Much of the interesting and difficult stuff about morality happens when there are different conflicting concerns at the stage. Virtue-ethicists on these matters seem much more handwavy than utilitarians or deontologists to me. Take for example the dilemma of what you should do if your host prepared you food with animal products without knowing that you are a vegan. Should you eat it? For utilitarians, it takes plenty of work to calculate the consequences but at least there is a rigorous process to base your policy upon. On page 142, paragraph 3 of this article, you may find a virtue-ethics treatment of the same dilemma, which seems very handwavy to me.
Of course one article doesn’t prove a trend, but often what I have seen is “oh there is this virtue, and there is this another virtue. Sometimes they might get into conflict, the virtue ethics is about finding the moderation between them. You will accomplish this through practical wisdom and getting more life experience” which is not informative at all. I don’t think this process is better than trying to calculate the benefits and costs of your important actions.
I think the point of the virtue ethicist in this context would be that appropriate behavior is very much dependent on the situation. You cannot necessarily calculate the „right“ way in advance. You have to participate in the situation and „feel“, „live“ or „balance“ your way through it. There are too many nuances that cannot necessarily all be captured by language or explicit reasoning.
Thanks! I’m still grappling with putting the intuitions behind this post into words, so this is valuable feedback.
Personally, my heuristic in the example you describe is rolling with what I feel like. Considerations that go into that are:
1. Will it kill me? (I’m allergic to red meat) 2. Would I be actively disgusted eating it? (The case for most if not all non-vegetarian stuff.) 3. Do I lack the spoons to have a debate about this, given which amount of pushback/disappointment I expect from the host?
...and when all of them get a “no”: 4. Do I feel like my nutrient profile is sufficiently covered atm? Will this, or asking for a vegan alternative make me feel more alert and healthy? (I all-too-often default to lacto-vegetarianism in stressful times. Low-effort vegan foods tend to give me deficiencies (probably protein) that give me massive cheese cravings. From utilitarianism I learned to prioritize not feeling crap over always causing minimum harm.)
While studying philosophy in Uni, I also hated virtue ethics for years due to its intrinsic fuzziness.
Things that changed since then and turned it into a very attractive default: 1. Picking up a meditation habit that made my gut feeling more salient and coherent, and my verbal reasoning less loud/coercive. 2. Learning Focusing to a reasonable level of fluency. The mental motion of checking with my system 1 what the best course forward would be is pretty much the same as pausing to tune in to my felt sense and gauging where it draws me.
Much of the interesting and difficult stuff about morality happens when there are different conflicting concerns at the stage. Virtue-ethicists on these matters seem much more handwavy than utilitarians or deontologists to me. Take for example the dilemma of what you should do if your host prepared you food with animal products without knowing that you are a vegan. Should you eat it? For utilitarians, it takes plenty of work to calculate the consequences but at least there is a rigorous process to base your policy upon. On page 142, paragraph 3 of this article, you may find a virtue-ethics treatment of the same dilemma, which seems very handwavy to me.
Of course one article doesn’t prove a trend, but often what I have seen is “oh there is this virtue, and there is this another virtue. Sometimes they might get into conflict, the virtue ethics is about finding the moderation between them. You will accomplish this through practical wisdom and getting more life experience” which is not informative at all. I don’t think this process is better than trying to calculate the benefits and costs of your important actions.
I think the point of the virtue ethicist in this context would be that appropriate behavior is very much dependent on the situation. You cannot necessarily calculate the „right“ way in advance. You have to participate in the situation and „feel“, „live“ or „balance“ your way through it. There are too many nuances that cannot necessarily all be captured by language or explicit reasoning.
Thanks! I’m still grappling with putting the intuitions behind this post into words, so this is valuable feedback.
Personally, my heuristic in the example you describe is rolling with what I feel like. Considerations that go into that are:
1. Will it kill me? (I’m allergic to red meat)
2. Would I be actively disgusted eating it? (The case for most if not all non-vegetarian stuff.)
3. Do I lack the spoons to have a debate about this, given which amount of pushback/disappointment I expect from the host?
...and when all of them get a “no”:
4. Do I feel like my nutrient profile is sufficiently covered atm? Will this, or asking for a vegan alternative make me feel more alert and healthy? (I all-too-often default to lacto-vegetarianism in stressful times. Low-effort vegan foods tend to give me deficiencies (probably protein) that give me massive cheese cravings. From utilitarianism I learned to prioritize not feeling crap over always causing minimum harm.)
While studying philosophy in Uni, I also hated virtue ethics for years due to its intrinsic fuzziness.
Things that changed since then and turned it into a very attractive default:
1. Picking up a meditation habit that made my gut feeling more salient and coherent, and my verbal reasoning less loud/coercive.
2. Learning Focusing to a reasonable level of fluency. The mental motion of checking with my system 1 what the best course forward would be is pretty much the same as pausing to tune in to my felt sense and gauging where it draws me.