What about ought? Response to practical intelligence and the virtues

According to a qualified-agent account of right action, an action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances (V).¹ A frequent objection to this account is that it gives the wrong result in cases where the agent faces a dilemma because of previous wrongdoing. Robert Johnson gives the example of the chronic liar who undertakes a series of remedial actions to improve his character. Commonsense tells us that he acts rightly (or does what he ought to do), but (V) denies this, for no virtuous agent will find herself in these circumstances. Johnson concludes from this that virtue ethics fails to make room for a genuine moral obligation to improve your character.

Can virtuous people emerge from tragic dilemmas having acted well?

A tragic dilemma is thought to arise when an agent, through no fault of her own, finds herself in a situation where she must choose between two courses of action, both of which it would be wrong to undertake. I focus on tragic dilemmas that are resolvable, that is, where a reason can be given in favour of one course of action over another, and my aim is to examine whether Hursthouse's virtue-ethical account of right action succeeds in avoiding two problems presented by tragic dilemmas. The first of these is that they produce the seemingly contradictory conclusion that an agent, in doing what she ought to do, acts wrongly, making it appropriate for her to feel guilt. The second is the paradox of moral luck, which consists in the conflict between the intuition that an agent cannot be held responsible for actions that are not fully voluntary, and the fact that she may nevertheless believe that she has done something morally reprehensible. I argue that if we accept Hursthouse's separation of action guidance and action assessment, her account succeeds in solving the problem of contradiction. However, it does not completely avoid the problem of moral luck. I argue, against Hursthouse, that the virtuous agent can emerge from a tragic dilemma having acted well, and that this is the conclusion we must arrive at if we want to avoid the problem of contradiction and of moral luck

Accidental rightness

In this paper I argue that the disagreement between modern moral philosophers and (some) virtue ethicists about whether motive affects rightness is a result of conceptual disagreement, and that when they develop a theory of ‘right action,’ the two parties respond to two very different questions. Whereas virtue ethicists tend to use ‘right’ as interchangeable with ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ and as implying moral praise, modern moral philosophers use it as roughly equivalent to ‘in accordance with moral obligation.’ One implication of this is that the possibility of an act being right by accident does not pose a problem for consequentialism or deontology. A further implication is that it reveals a shortcoming in virtue ethics, namely that it does not—yet needs to—present an account of moral obligation

A case for paid surrogate motherhood

It has become commonplace to distinguish between altruistic and commercial surrogate motherhood. Altruistic surrogacy refers to cases where the surrogate mother is motivated by care or concern for an infertile couple, usually friends or relatives, to bear a child and then to transfer parental rights to them. Although she may be reimbursed for expenses associated with the pregnancy, she is not paid. Commercial surrogacy, on the other hand, is arranged through an agency which puts potential surrogates in contact with people wishing to employ their services. In addition to her expenses, the surrogate mother is paid a fee. Although both forms of surrogacy are morally controversial, the dominant view is that altruistic surrogacy is morally superior to, or at least less problematic than, commercial surrogacy

Book review: Motive and rightness

This article reviews the book: “Motive and rightness “ , by Steven Sverdlik. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the question of whether the motive of an action ever affects its deontic status, and it will also be of interest to normative ethicists in general. Many prominent moral philosophers, including J. S. Mill, H. A. Prichard, and W. D. Ross, hold that motives never have deontic relevance, but Steven Sverdlik disagrees. His aim in this book is to establish the truth of the following thesis and to understand why it is true: Motives Matter (MM): there is an action X such that if X were performed from one motive it would fall into one deontic category and if X were performed from another motive it would fall into a second deontic category in virtue of this difference in motives

In defence of agent-based virtue ethics

In 'Against Agent-Based Virtue Ethics' (2004) Michael Brady rejects agent-based virtue ethics on the grounds that it fails to capture the commonsense distinction between an agent's doing the right thing, and her doing it for the right reason. In his view, the failure to account for this distinction has paradoxical results, making it unable to explain why an agent has a duty to perform a given action. I argue that Brady's objection relies on the assumption that an agent-based account is committed to defining obligations in terms of actual motives. If we reject this view, and instead provide a version of agent-basing that determines obligations in terms of the motives of the hypothetical virtuous agent, the paradox disappears