Uh, yes, in a way, though in general, I think the question "what is virtue" only gets asked from some theoretical standpoint of objectivity. In reality it's more like "who is virtuous (for us)?" And from there abstracting "what are the virtues he /she exemplifies that makes us consider him/her virtuous?

It's about as useful? yes, precisely. I'm not suggesting one is superior, though I probably tend toward virtue ethics myself, especially in so far as it doesn't isolate the act. In some way a verdict requires the consideration of a person's history, perhaps we can't really pronounce if someone is / was virtuous until the end of his or her life when we can consider the sum and perhaps distinguish the virtues that caused the actions. Determining right or wrong in a particular act is simply of less interest for me.

Same quote above,
I really dont believe that the virtous action is based on the values of a certain community or culture.
Virtue are those that, in adhereing to them, promote human flourishing.
yes this is defined by an action, but thats not what im focusing on now. WHats important is that virtues are defined NOT by instinct or how you were raised, its about (bear with me) that whatever you do that is virtuous will give you a good 'flourishing' life. Thus, given a culture where 'evil' things like murder and canabalism and stealing are all commonplace and acceptable, it seems [some of you] argue that right actions would just be recognized as those that are acceptable. THus, killing people is acceptable, killing people could be virtuous -> being prone to muder is a virtue. (parapharsing your ideas, but the idea basically that if its acceptable, its fine, and can even be good)
Just because somehting is acceptable, it is NOT a virtue. A virtue promotes flourishing and a good life! The virtue ethicist would argue that if you lived this way, you would not be living a good life. Thats it. THere is no option for a good life if this is where you lived and how you were raised. you may have the illusion of happiness and fufillment, but truly, it is not a good life.
I think that most of this debate is regarding what makes someone virtuous/what characterizes virtue. That is the answer- virtues promote human flourishing. Again, this does NOT mean happiness. Honesty is generally regard as a virtue, but it can cause pain. Not cheating on a test causes pain, but you must do it to live a good life. if you lie, you cannot flourish.
mcbry good point! see thats what i mean about utilitarianism. There are so many different things to take into account. you say this well. Thats why i dont like utilitarianism _in practice_. If there was a way to measure happiness, then it wouldnt be that bad in the long run. But there isnt, and thats my objection.

"perhaps we can't really pronounce if someone is / was virtuous until the end of his or her life when we can consider the sum and perhaps distinguish the virtues that caused the actions."

That sounds pretty consequential to me. It seems like you are indeed looking at the results of a person's actions in order to determine whether the behaviour was virtuous or not. It seems like the main problem you have with utilitarianism is that they set out to define the currency of ethics as pain and pleasure, and not actually that its a consequentialist ethical philosophy. I might be misinterpreting you, but I think you're just taking a more qualitative approach, forgoing utilitarian arithmetic, but that since you're deciding what is virtuous based on what good has come from it, you're a consequentialist, albeit a hazy and more holistic one. This is no criticism, because I'm probably pretty similar (so maybe I'm just projecting), and I think our innate moral sense is offended by the idea of quantitative ethics and utilitarian arithmetic.

Sorry, you're mostly right, there zoeoz, most virtue ethicists do (did) tend to think that virtues are virtues for everyone across cultures. Making it culturally relative (of just accepting its necessary cultural relativity) is a relatively recent innovation from, for example, Alisdair MacIntyre who is probably the most significant contemporary proponent (see "After Virtue")

zoeoz, how would you characterize a flourishing life? I'm not sure what you're getting at with your example of a society of murdering, stealing, cannibalizing people. (For the record, such a society could never be sustained.) What do you mean when you say that killing people can be a virtue? If virtue can neither be gleaned from instinct nor from culture, where does one get it from? Divine revelation?

Wait, is virtue something that if followed will lead an individual to a flourishing life? Or is it something that if everyone (or at least most people) followed would lead to collective human flourishing? Or both? If both, is one primary to the other?

I think that's pretty fair, Chris. Like I said in my first post to this thread, virtue ethics isn't incompatible with consequentialism. But to repeat, I'm not so interested in the consequences of particular actions, I'm more interested in establishing the why of the action, the cause, the motivation, the virtue (or lack there of).

yeah my example was weird, sorry. I just mean to say that soceity is not what defines virtues. In this radical case, things we would consider wrong are commonplace adn accepted. Thus, were we would see honesty as a virtue, these people may see lying as a virtue. Lying cannot be a virtue however, because lying (and this is according to Aristotle) does not promote human flourishing.
Essentialy, a flourishing life is one that is a virtuous person leads.
and yes that means that you must define virtue
and yes virtue is definded by a flourishing life. however!!
it is not only that. i think a lot of people have made good points about this, and i would like to disscuss it, however, (ironically) i have to finish writng an ethis paper at the moment.

