 Virtue ethics is Well, it's it's a little different from the rest of the theories that we're gonna look at most of the ethical theories are Going to give you or are going to give you some kind of valuation of action They're gonna tell you they're gonna have some some claim as to what the right or wrong act is supposed to be And you know, that's good as far as it goes. I mean ethical theory is supposed to be a guide to action It's supposed to tell us what course of action to take virtue ethics is I mean, it's kind of like that, but there's a real big difference There is there is going to be something to say about action but a big part of virtue ethics is Not only saying what is the right action to do What is the good action? But what kind of person to be? What is a good person and this can get really sticky real fast real sticky real fast So this is one important key difference to keep to keep in mind is that virtue ethics Ask the question of what kind of person to be We should probably start with the definition of a virtue I usually like to work up to the definition And and explain why we have that definition But I think it in this case is helpful to go kind of backwards Now virtue As the book is defining is a trait of character Manifested by habitual action that is good for a person to have trait of character Manifested by by habitual action that is good for a person to have That's a mouthful And this is this is why I say You know virtue ethics does look at action. It really does look at action, but not just action There's more involved in it than that um Now what's interesting here is There's some kind of implicit claim that the trait of a character is going to determine the action And we'll you know keep a finger on that one. I'll return to that and see what that means later on And you know a real question here is what does it mean for it to be good for a person to have? That's another question. It's going to come up. So put your finger on those but we uh But also keep in mind that you know this definition of A virtue is a trait of character manifested by habitual Action that is good for a person to have So before really diving deep into you know an extensive discussion of what virtues are It's probably helpful to start with what are two examples I'm not going to go through the laundry list of examples in the book I'm going to focus primarily on on two Now one question that I think immediately comes up is you know, how do you know? Uh, what's a virtue so where we're asking here is and how do we know which dispositions of character? Produce these you know habitual actions that are that are good for us Well, there's there's already one idea already embedded in our culture when we talk about this and that's health Health is a virtue in our culture. It's good for us to be healthy It's good for us to be healthy So a question very quickly becomes an imaginary asking right now. So what is healthy? How do we figure this out? well, uh Aristotle Thought that there was a really kind of a handy way to start figuring out what the virtues are And that was through what he called the golden mean And it was the uh point Between the x between the two vices, right? There are vices of excess and vices of deficiency So when we're talking about health, what kinds of actions are we talking about? We're talking about eating and we're talking about exercise and we're probably talking about You know medical care of some kind or another So we can we can really quickly start thinking of excesses of eating, you know Spending three days at the all-you-can-eat buffet that that's an excess Uh, you know deficiency is you know kind of go the other direction where you're not eating for three days Where you're just having water or Crust of bread or something like this Well, the golden mean Is is going to be between that now it's probably got take some work Right where you try to figure out exactly what's too much or too little This is a hot topic for debate in our in in our culture You know just the number of meals and size of meals to in a day, you know The one standard model is three Meals three, you know quote-a-quote full meals another model is six smaller meals That's there's a debate between those So this you know, so trying to figure out that you know That middle point between the excess and the deficiency that that's the golden mean and it takes work Uh same thing with exercise you can uh, you know That an extreme deficiency is not moving at all You know becoming very much a part of your couch That would be a deficiency of exercise going on excess is You know running yourself into a heart attack, you know running all day every day And and not stopping that would be an excess. So the golden mean is somewhere in the middle there Well, that that's the idea for health what we can apply this to Um To other kinds of dispositions. So for instance courage or bravery Or at this has its excess and it has this deficiency And the excess is You know supposing i'm confronted with 20 guys and out here in the middle of the park and they want to take my camera I was like, well, I'll wield my water bottle as a weapon I'm going to take you all on. Well, that would be an excess Of trying to handle that situation, you know thinking you're being very over confident of my abilities to handle 20 guys You know a deficiency would be uh, you know, maybe something like uh, say, okay. Well, here's my camera. Here's my wallet Here's my hat here my clothes and by the way, would you like to beat me a few times before you leave right? That would probably be some kind of um, you know deficiency and you know the you know the courage part might be somewhere in the middle, right? um You know in that situation probably, you know leaving behind the camera and taking office probably the actually the courageous thing to do Because you're being so outnumbered Now if it's just one person, well, you know, maybe there's a difference there. Maybe there's a difference so You know, this is how we start to find these virtues we start to find this golden meme between the excess and the efficiency In addition to you know the action there is this this trait of character So we're getting at the motivation for the action Why do we perform that action? So for instance, um You know a really You know, we again, we already kind of load this into our culture. We already have some really clear ideas about this you know, we tend to think that a really poor reason to pursue health is Uh, you know merely for the sake of vanity merely for the sake of looking good It's not that looking good is a bad thing But if that's your only reason if you're not pursuing health for the sake of being healthy We tend to think that the reasoning is off. There's