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Notes
See John Doris, Lack of Character (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 58–60, 110–112; John Doris and Stephen Stich, “As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics” in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), see esp. 120–123. Mark Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). For the purposes of this essay, I will use “virtue ethics” to refer to broadly Aristotelian virtue ethics.
See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1095b20, and 1179b5–19.
See Gilbert Harman, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error” (1999) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99: 315–331; Gilbert Harman, “The Nonexistence of Character Traits” (2000) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100: 223–226. While Doris argues that most people do not have cross-situationally consistent traits, he allows that some people might possess virtues or vices that are cross-situationally consistent.
See, e.g., Daniel Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 239–241, 284.
For a different sort of worry about the No Global Character Thesis, see Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 172–173.
See Gopal Sreenivasan, “Errors About Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution” Mind 111:47–68 (2002); Rachana Kamtekar, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character” Ethics 458–491 (2004); J. Sabini and M. Silver, “Lack of Character? Situationism Critiqued” Ethics 115:535–562 (2005); Gopal Sreenivasan, “Character and Consistency: Still More Errors” Mind 117:603–612 (2008); Gopal Sreenivasan, “The Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics” in Daniel Russell (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 209–314.
See Daniel Russell, Practical Intelligence; Nancy Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence (New York: Routledge, 2010); Christian Miller, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Miller, Moral Character, 3.
On the practical character of Aristotle’s ethics, see NE I.1–4 and X.9.
NE X.9. See esp. 1179b5–19.
Doris and Stich, “As a Matter of Fact,” 122.
Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, 62–64.
One of the most prominent recent explorations of skill and virtue is Julia Annas’ book Intelligent Virtue. Urging us to take more seriously the analogies between virtue and skill, Annas argues that both skills and virtues must be learned, and that both involve a “drive to aspire” that separates them from mere routine behavior. This drive to aspire incorporates three features that skill and virtue have in common: 1) understanding, 2) self-direction, and 3) improvement. While Annas notes the potential relevance of the skill-analogy for situationist challenges to virtue ethics, she does not directly address the Rarity Thesis or worries particular to it. For other recent attempts to understand virtue by drawing on the nature of skills, see Jason D. Swartwood, “Wisdom as an Expert Skill” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16:511–528 (2013); Matt Stichter, “Virtues, Skill, and Right Action” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14:73–86 (2010).
There is, of course, considerable debate about the best way to understand skill, and the closely related idea of knowing how to do something. See, e.g., H.L. Dreyfus and S.E. Dreyfus, Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (New York: Free Press, 1986); H.L. Dreyfus, “How Far is Distance Learning from Education?” in E. Selinger and R.P. Crease (eds.) The Philosophy of Expertise, 196–212 (Columbia University Press, 2006); John Bengson and Marc A. Moffett (eds.) Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jason Stanley, Knowing How (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011). The parallels between virtue and skill that are central to my argument to do not require me to take a stand in debates about the precise character of skill-knowledge, including the relation between knowing-how and knowing-that.
There are, of course, serious difference among Aristotelians about how best to understand phronesis. My arguments in this paper are consistent with a range of view on this issue, and hence I will not attempt to decide among them. For a sample of positions on phronesis in Aristotle, see Sarah Broadie, Ethics With Aristotle, chapter four (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991); Richard Kraut, “In Defense of the Grand End” Ethics (1993) 103:2 (361–374); Alasdair MacIntyre, “Rival Arisotles: Aristotle Against Some Renaissance Aristotelians” and “Rival Aristotles: Aristotle Against Some Modern Aristotelians” in Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Vol 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 3–40; John McDowell, part I of Mind, Value and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Aristotle does not say this explicitly, but it seems to be implied by his treatment of the virtues, or at the very least consistent with it. And the basic idea has be endorsed my a number of contemporary virtue ethicists. See, e.g., Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics chapter 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness 12–13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Philippa Foot, “Virtues and Vices” 8, in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). For the passage in Aristotle, see NE VI.5 (1140b). For more on the distinction between skill and virtue, see Russell, Practical Intelligence, 16–18.
In speaking about what “a shortstop does,” we are not referring to any particular shortstop, but to a conception of the skill itself. We might also speak about what is true of “the shortstop,” analogous to claims about “the dolphin” in natural-historical judgments about a life-form. For an account of life-form judgments, see Michael Thompson, Life and Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
I speak here about “being a shortstop” in the sense relevant to the skill. One might have the identity in a different sense – e.g. a person totally ignorant of baseball might be put onto the roster as a political protest, but that would not make him a shortstop in the sense of identity relevant to the skill.
