Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Virtue is about wanting right and good things, not about being particularly good at thinking.
I am an atheist. I don't think there's anything divine. Beautiful, impressive, awe-inspiring - sure, but not divine.
I think it's ok to have wishes that conflict with each other - it's irrational to try to make them both come true, but not irrational simply to have them.
Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though things are rarely equal.
Moral virtues and intellectual virtues are very different from each other, and moral virtue has to do with motivation, not cognition. Moral virtue requires a human level of intelligence, but it doesn't require that one be an intelligent human.
For those of us who want to have control over all our mental states, compatibilist substitutes - such as desiring what we desire to desire - will always be like being told, when you desperately want there to be a God, that yes, God exists, as God is simply the good within people.
I am not committed in any way to the traditional concept of character - the concept of "character trait" as involving predictable behavior. I am committed to a view in the neighborhood - the view that the moral worth of one's actions depends on the quality of will expressed in them.
When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and think "there, I'm so irrational!". But your reluctance to sit on a probably rickety chair is not irrational - you think it's irrational because you have a false view of what irrationality is.
Characters in Hollywood movies encounter a lot of car chases. Characters in novels rarely wash their hands or do their laundry. And in the work of moral psychologists, people deliberate and reflect a lot. They deliberate, one sometimes feels, whenever they perform an action, and certainly whenever they act for good reasons.
If I am told my loving you had to happen because of some Freudian stuff about my childhood, that might be degrading or deflationary, but if I am told it had to happen because you are such a wonderful person that I couldn't possibly resist your charms, or because we are so incredibly compatible, then necessity seems very romantic.
When I see two owls and then two more owls and conclude that I see four owls, I am responding to reasons, and it better not be my choice to believe that two plus two always equals four. If I am a rational person, I will have that belief by necessity, whether I wanted to or not. So it's not that strange to discuss responding to reasons out of necessity.
I don't think we are all irrational every time we fail to see through an argument in a book, but suppose it's true about you. You are still more rational than you think you are. You are irrational in a minor way - believing a misguided theory of the nature of rationality - but rational in a major way - you respond well to probabilistic evidence as you go through the day.
Incompatibilists will tell you that a work of art has no meaning unless the artists could have chosen to create a different one, but actual artists often say things like "the book chose me" - that is, the work had to be. Some philosophers would call it "volitional necessity", and a similar case that's discussed is the case of Luther saying "here I stand, I can do no other".
If I make a stupid decision but don't execute it because I'm, say, lazy, then I'm lucky, not rational. However, at other times a person acts for good reasons just as she does what she thinks she shouldn't do, not knowing that they are good reasons. Just like sometimes we are a lot less rational than we think we are, it is also true that sometimes we are a lot more rational than we think we are.
I think that if your tenure case depends on your proving what you thought was a mathematical theorem and the proposed theorem turns out to be false just before your tenure decision, and you want to get tenure very badly, there is a sense in which it's perfectly understandable and reasonable of you to wish the proposed theorem were true and provable, even if it's logically impossible for it to be.
Sometimes we deliberate - for example when we plan a long trip or - if we are not math wizards - when we solve long division problems. However, if we deliberated every time we acted we would never get through the day. Most of the time, we act for reasons without deliberation. I am not just talking about cases of simple, habitual action, like brushing your teeth, but also about more sophisticated action.
Duties concern things that are voluntary. I do think that if you have a moral duty to bring me back the book you borrowed, that implies, roughly, that your doing so depends on your wanting to do so: if you want to bring me the book, you will. This is not the case if you are stuck at some airport due to a snowstorm, far away from me. This, however, is not the same as "ought" implying a metaphysical "can".
Though we think intrinsic desires tend to be pretty stable, we do not think they imply anything like the amount of predictability in behavior that traditional virtue ethics requires for someone to have a one-word-in-English character trait such as "benevolence". Other things being equal, a person with more of a desire for other people's wellbeing will do more for other people's wellbeing, but things are almost never equal.
A person is praiseworthy for a right action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, good will, that is, concern for the right and the good, not necessarily under the description "right" or "good". A person is blameworthy for a wrong action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, ill will - concern for the wrong and bad, also de re - or moral indifference - lack or deficiency of good will.
Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he doesn't care much about the truth or about me, and his self interest, which he worships, tells him to lie, and so it comes about that given his psychology, it is a forgone conclusion that he will lie to me. I think in this case he is still blameworthy, and that implies, among other things, that he did something he ought not do.
Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because of that, it is absolutely wrong to be culturally intolerant". This student, if she believes what she writes, believes a contradiction. She ought not to believe the contradiction - it's a basic epistemic norm. This is true even if she can't avoid believing it - no amount of studying will show her the light.
People of relatively low intelligence can be morally wonderful if they desire the right and the good (not necessarily under the description "right" or "good"). Their low intelligence sometimes results in their accidentally doing something wrong, but doing something wrong out of low intelligence alone is like stepping on a person's foot because you are (literally) blind or missing a cry for help because you are (literally) deaf. We do not judge the blind or deaf person as morally bad.
I don't think any of my desires or beliefs or other mental states are external to me. Many people will occasionally feel alienated from the motives for an action - "whatever possessed me to do that?". Note, however, that some people feel alienated from the white hairs that recently appeared on their heads - "who put them there?", they might ask the mirror - but the white hairs are still theirs. Similarly, I might feel alienated from an action or a mental state because it does not fit with my visceral self - image.
Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would find it a very sad thing if it turned out that the only way a human is superior to a wolf is this: the human brain is significantly more capacious and complex.
I would be ok if I found out for sure that if I am in any way superior to a wolf it is simply in virtue of my brain's higher capacity and complexity. A large difference - my cerebral equipment allows me to have such diverse concepts as "hope", "funky", "England", "multiplication", "three strikes" and "the categorical imperative" - but a difference in degree. Wolves, of course, are superior to me with regards to smelling, hearing, and running, and are generally superior to humans in that they don't kill each other.
A very tall man once asked a question after my talk. Before beginning his question, he explained that the reason he was standing up is not to be intimidating but rather to make eye contact. His question was essentially "are we really interested in moral motives? Isn't it all about action?". I pointed out to him that it was not enough for him to do the right thing - stand up - but he also wanted me to know that he is doing it from the right motive or for the right reason - to make eye contact, rather than to be intimidating. Voila, moral psychology.
The fact that only humans above a certain age can be morally virtuous, rather than babies or cats, means that that being moral requires some cognitive ability. If virtue is about desires, it is worth remembering that you can't desire some things without being able to conceive of them. Suppose a virtuous person will desire to make people happy and desire to tell the truth. You can't desire to make people happy without having the concept "happy" and you can't desire to be truthful if you don't have have the concept "lie", so a cat or a baby cannot desire these things.
"Externality" is a different phenomenon from akrasia and doesn't always come with it. The set of desires and actions from which one feels alienated isn't always the same as the set of desires and actions of which one disapproves. It has been pointed out that you can disapprove of something inside yourself but still experience it as yours ("damn it, here I go again!"). In addition, you can approve of something inside yourself but feel like it's not yours ("when the emergency sirens went off, it was as if someone calmer and more reasonable took over and knew just what to do").