something missing. There's a improper motivation Um So not only the kind of action but the motivation For the action and maybe a way of saying that is you know, once we've identified the good Then wanting the good for the sake of the good So wanting to be healthy because it's healthy as opposed to wanting to be healthy for the sake of vanity We can start going into other examples. Um, but that'll I think suffice for the moment So this this gets us an idea to what these virtues are It's you know, this mean between the deficiency and the excess And it's you know, these reasons it's these motivations that dispose us to perform that golden mean In the variety of situations Well, very quickly Some questions are going to rise as to whether these virtues are the same for everybody Now there's going to be a lot of variation All right You know, my golden mean for courage is probably going to be something very different than say your average trained marine You know your average trained marine might be able to take on those 20 guys and not be foolish You know, the trained marine has got lots of training and strength and knows how to handle that situation So what's going to determine the right action here? Well, that that's hard There is going to be some variation between people Similarly, it's going to be variation between cultures So we might be tempted to say that we're, you know, right back with moral relativism all over again Since the virtues are going to vary from person to person and I mean, you know, kind of sort of there's going to be some Actions that are going to be virtuous and some reasons are going to be virtuous depending upon The person But the fact of the matter is and I don't think Rachel's emphasizes this enough There are going to be same virtues Simply because we are all people We are all people there is something of what it means to be a person There's something of what it means to be human beings. So think back to health So there is going to be some variation between people, but that doesn't mean that it's completely relative No, of course, there's variation, but that doesn't mean that there's this fundamental difference because we are all people We are there are some fundamentally Same things about all of us what it means to be a person what it means to be human being So even just looking at health you know you know my Target heart rate is about 144 right that's supposed to be my I'm sorry. No, that's the high end Between 117 and 144. That's my target heart rate now That's going to differ from people from you know people that are younger than me and you know some people that are older than me But there's still that range there's still that commonality why there is that range. Nobody's target heart rate is 10 You would be dead Nobody's target heart rate is 350 Again, you would be well, I don't know that might be high. Let's say 800. Let's say 800 you'd be dead by then Now the reason why there is that range Even amongst a variety is because we are all human beings or is that commonality So we looked at two ideas here that we come to know the virtues By finding this golden mean. You know, this is a process of discovery And yeah, you have to go out and discover it um But at the same time The you know the range of the virtues or what's going to count as a virtue is going to have a common Uh defining point and and that's because of what we are Right. What does it mean to to be human? What does it mean to be a person? Now there are some advantages to this to virtue ethics and since we Uh do load in the idea of of reason and we do I load in the idea of character traits It seems like virtue ethics, um Avoid some problems about uh doing the right thing for the wrong reason Now you you might be wondering what this is. Well You know, suppose, um, I don't know Suppose you're friendly to uh, suppose. Yeah, you suppose you're friendly to a co-worker And you know, you talk to the co-worker you find out the co-worker's interests And you come to know what the co-worker is like Now one reason to do this is because you care about your co-worker You want to know what another human being is like you want to be humane You want to make a connection Maybe you want to work together so you know where your interests and their interests Line up and where you want to be able to be more productive as a team We tend to think of these as as good reasons what it means to be a human being A good human being in this case But you could do it for other reasons too. You could find out what your co-workers like For the purpose of manipulating the co-worker to do what you want I mean, it doesn't even necessarily mean harming the co-worker. You just You know be able to Persuade the co-worker to do what you want that co-worker to do Maybe for their own benefit. That's fine So again, we're kind of talking about this idea of selfishness and we were related to with the ethical egoism We think selfishness is kind of a bad reason and a dishonorable reason of distasteful reason To do things, you know You know marrying a person for social status Doesn't seem like a good reason and we think that if you marry somebody you You ought to marry that person because you love that person It's the same act marrying marrying all those things considered equal is good But the difference is The motivation the reason So in this much we think that virtue ethics gets it right That there's a certain vantage where virtue ethics gets at the character doing the right thing for the right reason Now this isn't to deny That you you can't do the wrong thing for the right reason. Sure, right? We think that there's doing the wrong thing for the right reason But with this much as far as motivation is concerned, we think virtue ethics gets this right So Another thing that virtue ethics tends to get right Is dealing with impartiality Now when we're dealing with theories that just cover actions, we don't deal with the reasons or motivations at all So uh when we're so you so sometimes it seems kind of weird in some situations where you know, you save somebody's life Because you're obligated to save their life like well Or you know, suppose you rescue your spouse From a fate worse than death and your spouse says wow, thank you so much for saving my life And then you say well, you know, I had a moral obligation to save your life That's gonna be silence at dinner that night You know virtue ethics tends to get this right. It's like well, I saved your life because I love you So When one of the things that virtue ethics tends to get right is is this idea of the right motivations for actions Now related to that is uh dealing with impartiality Now Rachel's first gave this condition for impartiality is you know, everybody's