I have taken helpful term “calibrates” from Daniel Russell’s excellent discussion of “the virtuous person” in chapter 4 of Practical Intelligence and the Virtues.
Cf. Kamtekar, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics,” 477–479.
For example, suppose I am watching Robin doing what I know to be a characteristically precise bit of sawing, when a friend walks up who mistakenly believes that Robin has no knowledge of carpentry. If the friend exclaims with surprise, “How is she doing that!” then I might explain “She is a skilled sawyer” to affirm that this particular bit of sawing is not the result of luck but Robin’s skill. Such explicit appeals to skill to explain particular actions might be fairly rare. What is ubiquitous, however, is our implicit understanding that a person is, or is not, acting from skill or capable of doing so. If we hire a plumber or watch the Olympics, we assume that certain persons will be acting from skill. And our predictions about these people will correspond to this assumption. We expect that the plumber will be able properly fix the sink properly, and that the gymnasts will twist and turn brilliantly, and that they will all do these things because of their respective skills.
Of course, a characteristic way of acting might also imply a defect in one’s skill – e.g. “He swings at pitches that are far too outside.” Identifying such characteristic deficiencies, as opposed to one-time errors, is important for knowing how to improve one’s skill and what sort of practice to emphasize.
My point is not to explain the process of learning a skill, but to highlight certain aspects of it. And, I should add, a conception of a skill is certainly not fixed for all times, but is subject to dispute, revision, and innovation.
See Russell, Practical Intelligence, 123–130, for helpful discussion of the point that having an ideal as one’s goal is not the same as, and does not require, striving to be as much like the ideal as possible.
I have said that a widespread lack of skill-knowledge does not on its own reveal a problem in our conception of a skill. But matters are slightly more complicated. For in some cases, the best explanation of rarity is that the supposed “skill” is actually impossible for human beings, and thus we have reason to reject the claim that it is a genuine skill. Consider the rarity of the “skill” of telekinesis. The best explanation of this rarity is that telekinesis is impossible for human beings, and hence it cannot be taught or learned. There is simply no skill-knowledge to be acquired in this case; telekinesis is not an actual skill. Analogously, if the rarity of the virtues is best explained by the impossibility of acquiring virtue, this would spell trouble for the Aristotelian account of practical wisdom and moral virtue. But the claim that acquiring virtue is impossible is much stronger than the Rarity Thesis, and hence goes beyond the focus of this paper. Moreover, I take it that the best interpretation of the empirical evidence does not support the conclusion that pursuing virtue is as misguided as attempting to learn telekinesis. On this point, see Miller Character and Moral Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). I thank an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Value Inquiry for encouraging me to consider this point.
Doris and Stich, “As a Matter of Fact,” 122.
What I say here is consistent, I believe, with much of Sreenivasan, “The Situationist Critique” (2013), esp. 295–313, although Sreenivasan does not explore any analogies between virtue and skill.
For further discussion, see Christian Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, esp. part four. See also Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence, 31–38.
Thanks to John Hacker-Wright for encouraging me to consider this point.
Of course, each of these three points invites a host of further questions – e.g. why should I care about being good qua human being? In what does the “moral worth” of virtuous activity consist? These are questions far beyond the scope of this paper. My goal is only to sketch some lines of reply available to Aristotelian virtue ethics, in response to the worry about a lose of motivation to pursue virtue, in light of rarity.
To be clear, Alfano considers much besides the Rarity Thesis in spelling out empirical challenges to virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. This section is not intended as a systematic evaluation of Alfano’s position, but a specific response to his claims about the rarity of virtue.
Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, 34.
Alfano’s distinction between “high-fidelity” and “low-fidelity” virtues is related to the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. Examples of high-fidelity virtues include fairness, fidelity, honesty. Examples of low-fidelity virtues include charity, diligence, and generosity (31–32).
Ibid., 63.
See Russell, Practical Intelligence, 307–313.
Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, 34.
Ibid., 63.
Ibid., 33.
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For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, I thank Anne Baril, Aaron Cobb, John Hacker-Wright, Christian Miller, and Philip Reed.
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Lott, M. Situationism, Skill, and the Rarity of Virtue. J Value Inquiry 48, 387–401 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9415-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9415-3