I can see your view on divine command if it’s like, “god is smarter than me, if I disagree with him on morality it’s probably me who is wrong, not him”, but not if it’s “the good is literally defined by god’s will, rather than god’s will simply being aligned with the good”. If it’s the latter then strong disagree, but the former definitely makes sense.
This is a very good comment about what the other options are when you have a book-based religion. Your view is saying that God is simply a very smart moral realist. I think that’s weird because it quietly admits means divine commands are only moral if they lead to better consequences — and gotta be honest, through this lens, the whole “hell” thing starts to look pretty bad, and probably undermines the part where God said he’s “maximally good”
Whereas if we just embrace deontology and assume god REALLY knows better than us then it’s internally consistent AND the problem is solved AND that book that’s supposed to explain all of reality has a lot more authority.
I didn’t really explain what the other option was from religion, so thanks for pointing that out and letting me expand on it.
Great minds almost think alike, but your take on preference utilitarianism is F-tier. It looks like hedonism will face the same problem as non-ideal preference utilitarianism: Many people might derive pleasure from seeing someone get tortured, so qu quoque.
Also, it's not like preference utilitarianism tells you to do drugs all day if that's what you want (unless that's the only thing you want), as that will cause other desires to go neglected and so overall be bad for you.
Very fair point on the torturing someone, that’s obviously something hedonistic utilitarianism will also encourage if utility is high enough. But hedonistic utilitarianism will also acknowledge the pointlessness of having him actually be tortured and attempt to trick the people or replace whatever video they see of this guy getting tortured with AI while also keeping all the benefits.
Preference utilitarianism treats a sober human as some sort of “ultimate rationality machine” that definitely is smart enough to where we should just let them have a life of pain over joy and happiness.
It all feels so arbitrary and arrogant; why not afford that to children, to people on drugs, to people who are dumb. The only way to get around that is by calling people irrational, and this is a big deal; because as a hedonistic utilitarian, I really think that these “purely rational observers” are smarter than humans and would only endorse hedonistic utilitarianism. And in your drug example, where’s the principled way to balance all your desires? I’d argue the principled way is indeed hedonistic utilitarianism again; it will make your mental state the best.
Fair enough on the first point, preference utilitarianism really does require that someone actually be tortured in such a case. We can of course also construct cases where hedonism says the same (eg by simply stipulating that you can't do it otherwise). I think the thing that we are actually repulsed by (or at least that I am) is the idea that it can be good to satisfy "vicious" desires. But hedonism also says that it can be good to derive pleasure through "vicious" means (like sadism or watching child porn), and I don't think the fact that you can deceive people in the latter helps very much at making it less repulsive.
I don't think preference i utilitarianism treats people as ultimately rational. It only requires that if you really care about or want something, then it's good for you to get it. If I honest to God like being spanked or prefer that my friends are not p-zombies, then it's better for me to have that--despite it causing less pleasure--all else being equal.
I also don't think it's arbitrary at all! There's a perfectly principled... Principle: Maximize satisfied preferences and minimize thwarted ones (weighed nu strength). Why not let children satisfy their immediate desires? Because they'll predictably have desires like having teeth and an education in the future, which will be thwarted by eating candy and skipping school. Why not let drug addicts be? Because they'll have a life with more satisfied preferences of they don't satisfy their immediate preference for heroin.
I can still say that people are irrational and that they suck at their own preferences while maintaining that their actual preferences are what matters.
Now, I'm meta-ethically a non-realist, so I don't expect my perspective and theory of action to be persuasive to everyone, but virtue ethics is the most helpful to "tell me what to do" than any other normative theory, which seems more about coming off at being the best at math and gotcha arguments than living a happy, pro-social life
God tier: Weak negative, desert-adjusted, act utilitarianism – minimize suffering and maximize happiness in accordance with justice
The badness of suffering is stronger than the goodness of happiness, and thus our priority is in line with empirical facts about the psychologies of embodied organisms. At the same time, since we’re equal in front of suffering, no one should be treated as if they deserve more unless they actually deserve more, that is, unless they have sustainably solved the problem of suffering for the greatest number of organisms.