interests are considered equal And you know nobody really blocked at that but I think you're probably thinking of maybe a legal or setting like that But there are plenty of situations where uh, you are you are biased and you should be biased You know, if you have two people in front of you And they each have a headache And one person's headache is worse than another. You know, you probably ought to give And you have like one dose of aspirin you ought to give that dose of aspirin to the person is the worst headache Okay, no big deal But suppose uh, the two people uh are Are not just two people. Suppose one of the people is You know, you're you're a young child and another person is a uh You know an adolescent of somebody else's So your child and somebody else's child This blanket statement of impartiality would say well, you know, you ought to consider their interests equally. No You know and situations like that you ought to consider your child's interests to be more important. That's your child. There's a relationship there so This idea of uh, um that virtue ethics gets the Right motivation down is strongly linked to the idea that virtue ethics gets the right impart gets the right ideas down about impartiality So virtue ethics has its advantages But it still has us murky areas And one of the things that uh, rachel's points at is you know with this definition of virtue You know, we're asking ourselves. Well, what is Well, what is what is good? What is goodness? And you say well, what is goodness? And the answer is it's virtue And the question is well, what's virtue? And the answer is well, is that character trait Manifested by habitual action. That's good for a person to have To which you say great What's goodness? And the answer is it's virtue Very quickly, you see how this kind of devolves into a circle What's goodness? Well, it's virtue. Well, what's virtue? Well, it involves goodness and that doesn't help So yeah, they give me some real problems. They're trying to figure that out Now What I don't think rachel's does enough work doing He kind of just leaves it as mysterious and walks away. It's like well, you know in his own Uh description of what a virtue is he he has the answer, you know, it's not It's not the clearest answer But it's it's the way to start figuring that answer and you know, we start figuring what virtues are Well, it's It's what's good for a person. How do we know what that is? Well, we got to know what a person is But there is something fundamental to what being a person is We already have this idea regarding health We have a lot of descriptions about what health is And you know, we have a lot of descriptions of what the body is and this doesn't stop us From figuring out what healthy is We have this range of what health is Same thing with any kind of emotional health There are some commonalities of what it means to be person and what it means to be a person with a mind and emotions And we are we are able to start figuring out what this what this is what this goodness is to have this kind of goodness Of what it means to be a person uh And this comes from this common definition this common This definition of what it means to be human So it's not quite as far fished out there It's not like we can just pick any notion of good or just You know put it into the virtues like no, there's there's something of what it means to be a person And yeah, that's a lot of hard work trying to figure out what that is. There's a lot of theories about what trying to figure that is But that doesn't mean that whatever virtue is it's just up in the air There's just kind of a lot of blank spots And if we want to answer that question if we want to figure out What the good life is We got to figure out what we are And when you're doing that You're doing metaphysics So you'll want to worry about virtue ethics is trying to figure out what this goodness is and Like I said, we we apparently don't have much of a problem trying to figure out at least a range of what healthy is And uh, you know, uh, as far as physical health is concerned and what health is as far as the uh, uh emotional health is concerned And we do the same thing when we start talking about uh, in intellectual life And we have a range of what we think a person ought to ought to know Now it doesn't mean that's beyond reproach and beyond question doesn't mean there's still not a whole lot of hard work But it's there, you know, it is a process of discovery trying to figure out what we are and trying to figure out How we're supposed to function How we're supposed to You know be what we're what we are Another problem that kind of pops up for virtue ethics is uh, what we might call a problem of indecision So remember an ethical theory is supposed to be action guiding it's supposed to tell us What course of action to take all right Now a problem with uh virtue ethics is that we're just dealing with not just dealing with we're dealing with character traits We're dealing with character dispositions and sometimes it seems like these dispositions can conflict with one another So we might talk about, um Oh, I don't know Honesty and courage right Now there's some cases where um, the courageous thing Is to lie Yeah, the courageous thing is to lie. Um So you know think of a situation like this where, uh, um you know A murderer comes to your door And uh threatens your life If you don't tell the murderer where your, um Family is so that the murderer can go and murder your family now A very cowardly thing to do in that situation is to tell the truth And to tell the murderer where your family is and let the murderer go murder your family All right, that's a very cowardly thing to do um You know a brave thing to do is to is to lie and to risk The discovery of lying, you know, maybe even to try to trap the murderer or defend your family, right? And you say you lie and you say well, um You know, my family is out of town This week and they, uh, there are two states across, you know, they're at this address If you hurry now, maybe you can go catch them before you they leave and come back here You know, that'd be a complete lie. All right, they're all hiding in your closet or something like this So there's sometimes where it looks like the virtues can conflict And so what's needed here is some kind of hierarchy of the virtues, you know, which virtues are more important than others and So and that that's that's a lot of hard work and there have been lots of attempts to do that And these are the two main problems then with, uh, virtue ethics is, you know, trying to define what the good is And trying to define, you know, trying to, you know, solve this problem of indecision or maybe what we might call conflicting, uh, virtues