I will leave anyone interested with this question:

A crime has been committed, and all the people in a large town are very angry. They tell the judge [and police force, the works] that if no one is punished for this crime within a day, they will go through a poor town and kill everyone in it, as they beleive whoever is guilty came out of that town. The judge and police have no ideas as to who committed this crime, but there is a very unpopular man who has committed smaller crimes in the past, and could easliy be blamed for this one. Thus, the question is, should the judge find the innocent man guilty (he will be sentenced to death), or be truthful and say that no one can be found in the time given, meaning that the angry people will kill everyone in the poor town.

What is the utilitarian standpoint? Deontologist? Virtue Theory?
Just an idea, i thought this was interesting to think about.

Tell the truth and get ready for the smackdown. Invest in the odd occasional automatic weapon.

Seriously though, the townspeople and whoever is inciting them are at fault, and therefore they are acting in an immoral manner. The police force has no obligation other than to do their best to avoid the loss of life among their innocent citizen's (even the one's they dislike). They are not complicit in the townfolk's crime until they accquiesce to their demands. Stand up to them as the duely appointed police force and tell them in no uncertain terms all they can possibly hope to accomplish will be to get an innocent man lynched. Go home, cool off, & let the police do their job without an unreasonable time schedule hanging over their heads and the temptation to hand over a scapegoat.

I still want answers from zoeoz, but I thought I'd just outline my own opinion. If you couldn't tell, I personally view ethics as a system cobbled together by evolution to lubricate social interaction for the benefit of all. There are huge gains to be made by working together, and evolution has given us a host of emotions such as trusting another, guilt for exploiting someone, dismay at betrayal, a sense of fairness, anger at being cheated, generosity, empathy, theory of mind etc. As well, we have a lot of mechanisms such as good memories to hold grudges for previous wrongs, the importance of reputation such that an exploiter is punished not just by the victim, but by the community at large, and networks of gossip to spread information. These are all things that come together to give us a sense of what is right and what is wrong, and since it was fairly haphazardly built, it's not so easy to create a logically consistent model of ethics (especially a practical one that adequately deals with uncertainty), nor is it easily reduced to the sum of its parts.

It's been shown that many animals, especially the more social, have some basic moral principles, such as the golden rule. Social monkeys and primates exhibit some pretty complex ethical behavior, fairness, and justice. For example, in the case of a rampaging alpha male beats up a subordinate who happens to be in his way vs. an alpha male that beats up an impudent subordinate who was provoking him, the community is much more likely to give a greater number of grooming sessions to the poor guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time than the nuisance who got what was coming to him.

In a large sense, behaving ethically has some pretty self interested results, because it reaps the greater benefits of social cooperation in the long term. I always find it funny when someone says something like, "If God doesn't exist, there's no absolute morality, and I might as well go punch my boss", as though their boss was an inanimate object such that they couldn't reasonably expect to get punched right back. Of course, we are often generous for generosity's sake and not with any explicit expectation of compensation, we don't assault others because we feel it's wrong and not because we consciously realize it would put us at risk for assault, we don't consciously add up all the pleasures and pains that will result from our actions but we do tend to act in a way that has a greater benefit, it's just that this is the net effect, and that's all that evolution cares about. It's about the results, selfish though they may ultimately be, not the mechanism; the mechanism we call ethics.

It's all too easy to come up with hypothetical situations that absolutely confound our instinctive moral sense, especially in modern times and given that such situations try to trap you in ways that you would not be trapped in a real life situation. For example, in zoeoz's situation, there's an obvious moral imperative to not condemn an innocent man to death, but it must be weighed against the death of the entire town. However, I'm sure that if I said my solution would be to try and reason with the angry townfolk and appeal to their empathic capacity or that I didn't think they'd actually carry through with their threat given that they would likely suffer casualties at the hands of a poor town who would not go down without a fight, I'd be told that they cannot be reasoned with and that somehow I know for sure that they will indeed carry through with their threat regardless of the consequences as though we are no longer dealing with humans, but irrational philosophical demon people. =P

McBry says:
"But virtue ethics isn't really based on the individual, for it is the community which decides or identifies who the virtuous person is. Hence, as I said before, it is cultural and it is culturally relativist."

When I say virtue theory prioritizes the individual, I am not commenting on who decides what is and is not a virtue. I am talking about the ends of moral behavior. For what purpose do we behave morally? Virtue theory says the reason is to achieve a "flourishing", which means the ends are entirely individualistic. The fact that virtues are culturally relative is not really relevant, but points to oddity of having a moral system that is focused on individual fulfillment but yet uses society as its foundation for determining what is moral behavior. If moral behavior is determined by society, then doesn't it only make sense that we decide what is moral based on what most benefits society?

