Right. This is the first of my mini podcasts, so we're hoping to be able to do virtue ethics in 15 minutes, which will be interesting.
Let's see if I can do it. And this is welcome to everyone who's listening in video and audio.
And, of course, welcome to you, too. So let's get started.
If you've only got 15 minutes, OK, the virtue ethicist argues that what matters morally is not what we do at a time.
Everybody gets things wrong every now and again. You're not immoral because you've done something wrong.
What matters, according to the Virtue ethicist, is what you become over time, not what you do at a time.
And to the virtue ethicists, the acquisition of a good character that is, or that ought to be your moral aim.
And so in particular, he rejects the idea that we should follow rules.
Now, if you listen to the podcast on Day Ontology,
you'll see that the Day Ontologies believes that morality is a matter of following rules in various ways.
But that's not true for the virtues of this emphasis, the virtues of Sicily's that aren't any rules at all in morality,
or at least there aren't any rules that are the sinner qua non of reality.
The thing that you've got to follow in order to act morally and similarly,
the virtue ethicist doesn't think for one minute that you should try and produce certain consequences in order to try to act morally.
The consequentialist, as you'll see if you watch the podcast on consequentialism, does believe this, but not the virtue ethicist.
What the Virtue ethicist believes is that what you are, what your character is, is what matters morally.
And I'm going to give you some considerations that may prompt you to to go along with
that may prompt you to believe that the virtue ethicist is right when he says that.
So imagine this situation. There's a fireman who thinks that he can run again into a burning building.
And if he does so, [INAUDIBLE] be able to save a child. And he thinks this is possible.
And so he springs into action and sadly, he fails to save the child and he injures himself in the attempt.
So his action led to very bad consequences. It didn't help the child.
It didn't help himself. But the virtue ethicist would say that the firemen still acted properly because what he did was courageous.
He his action expressed the virtue of courage and therefore it was the right action, although it had poor consequences.
And another situation of poverty. Poverty stricken scientist is offered money by a rival company to share details of his or her work, her work.
I've said here and now the scientist knows that these details are about to be in
the public domain so she could accept without actually doing any harm at all.
But she rejects the offer because she thinks that to do so,
to accept it would be to betray her company and that she thinks would be the wrong thing to do.
Now, again, the consequentialist would have to say that it didn't lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
But the virtue ethicist would say that her action, if it expressed the courage of loyalty sorry, the virtue of loyalty, which it might have done,
but didn't necessarily let's say it did, then that would be the right action, because what we should all be aiming for is to become loyal.
And therefore she did the right action. And the final example I'm going to give you is this one.
An unemployed biologist is interviewed for his dream job.
The interview goes really well until he discovers that the company is funded by a Christian organisation and it expects its employees to be Christian.
Oh, well, he's not a Christian, but he could easily get away with claiming to be one, but he doesn't want to lie and so he doesn't get the job.
Now, again, it looks as if that the the action that he's performed hasn't had good consequences.
It hasn't led to any benefits for anyone.
But at the same time, virtue ethicists could say it expresses the virtue of being truthful and therefore is the right action to perform.
So this is sorry, so what the Virtue ethicist is saying is that what's your aim should be,
as somebody who's aiming to become a moral agent, is to acquire the virtues.
And in acquiring the virtues, you'll acquire a good character.
And having acquired a good character, every action you perform will then be the right action.
You almost can't go wrong, but we'll say something more about that in a minute.
And importantly, we can't be born virtuous.
And virtue is something that must be acquired. And the way we acquire it is to acquire the right habits.
So imagine somebody who's born naturally strong.
OK, unless they actually exercise, eat the right things, get enough sleep and so on.
Unless they get the right habits, the strength that they're born with,
the natural strength that they're born with won't become the virtue of strength.
Will it be the athlete will just become flabby and the strength that he had as a matter of nature, will just dissipate.
And exactly the same way the virtue ethicist thinks human beings have got to habitually
act in accordance with the virtues in order to avoid becoming morally flabby.
So the first lie you tell is going to be quite difficult. But the second one's a bit easier.
