A C Molino on Nostr: There is actually almost universal agreement about the virtues at a basic level. You ...
There is actually almost universal agreement about the virtues at a basic level. You can read a book about compassion to a 3 year and he or she will get it. I could A/B test you on ‘brave or not brave’ to prove this.
Most of the disagreement about whether X has virtue A or not boils down to implicit misunder-standings over X; I mean Bob is addressing element 1 within X and Alice is addressing element 2; but they both just talk of X. Think of people arguing over whether pacifism in wartime is brave.
Virtue Ethics is neither subjective, nor objective. It’s relativistic. The criterion for truth is a shared cultural understanding. It’s strange though. It tends towards objectivism.
Think of a scale, 1 being subjective and 10 being objective, 5 being relativistic. Virtue Ethics is a 7. It has some objective properties. The virtues appear similarly in all societies and in all ages. Some virtues, like justice, seem to be a priori true. A particular society could redefine justice but the members’ consciences would nag that it was wrong and other societies would not be fooled. It would be a collective delusion. I believe there’s an objective metaphysical reality at work, but I’m unclear on this. I can’t argue for it.
I will try to quantify merely for the sake of the argument: 80% of the cultural background giving the criteria of validity to the virtues stretches back to the dawn of homo sapiens; 10% is the last 1-2 thousand years; and 10% the last couple of generations. The final 10% variation explains a lot of the objections at the forefront of your mind.
You can claim subjectivity of the virtues. You can claim your own meanings to words. Good luck with that. It’s like you’re in the boxing ring claiming “I decide if I win the fight.”
By the way, I realize now that the piracy example was a bad one to start with. It brings in other moot points about intellectual property and just muddies the water. If you’re still interested, we should use a more straightforward example.
#philosophy
Most of the disagreement about whether X has virtue A or not boils down to implicit misunder-standings over X; I mean Bob is addressing element 1 within X and Alice is addressing element 2; but they both just talk of X. Think of people arguing over whether pacifism in wartime is brave.
Virtue Ethics is neither subjective, nor objective. It’s relativistic. The criterion for truth is a shared cultural understanding. It’s strange though. It tends towards objectivism.
Think of a scale, 1 being subjective and 10 being objective, 5 being relativistic. Virtue Ethics is a 7. It has some objective properties. The virtues appear similarly in all societies and in all ages. Some virtues, like justice, seem to be a priori true. A particular society could redefine justice but the members’ consciences would nag that it was wrong and other societies would not be fooled. It would be a collective delusion. I believe there’s an objective metaphysical reality at work, but I’m unclear on this. I can’t argue for it.
I will try to quantify merely for the sake of the argument: 80% of the cultural background giving the criteria of validity to the virtues stretches back to the dawn of homo sapiens; 10% is the last 1-2 thousand years; and 10% the last couple of generations. The final 10% variation explains a lot of the objections at the forefront of your mind.
You can claim subjectivity of the virtues. You can claim your own meanings to words. Good luck with that. It’s like you’re in the boxing ring claiming “I decide if I win the fight.”
By the way, I realize now that the piracy example was a bad one to start with. It brings in other moot points about intellectual property and just muddies the water. If you’re still interested, we should use a more straightforward example.
#philosophy