" The person is virtuous and his or her actions are virtuous by extension. No action is virtuous that doesn't come from a virtuous person."

And the question we keep coming back to is, how is a person deemed virtuous absent action?

"but Virtue theory says the opposite: All actions reflect some kind of virtue but not perfectly. You cannot know if an action is virtuous simply by looking at the isolated action."

But you can determine a virtuous person by looking at a person isolated from action? How? How do virtuous people come before virtuous action? People just come out of the womb virtuous?

"Therein lies a world, and can we not be said to always carry a responsibility as a member of the human race which is always prior or superimposed onto any other?"

Sure, utilitarianism concerns itself with the well-being of the greatest number. What number is greater than all of humanity? But not every single situation calls for considering what is in the best interest of all humanity. You're on a neighborhood civic committee dealing with neighborhood complaints. You do not make decisions in such an environment based on what is going on in the rest of the world.

" But if someone is faced with a choice between saving a bus load of strangers or saving his or her child, who has the balls to say one of those choices is wrong?"

Once again, no one said there are always clear-cut answers. Thankfully people do not deal with bus load of strangers vs. child situations 99.9999% of the time. But are we discard a moral system because it doesn't provide cookie-cutter answers to every single hypothetical we can come up with? What does Deontology say about this situation you mention? I doubt it comes up with anything clearer.

"How can we make such a thing as pleasure our goal, especially when there is almost no experience of pleasure that isn't of necessity tinged with pain?"

What is the goal then? What is a good substitute for the happiness of the many?
You'll have to convince me that nearly every experience of pleasure is tinged with pain before going forward though.

Bentham provides a felicific calculus which I believe, addresses drug addiction, masochism, and Brave New World quandaries about happy asleep 'slaves' vs awake but miserable freemen, and can calculate rather well the total happiness of any action.

I loathe wikipedia, but whatever - here is a quick and dirty explanation of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus#Bentham.27s_instructions

Okay, again, Virutes are not dependant on society's ideals.

In different cultures, what is allowed and acceptable may change, but virtues will never change. IF your soceity or culture allows and accepts certain ideas or practices, that will create a mind frame for any person who is raised there as to what is right and wrong. Their perception of right and wrong is different.

For a human to flourish, their vitrues must be of a certain set, ALWAYS. This set of virtues DOES NOT change with soceity.

If a person adheres what is considered morally correct in their soceity
And IF what is considered morally correct in their society is different than what Aristotle considered morally right (that is, as i said way back, something of vaguely basing virtue off what achilles would do)
THEN the said person will not attain a flourishing human life, or eudemonia. EVEN though they beleive they are doing the right thing, it is not what Aristotle says is needed to acheive eudemonia.

Therefore soceities' pressures and ideals, while always present, DO NOT affect virtues. Society, is anything, only interferes with one's proper conceptualization of what is morally right or wrong.
Virtues are set in stone. They never change. They are what allow for human flourishing, which can only happen in one way.

As to my question, assuming you must choose one option, the utilitarian would say the innocent man should be killed, the deotologist would say the man should not be killed, and the virtue thoerist- im not sure. Lots of factors for that one.

Utilitarian - basically, the life of one over the life of many. If the man is killed, the mob is happy, the townspeople are happy, only the judge and the dead man are in pain. the man is dead, and the judge is feeling very conflicted becuase he/she knows they have put an innocent person to death.
However, it could be more complicated. What if the innocent man (dead man, convicted man, you know) had a very large family that cared for him deeply? you would have to think about the saddness of them. WHat if a boy serial killer was in the town (that is to say he would grow up to be a serial killer) what of the saddness he would create in the future? would that out-weigh the pain in the town?
It's true this is extensive, but to know _for certain_ that your action is right or wrong, you must think through all outcomes.

Deontolgist - Kant says it's wrong to lie no matter what. ever. he says that lying debases human communication and thus undermines all that rational human beings stand for, among other things. Thus _no matter what_ the scenario, lying is wrong, thus the judge would leave the man innocent and the townspeople would die.
-really Kant? is that what you really want? I don't know, I just don't like it. There should be exceptions.

Virtue Theory - Well this is tricky, because on one hand you must value human life, and on the other you must be honest and fair. To be honest and fair, the townspeople will die, and if the townspeople die, you have not valued human life.
There is no good outcome. No matter what, you will hurt one or your virtues. Aristotle says that 'virtues never confilct. THere is only an apparnet conflict' (paraphrasing) that is to say that a truly moral agent will never have issues. thus they would know how to react in this situation. Aristotle also says, however, that "there are some things it is better to die than do." now he is saying that, in such a case like this, there is no good outcome. Whatever happends wiill harm your integrity. Thus in extreme cases, it is better to die than do.
So it seems we are left to say that virtue theory would have to say that, instead of choosing a side, you should kill yourself.
...
yeah. That's pretty harsh. But the point is that once you give in to either side, you lose what makes your life worthwhile (that is, your flourishing), and thus no longer want to live becasue you have been so damaged. Interesting.

