, James Montmarquet [1993] thinks that attaining true beliefs is not even required for epistemic virtue.) Zagzebski takes open-mind-edness, intellectual courage, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual humility to be paradigmatic epistemic virtues. On her view, a person with the virtue of open-mindedness is motivated to attain truths and motivated to consider alternative ideas; he also considers alternative ideas when he should, and reliably attains truths as a result. Using Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, Zagzebski argues that the virtue of open-mind-edness lies in a mean between two vices.

Which of these two concepts of virtue is the “real” concept? Arguably, there is no single real concept of virtue, and arguments to that effect will be unproductive (see Battaly 2008a, 2008b). Both concepts are good: both identify qualities of an excellent person. One way to be an excellent person is to reliably get the good; for example, to reliably help others rather than harm them, or to reliably get truths rather than falsehoods. Another way to be an excellent person is to possess virtuous motivations: to care about others or about the truth.

What is a vice? If virtues are qualities that attain the good, then vices are qualities that fail to attain the good. If, on the other hand, virtues and vices are contraries rather than contradictories, then one can fall short of virtue without being fully vicious. One could instead be akratic—weak-willed—or enkratic—continent. The enkratic person performs, for example, benevolent acts, but must overcome competing motivations in order to do so. The akratic person also has competing motivations, but unlike the enkratic person, fails to overcome them and fails to perform benevolent acts. In contrast with the akratic person, the vicious person does not have competing motivations—she is not conflicted. The vicious person’s motives are in fact bad. Arguably, the person who possesses the vice of cruelty is disposed to harm others, be pleased by others’ failures, and notice opportunities for insulting others, and is motivated to do these things because she thinks they are good. By comparison with the literature on virtue, considerably less has been written about vice. This is especially true of intellectual vice. A noteworthy exception is Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice (2007), which provides a detailed account of the epistemic vice of testimonial injustice. This collection contains two chapters on epistemic vices: Jason Baehr’s “Epistemic Malevolence,” which makes use of Robert Adams’s (2006) account of moral malevolence; and my “Epistemic Self-Indulgence,” which employs Aristotle’s account of moral self-indulgence.

The Structure of Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology

What is a virtue theory in ethics? We have seen that the standard answer is that virtue ethics differs from deontological and consequentialist ethics because it reverses “the direction of analysis” of two of the main concepts in ethical theory: the concept of right action and the concept of virtue (see Greco 2004). To explicate, it is claimed that deontological and consequentialist theories both take the concept of right action to be more fundamental than the concept of virtue, and define virtue in terms of right action. Whereas virtue ethics takes the concept of virtue to be more fundamental than the concept of right action, and defines right action in terms of virtue—as an action that a virtuous person would perform. The three chapters in the first group all address the structure of virtue theories in ethics. Linda Zagzebski and Thomas Hurka both endorse versions of the direction of analysis view, while Roger Crisp’s “Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology” suggests that the direction of analysis view is problematic.

Crisp explores the problems and prospects for an analogy between virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. In so doing, he defines virtue ethics, outlines a virtue epistemology that is modeled on Aristotelian virtue ethics, and enumerates several challenges for virtue epistemology. Crisp argues that all ethical theories ask and answer the following questions: How should I live? What kind of person should I be? And, how should I act? On his view, what is distinctive about virtue ethics is the ultimate reason it gives for its answer, rather than the answer it gives. After all, Crisp explains, virtue ethics and utilitarianism might give the same answer—live virtuously, be a virtuous person, and act virtuously. The difference is that the utilitarian gives this answer because she thinks that living and acting virtuously maximize utility, whereas the virtue ethicist gives this answer because she thinks that it is virtuous to live and act virtuously. According to Crisp, for a theory to count as an “explanatory” virtue ethics, the ultimate reason it gives for living and acting virtuously must be provided by the virtues themselves. Crisp also argues that defining virtue ethics in terms of its direction of analysis is problematic. For if we define virtue ethics in terms of its direction of analysis, then virtue ethics is committed to claiming that an act is right because it is an act that a virtuous person would perform. But that, argues Crisp, is false: “What the virtuous person would do is insufficient to explain rightness.” Sometimes what makes an act right are the details of the situation, rather than the fact that a virtuous person would do it.

Crisp outlines an Aristotelian virtue epistemology that allows for two different sorts of epistemic virtues. He begins with Aristotle’s notion of moral virtue and his doctrine of the mean. Aristotle famously argues that each moral virtue lies in a mean between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. The morally virtuous person hits the mean—he acts and feels as he should. According to Aristotle, the virtues deserve praise because we are responsible for possessing them. Likewise, argues Crisp, some epistemic virtues lie in a mean and involve actions and feelings. These virtues include: creativity, perseverance, open-mindedness, self-doubt, and joy in inquiry. Crisp suggests that these virtues deserve praise because they are traits for which we are, to some extent, responsible. But he also thinks that there are epistemic virtues for which we are not responsible, including the capacities of perception and memory. Thus, he makes space for both responsibilist and reliabilist epistemic virtues.

Crisp concludes that though it is worth developing a virtue epistemology that is modeled on virtue ethics, such a view faces several challenges. First, most virtue ethicists do not endorse virtue epistemology but instead rely on epistemological theories that virtue epistemologists reject. Second, the debates about the role of commonsense intuitions in ethics would carry over to virtue epistemology. Finally, virtue epistemology may not be able to live up to its billing: it may fail to avoid the foundationalist-coherentist debate, the internalist-externalist debate, and skepticism.