I will have a lot more to say, but it will be in my own posts. This is all you get for free 😏
Regarding Kant: When you say that you have looked into it, I'm assuming you have read the most famous essay on the topic: The Right to Lie by Korsgaard... If so, what's your objection to it?
As I talk about in my article about Kant and Korsgaard “Intuitionism is Morally Mandatory” (yes we do a shameless plug let’s gooo) I really think this line from Korsgaard in that very article goes against Kant’s whole point: “morality itself sometimes allows or even requires us to do something that from an ideal perspective is wrong”
What’s the point of ideal rules if having them is morally irrational if the other party isn’t also perfectly kantian? Her article says purposely undermining a perfect ideal is a reason to break a perfect ideal. By this exact logic, sacrificing 1 person to save 1 billion people is still completely banned, no one is subverting the ideal purpose, so it doesn’t address this case which I think is much worse than the lying thing. I’m telling you, the reasons why some Kantians say you can sacrifice them when the numbers on the other side are really big are REALLY weak and consequentialist sounding.
Just far weaker than Kant’s original ideal rules. Korsgaard would get a D.
Your article talked about lying to bad people specifically. And, as Korsgaard shows, it's imho possible to have a theory in the Kantian spirit which allows lying to the axe murderer. Whether Kant himself would have agreed is irrelevant, what matters to Neo-Kantians is the underlying motivation of the view.
If you now wanna talk about sacrificing someone innocent to save others, then I'm just gonna say that Kantianism is indeed incompatible with THAT... but I take this to be the correct result. Obviously the utilitarian probably takes this to be utterly crazy, but that wasn't the point.
That’s fair, in my article I mostly stressed that Kant’s universality test is arbitrary and that ideal Kant led to bad results. If you disagree that universality is arbitrary and don’t mind the bad results from the 1 billion people examples, then I didn’t make a criticism specifically against that theory of Korsgaard’s besides gesturing it’s weird to stipulate ideal rules but then say you can break them.
All I can say is when she says “when the attempt to live up to [the ideal] would make you the *tool of evil* you should not do so” that sure sounds like that word “evil” is selectively pleading to ‘intuitionist’ bad results.
I just read your article on intuitionism and it's not bad at all. But you do what utilitarians so often do when talking about Kantians: strawman like hell. For example, you say:
"But there’s a little bit more of a slight of hand here — first, I’m going to point out there’s at least one curious jump here. We start by saying “you must respect your own ability to choose” then jump in the next point to “ok, so everybody must respect everybody else.” This doesn’t strike me as some obvious thing that’s clearly derived from being a rational observer."
But... obviously there is no actual curious jump being made. There's only a curious jump in the four premise strawman argument that YOU gave. Kant spends several pages in the Groundwork and Korsgaard several pages in Sources of Normativity on justifying this very inference!
Woah woah woah, I’ll put out my meta-ethical tier list if I hit my goal of 1 like! I only barely touched on some moral anti-realism because constructivism is necessary for setting up Kant!
Virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism are all parts of a complete utilitarian breakfast. They're not as mutually exclusive as usually portrayed.
Yes, for a utilitarian sometimes they see the value in things like upholding rules or trying to be a good person as the things that DO maximize utility. The only thing is that the base of morality is still utilitarianism.
Yeah, the main thing with utilitarianism that I think ends up with it going off the rails (or trolley tracks, if you prefer) is the lack of diminishing returns or uncertainty. Two murders are worse than one, sure, but are they exactly twice as bad? Similarly, if less charged, taking the last brownie registers as more of a sin than the first brownie.
Friendly reminder that in the Experience Machine we don’t know what really goes on outside of our consciousness. Entering the machine is compatible with letting others live in Hell without your knowing it.
Oh, I’m not saying I want to go in the experience machine alone, I want everyone and all conscious beings to go in the experience machine — that’s hedonistic utilitarianism. Going alone would be selfish if I can get more people. Indeed the real world may be Hell compared to it.
I started typing serious objections about how you’re undervaluing/overvaluing certain theories while forgetting about other theories (e.g. contractarianism and natural law), but then I stopped because this is clearly a shitpost. Although if we’re appointing head honchos of different moral theories I’ll nominate myself as the grand poobah of (universalist) subjectivism.
