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What Even Consequentialists Should Say About the Virtues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2007

LUKE RUSSELL
LUKE RUSSELL*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

In Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver advocates a consequentialist account of the virtues. In so far as her view is ‘psychologically minimalist’, Driver's account is superior to the psychologically rich theories of virtue offered by Aristotle, Hume and Kant. However, Driver is also committed to ‘instrumentalism’ about virtue: a trait is a virtue only if it has instrumental value. In contrast, I argue for a ‘disjunctive’ form of minimalism, according to which a character trait counts as a virtue if it has either instrumental or intrinsic value. The common intuitions about virtue that Driver takes to support her ‘instrumental minimalism’ actually fit better with disjunctive minimalism. Admittedly, disjunctive minimalism is a messy account of virtue. However, this messiness would be a problem only if we drew a tight connection between virtue and right action, and we have good independent reasons for thinking there is no such tight link.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 466 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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13 Of course, these standard reasons are not compulsory for consequentialists. Some consequentialists argue that it is wrong (or almost always wrong) to kill the scapegoat because killing the scapegoat would always (or almost always) fail to maximize the things that are good.

14 Driver, Uneasy Virtue, p. 72.

15 Driver, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 72–3.

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17 Driver, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 84–5.

18 Driver, Uneasy Virtue, p. 88.

19 Driver, Uneasy Virtue, p. 86.

20 The actual quote is as follows: ‘Recognizing a trait's effects will give a person reasons for adopting or rejecting the trait as a virtue. But oddly, we may feel that there are other quite distinct and quite appropriate motivating reasons. One can see why a trait is valuable objectively (because it produces good consequences), yet have a different reason for valuing it (or devaluing it) subjectively. Our attitudes may be slow to catch up with our perceptions’ (Driver, Uneasy Virtue, p. 88).

21 Note that there is nothing metaphysically deflationary in minimalism about virtue, unlike, say, minimalism about truth. Minimalists about virtue are free to think that virtues really are valuable.

22 Cf. Driver, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 36–7, where she lists psychological conditions that are required for specific virtues, such as modesty and blind charity.

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32 O'Neill was right to be surprised that Driver's list of virtues corresponds so closely to a traditional list of virtues: Onora O'Neill, ‘Consequences for Non-consequentialists’, Utilitas 16 (2004).

33 Alternatively, she could argue that a character trait which results in killing of innocents only in scapegoat cases is a psychological impossibility. I owe this point to David Braddon-Mitchell.

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38 Intrinsicalism will preserve the principle of mutual exclusivity if we assume that a character trait cannot be both intrinsically good and intrinsically bad. Yet, depending on how we individuate character traits, some intrinsicalists might accept that a single character trait might be intrinsically good in some respect and intrinsically bad in another respect.

39 One possible response is to uphold the principle of mutual exclusivity, and maintain that the everyday concept of virtue is not disjunctive, but rather that the term ‘virtue’ is deeply ambiguous. If ‘virtue’ is ambiguous, and if each of the independent concepts it expresses preserves the principle of mutual exclusivity, the claim that a trait is both a virtue and a vice turns out to be false, whenever we carefully disambiguate the terms ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’. Yet ascriptions of deep ambiguity are plausible only in cases in which a term refers to two radically distinct classes, not in cases in which the classes are subtly distinct but share an important common feature. Unlike river banks and financial institutions, all disjunctive virtues have something important in common: all are good character traits. Thus, suggesting that the term ‘virtue’ is deeply ambiguous seems to be an ad hoc solution to the problem of mutual exclusivity.

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