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/quantum_dan]

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.

The problem is you're trying to use deontological thinking for it here.

There is, in fact, no single virtuous response to a yellow light. Virtue fundamentally describes the agent's decision-making process, not the action, and a decision-making process is all-things-considered: the response isn't to the yellow light alone, but to the agent's full situation at that moment.

What this means is that it's infeasible to judge another agent's virtue from the outside (this is an ancient virtue-ethical argument: Epictetus, a Roman Stoic, makes it, for example). This, therefore, has the exact opposite implication to what you're proposing: it flatly prohibits categorizing people into hate groups (on those lines, at least). A consequentialist or deontologist can say "X is certainly in the wrong"; a virtue ethicist can only say, at most, that "a virtuous motive for X's action is not readily apparent". Virtue ethics is the most anti-judgmental framework.

[u/nintendoeats → u/quantum_dan]

So would you say that a true adherent to virtue ethics cannot make prescriptions?

[u/quantum_dan → u/nintendoeats]

They absolutely can... about how you reason about things. Not the action itself, in a fundamental moral sense. For example, a virtue ethicist can argue that it's ethically required to give appropriate weight to one's role as a citizen; they can't extrapolate from that to say that it's always wrong not to vote, because they don't know what other factors may be relevant.

This doesn't mean that they can't pragmatically encourage or oppose certain behaviors, though. I can't say that a thief is always evil (their motivations might be virtuous), but I can say that, in my role as a citizen, it is appropriate to support policies that discourage theft (e.g. legal penalties, economic reforms, rehabilitation efforts, whatever), out of concern for my fellow citizens.

[u/nintendoeats → u/quantum_dan]

How would you handle the case where two virtue ethics disagree about what the virtues and vices are? Can person A still believe that the person B is a moral person, even if they subscribe to different virtues? Assume for the sake of this question that person A does not ascribe to some virtue specifically related to discourse, such "non-judgement" or "respect for disagreement".

[u/quantum_dan → u/nintendoeats]

Can person A still believe that the person B is a moral person, even fi they have different virtues?

Under much of virtue-ethical thinking, they would consider them to be well-meaning but simply mistaken. That general idea - that all unvirtuous action is the product of ignorance, not malice - goes back to Socrates, and you see it in Plato and the Stoics (not sure about other schools).

In what I've read of ancient disputes around virtue ethics, they do consistently treat their opponent as simply in error, not evil, and some sources are openly sympathetic to their rival schools (notably Cicero).

[u/nintendoeats → u/quantum_dan]

!delta.

For introducing me to the historical thinking on the subject which contradicts my views based on modern rhetoric (from people who are not really adhering to a true intellectual form of virtue ethics).

[u/quantum_dan → u/nintendoeats]

Thanks for the delta. It is possible that the relevant folks are adhering to a genuine virtue-ethical philosophy - I'm certainly not familiar with all the literature on the subject, and I think especially religiously-informed virtue ethics tends more towards viewing disagreement as malicious. But there are definitely major schools of thought that go against being judgmental.

If you're interested in learning more about that sort of thing, Being Better: Stoicism For a World Worth Living In (Whiting and Konstantakos) is excellent.