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VIRTUOUS PARTICULARISM

presented by

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VIRTUOUS PARTICULARISM
By

Rory E. Kraft, Jr.

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Philosophy

2006

 

ABSTRACT
VIRTUOUS PARTICULARISM
By

Rory E. Kraft, Jr.

Moral particularism is a theory of ethics advanced most prominently by Jonathan
Dancy. For the particularist the decision about what is the right action to take is always
situation dependent and arises out of the successful perception of the salient features of
the world. Since particularists believe not only that the morally correct action could
change depending upon which features are present in an instance, but also that the
individual features’ relative right-making and wrong-making weight could change, be
reversed, or perhaps be irrelevant, particularists are in need of a system wherein agents
can be educated into how to properly pick out saliencies and how individual features
come together to reveal the morally correct action.

Drawing upon an Aristotelian virtue based approach I propose a system of moral
education that focuses on exposure through laws to social norms, mentored guidance in
the selective rejection of those norms and laws, consideration of cases, observation and
questioning of mentors and models, and self~reflection Through this continual process
moral agents can come to see the features of the world (and the individual situations) that
allow them to determine for themselves what action is morally correct.

In the dissertation I explicate a theory of moral particularism and a virtue~based
education system to create a system of virtuous particularisrn that is able to educate
agents in how to be moral without relying upon principles or ordering of moral values. In

doing so I show how particularism and virtue theory can come together to create an

understanding not only of how we come to see what action is morally conect to take, but

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also how to understand and use in moral education instances where agents appear to act

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against moral reasoning.

 

Cornyrisht by
Rory E. Krafi, Jr.
2006

To Carolyn

Starting when they are little children and continuing as long as they live, they teach them
and correct them. As soon as a child understands what is said to him, the nurse, mother,
tutor, and the father himself fight for him to be as good as he possibly can, seizing on
every action and word to teach him and show him that this is just, this is unjust, this is
noble, that is ugly, this is pious, that is impious, he should do this, he should not do that.
If he obeys willingly, fine; if not, they straighten him out with threats and blows as if he
were a twisted, bent piece of wood.

- Plato, Protagoras 325c7 - d7

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While everyone seems to claim that it should go without saying, it never seems go
without saying that large works like dissertations do not come together easily. Perhaps
inevitably this is the case with this work. Many individuals beyond my committee helped
along the way, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in large ways.

Thanks to Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge for their helpful comments on my
critique of their work in my first chapter, Garrett Cullity for his clarification of his
account of possible moral particularism, and Jonathan Dancy for his timely assistance in
rethinking how prudential reasons function in the perception of moral shapes.

Both Debra Nails and Chet McLeskey put up with many questions about how to
best link together the various aspects of Aristotle’s moral education and actions which do
not conform with virtuous reasoning. Debra’s comments on an earlier draft of chapter
four assisted me greatly, and reinforced the large gap that remains between my work with
the Greeks and specialists in the ancient world. Chet’s receptiveness to my bouncing
ideas off of him was marvelous. A better officemate could not have fortuitously
occurred.

Special acknowledgement needs to be made for T richa Shivas’s assistance in this
project. She freely shared of her time, her work, and her musings on these issues. The
biggest debt I owe to her is not for her willingness to look over this, but for being a
marvelous fiiend throughout.

The final and largest acknowledgement is owed to my wife, Carolyn, who put up
with me being grumpy, distracted, and occasionally short-tempered throughout the

writing.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ....................................................................................................... ix
Notes on Citation ................................................................................................... x
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1
Chapter One: The Metaphysics of Moral Particularism ........................................ 5
Chapter Two: Dancy’s Theory and its Epistemic Shortcomings ......................... 39
Chapter Three: Aristotle’s Account of Moral Education .................................... 55
Aristotle’s Particularist Metaphysics ....................................................... 70
The Diffith Discernment of Shape in Invirtuous Actions ...................... 80
Chapter Four: The Problems of Using Aristotle .................................................. 83
Clarifying Aristotle’s Distinctions ............................................................ 93
Dancy’s Shape Theory ............................................................................ 114
Comparing Accounts .............................................................................. 1 19
Chapter Five: Confronting Objections, Facing a Dilemma ............................... 121
Formalized Orderings ............................................................................. 123
Limited Orderings ................................................................................... 125
An Epistemic Objection .......................................................................... 132
Avoiding the Horns ................................................................................. 137
Chapter Six: Virtuous Particularism .................................................................. 141
Works Cited ........................................................................................................ 155

viii

LIST OF F IGURBS

 