The third one's a bit easier, etc. But by the same token,
the first time you resist temptation and do the right thing, it's hard maybe, but then it becomes easier and easier.
And in doing this, you're exercising your moral capacity and getting yourself into the right habits and you'll avoid becoming morally flabby.
And if you acquire the right habits, you're going to over time become a person with the disposition to do certain things in certain circumstances.
So, for example, sorry, I was just checking to see if there was a slide that I did once have in.
There was still there, but it wasn't. So, for example, what we're looking for is what Aristotle, for example, called the golden mean.
And the golden mean is the virtue and the virtue lies always in between two vices.
So there's rashness when you think, oh,
I'll get out there and kill the enemy and you just act stupidly because you didn't stop and think the situation is dangerous, etc. That's being rash.
And that's one of the vices over here. And at the other end is the vice of cowardice, where you think, oh, I'm not going to go there.
This is not something I want to touch. In the middle is the golden mean of the virtue of courage.
And so what you've got to aim to do is, is know something about yourself.
So, Mike, I don't know about you, but you might have a tendency towards rashness or you might have a tendency towards cowardice, have a tendency.
You have it's your job to pull yourself away from it towards the golden mean because
it's in achieving the goals and means that you acquire the virtue of courage.
Or another example is, is you can be obsequious or you can be surly and you don't want to be either of those things.
What you want to be is friendly and friendliness. The virtue of friendliness is in between secret obsequiousness and surliness.
So if you acquire the right habits, you'll become a person with a disposition of courage, for example.
And when facing danger, you will act courageously.
If you acquire the right habits, you will over time become the person with the disposition to be friendly, the virtue of friendliness.
And again, when friendship is required, you will be friendly, you won't be obsequious,
you won't be over friendly, nor will you be surly or under friendly.
And once you've become virtuous, once you've acquired the virtues and you'll do three things, you'll know what the right action is.
You'll perform the right action and you'll perform the right action for the right reason.
The right reason being it is the right action. So think about the situation.
Here's your mum or your wife or whoever comes back from the hairdresser says, what do you think?
And you think, yuck, OK, you've got a problem here, haven't you?
You can't be both kind and honest. And of course, you want to be both because you're a nice chap.
You've been brought up that way. So you think, oh, what am I going to do here?
Now we can give our arguments for both sides, can't we?
Because you do want to be kind. You do want to be honest.
Now, in this situation, what if it's the first time you've seen your mum smile for six months?
OK, so that situation would probably push you in one direction, wouldn't it?
Or what if her hair is really so bad that if she goes out like that,
she's going to look she's going to become a laughing stock that pushes you perhaps in the other direction.
The virtuous person will look at the whole situation, every aspect of the situation, and know what he should do in that situation.
What's more, [INAUDIBLE] perform the right action so he won't think, well, what I should do here is tell the truth.
But actually, I. I can't I'm a moral coward.
I'm not able to tell my mum that she doesn't look nice, that she ought to go back to the hairdresser and complain or something like that or.
Whatever the other one is, the third thing is you perform the right action because it's the right action.
OK, here you could either be honest or you could be kind. Let's say that you're honest, but the reason you're honest.
So the reason you tell your mum that her hair doesn't look nice is because you've given to a moment spight.
OK, you just think you'll pay her back for what she did to me last night.
No, Mum, it doesn't. Look, you really ought to go back it OK?
You can justify that action because you can justify it on the grounds of believing that was the right thing to do.
But actually, maybe it is the right thing to do.
Maybe that's what you should do. Maybe that's what the virtue does require of you.
But if you did it for the wrong reason, you are not virtuous.
Do you see the difference? So there's a difference between your act being virtuous and you being virtuous,
and that comes out in when you perform the right action, but for the wrong reason.
So to be virtuous when you perform the right action, it's got to be because it's the right action and for no other reason.
Aristotle was the founder of Virtue Ethics. This this is he's not the person that most virtuous artists these days would rely
on because virtue ethics is a modern theory as well as an Aristotelian theory.