Linda Zagzebski’s “Exemplarist Virtue Theory” argues for a radical kind of virtue ethics that is grounded in exemplars. Zagzebski enumerates three main desiderata of a moral theory. First, a moral theory should “simplify, systematize, and justify our moral beliefs and practices.” Second, there must be some element in the theory that enables users to link the theory to the world—to recognize that a particular element of the theory refers to a particular thing in the world. Third, Zagzebski thinks that “foundational” moral theories currently have an advantage, since contemporary philosophers (unlike the ancients) assume that morality itself requires justification. A moral theory is foundational if it takes a single moral concept as its foundation, and uses that concept to define all other moral concepts. Accordingly, Zagzebski thinks, contra Crisp, that virtue ethics takes virtue concepts to be the most fundamental, and defines the concept of a right act in terms of virtue concepts.

With these desiderata in mind, Zagzebski designs an innovative moral theory that grounds moral concepts in exemplars—virtuous people. The theory is foundational, but its foundation is not conceptual. Radically, its foundation consists in virtuous people themselves. Zagzebski’s moral theory begins with direct reference to exemplars. Employing the well-known Kripke-Putnam theory of reference, Zagzebski argues that direct reference to exemplars is analogous to direct reference to gold (see Kripke 1980 and Putnam 1979). Roughly, the Kripke-Putnam view argues that the referent of the natural kind term “gold” is fixed by ostention. Zagzebski highlights two features of this view. First, it argues that one can successfully refer to gold even if one does not know the essential properties of gold—those properties were in fact discovered much later via empirical research. Second, it argues that a speaker can successfully refer to gold even if she associates the wrong descriptive meaning with “gold,” provided that she is connected “by a chain of communication” to other speakers who reliably pick out gold. Analogously, contends Zag-zebski, we can fix the referent of the term “good person” by pointing at exemplars. Moreover, we can successfully refer to exemplars even if we do not know their essential properties. Like the nature of gold, the nature of exemplars may be discovered later via empirical research. We can also successfully refer to exemplars even if we associate the wrong descriptive meaning with the term “good person,” provided that there are some speakers in our community who do succeed in picking out exemplars.

Is there anyone in our community who reliably identifies exemplars? Zagzebski thinks that we identify good people via the emotion of admiration, which she claims is “generally trustworthy when we have it after reflection and when it withstands critique by others.” Hence, she thinks that people in our community who have a sufficiently developed emotion of admiration succeed in picking out exemplars. Zagzebski acknowledges that just as some of the stuff that we judged to be gold (pyrite) was not really gold, some of the people that we judge to be exemplars may not really be exemplars. We might learn later on, via empirical research and narratives, that some of our judgments were mistaken.

Zagzebski defines the concepts of a right act, a virtue, a duty, a good state of affairs, and a good life by direct reference to exemplars. Thus, a virtue is “a trait we admire in that person,” where “that” refers directly to an exemplar. It is a trait that “makes the [admirable] person paradigmatically good in a certain respect.” A right act is “an act a person like that would take to be favored by the balance of reasons.” Zagzebski concludes that her exemplarist virtue theory satisfies the three desiderata above. It explains our practice of identifying exemplars; its direct reference to exemplars links the theory to the world; and it is foundational.

Hurka and Zagzebski agree, contra Crisp, that virtue ethics differs from deontological and consequentialist ethics because it takes the concept of virtue to be more fundamental than the concept of right action, and defines right action in terms of virtues rather than the reverse. But Hurka and Zagzebski disagree about whether we should endorse virtue ethics. Zagzebski endorses a radical version of virtue ethics, which takes exemplars—virtuous people—to be fundamental, and defines the concept of right action (and other moral concepts) in terms of exemplars. In contrast, Hurka’s “Right Act, Virtuous Motive” argues against all versions of virtue ethics, and for “higher-level” accounts, which define both the concept of right action and virtue concepts in terms of a third moral concept (either the good or rightness) (see also Hurka 2001).

Hurka sets out to explain why right acts and virtuous motives often coincide. He considers four possible explanations: consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and higher-level accounts. He argues that consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics have at least one thing in common: they all define right acts and virtuous motives directly in terms of each other. That is to say, each view treats one of the two concepts as more fundamental than the other, and then defines the other concept in its terms. Consequentialism takes the concept of right acts to be more fundamental, and argues that virtuous motives are those that tend to produce right acts. Deontology takes the concept of right acts to be more fundamental, and argues that virtuous motives are motives to perform right acts because they are right. Virtue ethics takes the concept of virtuous motives to be more fundamental, and argues that right acts are those that would be done from virtuous motives. Hurka insightfully contends that there is a fourth option. In contrast, higher-level accounts argue that rights acts and virtuous motives coincide, not because either concept is defined directly in terms of the other, but because “each involves a relation to some third [basic] moral property.”

What is that basic moral property? Hurka maintains that there are two sorts of higher-level accounts. The first falls within a consequentialist framework: it takes goods and evils to be basic, and it defines both right acts and virtuous motives in terms of goods and evils. Hurka argues that virtuous motives are here defined as appropriate attitudes toward goods and evils. That is, it is virtuous to love and want goods—like another person’s pleasure—and to hate and seek the absence of evils—like another person’s pain. Correspondingly, it is vicious to love evils, and to hate goods. Right acts are defined as acts that produce the greatest surplus of good over evil. The second ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Notes on contributors
• 1: INTRODUCTION: VIRTUE AND VICE
• Part 1: The Structure of Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology
• Part 2: Virtue and Context
• Part 3: Virtue and Emotion
• Part 4: Virtues and Vices
• Index