Figure Page
1. Possible Particularisms in Cullity’s Schema ................................................... 13
2. Preliminary Typology of Actions against Moral Reasoning .......................... 90
3. Augmented Typology ofActions against Moral Reasoning . - - - --l 14
4. Virtuous Particular-ism Typology of Actions against Moral Reasoning ........ 150

ix

NOTES ON CITATION

As much as possible, I have endeavored to follow standard conventions for citation of
texts. Below are explanations for the standard conventions which deviate fiom the
normal use of page numbers.

Citations to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas are handled in two manners. Citations to
his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics are by section number. The Summa
Theologiaz is cited by part, question, article. For example, a citation to Ia2m. 13, 6 is to
the first part of the second part (the “Prima Secundw”), question 13 (regarding choice),
article six (“Does a man choose necessarily or fieely?”). In all cases, the referent is to
Aquinas’ reply to his questions. This is to ensure that the content conforms to Aquinas’
own beliefs and is not simply a considered objection.

Aristotelian references are to Bekker line numbers, rather than page numbers. References
consist of a page number, a column letter, and a line number in the Immanuel Bekker
standard edition of the Greek text of Aristotle. The translations throughout are those in
the Jonathan Barnes edited Complete Works.

Kantian references are to the standard German edition of Immanuel Kant’s works, Kant ’s
Gesammelte Schrifren, by volume and page number. All references are to the recent
Cambridge translations into English.

Platonic references are to Stephanus line numbers, rather than page numbers. These line
numbers are standard across all translations and editions of Plato’s work and date back to
the 1578 Greek text of Plato’s work edited by Henri Estiene (in Latin, Stephanus). The
translations used throughout are those in the John Cooper edited Complete Works.

Citations to the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein are by aphorism number rather than page
number, with the exception of part II of the Philosophical Investigations where page
numbers are used.

INTRODUCTION

Since 1983, Jonathan Dancy has been advocating a moral theory which focuses
on the manner in which event-particular elements work in conjunction in order to create
an understanding of and motivation to do an ethical set. In the twenty years since
“Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties” was published, his metaphysical
account for his theory has been fleshed out and developed into a robust meta—ethical
account of how reasons, specifically moral reasons, operate.l His robust theory, laid out
most fully in Moral Reasons and Ethics Without Principles (1993 and 2004,
respectively), stays true to his initial stance that “ethical decisions are made case by case,
without the comforting support or awkward demands of moral principles.”2

In his early work, Dancy claimed that particularist epistemology would hold that
ethical agents “discern directly that individual acts are right, without needing any detour
through principles.”3 While he retains this vieWpoint, his fuller accounts have
emphasized the metaphysical, not epistemic, elements of his particularism. This presents
a possible problem: while Dancy has nicely worked out a theory with strong arguments
for why reasons must work the way he claims they do, he does not explain how
individual agents learn to use his theory to arrive at morally permissible actions. At best,
Dancy hints toward the need for “moral education“ or “serious training at an early
age.” While the majority of objections to Dancy’s strong particularism have focused on
1 Dancy explicitly states thatj‘Particularism is officially a doctrine in meta-ethical
theory.” (Ethics Without Principles, 190) I read this as a recognition that his work is not
intended to be action guiding in itself, but foundational for ethical theories.
2 Dancy, “Ethical Particularism...” 530.
3 Dancy, “Ethical Particularism...” 543.