I definitely missed a TON of moral frameworks but I didn’t want it to be too long. I cut out a joke where I listed like 10 moralities I missed. Haven’t philosophers made enough moral frameworks? guys stop the right one has to be in there somewhere.
Re other theories saying to act like a virtue ethicist, but basing it in a "serious" moral theory, I think this is a very cheeky move that assumes a lot. It reveals (1) that virtue ethics actually gives a much more practically useful way of choosing one's actions, even compared to their own theories, and (2) admits that those decisions are probably correct, and (3) just assumes that their moral theory would come to the same decision, if only they had the computational power to crunch the numbers/logic.
I have a very silly complaint about utilitarianism, which is that surely morality cannot come down to a sum? Of all the mathematical functions, I find it difficult to believe it would be one that's so inelegant.
I mean, I think a moral person would do whatever a hedonistic utilitarian would do, because indeed I believe that’s what being “virtuous” means. So virtue ethics is correct after all!! Woot!
It’s so vague that I think the above COULD be a fair reading of virtue ethics — I really believe an abstract good person would follow that philosophy! — so how useful can it be if it equally explains all moral philosophies?
Also lol that’s a hilarious utilitarianism critique
Ok but surely that's not what anyone means when they argue you should "act like a virtue ethicist"? Anyone arguing for that must have a decent concept of how a virtue ethicist would act.
I expand on this where I quote you, definitely not what people mean — virtue ethics says all the stuff you say in your post, and try to not be a selfish person, and etc etc. When *I* say virtue ethics is useful to follow it’s more that it’s easy to justify selfish things by twisting abstract moral theories, where virtue ethics says “don’t do that selfish thing please”.
Now, I think virtues’ failure state is when bad stuff is really far away, like factory farming, so it doesn’t really clock in to the emotional center of your brain. Now “true” virtue ethics itself is concerned about “pure” virtue, not just what feels virtuous, but I worry that really could will fall into utilitarianism or whatever you think morality “really is”.
> The main question you may have after reading the name: ok, so how do you select which virtues?
You don’t have to select any of the virtues. They have been engrained in society arguably since prehistory, and if you read Aristotle they are exactly the same today as they were 2,400 years ago. They are the sorts of character traits that bring you the right sorts of happiness.
Virtue theory being F tier, while hedonic Utilitarianism being S tier is just a joke, and shows you’re really degrading a theory you haven’t spent even a small amount of time learning about besides perhaps online arguments.
Would you desire a future where the entire universe is tiled over with monkey brains bathed in super-heroin? Do you think we should value the pleasure derived from seeing others tortured (even if the video was AI generated) and the pleasure derived from helping others flourish equally?
Read Nicomachean Ethics as a starting point. You’ll realize that the virtues aren’t asserted for no reason, that a life pursuing pleasure alone is not a good life, and there are different sorts of pleasures to be pursued. Virtue theory is significantly more complex than you trying to “pick” the virtues you want to pursue without guidance or justification.
Reminder that I’m not denying the instrumental appeal of virtue ethics, just denying that it’s very philosophically serious — “the right sorts of happiness” is an ill defined phrase that smuggles in a lot.
For your questions, I don’t think it matters what leads to human’s emotions. If all people involved are having a great time, who am I to say “this AI video represents something I object to in principle, stop having fun.”
Man virtue ethics just feels like its ground is nonexistent. It basically doesn’t even pretend to give you the answers to hard questions, which is what a moral theory really should do.
Yes. It’s ill-defined because it’s shorthand for a detailed explanation that isn’t warranted in a comment. Just because I don’t go into detail doesn’t mean that the detail isn’t there.
Hedonistic Utilitarianism’s ground is “Pleasure is good and pain is bad.” which is specifically discussed at length by Aristotle in multiple books within Nicomachean Ethics. If the ground you think is solid for utilitarianism is analyzed and discussed in extreme detail within the foundational texts of Virtue Theory, don’t you think there might be more to it than you think?
Virtue theory, besides divine command theory, is also that upon which all western philosophy had been built. Within Nicomachean Ethics alone (and this is certainly not the only relevant text, just one of the most important), Aristotle discusses the human desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, deontological principles (whether “you should always do X” represents human morality well), and even the universalization of moral principles as an important test for them a-la the categorical imperative.
