TPQs (2/7) Group 2 Posts, Group 3 Responds

[Becko Copenhaver]

[rh...@lclark.edu]

On page 261 the author states "Finally our ultimate good must involve something that is distinctive about us, something that is uniquely human.  We need food to survive.  But being nourished cannot be our final good, sine we share this need with plants and animals.  And since animals can experience pleasure, the point of our lives cannot be to gain pleasure, either.  What sets us apart from everything else in the world is our rationality."

Do you believe this is a good enough justification for placing such importance on rationality?  Apparently if we were to come into contact with another rational species, using our rational faculties would suddenly become hardly more important than seeking our own pleasure.  Personally, it feels wrong that morality can suddenly lose importance so abruptly and arbitrarily.  What do you think of Shafer-Landau's reasoning?  Do you think she defends herself against this point?  Why or why not?  What is your personal view on it?

[sretzlaff]

Shafer-Landau states that, "a virtuous person who understands the right thing to do will also be strongly motivated to do it...for all the right reasons" (Shafer-Landau, 176).  What is an example that explains the difference between a truly virtuous person and someone who is merely continent? What does Aristotle mean when he insists that "virtuous conduct gives pleasure to the lover of virtue" (Shafer-Landau, 176)?

[afin...@lclark.edu]

In the second half of the paper, Shafer-Landau outlines and explains several objections and criticisms, from Tragic Dilemmas to demandingness to identifying and choosing 'the virtuous'. Shafer-Landau attempts to provide a virtue ethicist counter to each objection, with varying degrees of success. To you, which criticism is most powerful and why? Which is the most persuasive for and against virtue ethics? 

[sluh...@lclark.edu]

The priority problem seemed to hold the strongest grounds for criticism of virtue theory. That we must look to the virtuous person to validate our actions as morally sound, but then concede that such a person would, if not to have acted arbitrarily, need to have fashioned her own actions after careful reasoning, this seems in no way reconcilable if we are not to find our own rationalization for behavior (e.g the observation and mimicry of a virtuous person) superfluous. However, I hesitate to insinuate that this is precisely what Shafer-Landau are offering as criticism. Perhaps my own reading more than anything. But, given that we've discussed the need for those with vices, because they cannot perceive virtuous character as such, to overshoot the mean, the target that which is excess, I am reasonably sure that virtue ethics does not place all of its "methodological chickens" in one basket in terms of the means by which we can learn to be virtuous. 

[leep...@lclark.edu]

The truly virtuous person, like you said above, acts according to virtue for, "all the right reasons". This means that it is not merely enough to act as if one possesses these virtues, one must truly have the virtue to be doing right. For example, a person who uses courage in one instance, to avoid something that might be painful or scary later, cannot be said to be truly virtuous. If acting from virtue is a struggle for the actor, the actor cannot be said to be virtuous. Virtuous conduct would give pleasure tho the lover of virtue, as the lover of virtue would be pleased by her own virtuous action.

[epro...@lclark.edu]

A person who is merely continent performs actions that may appear virtuous to a bystander but they themselves are not truly virtuous because they perform these actions only to avoid the displeasure that comes with "breaking the rules".  The merely continent person does not actually enjoy performing these actions and would rather act oppositely.  A truly virtuous person performs virtuous actions in accordance with their own desires.  They do not perform these actions for pleasure, but do receive pleasure when performing them because the actions satisfy their own standards.

[Maggie McQueston]

This reading made me consider the way that the teaching and learning about ethics would be examined by virtue theory. Would a truly virtuous person take an undergraduate class on ethics or would doing so in itself undermine the idea of inherently knowing what virtuous action is? I think it is hard to look at virtue theory in this way. Shafer-Landau states that "moral understanding is a species of practical wisdom" (255). In this way we can look at the teaching and learning of philosophy (particularly ethics) as practice in moral understanding rather than as proof of our lack of moral wisdom. Shafer-Landau makes a similar argument; "we begin as apprentices, following in an unquestioning way the rules handed down by out parents and teachers...we gradually step back from the rules we learned on our mother's knee, and subject them to careful  scrutiny. A successdul education will produce and independent thinker, one who doesn't need the old, oversimple rules as a crutch to get through each new situation" (258). I think that this better explains why moral understanding is an interesting but also difficult thing to learn. Our challenges come from our inability to apply rules in a straight forward way. As we make the transition to morality as something that must be practiced, we must look at moral issues in a more nuanced manner.

[ega...@lclark.edu]

In Shafer-Landau's paper, Virtue Ethics, the author introduces the question: Is the action virtuous because it is what a virtuous person would do, or is the person virtuous because they do right actions? But doesn't this contradict the point that people can learn how to be virtuous? Because, according to the first statement, if you are not a virtuous person, no matter how many right things you do, they will never be virtuous because you are not virtuous.  THis seems to go against the part of virtue theory that says that the way to become virtuous is to do as the virtuous person does.