Virtue Ethics and Effective Altruism

A/Prof Justin Oakley, Centre for Human Bioethics

Virtue ethicsAs a theory of right action, the most fundamental claim made by virtue ethics is that reference to character and virtue are essential in the justification of right action. A virtue ethics criterion right action can be stated initially in broad terms as:

V: An action is right if and only if it is what an agent with a virtuous character would do in the circumstances.

Most contemporary forms of virtue ethics provide a criterion of this type. According to V, what makes the action right is that it is what a person with a virtuous character would do here. eg:It is right to save another’s life, where continued life would still be a good to that person, because this is what a person with the virtue of benevolence would do.

It is ordinarily right to keep a promise made to someone on their deathbed, even though living people would benefit from its being broken, because that is what a person with the virtue of justice would do.

The primacy given to character in V helps distinguish virtue ethics from Kantian and Utilitarian approaches, whereby actions are justified according to rules or outcomes.

Aristotle: Virtues are character-traits which enable us to live humanly flourishing lives.

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Distinctive features of Virtue ethics Right action usually requires acting from particular motives.Most forms of Utilitarianism and Kantianism which go beyond mere theoretical possibilities hold that generally speaking, one can act rightly, whatever one’s motivation – so long as one maximises expected utility or acts in accordance with duty, one has done the right thing, whether one’s motives were praiseworthy, reprehensible, or neutral.

By contrast, Virtue ethics typically holds that acting rightly, in many situations, requires acting from a particular sort of motivation, since this is part of what is involved in doing what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances.

The goodness of each individual virtue cannot be reduced to a single value.

Another key difference between virtue ethics and classical forms of Utilitarianism is that many contemporary exponents of virtue ethics argue that virtues are intrinsic goods which are plural, and so the goodness of the virtues cannot be reduced to a single underlying value, such as utility.

The good of integrity, for example, does not consist simply in the utility (eg. pleasure) that the agent or others gain from this (see Oakley 2014).

Effective altruism and the virtue of ‘liberality’Virtue ethics can support effective altruism as an expression of what Aristotle called the virtue of ‘liberality’ (sometimes translated as generosity).

The virtue of liberality is concerned with money and wealth (specifically, with donating money and one’s possessions to others), and is an intermediate between the vices of prodigality (eg. indiscriminate giving) and meanness.

The liberal person “does not value wealth for its own sake”[NE1120b15]. It is “the mark of the liberal man to give to the right people”, but also, from the right motives….“with pleasure or without pain” [1120a11-22]

The liberal person “will refrain from giving to anybody and everybody, that he may have something to give to the right people, at the right time…” [1120b4-5]

“The term ‘liberality’ is used relatively to a man’s substance …this is relative to the giver’s substance. There is therefore nothing to prevent the man who gives less from being the more liberal man, if he has less to give”[1120b7-8].

For Aristotle one can give with both head and heart, but not in the manner of the prodigal person, who “has an appetite for giving, and they do not mind how…”[1121b3]. “It is not the mark of a wicked or ignoble man to go to excess in giving…, but only of a foolish one”[1121a30]

Meanness can also manifest as “a sordid love of gain”…., and is “a greater evil than prodigality”.

Magnificence is the virtue concerned with very large (and less regular) donations…. “the magnificent man will do so gladly and lavishly; for nice calculation is a niggardly thing” [1122b7].

Altruism and the virtue of justiceAristotle also argued (Politics 1324a23-5) that “the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily”.

A just state therefore has an enabling function: to provide the means or conditions under which its citizens have an equal chance of developing and exercising their basic human capabilities to live flourishing human lives (see also Nussbaum 2006).

This requires both broader structural measures, along with support for individuals to develop and exercise the virtues, including liberality/generosity.

Effective altruism and family caregivingPeter Singer (2015): “We should do the most good we can”.

It is important not to undervalue family caregiving – even where caring well is very time-consuming, and may not always be the most 'effective' way of being altruistic.

https://seniorcarecentralpa.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/cgvrchallenges.jpg

The sort of care which many patients in home care find most valuable is emotional support from their children – the help provided by professional carers and the help provided by family carers may not have equal expressive value.