To say that it’s “not a serious philosophy” is actually communicating “I don’t take this philosophy seriously” which is fine, but certainly doesn’t qualify you to judge accurately. To me it looks like your exposure has been limited to the simplistic “Do virtuous actions because they’re good” thinking you might find with the uninformed.
The idea to focus on character instead of choices or outcomes like the other two moral fighters in the ring do is a genuinely cool idea that sounds like it could work — but there’s just no principled way to pick the virtues or figure out what “pure virtue” is. It’s so unprincipled it’s difficult to find what the theory ACTUALLY advocates for in a logical way, besides “the stuff you think is good” which is unhelpful if I want to know which good stuff I should focus on. How do I balance multiple virtues? No good answers are given.
Like this shows how little you’re actually informed on Virtue Theory. Even a complete novice reading about it would see that these are the questions being discussed in extreme detail. “The stuff you think is good” is very clearly (and stated throughout Nicomachean Ethics dozens of times) not the standard on which the virtues are claimed to be established. This is the equivalent of a teenager reading the wikipedia article on WW2 then asserting to military historians how “Hitler could’ve won the war if he just…” It’s fundamentally unserious critique, and deeply ironic that within your critique you accuse Virtue theory of not being a serious philosophy.
Haven’t even read it. Already a banger. Please add the actual tier list image to the article somewhere though!
I can see your view on divine command if it’s like, “god is smarter than me, if I disagree with him on morality it’s probably me who is wrong, not him”, but not if it’s “the good is literally defined by god’s will, rather than god’s will simply being aligned with the good”. If it’s the latter then strong disagree, but the former definitely makes sense.
This is a very good comment about what the other options are when you have a book-based religion. Your view is saying that God is simply a very smart moral realist. I think that’s weird because it quietly admits means divine commands are only moral if they lead to better consequences — and gotta be honest, through this lens, the whole “hell” thing starts to look pretty bad, and probably undermines the part where God said he’s “maximally good”
Whereas if we just embrace deontology and assume god REALLY knows better than us then it’s internally consistent AND the problem is solved AND that book that’s supposed to explain all of reality has a lot more authority.
I didn’t really explain what the other option was from religion, so thanks for pointing that out and letting me expand on it.
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Great minds almost think alike, but your take on preference utilitarianism is F-tier. It looks like hedonism will face the same problem as non-ideal preference utilitarianism: Many people might derive pleasure from seeing someone get tortured, so qu quoque.
Also, it's not like preference utilitarianism tells you to do drugs all day if that's what you want (unless that's the only thing you want), as that will cause other desires to go neglected and so overall be bad for you.
Very fair point on the torturing someone, that’s obviously something hedonistic utilitarianism will also encourage if utility is high enough. But hedonistic utilitarianism will also acknowledge the pointlessness of having him actually be tortured and attempt to trick the people or replace whatever video they see of this guy getting tortured with AI while also keeping all the benefits.
Preference utilitarianism treats a sober human as some sort of “ultimate rationality machine” that definitely is smart enough to where we should just let them have a life of pain over joy and happiness.
It all feels so arbitrary and arrogant; why not afford that to children, to people on drugs, to people who are dumb. The only way to get around that is by calling people irrational, and this is a big deal; because as a hedonistic utilitarian, I really think that these “purely rational observers” are smarter than humans and would only endorse hedonistic utilitarianism. And in your drug example, where’s the principled way to balance all your desires? I’d argue the principled way is indeed hedonistic utilitarianism again; it will make your mental state the best.
Fair enough on the first point, preference utilitarianism really does require that someone actually be tortured in such a case. We can of course also construct cases where hedonism says the same (eg by simply stipulating that you can't do it otherwise). I think the thing that we are actually repulsed by (or at least that I am) is the idea that it can be good to satisfy "vicious" desires. But hedonism also says that it can be good to derive pleasure through "vicious" means (like sadism or watching child porn), and I don't think the fact that you can deceive people in the latter helps very much at making it less repulsive.
