Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. In Part A we explain some key aspects of virtue ethics e.g. including eudaimonia (the good life), the concept of the virtues and the development of stable character traits. For space reasons this will be very brief but should provide some theoretical background for the more general discussion in this book. To be clear, this is not intended as an authoritative, or exegetic, reading of Aristotle. Rather, our aspiration is to suggest that many of the ideas in the Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle’s central work on ethics) make for a highly useful approach to modern moral problems. In Part B we focus on epistemic virtues, both traditional and modern, and provide examples of their role in decision-making. We also show how the cognitive improvements from previous chapters can both increase the commitment to the type of life described by Aristotle, and boost the capacity for cultivation the necessary epistemic virtues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We understand bias as a form of heuristic or shortcut that the human brain is prone to when engaging in e.g. decision-making, general assessment of events, ranking how important events/facts are and what to pay attention to in a situation. Unfortunately the agent tends to be unaware of the nature and magnitude of such bias.
- 2.
Parts of this chapter has been previously published in Björkman, B. (2008). Virtue Ethics, Bioethics, and the Ownership of Biological Material.
- 3.
The focus of this book is cognitive enhancement (as opposed to physical and moral enhancements) and how that could be achieved through committing to meditation and virtue ethics. Note however, that some philosophers have argued that in order to handle the potential dangers of cognitive enhancement humans need moral enhancement and, further, that this would be best brought about not through virtue ethics but rather by pharmaceutical drugs and or hormones. For an interesting account see Douglas, T. (2008). Moral enhancement. Journal of applied philosophy, 25(3), 228–245. Persson, I., & Savulescu, J. (2008). The perils of cognitive enhancement and the urgent imperative to enhance the moral character of humanity. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 25(3), 162–177. See also Chap. 6 for a discussion.
- 4.
Evidently this is not intended as an exhaustive list.
- 5.
Unless stated otherwise we have used Irwin’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle (1999). The Nicomachean Ethics, (translation and introduction by T. Irwin), Hackett, 2nd edition.
- 6.
Parts of section has been previously published in Björkman, B. (2008). Virtue Ethics, Bioethics, and the Ownership of Biological Material.
- 7.
For some comments on the merits of an inclusive dialogue on these issues see Chap. 6.
- 8.
Parts of Sect. 5.1.4 has been previously published in “Virtue Ethics—a short introduction” in (ed.) Pragati Sahni, Understanding Ethics, Macmillan India, 2012.
- 9.
We use the words ‘happy’, ‘good’ and ‘fulfilled’ as synonyms for the virtuous life.
- 10.
Nicomachean Ethics 1098a17–20.
- 11.
Evidently some virtues fit more easily into the doctrine of the mean model than others.
- 12.
Bostock’s suggested solution is that Aristotle should be understood as saying that a virtue is a middling disposition—it is the disposition that the virtue is flowing from that lies in the middle.
- 13.
For a discussion of the epistemic virtues which plausibly would be conducive to good-decision making see Sect. 5.2.8 below.
- 14.
For a discussion see /NE1102b30-34/. Sometimes a distinction is made between moral virtues and eudemonic virtues. With regards to Aristotle we believe this to be confusing, for him all moral virtues were eudemonic virtues.
- 15.
Lear J. (1988). Aristotle—the desire to understand. Cambridge University Press, p. 168.
- 16.
For example brittleness which is a dispositional property of glass and this influences the behaviour of glass when dropped i.e. it shatters.
- 17.
To Aristotle our likes and dislikes indicate whether or not we have acquired the virtues and the virtuous only take pleasure in doing the fine and noble.
- 18.
As there is no space to go deeper into Aristotle’s account of akrasia and moral failure we refer the reader to Book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle (2002). The Nicomachean Ethics, (translation, introduction and commentary by S. Broadie and C. Rowe), Oxford University Press. Burnyeat M. F. (1980). Aristotle on Learning to be Good. In, Essays On Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A O. Rorty, 1980, University of California Press, pp. 69–92. Sorabji R. (1980). Necessity, cause and blame: perspectives on Aristotle’s theory. London.
- 19.
Some parts of 5.6. have been published in “Virtue Ethics, Bioethics and the Ownership of Biological Material”, Björkman B. (2008). Theses in Philosophy from the Royal Institute of Technology 28. viii + 203 pp. Stockholm.
