Abstract
A large part of the current debate among virtue ethicists focuses on the role played by phronesis, or wise practical reasoning, in virtuous action. The paradigmatic case of an action expressing phronesis is one where an agent explicitly reflects and deliberates on all practical options in a given situation and eventually makes a wise choice. Habitual actions, by contrast, are typically performed automatically, that is, in the absence of preceding deliberation. Thus they would seem to fall outside of the primary focus of the current virtue ethical debate. By contrast, Bill Pollard has recently suggested that all properly virtuous actions must be performed habitually and therefore automatically, i.e. in the absence of (a certain kind of) moral deliberation. In this paper, Pollard’s suggestion is interpreted as the thesis that habitual automaticity is constitutive of virtue or moral excellence. By constructing an argument in favor of it and discussing several objections, the paper ultimately seeks to defend a qualified version of this thesis.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This emphasis on the connection between virtue and practical wisdom is reflected even in the titles of some of the monographs recently published on this subject: Russell 2009, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues; Snow 2010, Virtue as Social Intelligence; Annas 2011, Intelligent Virtue. The conception of wise practical reasoning developed by these theorists is a rich, comprehensive one, inspired by Aristotle: practical wisdom is not exhausted by something like cleverness or cunning with regard to practical matters. Most importantly, practical wisdom on these accounts – as on Aristotle’s – is necessarily paired with the pursuit of virtuous aims for virtuous reasons.
See Annas 2011, 12–15. This distinction between habits and intelligent capacities goes back to Gilbert Ryle: according to Ryle, exercises of habit are uniform, inflexible, carried out inattentively and without critical assessment. Exercises of intelligent capacities, in contrast, are ‘indefinitely’ varied, accompanied by attention and critical assessment (Ryle 2000, 41–44). However, it has been argued (convincingly, to my mind) that Ryle’s contrast cannot be maintained (see Pollard 2006; Brett 1981). We may note in passing that Kant also argues that habit cannot be a source of moral action, but on different grounds: he writes that habit (Angewohnheit or assuetudo), in so far as it involves the necessity to repeat the same action over and again, precludes the action it generates from being properly free (see AA VI, 407).
As will become clear below, the argument I shall consider in the following will primarily pertain to the relation between virtue and automaticity, and to the relation between virtue and habit only by extension. However, since the argument will take its lead from Bill Pollard, who explicitly makes a suggestion concerning habit, I will initially introduce the idea as one on habit, and explain only later on why and in what sense it is necessary in my view to differentiate between habit and automaticity in this context.
Or else, they would have to concede at least that moral action properly speaking is much rarer than one would have thought.
ST I-II, Quest. L, Art. 5. For a more recent statement of a similar point (referring however to Aristotle’s position), see Russell 2009, 11–13.
At least, Pollard can be interpreted as making a claim about the intrinsic moral value of habituality in action, as I shall try to show in detail below.
See Pollard 2003, 416–17.
See my discussion of Nancy Snow’s criticism of Pollard below.
Harman 1999, 217.
See Nic. Eth., 1140 b 22 ff.
See ST I-II, Quest. LVI, Art. 3.
Pollard 2003, 416–17.
One might object to the expression of virtue ‘requiring’ something, since this may seem to blur the important distinction between virtue ethical and deontological positions. I nevertheless continue to use the formulation in the following, adopting Pollard’s terminology.
It is important to note that possessing the habit of doing what virtue requires is supposed to be necessary rather than sufficient for the possession of virtue on Pollard’s account.
See Nic. Eth. 1102b 10 ff.; 1146a 10 ff.
See for instance McDowell 1979, 146.
It is not entirely clear what, on McDowell’s view, remains for the agent to deliberate about once the option of acting contrary to virtue has been ruled out as a practical option. This may render support to the present suggestion of drawing the Aristotelian distinction with the help of the notion of automaticity.
Snow 2006, 549–551 and 2010, 45–49. The two passages are largely identical.
