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.A related criticism has to do with the notion of Some may observe that there is a third option here tomaking the world   better.  Some may wonder whether extricate the objection: the principal is correct that theone of the GVP s motivating assumptions is that ethics bully ought to be more just, caring, and honest, but notwill arrive at some univocal conception of better.But because his doing so will make for a better world.The36 POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES N SEPTEMBER 2009 N VOL.28, NO.2Walkertrouble with this response is that it does not tell us that certain attitudes accompany the exercise of suchwhat reason there is for the bully to be virtuous, so it is dispositions is to misunderstand what is definitive aboutimpossible to tell whether the reason might apply virtue.And so, the GVP would not need to stand aloneequally well to using the GVP to promote virtue.And it in saying that the behaviorist condition is the soleis difficult to imagine what candidates there are for requirement of virtue.enjoining him to be more virtuous that would not A second and much more important response is toapply equally well to the GVP.If the thought, for note that the GVP is not necessarily wed to the viewexample, is that being virtuous will make the bully s that the behaviorist condition is sufficient for virtue.life go better, then such reasoning seems to apply To see this, consider Aristotle s definition of virtue.equally well to using the GVP to make persons more Aristotle argues that a properly virtuous person takesvirtuous.If the thought is that making the bully pleasure in his or her virtuous acts, in addition to threevirtuous will make the lives of others go better, then other conditions:   first of all, he must know what he issuch reasoning seems to apply equally well to using the doing; secondly, he must choose to act the way he does,GVP to make people more virtuous.and he must choose it for its own sake; and in the thirdplace, the act must spring from a firm and unchange-A simulacrum of virtue?able character.  99 Aristotle s conception of virtue isAnother serious objection is that the GVP offers only thus more restrictive than the behaviorist conception,a simulacrum of virtue, not virtue itself.One way to for while it includes the behaviorist requirement ofmake this point would be to focus on the behaviorist action it also imposes further requirements.What thisconception of virtue.Recall the assumption made means is that those individuals who exhibit Aristote-above that the behaviorist condition is the sole lian virtue may form a subset of the population whocriterion for virtue.There is a tradition tracing back meet the behavioral requirement.at least to Plato that understands the behavioristHowever, so long as we have some way ofcondition as only one of several conditions forascertaining whether individuals possess Aristotle svirtue.95,96 The objection then is that the GVP shouldadditional conditions, the GVP could work with thebe rejected because it utilizes an impoverished concep- Aristotelian approach.To see how this might be so,tion of virtue.suppose there are 100 subjects participating in anThere are two responses that can be made to this line experiment to differentiate between those who exhibitof objection.The first is that the behaviorist conception truthfulness from those who lack this virtue.Imagineof virtue is not indigenous to the GVP but has also been further that the first round of the experiment isinvoked by other theorists, for example, that it finds a designed to distinguish participants in terms of thenatural home in some forms of consequentialism where behavioral requirement of virtue and 60 are found tovirtues are simply those character traits that tend to exhibit truthful behavior.Assuming only the behav-promote the good.That is, at least some consequenti- ioral condition, the experiment might end here.For analists might think it unnecessary or undesirable to build Aristotelian, however, further rounds are necessary toanything more into the notion of virtue, such as the ensure that we have discovered the virtuous partici-requirement that the agent has certain attitudes towards pants.Suppose a second experiment discovers that fivetheir behavior.Thus, Bentham writes of virtues:   It is of the remaining 60 do not take pleasure in their truthwith disposition as with everything else: it will be good telling behavior, and so are eliminated from additionalor bad according to its effects: according to the effects it study [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]