4 Dancy, Moral Reasons 64.
5 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 49.

the metaphysics of his theory, the lack of a coherent explanation of how agents learn to
successfully implement his particularisrn leaves his account and all particularist accounts
open to epistemic objections regarding how one comes to have moral knowledge in the
absence of moral principles.6 In the following, I propose a solution to this epistemic
shortcoming which is in keeping with Dancy’s project specifically and strong
particular-ism generally. In order to address this objection I propose a manner of
augmenting Dancy’s theory with a process of moral education and training that borrows
fi'om Aristotle’s account of how an agent learns to be virtuous. In the first three chapters,
I examine the underlying metaphysics of moral particularism, and lay out the relevant
elements of Dancy and Aristotle’s respective theories to display the extent to which
Aristotle’s process of moral education completes Dancy’s account. I refer to this
combined theory as “virtuous particularism.”

A problem for this virtuous particularist position is that while Dancy has worked
out a metaphysical understanding of ethical action based upon the particulars of a
situation, Aristotle’s account of the various ways that an action fails to be virtuous is far
from clear. He moves back and forth between various conceptions of action taking, some
of which would be against virtue, others which would conform with it. Most notably in

Nicomachean Ethics, but also in Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle’s descriptions of actions

 

‘ I see this objection as distinct from Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith’s
epistemic concern that “we nwd moral principles to arrive at and justify our moral
judgements.” (Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 80) Their objection is questioning the strong
particularist rejection of principles; my concern is how we are able to make judgments in
the absence of these principles.

which appear to be non-virtuous7 are convoluted, confusing, and could be read as
contradictory to Dancy’s account. Understanding how to interpret this aspect of
Aristotle’s thought and determining the extent to which it meshes well with Dancy’s
particularism is vital for augmenting Dancy’s theory in this manner. If we cannot find a
way to resolve the tensions between the two accounts, then the augmentation that I
propose here is not tenable. For this reason I present in my fourth chapter a reading of
Aristotle’s account in light of Dancy’s distinctions.

In my fifth chapter, I confiont two classes of objections to my own theory. The
first class of objections comes from those who could claim that the account of moral
education that I ofi‘er is not in keeping with strong particularism, but instead is better
served to educate agents in any of a variety of moral theories which are morally
pluralistic by embracing multiple moral values or allow for multiple instantiations of
values which are all instantiations of a single value. In the midst of considering this
objection I consider in turn a) formal ordering approaches which provide
binding/permanent ordering of principles and b) “limited” ordering approaches such as
Rossian primafacie duties, Kagan’s pro tanto obligations, and other approaches which
provide limited and non-binding ordering of principles. The second major objection that I
consider is that my account still provides no methodology for discerning the features
which are morally salient in a situation from those which are not. In order to address this
objection I consider again the metaphysics of strong particularism and draw epistemic

support from Kent’s writings.

 

7 Strictly speaking, for Aristotle agents, and not actions, are virtuous. However, if we
consider those actions which will lead to an agent becoming virtuous in character as
“virtuous actions” it is far easier to speak about his theory.

In my final chapter, in order to more clearly delineate the theoretical boundaries
of virtuous particularism, I present both a summary and re-statement of virtuous
particularism as its own theory, noting only in passing what differentiates my work fi'om

others.

CHAPTER ONE:
The Metaphysics of Moral Particularism

Moral particularistsl tend to use two distinct types of arguments to support the
metaphysical underpinnings of their particularism. The first, a phenomenological
account argued largely through counterexamples, emphasizes the variability of the moral
valence of reasons. This account is generally applied to widely accepted moral principles
and is meant to display that a holistic understanding of the features present in moral
decisions is necessary; no single feature can always decide the morality of an action since
individual features of the world have variable moral valence which alter depending upon
which other features are present in a given situation.2

A non-moral example of how reasons work holistically is the sort of reasoning
process that one makes when considering the best driving route through a city while on a
cross-country road trip. Factors such as the time of day, familiarity with the city, amount
of gas in the tank, and relative confidence in the mechanical integrity of the car driven
would all function in mapping a route. While each attribute individually has a role to
play in making the decision, the best decision is made only by considering all of the

relevant elements collectively (some of which will have no impact on the consideration.)