Effective altruism and ethical career choicesWill MacAskill (2014): “It is ethically preferable to pursue philanthropy through a higher paid but morally controversial career than to pursue philanthropy through a lower paid but morally innocuous career”. (See also MacAskill 2015)

Albert Schweitzer (1949) did not think what he did was too daunting for others. Rather, he thought that many doctors could and ought to follow his lead and take up the call to become ‘jungle-doctors’:

“Let no one say: ‘Suppose “the Fellowship of those who bear the Mark of Pain” does by way of beginning send one doctor here, another there, what is that to cope with the misery of the world?’ From my own experience and from that of all colonial doctors, I answer, that a single doctor out here with the most modest equipment means very much for very many. The good which he can accomplish surpasses a hundredfold what he gives of his own life and the cost of the material support which he must have. Just with quinine and arsenic for malaria, with novarseno-benzol for the various diseases which spread through ulcerating sores, with emetin for dysentery, and with sufficient skill and apparatus for the most necessary operations, he can in a single year free from the power of suffering and death hundreds of men who must otherwise have succumbed to their fate in despair. It is just exactly the advance of tropical medicine during the last fifteen years which gives us a power over the sufferings of the men of far-off lands that borders on the miraculous. Is not this really a call to us?” (p. 127)

Hastings Rashdall (1924) argued that we should choose a career through which we can make the best contribution to the world that we can: “it is a man's duty to choose the Vocation which, being what he is, he will contribute most to the social good” (p. vii.). Rashdall acknowledges that he would not condemn those whose temperament leads them to forsake service careers for other fields, so long as their work in their chosen field itself still results in the good being maximised:

“Common sense agrees with Roman Catholic Moral Theology in recognizing that it would be positively wrong for any one to enter upon certain careers which make great demands upon the moral nature, merely from a strong sense of duty, when they have no ‘internal vocation’ for them. …The average sister of mercy is, no doubt, a more valuable member of Society than a Belgravian lady who is somewhat above the average; but a sister of mercy with no natural love or instinct for her work, with no natural love for the poor or the sick or the young to whom she ministered, would be far less useful to Society than the Belgravian lady who performs respectably the recognized duties of her station, even though she may devote what must in the abstract be considered a somewhat excessive amount of time to domestic trivialities and social dissipation” (p. 123).

Ethical career choices and the value of personal fulfilment

Ethical career choices can justifiably make allowances for personal fulfilment and self-realisation, even where one’s career choice is not the most effective way of being altruistic.

The ethical relevance of personal fulfilment considerations can be seen by a person comparing a choice between two careers that would have equal social utility, but one job would be more personally fulfilling than the other. There seems to be ethical reason to choose the more fulfilling job.

Consider also a comparison between a person taking a moderately lucrative professional philanthropy job in the private sector which they find mildly interesting, and a person who delivers a little less help (via a charity job) but finds it very personally fulfilling. It is not obvious that the latter is less ethical than the former.

100,000 hours?80,000 hours“You have 80,000 working hours in your life. If used well, you can use this time to greatly improve the lives of hundreds of people.” https://80000hours.org/

100,000 hoursIn 2013, the median length of a marriage in Australia was 12.1 years http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3310.0

= 105,705 hours

Such a website could help you find the partner with whom you together are likely to produce the most good for the world. “You two would not only make a great team, but an optimal team for the world.” However, must you do this? Personal attraction seems to have a legitimate role in partnering decisions, even where this results in a couple being a sub-optimal team for the world.

References

Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (trans. W.D. Ross), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980.Norman S. Care, ‘Career choice’, Ethics 94, no. 2, January 1984, pp. 283-302. Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.William MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

17, no. 2, April 2014, pp. 269-83.William MacAskill, Doing Good Better, New York, Penguin, 2015.Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: disability, nationality, species membership, Cambridge MA: Harvard

University Press, 2006. Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking, Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles, Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press, 2001.Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking, ‘Consequentialism, complacency, and slippery slope arguments’, Theoretical

Medicine and Bioethics 26, no. 3, May 2005, pp. 227-39. Justin Oakley, ‘Virtue ethics and utilitarianism’, in Stan van Hooft (ed.), The Handbook of Virtue Ethics,

Durham, Acumen, 2014, pp. 64-75.Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, Volume II, 2nd. ed., London, Oxford University Press, 1924.Daniel C. Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues, New York, Oxford University Press, 2009.Daniel C. Russell, ‘What virtue ethics can learn from utilitarianism’, in Ben Eggleston and Dale E. Miller (eds.),

The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.Michael Slote, Morals from Motives, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.Peter Singer, The most good you can do, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 2015.Nancy E. Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence: An empirically-grounded theory, New York, Routledge 2010.Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics, A Pluralistic View, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.Rebecca L. Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Working Virtue: Virtue ethics and contemporary moral

problems, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007.