- 20.
Burnyeat M. F. (1980). Aristotle on Learning to be Good. In, Essays On Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A O. Rorty, 1980, University of California Press, p. 71.
- 21.
Nicomachean Ethics 1179b20–1180a.
- 22.
See Dworkin ‘Laws & Empire’ for a similar analogy. Dworkin R. (1986), Law’s Empire, Belknap Press.
- 23.
Notice that we follow Aristotle’s account of moral motivation as broadly understood. E.g. to be morally motivated leads to action, i.e. it is more than simply feeling or thinking that X is right. For more on this see Part A of this chapter.
- 24.
Notice that we do not mean that socioeconomic and other ‘nurture’ aspects are not powerful in shaping who we become and what we are able to make of our biological background.
- 25.
Naturally, one can still accept that it is the eudaimon life but that it might not be a possibility for most people, or indeed, anyone.
- 26.
For both sides of the discussion see e.g. Harman. 1999. Moral philosophy meets social psychology: virtue ethics and the fundamental attribution error. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99: 315–331. Darley, and Batson. 1973. “From Jerusalem to Jericho”: a study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. JPSP 27: 100–108. Doris. 2002. Lack of character. Cambridge: CUP. Haidt, J., Seder, J. P., & Kesebir, S. (2008). Hive psychology, happiness, and public policy. The Journal of Legal Studies, 37(S2), S133–S156. Hursthouse. 1991. Virtue theory and abortion. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20(3): 223–246. Nussbaum. 1986. The fragility of goodness: luck and ethics in greek tragedy and philosophy. UK: CUP. Haidt. 2004. Intuitive ethics; how innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus 133(4): 55. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371. Hobbes, T. (1969). Leviathan, 1651. Scholar Press.
- 27.
Note that we are primarily interested in a set of core cognitive skills and how they can be conducive to epistemic virtue. In other words we are not looking at a general increase of IQ and what may be the effects of such changes. However, we have identified one study where relational frame training (which is the theoretical basis for Acceptance and commitment therapy) seem to increase the IQ of the participating students: Cassidy, S., Roche, B. & Hayes, S. C. (2011). A relational frame training intervention to raise Intelligence Quotients: A pilot study. The Psychological Record, 61, 173–198.
- 28.
Fleming, S. M., Weil, R. S., Nagy, Z., Dolan, R. J., & Rees, G. (2010). Relating introspective accuracy to individual differences in brain structure. Science, 329(5998), 1541–1543.
- 29.
Admittedly, research on so called “change processes” indicate that a profound change in a virtuous direction is sometimes the result of a life crisis as opposed to intellectual reasoning. We are also aware of that there is no shortage of examples of individuals groups and organizations which on closer inspection only pay lip service to virtue. However, such empirical observations hardly undermine the foundational assumptions of virtue theory. Plante, Thomas G. and Courtney Daniels. “The Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Roman Catholic Church: What Psychologists and Counselors Should Know”. Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 52, No. 5, May 2004.
- 30.
While there is a little means and a lot of ends in all the virtues they are certainly not instrumental to happiness but have substantive intrinsic value.
- 31.
Notably we are not implying that virtue theory on the traditional account includes moral duty to maximise.
- 32.
Flook, L., Goldberg, S. B., Pinger, L., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum. Developmental psychology, 51(1), 44.
- 33.
Wallmark, Erik; Safarzadeh, Kousha; Daukantaite, Daiva; Maddux, Rachel E. Promoting Altruism Through Meditation: An 8-Week Randomized Controlled Pilot Study. Mindfulness, September 2013, Vol. 4(3), pp. 223–234.
- 34.
Condon, P., Desbordes, G., Miller, W. B., & DeSteno, D. (2013). Meditation increases compassionate responses to suffering. Psychological science, 24(10), 2125–2127.
- 35.