 

1Iamspeakingbroadlyhereofthe generalprinciplesofparticularism. Assuch,Iam
lumping together weak particularists and strong particularists. Roger Crisp, Jonathan
Dancy, Frank Jackson, Margaret Little, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Phillip Pettit,
Joseph R32, and Michael Smith can all be said to be a member of the general family of
particularists, though their individual metaphysics and place on the “weak”/“strong”
specmrm varies.

2 A spirited debate is on-going among and with particularists as to ifall features have
variable moral valence. The snongest moral particularism entails a belief that all do;
weaker particularisms believe that most or perhaps only some do. Non-particularists
believe in the existence of at least one feamre with non-variable moral valence. These
distinctions are eXpanded and clarified in this chapter.

Further, each individual feature can serve in one situation as a reason for acting in one
manner and in an alternate manner in another situation. The right-making/wrong-making
valence of the features change depending upon the presence of any number of additional
features. For this reason a situation must be seen holistically in order to understand the
overall right action to take.

A moral example on the same lines is the manner in which agents stranded on the
top of a mountain following a plane crash should distribute resources.3 Beyond a simple
‘ desire for equitable distribution, many factors could be considered by agents. These
reason include the relative health of the parties, the calories extended in various rescue-
inducing attempts, as well as needs to preserve special skills. By considering holistically
the situation the moral decision may be to provide more food to those building a shelter, a
physician, or an radio engineer while withholding resources from those too ill to survive.
If we consider just one possible feature, for example a particular agent being a physician,“1
we can see that in most situations just being a physician does not-mean that one ought to
get more resources than a non-physician. However, given the rest of the factors involved
(most notably the need for someone who can provided medical care) the presence of this
feature could make it right to distribute resources unequally. Only after all features are
considered can the moral valence of each individual feature be determined. This first

argument for moral particularism emphasizes that moral reasoning, like all reasoning,

 

3’IarnthinkinghereoftheexperiencesoftheUruguayanrugbyteamstrandedinthe
Andes in the 1970s. Piers Reed’s account of their time in the mountains in his Alive was
made into a 1993 movie with the same name.

‘ In the real situation, a rugby player had taken some medical courses, but served as
doctor to those who survived the crash.

functions best when all factors are considereds; moral systems that over-emphasize
principles do so at the risk of advocating poor reasoning.

The second argument for moral particularism goes further and proposes that a list
of possible relevant features is not possible. This argument emphasizes the uncodifiable
nature of morality. Tin-hing again to the previous two emples (mapping a route and
distributing resources), it should be clear that both of the lists of relevant features I
provided were incomplete. Multiple additional features could be relevant; further, any
explication of additional features would also be incomplete. No complete listing of all
possible relevant features is possible. For example, in the non-moral case we might
expand the considered features to include such factors as the presence of a traveling
dignitary, the possibility of outstanding traffic tickets, and a passenger’s need to use a
restroom. Of come, this list could also be expanded to include a desire to avoid cities
that allow concealed weapons permits, or the desire to visit cities which have a museum
for Negro League Baseball history. There seems to be no end to the number of attributes
which could be considered relevant in this decision. The uncodifability thesis holds that
given the infinite variety of possible relevant features it is not possible to determine
before the fact what featmes are relevant. No list, or codification, of morally relevant
feattnes, principles, or complete set of rules is possible.

These two arguments, the first for a holism of reasons, the second for the

uncodifiable nature of morality, are best considered as two separate but interrelated

 

5 Of course, only in an idealized an abstract situation would all factors be accessible for
consideration. In practice we can only consider the finite set of factors we are both aware
of and believe impact the consideration. This is similar to the method of examination in
the sciences; ideally all variables would be measured, controlled, and tested in
determining a causal relationship. In practice we focus on those variables that we believe
(could) make a difference.)

