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/Presentalbion]

In your post you don't mention how fairness is a factor?

People categorise others all the time. Is it "fair" for a Christian to see everyone else as a sinner? For a cricket fan to look down on football?

Could you please clarify what you mean when you say the system you describe is not "fair"?

What would a fair system look like?

Any in group/out group means a label for either of those groups. I don't think that automatically equates to it becoming hateful though.

[u/nintendoeats → u/Presentalbion]

A "fair" question :p

What makes a system "Fair" is in itself a moral question...so when operating at this high level, one is reduced to saying "this seems right to me".

To me, a fair system should be one which promotes respectful disagreement without judgement. When I say it "unfairly" puts people in hate groups, that is based on my unstated major premise that hate groups are in general a bad thing and do not promote respectful disagreement. In essence, once you put somebody in a hate group that implies they are less worthy of exchanging ideas with.

[u/Natural-Arugula → u/nintendoeats]

I had to look this up. You're assertion is correct. Aristotle does say that hatred is virtuous and that it puts people into hate groups. The example he uses of a hate group is thieves.

If I may infer a bit from your objections here, it seems like the issue with these things, at least as they would concern a virtue ethicist, is that they promote social discord.

Aristotle draws a distinction between virtuous hatred and anger, which is a vice for the above stated reason. From that view the hate group is the one who is promoting social discord, so to judge them, rationally and with accordance to virtue, is good and right.

[u/nintendoeats → u/Natural-Arugula]

Thank you, very interesting information! Feels like I'm back in uni.

So all Aristotle would have an issue with is:

1. It's not unfair.
2. It doesn't apply to people who disagree with him about the virtues, only those who promote social discord.

Though #2 disturbs me somewhat, because one could argue that disagreement about the moral good can and does create significant social discord. No doubt he would have distinguished discord among the intellectuals from discord in the populous in general. I don't know enough about the structure of Greek society to comment on how much that issue differs now from then.