I am a virtue ethicist for consequentialist reasons. While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex for a real time evaluation of the likely results of even relatively simple decisions. So you use virtues (my definition is slightly non-standard) - rules that are more likely than not to result in better outcomes. This is partially derived from the definition of morality in Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, which where you do or don’t agree with it, raises lots of interesting points.
While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex
I’ve been thinking along these lines lately myself, and I think the classic ‘push a fat man in front of the train’ thought experiment is a good example of it. In thought-experiment-land, it’s stipulated that pushing the fat man would stop the train and save lives… but in the real world you don’t know that with any certainty. So if you make the consequentialist decision to push him, but it doesn’t stop the train, you ended up killing one more person than otherwise would have been… not because your moral philosophy was wrong, but because your mental calculations of the physics of stopping a train were wrong.
If, on the other hand, you make your moral decision on the basis of virtue, then so long as your virtues are well calibrated heuristics for real world consequences, then you end up making, on average, correct decisions (meaning decisions leading to good consequences) without needing to get the physics (or whatever) right in individual instances. In this case, the heuristic/virtue in question would be “It’s wrong to kill innocent people”, leading you to NOT push the fat man, which I believe would be the correct decision in real life.
I am a virtue ethicist for consequentialist reasons. While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex for a real time evaluation of the likely results of even relatively simple decisions. So you use virtues (my definition is slightly non-standard) - rules that are more likely than not to result in better outcomes. This is partially derived from the definition of morality in Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, which where you do or don’t agree with it, raises lots of interesting points.
I’ve been thinking along these lines lately myself, and I think the classic ‘push a fat man in front of the train’ thought experiment is a good example of it. In thought-experiment-land, it’s stipulated that pushing the fat man would stop the train and save lives… but in the real world you don’t know that with any certainty. So if you make the consequentialist decision to push him, but it doesn’t stop the train, you ended up killing one more person than otherwise would have been… not because your moral philosophy was wrong, but because your mental calculations of the physics of stopping a train were wrong.
If, on the other hand, you make your moral decision on the basis of virtue, then so long as your virtues are well calibrated heuristics for real world consequences, then you end up making, on average, correct decisions (meaning decisions leading to good consequences) without needing to get the physics (or whatever) right in individual instances. In this case, the heuristic/virtue in question would be “It’s wrong to kill innocent people”, leading you to NOT push the fat man, which I believe would be the correct decision in real life.
So your definition of value is essentially ‘good consequence heuristic’?
I agree with the sentiment by the way.