I don't think preference i utilitarianism treats people as ultimately rational. It only requires that if you really care about or want something, then it's good for you to get it. If I honest to God like being spanked or prefer that my friends are not p-zombies, then it's better for me to have that--despite it causing less pleasure--all else being equal.
I also don't think it's arbitrary at all! There's a perfectly principled... Principle: Maximize satisfied preferences and minimize thwarted ones (weighed nu strength). Why not let children satisfy their immediate desires? Because they'll predictably have desires like having teeth and an education in the future, which will be thwarted by eating candy and skipping school. Why not let drug addicts be? Because they'll have a life with more satisfied preferences of they don't satisfy their immediate preference for heroin.
I can still say that people are irrational and that they suck at their own preferences while maintaining that their actual preferences are what matters.
I'm normatively a hedonic virtue ethicist. Namely, I strive for a default state of static pleasure https://joerjames3.substack.com/p/the-prudential-hedonism-of-epicureanism
I "do good things" in following those preferences
https://joerjames3.substack.com/p/the-epicurean-case-for-behaving-well
Now, I'm meta-ethically a non-realist, so I don't expect my perspective and theory of action to be persuasive to everyone, but virtue ethics is the most helpful to "tell me what to do" than any other normative theory, which seems more about coming off at being the best at math and gotcha arguments than living a happy, pro-social life
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God tier: Weak negative, desert-adjusted, act utilitarianism – minimize suffering and maximize happiness in accordance with justice
The badness of suffering is stronger than the goodness of happiness, and thus our priority is in line with empirical facts about the psychologies of embodied organisms. At the same time, since we’re equal in front of suffering, no one should be treated as if they deserve more unless they actually deserve more, that is, unless they have sustainably solved the problem of suffering for the greatest number of organisms.
I will have a lot more to say, but it will be in my own posts. This is all you get for free 😏
I like Philosophy posts like this that are less pretentious 😀. Reading everyone taking themselves super seriously all the time gets exhausting
I don't yet have any posts about philosophy, but I did make a shitpost the other day with some totally 100% serious ideas of what I'd do if I was in charge: https://erioire.substack.com/p/the-hypothetical-dictator-with-magically?r=8p56a
Well, divine command theory is correct.
Regarding Kant: When you say that you have looked into it, I'm assuming you have read the most famous essay on the topic: The Right to Lie by Korsgaard... If so, what's your objection to it?
As I talk about in my article about Kant and Korsgaard “Intuitionism is Morally Mandatory” (yes we do a shameless plug let’s gooo) I really think this line from Korsgaard in that very article goes against Kant’s whole point: “morality itself sometimes allows or even requires us to do something that from an ideal perspective is wrong”
What’s the point of ideal rules if having them is morally irrational if the other party isn’t also perfectly kantian? Her article says purposely undermining a perfect ideal is a reason to break a perfect ideal. By this exact logic, sacrificing 1 person to save 1 billion people is still completely banned, no one is subverting the ideal purpose, so it doesn’t address this case which I think is much worse than the lying thing. I’m telling you, the reasons why some Kantians say you can sacrifice them when the numbers on the other side are really big are REALLY weak and consequentialist sounding.
Just far weaker than Kant’s original ideal rules. Korsgaard would get a D.
Your article talked about lying to bad people specifically. And, as Korsgaard shows, it's imho possible to have a theory in the Kantian spirit which allows lying to the axe murderer. Whether Kant himself would have agreed is irrelevant, what matters to Neo-Kantians is the underlying motivation of the view.
If you now wanna talk about sacrificing someone innocent to save others, then I'm just gonna say that Kantianism is indeed incompatible with THAT... but I take this to be the correct result. Obviously the utilitarian probably takes this to be utterly crazy, but that wasn't the point.
That’s fair, in my article I mostly stressed that Kant’s universality test is arbitrary and that ideal Kant led to bad results. If you disagree that universality is arbitrary and don’t mind the bad results from the 1 billion people examples, then I didn’t make a criticism specifically against that theory of Korsgaard’s besides gesturing it’s weird to stipulate ideal rules but then say you can break them.
All I can say is when she says “when the attempt to live up to [the ideal] would make you the *tool of evil* you should not do so” that sure sounds like that word “evil” is selectively pleading to ‘intuitionist’ bad results.