But he was certainly the founder and he believed that human beings are unique.
I think this is a very important thing about human beings. And I I remember learning this about Aristotle and thinking that's hugely important.
He thinks human beings are unique in that they have a potential. There's a difference between what you are and what you could be.
And Aristotle believes that what makes the difference there is the virtues.
If you acquire the virtues you can get from where you are to where you should be,
you can fulfil your potential, but you're never going to fulfil your potential without acquiring the virtues.
You've got to acquire self-discipline, tenacity, the virtues of wisdom.
You've got to think about where you want to be, what your potential is, and so on.
You've got to make plans by which to get there,
and then you've got to exercise the self-discipline to to put those plans into action and to fulfil your potential is to achieve happiness.
That's what that's the potential of every human being.
And of course, I should just say that no one whose child is killed in an accident is going to be happy, however virtuous he is.
So virtue isn't sufficient for happiness. It's necessary only for happiness.
So you won't be happy without virtue, but with virtue.
You may not be happy either because you haven't got the success or the luck or whatever else is also required.
And very importantly, acquiring the virtues can't be understood as a means to happiness.
OK, so you mustn't think, OK, acquiring virtue is a necessary condition for being happy.
I want to be happy. Therefore I'm going to be virtuous. I'm going to be courageous, da da da.
Because I want to be happy. Remember what I said about doing the right thing for the right reason.
If you're courageous, when virtue requires courage, but you're courageous because you want to be happy,
you won't acquire courage, you won't acquire the virtue and you won't acquire happiness.
You've got to see virtue as its own reward in order to acquire the virtues.
And some argue the virtue ethics is circular and gives no guidance at all on what to do.
I mean, you might think, well, hang on a second.
Okay, so if I become a virtuous person, then the type of form of virtuous if I perform virtuous acts, I become a virtuous person.
Well, how useful is that? Not very useful at all.
But the virtue ethicist will insist that there's no such thing as a manual that will tell us how to act properly.
I can't as a as a parent, give my child a set of rules,
a set of instructions by which if they follow these instructions, they will become a moral agent.
All I can do is become a moral agent myself and hope that my child will emulate me,
because the only way we can learn how to act morally is by emulating those who already act morally.
And so the only guidance that virtue Syria offers us when it comes to our own actions is to tell us to seek out virtuous people and emulate them.
And all of us know some people whom we admire, some people we may admire, different people in different circumstances,
but we all know what it is to admire somebody and believe that we would consult these people if facing a moral dilemma.
And that, according to Aristotle, for example, is exactly what we should do.
And in particular, moral knowledge is practical, not theoretical.
So you can't acquire a moral theory that will tell you how to act morally.
All you can do is acquire the knowledge how to act in order to act morally.
And just quickly, I look at three problems for virtue ethics.
Firstly, how do we know who is virtuous? And this is actually more difficult than it might seem.
For example, if not, I don't believe this for a minute.
But if Mike's a liar, he's not going to he will tell the truth most of the time.
Why? Because telling the truth most of the time when when it doesn't bother him, whether he tells the truth or not is the way to get me to trust him.
And of course, if I don't trust him, he can't lie successfully to me.
You can only lie successfully to somebody if they believe you're going to tell the truth.
So a dishonest person is most of the time going to act exactly like an honest person.
How do we know when somebody is a virtuous person or not?
Well, I'll leave that with you. The answer has got to be look at them over the time, etc. but I'll leave that with you.
How do we know who's virtuous? Second thing is, are there any virtuous people?
We all know that human beings are susceptible to being malevolent at times, to being weak at times, to being wrong at times.
So how can we really say that there is anyone who knows what the right action is,
who always performs the right action and who always performs the right action for the right reason?
And if we can't, is that a problem for virtue ethics? And finally, I've looked at that very quickly already.
This it's an act virtuous because a virtuous person performs it or does the virtuous person perform it because it's the right action?
So that's a quick romp through virtue theory.
And here is if you'd like to go on with philosophy in various ways, here is a way of doing it and I'll leave it there.