aspects of particularism. It is debatable the extent to which the acceptance of holism
entails an acceptance of the uncodifiability thesis.6 Further, since the holism thesis is
almost exclusively argued for by use of counterexamples and it is quite easy (though not
necessary) to do the same for the uncodifiability thesis (as I have done here), it is far too
easy to conflate the two theses. A restatement of these two theses may serve to show
their distinct character. Particularists find largely based upon consideration of cases and
examples that individual features of the world seem to not have a fixed moral valence.
Since the moral valence of features varies with the presence or absence of other featln'es,
it is best to make moral decisions holistically or in light of all features of the situation
rather than just the presence (or absence) of some feature or set of featmes. The second
argument appears in many ways to grow out of holism, and finds that further it is not
possible to establish a list or codification of what features make a difference in the overall
moral valence of possible actions. This argument for the uncodifiable nature of morality
also utilizes cases and counterexamples, but can also be supported based upon theoretical
accounts of the possibility of completeness. I examine these two arguments more
thoroughly after discussing how the acceptance or rejection of these arguments affects a
thinker’s position on a Spectrum from weak to strong particulist.

Proponents of both arguments taken together can be understood as strong
particularists who hold that moral decisions are made holistically upon consideration of
disparate and uncodifiable features. In the following, I refer to this strong position as
uncodifiable holism. Weak particularists support one claim while rejecting the other.

For example, a weak particulalist might believe that we cannot know all possible moral

 

6 Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge’s rejection of this connection is considered later in
this chapter.

features (thus accepting the lmcodifiability thesis) and believe that in all situations the
presence of an ‘involves killing an innocent person’ feature is always wrong-making
(thus denying the universal variability of moral valence). For this weak particularist a
holistic understanding does not assist in determining the invariant moral valence of
features though it may allow an agent to discern a featlne not previously considered. An
alternate variety of weak particularist is someone who accepts the variable nature of
moral valences, but denies that the uncodifiability thesis. She could hold that the right-
making nature of a moral feature is not fixed and depends upon the presence (or absence)
of other features. However, she believes that it is possible to know which other possible
feattn'es have the ability to change the valance of the ‘original’ feature. Strong
particularists believe that both of these possibilities for weak particularism (as well as
other more nuanced varieties of weak particularism) are flawed because they do not
properly accept the strong metaphysical arguments for each position.

An alternate understanding of the distinction(s) between various types of
particularisms is offered by Garrett Cullity. In his examination of particularisrn Cullity
parses these arguments difi'erently than by looking at the holism/uncodifiability theses
used above. In his system he separates “particularism about principles fiom particularism
about reasons.”7 In his schema both varieties of particularism can be understood as weak
or strong depending on the extent to which one denies that general principle are none
trivially linked to moral verdicts or denies that a moral consideration in one decision is a
moral consideration in all decisions.8 The former denial is a denial of moral principles;

the latter is a denial of invariant moral reasons for action. A weak principle-particularist

7 Cullity, 170.
’ Cullity, 169-»170.

would hold that there are general, descriptively specified reasons “that always count in
favour of a given moral verdict, although perhaps not always decisively so.”9 W.D.
Ross’ ethics of prima facie duties is an excellent example of this weak particularism.
When present, a conditional duty imposes an obligation on the ethical agent; since
multiple conditional duties may be present, it is only after consideration of all the morally
significant duties that the agent’s duty proper is determinable.lo A “stronger” principle-
particularist “denies the existence of conect principles of this more modest form.”ll
Margaret Little explains how one could deny this possibility by pointing out that we
cannot tell the variable worth of potential principles by “holding other variables constant,
for it matters what the substantive content of those variables was in the first place?“2
Moral claims and moral principles are anchored to the individual cases they arise in and
we cannot separate individual feattn-es from the rest to determine the decisive moral
principle. The “strongest kind of particularist about principles” holds that every feature
of the world, including “even ‘thick’ moral properties such as that a particular action can
be understood as cruel, has variable valency?” As Mark Lance and Margaret Little note,
considering consensual sexual S&M practices can cause us to see that in some
circumstances the “valences of certain morally significant features of acts” switch from
mung-making to right-making. "

In contrast to particularism about principles, which focuses on the possibility of

general principles nonstrivially—Iinked to verdictive moral properties, Cullity believes that

 

9 Cullity, 171.

1° Ross, Right and the Good 19 — 20.