@Chrisp yeah what you're saying is true, this is impossible, considering the townsfolk/mob will hear no reason. Your points about evolution are interesting too; what do mean by 'evolution cares about net effect?' I get the social context, but what does that have to do with evolution? is this more like social development?

@putin - hm i beleive i disagree when you say that flourishing is individualistic. It cant be, based on what i have said above. Seeing that virtues never change, flourishing wont change, either. Utilitarianism, you dont have to account for the entire world, but you should. thats the only way you can really know if what you are doing is right. I mean, i think that when you are on the neigherborhood planning commitee, you dont really have to worry about the world only because you probably wont effect it, however there is a chance you might, and this must be considered. Again, this is why i dont like util. in principle i like it, not in practice.

"hm i beleive i disagree when you say that flourishing is individualistic. It cant be, based on what i have said above. Seeing that virtues never change, flourishing wont change, either"

Maybe I'm a simpleton, but I really don't know how these two points are related.
Why is flourishing important? What is the point of being virtuous? I'm saying the goal of 'having a flourishing life' and being 'virtuous' is an individualistic one, since it isn't concerned with the aggregate or with consequences and it's only valuable to individuals to have a 'flourishing life'. I don't see what it has to do with virtues never changing.

On the latter point, somebody please answer the question of where virtues come from, if not society? Are we just following what Aristotle 'set in stone' millenia ago? If so, why?

"yeah. That's pretty harsh. But the point is that once you give in to either side, you lose what makes your life worthwhile (that is, your flourishing), and thus no longer want to live becasue you have been so damaged. Interesting. "

This statement buttresses my point re: virtue theory's individualism. A moral act only matters because it makes the agent's life 'worthwhile' to be moral. The townspeople, death, and chaos are entirely secondary, this is all about an individual's self-worth.

As for my answer to your hypothetical, I think Crazy Anglican responded nicely. Your hypothetical hinges on the idea that the authorities will not be capable of stopping the mob attack. The moral action would be to attempt to stop the mob by force, even if the attempt fails. The hypothetical gives a false choice.

I dont believe it is individualistic in that sense that 1.) there is NOT more than one definitionof flourishing and 2.) most if not all moral (virtuous) actions really end up involving other people. THus everyone else is not secondary, they are vital to the flourishing of the person in question. Am i misunderstanding your arguement here?

and while you are breaking off the given scenario, i beleive your answer is correct. once you deviate, there are options for doing the right thing.

Theories of morality have wayyyyy too many issues...

Really? Virtue theory says you should kill yourself? That doesn't seem like the logical conclusion to me. How is that at all practical? Instead of making a decision, you kill yourself to maintain your integrity, leaving the decision to someone else? It's not as though the mob disappears now that you're dead. I don't think the poor townspeople will be praising your virtue...

"what do mean by 'evolution cares about net effect?' I get the social context, but what does that have to do with evolution? is this more like social development?"

I mean that evolution will act to encourage behavior that increases reproductive chances. Social cooperation reaps many benefits that would certainly translate to greater reproductive success, so evolution would act to encourage behavior that helped make social cooperation more likely. It doesn't so much care what these behaviors are, as long as the result is more social cooperation and therefore greater reproductive success. From an evolutionary point of view, you don't exploit others in your community because if you are caught, you risk losing the great benefits of social cooperation. However, from a more proximal behavior point of view, you don't exploit others because you feel it is wrong and you would feel guilty for doing so. My point in that paragraph was merely that ethics, in many ways, is ultimately selfish, though more proximally it is selfless.

I think you're misunderstanding Putin. When he says he thinks that virtue theory is individualistic, it's not that he thinks it changes from individual to individual, but that he thinks that since virtue theory would have you base your decisions on maintaining personal integrity, rather than considering the welfare of others, which is pretty individualistic.

Virtue theory definetly does not say you must kill yourself. However, in order to be virtuous in some instances, virtue theory may require you to kill yourself.

Chrispminis concisely and correctly states my position on virtue theory, thanks.

That being said, I'd still like to refute the point that "Virtue theory says you should kill youreslf." As I said earlier, virtue theory most definetly does not operate on those logics.

Killing yourself to avoid making a decision is still making a decision: you've decided to kill yourself. Just as choosing not to choose is still making a choice.