I just read your article on intuitionism and it's not bad at all. But you do what utilitarians so often do when talking about Kantians: strawman like hell. For example, you say:
"But there’s a little bit more of a slight of hand here — first, I’m going to point out there’s at least one curious jump here. We start by saying “you must respect your own ability to choose” then jump in the next point to “ok, so everybody must respect everybody else.” This doesn’t strike me as some obvious thing that’s clearly derived from being a rational observer."
But... obviously there is no actual curious jump being made. There's only a curious jump in the four premise strawman argument that YOU gave. Kant spends several pages in the Groundwork and Korsgaard several pages in Sources of Normativity on justifying this very inference!
Relativism not even panned? Not even F tier? Typical. Goddamn moral realists.
Woah woah woah, I’ll put out my meta-ethical tier list if I hit my goal of 1 like! I only barely touched on some moral anti-realism because constructivism is necessary for setting up Kant!
Virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism are all parts of a complete utilitarian breakfast. They're not as mutually exclusive as usually portrayed.
Yes, for a utilitarian sometimes they see the value in things like upholding rules or trying to be a good person as the things that DO maximize utility. The only thing is that the base of morality is still utilitarianism.
Yeah, the main thing with utilitarianism that I think ends up with it going off the rails (or trolley tracks, if you prefer) is the lack of diminishing returns or uncertainty. Two murders are worse than one, sure, but are they exactly twice as bad? Similarly, if less charged, taking the last brownie registers as more of a sin than the first brownie.
I'm a Virtue Ethicist. Richard Ngo has the best argument I've seen.
So would you enter Nozick's experience machine?
Hell yeah I would, I’m not fully convinced I’m not already there. I think other people would way prefer it too.
Friendly reminder that in the Experience Machine we don’t know what really goes on outside of our consciousness. Entering the machine is compatible with letting others live in Hell without your knowing it.
Sorry, what’s the relevance of what goes on outside our consciousness? I’m missing the connection between it and hell.
The relevance is that a moral theory is other-regarding because there are other things in the world other than your ass.
Oh, I’m not saying I want to go in the experience machine alone, I want everyone and all conscious beings to go in the experience machine — that’s hedonistic utilitarianism. Going alone would be selfish if I can get more people. Indeed the real world may be Hell compared to it.
That’s fair, but I want to flag that we’re changing the thought experiment. This is not what Nozick asked.
I started typing serious objections about how you’re undervaluing/overvaluing certain theories while forgetting about other theories (e.g. contractarianism and natural law), but then I stopped because this is clearly a shitpost. Although if we’re appointing head honchos of different moral theories I’ll nominate myself as the grand poobah of (universalist) subjectivism.
Pshh, a shitpost Bob? Me? I would never.
I definitely missed a TON of moral frameworks but I didn’t want it to be too long. I cut out a joke where I listed like 10 moralities I missed. Haven’t philosophers made enough moral frameworks? guys stop the right one has to be in there somewhere.
Thanks for the shout out!
Re other theories saying to act like a virtue ethicist, but basing it in a "serious" moral theory, I think this is a very cheeky move that assumes a lot. It reveals (1) that virtue ethics actually gives a much more practically useful way of choosing one's actions, even compared to their own theories, and (2) admits that those decisions are probably correct, and (3) just assumes that their moral theory would come to the same decision, if only they had the computational power to crunch the numbers/logic.
I have a very silly complaint about utilitarianism, which is that surely morality cannot come down to a sum? Of all the mathematical functions, I find it difficult to believe it would be one that's so inelegant.
I mean, I think a moral person would do whatever a hedonistic utilitarian would do, because indeed I believe that’s what being “virtuous” means. So virtue ethics is correct after all!! Woot!
It’s so vague that I think the above COULD be a fair reading of virtue ethics — I really believe an abstract good person would follow that philosophy! — so how useful can it be if it equally explains all moral philosophies?
Also lol that’s a hilarious utilitarianism critique
Ok but surely that's not what anyone means when they argue you should "act like a virtue ethicist"? Anyone arguing for that must have a decent concept of how a virtue ethicist would act.