" Cullity, 171.

‘2 Little, “Moral Generalities Revisited” 290.
'3 Cullity, 171.

1‘ Lance and Little, 18.

10

 

particularism about reasons focuses on the extent to which if a feature is a consideration
for action in one instance then it must be a reason for action in other instances. Weak
reason-particularists believe that “there are some considerations that are reasons in some
contexts but not in others.”15 For example, the fact that a patient is a Jehovah’s Witness
might be a reason to withhold blood transfusion treatment, but not a reason to withhold
respiratory assistance.16 The patient’s religious beliefs provide a relevant reason to act in
a particular manner in the first situation, but provide no guidance in the second.
“Stronger” reason-particularists hold that “every descriptive consideration can be a
reason, but all descriptive reasons sometimes change their normative valency?” As
Little notes, while one may concede that “‘usually’ or ‘for the most part’ lying is wrong-
making” we acknowledge that even lying has instances where lying does not function in
this manner.18 The “strongest” reason~particularist believes that “all non-verdictive
reasons (even those supplied by ‘thick[’] moral properties such as cruelty) sometimes
change their normative valency.”19 The distinction between the “stronger” and
“strongest” reason-particularists is in their understanding of the role of ‘thick’ moral
properties. A property like cruelty is both evaluative and descriptive, and thus would be
in play in the “stronger” reason-particularism.20 In the “strongest” reason-particularism

“—

'5 Cullity, 171.
'6 I am assuming for the sake of the example that one would generally accept an adult
Jehovah’s Witness patient’s request to do undertake treatments which involve blood as
they believe that these treatrnents are immoral.

” Cullity, 171.
'8 Little, “Moral Generalities Revisited” 302. As will be discussed later, Kant would
disagree with this example, but his denial of this example displays nicely how he is not a

'cularist.

9 Cullity, 171.
2° Cullity in private correspondence assisted me greatly in parsing his categories in a way
consistent with his intent.

11

we see that even these ‘thick’ properties can have variable valence. In Ethics Without
Principles, Dancy points out how ‘thick’ aesthetic properties, such as symmetry,
painterliness, or imaginativeness sometimes better a work, but that they can “sometimes
be out of place?” This aesthetic example illuminates how reasons to value an action in
one instance (“promotes symmetry”/“alleviates cruelty”) may not always be a reason to
value an action in a similar instance.

Cullity’s taxonomy allows for multiple relationships between the different weak,
“stronger” and “strongest” varieties of both principle and reason particularism. Two
possibilities that Cullity’s schema does not allow are the combinations of weak principle /
“strongest” reason and “strongest” principle / weak reason particularisms. Culfity states
that “Strong particularism about moral reasons entails and is entailed by particularism
about principles.”22 (While he uses “strong” here, I believe he must mean his own
“strongest.” Otherwise, we are left with only weak and strong particularists and his
distinctions become useless.) The “strongest” particularists in his account would be
strongly particular about both principles and reasons. However, his account allows one
to be a weak principle and “stronger” reason particularist. In this possibility, one could
believe that some feature always, though non-decisively, counts as a reason for action
when it is present. But the valence of that reason could be either right or wrong-making.
An example of such a feature might be the feature ‘is a taking of a single life.’ This

feature can be wrong-making (such as when considering random murder) or right-making

 

2‘ Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 76.
22 Cullity, 172.

12

(such a heroic/martyr-Iike sacrifice of ones life in order to save multiple lives”). Of
course in many situations, such as in determining if one can break an appointment this
feature is absent entirely. In each situation when the feature is present it serves as a non-
decisive feature, but the valence of the feature differs.24
Cullity’s account ofi‘ers the possibility of more moderate positions on both
principles and reasons, but at the cost of complicating the particularist picture
lmnecessarily. Given his concession that the strongest particularism of either reason or
principle variety entails the other strongest particularism we are left with the following
particularist possibilitieszzs
Hm 1: Possible Particularisms in Cullity’s Schema

weak reason & weak principle particularism

weak reason & “stronger” principle particularism

“stronger” reason & “stronger” principle particularism

“stronger” reason & weak principle particularism

“strongest” reason and “strongest” principle particularism
The first of these possibilities corresponds to the first weak pertieulerism described above
(those who accept that morality is uncodifiable while holding that some features have
invariant moral valence). The final possibility corresponds to my strong particularist who
behaves moral decisions are made holistically upon consideration of disparate and
uncodifiable features. While it is possible to understand the middle positions (as

evidenced by my above parsing of the weak principle / “stronger” reason particularist), it