As regards the truth tracking capacities of the epistemic virtues we subscribe to a Reliabilist account as broadly conceived of i.e. that the epistemic virtues include motivating and reliability components which means that they can help us attain the truth or, at least, help us attain more true beliefs than false ones. Under such a broad umbrella assumption the epistemic virtues can be defined as “dispositions to attain the truth and avoid error in a certain field of propositions F, in certain conditions C.” (Sosa E., Knowledge in Perspective, 138, 141). Some scholars have added various constraints many of which are internalistic. As summarised by Heather Battaly “…Greco has maintained that the intellectual virtues must be both reliable and grounded in the subject's conformance to the epistemic norms that she countenances. Plantinga’s properly functioning faculties are reliable, but they also operate in accordance with a design plan in an environment sufficiently similar to that for which they were designed. And, Zagzebski maintains that the virtues have a motivational component in addition to a reliability, or success, component. She thinks the virtues are enduring, acquired excellences of a person that involve the motivation for truth and reliable success in attaining that end of that motivation.” Battaly’s paper ‘What is Virtue Epistemology?’ https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Valu/ValuBatt.htm#top.
- 36.
Section 5.2.5.1 has been previously published in B. Froding, Cognitive Enhancement, Virtue Ethics and the Good Life, Neuroethics, (2011) 4:223–234.
- 37.
We acknowledge that forms of very advanced conative (i.e. behavior directed toward action) enhancement potentially might achieve both the same results and mimic the experience of habituation. This text however, deals with the type of medical and technological possibilities that we have access to today or are likely to have in the near future. For space reasons, this book cannot deal with conative enhancement as a separate issue but for an interesting argument, see e.g. Douglas (2008) ‘Moral enhancement’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 25, No. 3: Persson and Savulescu (2008) ‘The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 25, No. 3.
- 38.
Here we follow the Aristotelian account in assuming some version of cognitivism i.e. that the virtuous person is the one who knows what is right and wrong.
- 39.
For some interesting ideas on social moral epistemology, see e.g. Buchanan. 2007. Institutions, beliefs and ethics: Eugenics as a case study. Journal of Political Philosophy 15/1: 22–45. Buchanan. 2009. Philosophy and public policy: a role for social moral epistemology. Journal of Applied Philosophy 26(3): 276–290.
- 40.
For an account of the temporal aspects of different virtues and personal goods, i.e. the idea that certain virtues are good for us at certain points in our lives (for example, that innocence and trustingness is good for children but less so for adults), see Slote. 1983. Goods and virtues. New York: Clarendon. Note, however, that Slote does not claim that all virtues are ‘relative’ in this sense.
- 41.
The relationship between the intellectual and the emotional in moral decision-making is among the most disputed issues in the Nicomachean Ethics. For examples of contradictory account see e.g. Book 3.2–3 and compare it with Book 6.12–13 in the Nicomachean Ethics.
- 42.
Pakaluk M. (2005). Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. CUP. p. 208.
- 43.
See, for example, Axtell (ed.) (2000), Knowledge, Belief and Character, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield); Sosa (1991) Knowledge in Perspective, (New York: CUP); Greco (2000), Putting sceptics in their place (New York: CUP).
- 44.
For example, Zagzebski (1996), Virtues of the Mind: an inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge (New York: CUP); Montmarquet (1993), Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield).
- 45.
This paragraphs has been previously published in Chap. 5 of Fröding, B. (2013). Virtue ethics and human enhancement. Springer.
- 46.
Evidently this is not intended as a complete list.
- 47.
By motivated reasoning we mean decision-making based on unreflected gut reactions NOT people’s strong moral intuitions which would be well considered, stable and able to withstand the test of time. We define a bias here as a form of heuristic or shortcut that the human brain is prone to when engaging in e.g. decision-making, general assessment of events, ranking how important events/facts are and what to pay attention to in a situation. Unfortunately the agent tends to be unaware of the nature and magnitude of such bias.
- 48.
For more on equity see Book 5.9 of the Nicomachean Ethics.
- 49.
Hauser TU, Iannaccone R, Walitza S, Brandeis D, Brem S. Cognitive flexibility in adolescence: neural and behavioral mechanisms of reward prediction error processing in adaptive decision making during development. Neuroimage. 2015 Jan 1;104:347–54.
- 50.
Although this text is inspired by a number of Aristotelian ideas, it features a mixed set of virtues. On a general note, however, we believe that the central claim defended here is Aristotelian in spirit.
- 51.
For a discussion on the self-regarding and other-regarding aspects of virtue ethics see Fröding, B. (2010). On the importance of treating oneself well. Polish Journal of Philosophy, 4(1), 7–21. For a much broader discussion on compassion, empathy and over-coming the self-other duality see Coplan, A., & Goldie, P. (Eds.). (2011). Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives. Oxford University Press.
