Greg Detre
Friday, 10 May, 2002
�Modern ethical theories, with perhaps a few honourable exceptions, deal only with reasons, with values, with what justifies. They fail to examine motives and the motivational structures and constraints of ethical life�
and so they �fail as ethical theories by not doing this�
�moral schizophrenia� is a malady of the spirit, a split between one�s motives and one�s reasons (and values + justifications)
not being moved by what one values, or not valuing what moves one
extreme cases:
being moved to do what one believes bad, harmful, ugly, debasing etc.
being disgusted, horrified, dismayed etc. by what one wants to do
less extreme:
e.g. weakness of the will, indecisiveness, guilt, shame, self-deception, rationalisation, annoyance with oneself
harmony between what moves one and what one values is a mark of a good
life
of course, it may not always be better if there is this harmony
it might be better if e.g.:
self-seeking authoritarians feel fettered by their moral upbringing
of if Eichmann had not wanted to do what he thought he should do
two problems with the strict view of rightness, obligatoriness and duty:
1. what sort of life would people who did their duties but never/rarely wanted to?
2. duty, obligation and rightness are only one, small and dry, part of ethics � what about the values of personal + interpersonal relations + activities, and the area of moral goodness, merit, virtue � here, motive is an essential part of what is valuable
he considers the disharmony in terms of two (hedonistic) egoists (adhering to the motive of pleasure-for-self) trying to enter a loving relationship (though the problems are the same for friendship, affection, fellow feelinge etc.)
they can have absorbing talks, make love, eat delicious meals, see interesting films etc.
but there is something essentially lacking in such a life � love � it is essential to the very concept of love that one care for the beloved, be prepared to act for their sake, as a final goal of one�s concern + action
to the extent that I act in various ways towards you with the final goal of getting pleasure/good for myself, I do not act for your sake
egoism is lonely, because individuals cease to be important except in terms of how they affect us. they are essentially replaceable � anything else with the same effects would do as well � Stocker suggests this is intolerable personally, as well as being conceptually + psychologically incompatible with love (of any sort)
yet love, friendship, fellow feeling etc. are among the greatest (sources of) personal pleasures � to achieve these great personal goods, they have to abandon that egoistical motive � they cannot embody their reason in their motive � their reasons + motives make their moral lives schizophrenic
the standard criticism of egoists:
they simply cannot achieve such nonegoistical goods, that their course of action will, as a matter of principle, keep them from involving themselves with others in the relevant ways etc.
Stocker thinks that the wise egoist could probably just adopt a policy that will allow them to forget that they are egoists, and so allow/encourage them to develop such final goals/motives as caring for someone else for their own sake
would they still be an egoist? is it important for the defence of egoism that you remain an egoist, or only that you live in a way that would be approved of by an egoist?
Stocker thinks it unlikely but possible, though undesirable, to have a personality private from the rest of yourself that checks every so often that one�s transformed self is getting on in achieving egoistically-approved goals
but this does not affect his criticism � that they will not be able to embody their reason in their motives
analagous criticisms apply to utilitarianism
e.g. an act is right/obligatory/whatever iff it is optimific in regard to pleasre + pain
adopting this utilitarian reason as your motive in your actions + thoughts towards someone creates similar problems as for the egoist
considers Moore�s formalistic utilitarianism � ??? pg 458
they all have a problem with people-as-valuable (including oneself(???)), dehumanising
he doesn't discuss, but clearly upholds, how personal relations work together to produce the fullness of a good life, eudaimonia
difficulties in the notion of a person-as-valuable � pg 460
he is concerned with what sort of motives people can have if they are to be able to realise the great goods of love, friendship etc.
if we take as motives those various things which
recent ethical theories hold to be ultimately good or right, we will be unable
to have those moties
love, friendship etc. essentially contain certain motives, and preclude others (including the justifications, goals + goods of most modern ethical theories)
you can have a successful loving relationship and still achieve the justifications, goals and goods of modern theories � but not by trying to live the theory directly
so far, he has only worried about moral schizophrenia with regard to love, friendship, affection, fellow feeling and community � but he now wants to consider �inquiry, taken as the search for understanding, wisdom�
� ??? pg 462
considers the case of Smith, who comes to visit you in hospital, but only out of duty � why is this action is lacking in moral merit or value?:
the wrong sort of thing is said to be the proper motive
the wrong sort of thing is essentially external (at least in this case)
but why shouldn't we instead take ethical theories as encouraging indirection � getting what we want by seeking something else
one risk of theories of indirection is that we will get the something else, nt what we really want
two related problems:
1. �a theory advocating indirection needs to be augmented by another theory of motivation, telling us which motives are suitable for which acts. Such a theory would also have to explain the connections, the indirect connections, between motive and real goal�
2. talk of indirection at the personal (rather than large-scale) level is implausible and baffling
e.g. in love, our motive seems to have to do directly with the loved one/friend, as does our reason
it is baffling to try to understand there being something beyond such activities as love which is necessary to justify them
�one partial defense of these ethical theories is that they are not intended to spuply what can serve as both reasons and motives; that they are intended only to supply indices of goodness and rightness, not determinants�(???)
