Tuesday, November 11, 2008
I guess I'm feeling pretty nice this week since both my posts are going to be basically agreeing with readings. I think in this case it may be my background in psychology that does it, but I think I like what Doris has to say. Or at least I like his practical applications. When he talks about donig out to dinner with the flirtatious colleague, I agree that whether you would cheat on your husband or not, it is probably best to just avoid the situation. It kind of made me thing though. Is it more virtuous to go and not cheat or to avoid it? I think that avoiding it could be sort of the practical wisdom that goes along with virtue. Maybe Aristotle would say that part of being virtuous is basically following Doris's ideas. It is virtuous to have the practical wisdom to not put yourself in situations in which you may fail. But I guess I see where Aristotle would not necessarily say that since a truly virtuous person wouldn't have the temptation to fail in virtue. So where does that leave us? Empirically there seemed to only be one truly virtuous person in the dime experiment. Would Aristotle simply concede that perhaps there is only one virtuous person in the bunch? I think he might. I think he may go the route in which virtue is not for everyone and that we should look to the few exemplars and try to live like them. However, this is why I think I like Doris. I tend to be an optimist about human nature and thus I do not want to concede that virtue is for the few. Perhaps perfect ideal virtue is. But I would like to leave room for most people to be relatively virtuous. There will be degrees. People make mistakes and some more than others. But I want to believe that virtue is in the reach of anyone. And I think that while Doris does not necessarily do a good job of explaining what virtue is, he has some helpful hints for those who fall short. I think Aristotle does explain true ideal virtue. But it's not necessarily realistic and so while one may strive for the virtue Aristotle argues for, I find it helpful to consider Doris's situations and use some practical wisdom to aide in virtuous action when virtuous motivation fails. It's not ideal, but it's real and practical. Better to avoid situations that will test faulty virtue than test it and fail.
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One reason I have to wonder if we should put too much emphasis on avoiding morally risky situations is expressed by Doris in the following: "Then condemnation for ethical failure might very often be directed, not at a particular failure of the will in action, but at a certain culpable naivete, or insufficiently careful attention to situations." I think this kind of failure is very important to consider. While at times I've thought that I think I've failed morally because I did not do the thing I ought to do, most of the time it's that I realize later I was insensitive to a relevant feature of the situation or was ignorant about what the consequences of my actions would be in a blameworthy way. While I don't have empirical evidence for this, only personal experience, it seems to me that actually experiencing near moral failure or actual moral failure makes me extremely sensitive to the relevant factors that could have made or did make my action wrong. I am particularly tuned in to whether they are present in other situations, and how they are relevant given the rest of the situation. The same thing would probably occasionally happen if I am putting effort into avoiding risky situations but fail at that, and end up in near or actual moral failure anyway. But I think that actually experiencing morally difficult situations are useful in heightening sensitivity to relevant features such that we will not forget them in new cases. Since we are insensitive to the features beforehand, it is impossible to intentionally avoid situations where they will make things difficult. So while avoiding obviously morally dangerous situations might be a good thing to do, putting too much effort into figuring out what to avoid instead of cultivating sensitivities to morally relevant factors seems misguided. We really don't know what to look for unless we've already experienced the morally difficult situations, and if we have experienced them we probably will not be ignorant to these factors in new difficult situations.
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