- 52.
I.e. in the epistemically virtuous manner, as opposed to a cold, calculating strategy or as a self-harming strategy to avoid discomfort.
- 53.
Cognitive dissonance is described as the mental stress or discomfort experienced due to two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or a confrontation by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values, in one individual (it could also be manifested in groups or at a societal level). Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. California: Stanford University Press. Festinger, L. (1962). “Cognitive dissonance”. Scientific American 207 (4): 93–107.
- 54.
See also Sect. 1.5.2 we tend to perceive meaningful patterns in random data (apophenia) and to perceive vague and random images and sound as significant (pareidolia), not least human faces. Voss, J. L., Federmeier, K. D., & Paller, K. A. (2011). The potato chip really does look like Elvis! Neural hallmarks of conceptual processing associated with finding novel shapes subjectively meaningful. Cerebral Cortex, bhr315.
- 55.
For a discussion on the role of choice and the concept of parity in virtue theory see Fröding, B., & Peterson, M. (2012). Virtuous Choice and Parity. Ethical theory and moral practice, 15(1), 71–82.
- 56.
Citation: The longest journey is the journey inward. Hammarskjöld D (2006) Markings, transk W.H. Auden, Leif Sjoberg (NY Vintage Books).
- 57.
E.g. Britton, W. B., Lindahl, J. R., Cahn, B. R., Davis, J. H., & Goldman, R. E. (2014). Awakening is not a metaphor: the effects of Buddhist meditation practices on basic wakefulness. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307(1), 64–81. For more details on the neurophysiological background please see Chap. 2 in this book.
- 58.
See pervious discussion of the work of Kahneman in Chap. 3. See also Damasio, A. (2012). Self comes to mind: Constructing the conscious brain. Vintage.
- 59.
Outward focus can also be trained efficiently via specialized computer games and we do not wish to imply that these, and other, life-style practices could not be combined for better effect. For comments see Chap. 6).
- 60.
Manna A, Raffone A, Perrucci MG, Nardo D, Ferretti A, Tartaro A, Londei A, Del Gratta C, Belardinelli MO, Romani GL. Neural correlates of focused attention and cognitive monitoring in meditation. Brain Res Bull. 2010 Apr 29;82(1–2):46–56.
- 61.
Farb NA, Segal ZV, Anderson AK. Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013 Jan; 8(1):15–26.
- 62.
For an interesting account see e.g. Slote M. (1992), From Morality to Virtue, OUP and Taylor G. & Wolfram S. (1968). The Self-regarding and Other-regarding Virtues, The Philosophical Quarterly, 18(72): 238–248. For a traditional account see e.g. Mill J. S (1997) ‘On Liberty’, Ryan A. (ed.), New York, Norton or e.g. book 3, Chap. 9.3 in Sidgwick H. (1981), The methods of ethics, 7th edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, and von Wright G. H (1963). The varieties of goodness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, e.g. p. 153.
- 63.
This is not addressing the issue of who actually benefits from the virtuous action. For an interesting discussion on this see e.g. Foot P., Moral Beliefs, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1958–59), 59:83–104, Foot P. (1978). Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press; Oxford: Blackwell.
- 64.
See Fröding, B. (2010). On the importance of treating oneself well. Polish Journal of Philosophy, 4(1), 7–21.
- 65.
This argument presupposes that one regards the virtues as threshold concepts, a view which we take to be relatively uncontroversial and so will not defend here.
- 66.
Neff, K. (2011). Self compassion. Hachette UK.
- 67.
For a discussion see Chap. 2 of this book. For a review on compassion, see Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: an evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological bulletin, 136(3), 351.
- 68.
For a good discussion on ’dispositions in ethics’ see Part IV Ethics and Epistemology in Groff, R., & Greco, J. (Eds.). (2013). Powers and capacities in philosophy: the new Aristotelianism. Routledge.
References
Aristotle. (1999). The Nicomachean ethics, (trans. and introduction by T. Irwin) (2nd Edn.). Indianapolis: Hackett.
Hughes, G. (2001). Routledge philosophy guidebook to Aristotle on ethics. New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fröding, B., Osika, W. (2015). Some Key Elements of Virtue Ethics. In: Neuroenhancement: how mental training and meditation can promote epistemic virtue.. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23517-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23517-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23516-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23517-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)