Abstract
The recent discussions on the unity of virtue (or lack thereof) suffer from a lack of reference to the processes through which we interpret each other as moral agents. In the present paper it is argued that much light can be thrown on that crucial issue by appealing to a version of Donald Davidson’s Principle of Charity, which we call “Principle of Phronetic Charity”. The idea is that in order to treat somebody as a moral agent, one has first to attribute to them, at least pro tempore, a significant degree of practical wisdom (intended as ethical expertise) and, then, to assess and rationally adjust such attribution of competence via actual engagement with them – a process that may lead to different responses on the part of the interpreter (i.e., the confirmation, upgrading, or withdrawing of the preliminary interpretation). After expounding and defending the Principle of Phronetic Charity and the interpretive practices connected with it, we discuss the repercussions of our account on the issue of the epistemic access to virtue. We will show, in particular, that some important components of both disunitarianism and unitarianism have to be retained: in accordance with the former, we stress the role of concrete experience over pure speculation and, up to a point, the idea that virtues tend to form variegated ensembles; in accordance with the latter, we accept the claim that virtues are not attributed to moral agents in isolation. Ultimately, however, the account developed here rejects both the atomism of the disunitarian view and the holism of the “Unity of the Virtues”, since it is in fact a form of molecularism, according to which virtues come neither individually nor as a whole, but rather as clusters.
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Notes
Typically, disunitarians like Foot (1978), Nagel (1979), Williams (1982), Walker (1993), and Badhwar (1996) either do not believe the virtues to be mutually compatible (what Badhwar calls ‘Mutual Incompatibility of the Virtues’, and Walker ‘Conflict Assumption’) or claim that there is no need for a virtue to be accompanied by all others to be genuine (‘Mutual Independence of the Virtues’, in Badhwar’s words).
A third, related question, which we cannot discuss here, concerns the ontogenetic level, i.e., the analysis of virtue acquisition. We discuss this issue in [reference removed for blind review] De Caro et al. (2018).
Meaning molecularism (from which molecularism about belief content conceptually depends) has been convincingly advocated, in different forms, by Dummett 1973, Devitt 1993, Perry 1994, and Marconi 1997. Such a view, besides being alternative to meaning holism, is also an alternative to meaning atomism, the view on which the meaning of basic semantic entities (be they words or sentences) does not depend on the meaning of other semantic entities. Analogously, molecularism about belief content opposes the related versions of holism and atomism.
With the term “the good” Davidson, of course, does not refer to an abstract entity or universal (following Quine, he notoriously rejected all abstract entities as entia non grata, with the usual exception of sets and numbers), but only a substantive set of interrelated moral beliefs.
Not all interpretations are necessarily also moral interpretations (think of the interactions between two people who ferociously hate each other: they still need to interpret each other, but morality is not their concern). However, as long an interpretation involves the attribution of morality to the interpreted speakers, we believe that the specific version of the Principle of Charity that we call Principle of Phronetic Charity is involved in the process.
One can imagine a situation in which an interpreter does not know anything about the moral views of the interpreted speakers. This, however, would simply be a special instance of Davidson’s radical interpretation; but, as it in the latter case, it would not be in principle different from everyday moral interpretations.
We have defended this view at more length in De Caro et al. 2018.
Gulliford and Roberts (2018) have proposed an interesting functional analysis of virtues that conceives of them as dived in three big clusters (unified, respectively, around intelligent caring, willpower, and humility). This is an interesting proposal, but here we are not committed to any specific identification of the clusters of virtues that are necessary for moral interpretations (it may even be that such clusters vary depending on the concrete situation in which an interpretation occurs).
This natural tendency is exploited by professional cheaters, who are able to produce in their interlocutors the impression that they seriously desire to be virtuous in general and that, consequently, they are trustworthy (films such as House of Games and American Hustle expose such moral-psychological dynamics brilliantly).
We also believe that McDowell has gone too far in characterizing each virtue in Platonic terms. In his words, a virtue is a kind of “reliable sensitivity to a certain sort of requirement that situations impose on behavior;” it consists in “a sort of perceptual capacity;” and “the specialized sensitivities that are to be equated with particular virtues […] are actually not available one by one for a series of separate identifications” (1998, 51–52). In sum, according to McDowell, any attempt to identify a specific virtue would be useless, since no such thing would ever be available to an agent and/or to an interpreter. This view, in our opinion, is too extreme.
Arguably, the most influential empirically-based attack on the virtues is the so-called “situationist criticism”, which rejects traditional accounts of ethical virtues and their essentialism, in that they would presuppose cross-situational identity of all the acts falling under the scope of the same virtue (see Doris 1998, 2002, and Harman 1999, 2000).
We thank Dan Lapsley, Darcia Narvaez, Ariele Niccoli and Juliette Vazard for their observations on the talk that this article is based on, and Robert Audi, Leonard de Leon and Leonardo Moauro for the useful comments on previous versions of it.
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De Caro, M., Vaccarezza, M.S. Morality and Interpretation: the Principle of Phronetic Charity. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23, 295–307 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-10054-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-10054-2