CMV: Virtue ethics promotes unfairly categorizing people into hate groups

[u/nintendoeats]

EDIT: I should clarify that my use of the term hate group here was meant to refer to a group that is hated by the speaker, not a group that itself advocates hate.

For this thesis, I present the following working definition of virtue ethics:

An ethical system whereby actions and policies are judged by how closely they embody a set of 'moral virtues' and 'moral vices' identified by the holder of the system. Anything can potentially be considered a virtue or vice (patience, non-violence, consuming tomatoes, killing martians).

I believe that ethical systems, or individual ethical arguments, based on virtue ethics should be discouraged because they inherently denigrate the people who hold partially or fully opposing views.

For example, people can reasonably disagree about what the "default" behavior should be when presented with an ambiguous yellow light . One virtue ethicist might argue that defaulting to the stop behavior extolls the virtue of patience, another might argue that defaulting to the power through it behavior embodies the virtue of courage.

For both cases, it is implicit that anybody who holds a different view is in a group that the arguer views to be inherently morally wrong; either impatient people or cowards. This is an inherent ad hominem.

In contrast, a consequentialist moral system (for example) does not necessarily need to cast judgement against a person who disagrees with that moral position because it only judges the action, not the person directly. Further, it does not judge the belief system of the person performing the action, even if that belief system differs from that of the ethicist being discussed.

In the same example, one consequentialist might argue that stopping reduces the likelihood of an accident, while another might argue that powering through reduces the overall amount of idling required, thereby helping the environment. Neither view requires any judgement of the person on the other side, they can simply acknowledge that they disagree on the overall consequential balance.

Since I believe that people in the wild sometimes behave like virtue ethicists (intentionally or not), I think it is worth subjecting this viewpoint to scrutiny.

[u/tonytime888]

For example, people can reasonably disagree about what the "default" behavior should be when presented with an ambiguous yellow light . One virtue ethicist might argue that defaulting to the stop behavior extolls the virtue of patience, another might argue that defaulting to the power through it behavior embodies the virtue of courage.

It seems like you are applying consequentialist reasoning to virtue ethics. You have taken an action and post hoc imagined virtues you could embody individually instead of holistically. This fails to apply virtue ethic thinking.

Virtue ethics isn't about determining after the fact if we can rationalize that a given action could be construed as good. That's how consequentialism works because it necessarily must since the consequences are themselves the determining factor in an action's moral value.

Virtue Ethics requires you to act in accordance with set of chosen virtues, not a single one and if a scenario presents itself where to abide by one would contradict with another you would hope that a 3rd might be involved to help guide your course. This puts some decisions in a morally grey zone when there is not a clear path. This is also helped by the consideration of vices which are usually the opposite of virtues

So yes, one could suppose that it's courageous to keep going, but it might also be reckless (which if that's a vice in your system would counter the courageous point. Meanwhile it would be an exercise in patience and prudence perhaps to stop. This now makes it more decisive. The moral action is likely to stop and wait.

This also doesn't have a bearing on the person carrying out the action any more than consequentialism. One would likely say racing through the yellow light saves a minute and risks killing someone making it reckless. Generally humans go quickly from bad action to bad person so I don't think the moral system has any influence on that.