Snow 2006, 551.
Snow 2006, 551.
See Russell 2009, 6–11 for an illuminating argument in favor of understanding Aristotelian phronesis as comprising both these dimensions of reflection.
Here it is important to bear in mind that Pollard is not claiming that habituality is sufficient for moral excellence; rather, he merely seeks to make the point that it is necessary for moral excellence. Thus the thesis I want to pursue and argue for in the following is that habituality is a constituent of moral excellence (i.e. one constituent among others); for the sake of simplicity, however, I will continue to speak of it as the thesis that habituality is constitutive of moral excellence.
There is a third type of case in which it may seem wrong for an agent to even consider – at least to seriously consider – acting contrary to virtue, but where this cannot be explained by the fact that it undermines the agent’s moral excellence if she sees even some good in acting contrary to virtue. For instance, there is nothing wrong with having a cone of ice cream, but it seems intuitively right to say that if someone on their way to the ice cream parlor saw a person bleeding on the street whom they could help, it would be wrong for them to even consider picking up a cone of ice cream instead of helping that person. I suggest that we can accommodate this intuition by saying that in the present case, it would be a sign of moral deficiency if an agent was to linger over the decision of whether to act in accord with virtue of not, or was to seriously consider acting contrary to virtue. In such cases, for a virtuous person the reasons for acting in accord with virtue must be overwhelmingly stronger than the reasons for acting contrary to virtue. Nevertheless, I think we should not say in such cases that considering at all to act contrary to virtue is as such a sign of moral deficiency; there is no reason to say this because here there is nothing wrong with seeing some (even a very small) value in acting in this way. By drawing a distinction between ‘considering seriously’ and ‘considering at all’, we can both do justice to the intuition appealed to above (i.e. the intuition that in the ‘ice cream cone case’, there is something morally wrong with a person who even so much as consider to act contrary to virtue) and maintain that there is an important distinction between the ‘animal torture case’ and the ‘ice cream cone case’. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pushing this point.
One may perhaps not find this extension of the argument from automaticity to habit entirely convincing, for the following reason: I am assuming above that habit is associated with both automaticity and repetition. However, one might think that habitual action is not just action which is both automatic and repeated, but which is automatic because repeated. In other words, the automaticity of habitual action is supposed to result from its repetition; it is an acquired automaticity. If this is correct, then the extension suggested above in fact does not work. For I see no reason why the kind of automaticity which is constitutive of moral excellence, as discussed above, should be necessarily acquired through repetition. However, even if the extension to habit does not work, I take it that the claim on automaticity established above is still interesting and significant.
References
Annas J (2011) Intelligent Virtue. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Aristotle A (2003) Nicomachean Ethics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. [Nic.Eth.]
Bargh JA, Chartrand TL (1999) The Unbearable Automaticity of Being. Am Psychol 54(7):462–479
Brett N (1981) Human Habits. Can J Philos 11(3):357–376
Harman, Gilbert (1999) Moral Psychology Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99, pp 315–331
Hursthouse R (1999) On Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Kant, Immanuel (1900 ff.) Kants Gesammelte Schriften, VI. Königlich preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. [AA VI]
McDowell J (1979) Virtue and Reason. Monist 62:133–50
Neal DT, Wood W, Quinn JM (2006) Habits – A Repeat Performance. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 15:198–202
Pollard B (2003) Can Virtuous Actions be both habitual and rational? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6:411–425
Pollard B (2006) Explaining Actions with Habits. Am Philos Q 43:57–68
Russell D (2009) Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ryle G (2000) The Concept of Mind. Penguin, London
Snow N (2006) Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9:545–561
Snow N (2010) Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. Routledge, New York
Thomas A (2008) Summa Theologiae I-II. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. [ST I-II]
Watson G (1984) Virtues in Excess. Philos Stud 46:57–74
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Peters, J. On Automaticity as a Constituent of Virtue. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 165–175 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9516-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-014-9516-x