or that they�re concerned exclusively with rightness, obligation and duty, and not with the whole of ethics, so they don't suffer from disharmony �
the problem is that they�re viewing morality from a legislator�s point of view, devaluing personal relations and emotions, and motivations
he considers that duty is relevant (and becomes a factor in our decisions) in our relations with our loved ones + friends only when our love/friendship/affection lapse
modern ethical theories are not simply mistaken in their denomination of what is good/bad, right/wrong etc. � the mistake is too well-reasoned � ??? pg 466/14
we mistake the effect for the cause???
The good life for humans (the eudaimon life) is a life of rational activity of the soul pursued according to the proper excellence(s) or virtue(s) of such activity.
In general the virtues are dispositions of the soul which aim to hit the mean between excess and deficiency in feeling and action. (The really best life, however, is the life of contemplation�see Book X.)
Is there a single thing to which everything we do is directed, and can it be thought of as eudaimonia?
Do humans have an ergon? The word does not mean exactly function; sometimes it is translated as characteristic activity.
Can it be given a sense according to which it is plausible both that humans have an ergon and that the good life is one in which the ergon is performed well?
Can the doctrine that virtue is a disposition which aims to hit the mean (the �doctrine of the mean�) be understood as being both substantial and plausible?
It is not a doctrine of moderation: the thing is to do and feel the right amount, given the people involved, the occasion, etc..
Can Aristotle accommodate the idea of moral obligation? According to his theory, to become virtuous is to come to feel the right way (as well as act the right way).
Aristotle seems to think that we are responsible for our characters: 1113b3-1115a3.
virtue seems to be just a disposition to do the right thing, so the goodness of virtue seems to reduce to the goodness of acts
But there is a meta-ethical point to virtue ethics, if you don't think there are non-trivial rules for action
i.e. that there is an exception to every rule; the particular circumstances of each action have to be taken into account
judgements about what to do in individual particular situations are primary; general rules for action are just rough generalizations from these particular judgements
Moral knowledge must be a knowledgeable disposition to make judgements about particular situations. But that's what a virtue is. Virtue theory is important to the particularist, because it provides a way of making sense of moral knowledge
learns to be good by training: one gets used to doing the right thing until this becomes the natural thing to do. You won't learn to be good just by following an argument
Hursthouse
ari: one of the only radical virtue theorists - virtues are all that are worth having in this life(???)
couldn't virtue theory itself be subject to stocker's attack, if it asks us to concentrate on being virtuous rather than doing things for their own sake???
presumably, this is the importance about 'doing things in the *right way*', i.e. 'as the virtuous man would'???
find out about the 'naturalistic fallacy' - is there any way to avoid it while still being naturalistic about human species function/design???
there�s a tri-partite distinction emerging then: between consequences + motivations, and motivations + reasons
motivations + reasons = intentions???
�love, friendship, fellow feeling etc. are among the greatest (sources of) personal pleasures � to achieve these great personal goods, they have to abandon that egoistical motive � they cannot embody their reason in their motive � their reasons + motives make their moral lives schizophrenic� � it�s a weird meta-value thing � kind of like nick�s worry that meditation/enlightenment/whatever is about changing what you value, which I value now and don't want to do � no, that�s not quite right
how strong a link can I make between Stocker�s article and MacIntyre�s thesis that the tri-partite system of morality is lacking its telos leg???
why doesn't virtue ethics reduce to the goodness of acts???
Tas says virtues have to be secondary concepts � why???
virtue ethics vs virtue theory
virtue theory would probably be used to refer to an algorithmic sort of theory, that could compete with consequentialism or Kantianism
whereas virtue ethics is more of a critique of action-based theories in general