I expand on this where I quote you, definitely not what people mean — virtue ethics says all the stuff you say in your post, and try to not be a selfish person, and etc etc. When *I* say virtue ethics is useful to follow it’s more that it’s easy to justify selfish things by twisting abstract moral theories, where virtue ethics says “don’t do that selfish thing please”.
Now, I think virtues’ failure state is when bad stuff is really far away, like factory farming, so it doesn’t really clock in to the emotional center of your brain. Now “true” virtue ethics itself is concerned about “pure” virtue, not just what feels virtuous, but I worry that really could will fall into utilitarianism or whatever you think morality “really is”.
> The main question you may have after reading the name: ok, so how do you select which virtues?
You don’t have to select any of the virtues. They have been engrained in society arguably since prehistory, and if you read Aristotle they are exactly the same today as they were 2,400 years ago. They are the sorts of character traits that bring you the right sorts of happiness.
Virtue theory being F tier, while hedonic Utilitarianism being S tier is just a joke, and shows you’re really degrading a theory you haven’t spent even a small amount of time learning about besides perhaps online arguments.
Would you desire a future where the entire universe is tiled over with monkey brains bathed in super-heroin? Do you think we should value the pleasure derived from seeing others tortured (even if the video was AI generated) and the pleasure derived from helping others flourish equally?
Read Nicomachean Ethics as a starting point. You’ll realize that the virtues aren’t asserted for no reason, that a life pursuing pleasure alone is not a good life, and there are different sorts of pleasures to be pursued. Virtue theory is significantly more complex than you trying to “pick” the virtues you want to pursue without guidance or justification.
Reminder that I’m not denying the instrumental appeal of virtue ethics, just denying that it’s very philosophically serious — “the right sorts of happiness” is an ill defined phrase that smuggles in a lot.
For your questions, I don’t think it matters what leads to human’s emotions. If all people involved are having a great time, who am I to say “this AI video represents something I object to in principle, stop having fun.”
Man virtue ethics just feels like its ground is nonexistent. It basically doesn’t even pretend to give you the answers to hard questions, which is what a moral theory really should do.
Yes. It’s ill-defined because it’s shorthand for a detailed explanation that isn’t warranted in a comment. Just because I don’t go into detail doesn’t mean that the detail isn’t there.
Hedonistic Utilitarianism’s ground is “Pleasure is good and pain is bad.” which is specifically discussed at length by Aristotle in multiple books within Nicomachean Ethics. If the ground you think is solid for utilitarianism is analyzed and discussed in extreme detail within the foundational texts of Virtue Theory, don’t you think there might be more to it than you think?
Virtue theory, besides divine command theory, is also that upon which all western philosophy had been built. Within Nicomachean Ethics alone (and this is certainly not the only relevant text, just one of the most important), Aristotle discusses the human desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, deontological principles (whether “you should always do X” represents human morality well), and even the universalization of moral principles as an important test for them a-la the categorical imperative.
To say that it’s “not a serious philosophy” is actually communicating “I don’t take this philosophy seriously” which is fine, but certainly doesn’t qualify you to judge accurately. To me it looks like your exposure has been limited to the simplistic “Do virtuous actions because they’re good” thinking you might find with the uninformed.
The idea to focus on character instead of choices or outcomes like the other two moral fighters in the ring do is a genuinely cool idea that sounds like it could work — but there’s just no principled way to pick the virtues or figure out what “pure virtue” is. It’s so unprincipled it’s difficult to find what the theory ACTUALLY advocates for in a logical way, besides “the stuff you think is good” which is unhelpful if I want to know which good stuff I should focus on. How do I balance multiple virtues? No good answers are given.
Like this shows how little you’re actually informed on Virtue Theory. Even a complete novice reading about it would see that these are the questions being discussed in extreme detail. “The stuff you think is good” is very clearly (and stated throughout Nicomachean Ethics dozens of times) not the standard on which the virtues are claimed to be established. This is the equivalent of a teenager reading the wikipedia article on WW2 then asserting to military historians how “Hitler could’ve won the war if he just…” It’s fundamentally unserious critique, and deeply ironic that within your critique you accuse Virtue theory of not being a serious philosophy.
Whither expressivism? We’re just not going to talk about strict non-cognitivists at all?