 

23 I am assuming here that most people would find that this form of self-sacrifice is
somehow “more right” than the sacrificing of another to save an equal number of lives.
Ifthis moral intuition is correct than self—sacrifice would have right—making features
thoughitstillcanbeunderstoodas ‘atakingofasingle life.’

7" There could be other situations, such as a soldier’s battlefield actions which may be
ones in which the presence of the feature would have no relevance. As such the feature
would have no impact on the moral valence of the action considered.

2‘ Excluded from these possibilities are non-particularists of all varieties.

13

is unclear what theoretical clarity comes from doing so. The difference between the
weak principle / “stronger” reason particularist and the “stronger” principle / weak reason
particularist comes down to a parsing of the variable nature of a reason. The weak
principle and “stronger” reason particularist holds that some features are pertinent to all
decisions in which they are present, though in a non-decisive manner and with variable
moral valence. In comparison, the “stronger” principle and weak reason particularist
denies that any descriptive feature functions in all moral decisions in which it is present,
butbelievesthataparticularmoral feature isareasontoactinaparticularmannerina
specific set of situations. The first “mix ” particularist possibility believes that some
features operate as reasons in some situations but not in all. The second “mixed”
particularist possibility holds that some features operate as reasons in some situations but
not in all. These particularisms both arrive at the same position. While they may arrive
there from different metaphysical beliefs about reasons, they both amount to a weak
particularism. Cullity’s account of possible moral particularism needlessly complicates
the possibilities beyond weak and strong particularism. Since his intent is to argue for
weak reason particularism,“ he does not seem to be concerned with the possibility that
weak reason / “stronger” principle and “stronger” reason / weak principle particularisms
though metaphysically distinct are practically identical. However, his schematic can be
useful if one conceives of it as a sequence of educating individuals into how to better be a
strong particularist. (I return to this point in my discussion of moral education.)

In the errplication of my account of virtuous particularism, I begin with a strong
particularism. As a leading proponent of strong particularism, Dancy’s writings provide

A A A“.

2‘ Cullity, 173.

14

an extensive metaphysical account of strong particularism. As such, I utilize his theory
as the beginning point for my own, though I am throughout conceiving of virtuous
particularism as addressing a deficiency in strong particularism generally. However, the
epistemic objection that I am answering could be presented to Dancy’s account
specifically. Dancy’s particularism is perhaps the strongest of all strong particularisms;
he embraces uncodifiable holism”, holds that principles carry no more weight than other
salient features”, and believes that all features of a situation have variable valence”. In
the following, I examine both the phenomenological account and the arguments for
uncodifiable nature of morality to support Dancy’s metaphysical argument for a strong
particularism.

Particularists’ phenomenological accounts of apparent exceptions to generally
held moral principles are intended to show the variability of the moral valence of a
feature. In most standard conceptions of morality, the presence of a feature always
flmctions in the same manner. A Utilitarian will always find that the foreseeable
additional pain as a consequence of an action reduces the overall moral correctness of
that action in all instances.30 For Kantians the absence of duty as the motivating factor of
an action precludes in all instances that action from possessing moral worth.31 While

particularists may not deny that some features do have invariant valence”, they believe it

 

2"ooncydocsnotnppeortolinlrthesetwo featurestogether. Thelmcodifiablenatureof
morality is argued for most recently in Ethics Without Principles at 11 -- 12; holism is '
defended in Ethics Without Principles at 112 — 113.

28 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 34 - 36.

29 Dancy, “Can a Particularist. . 61.

3° Mill, 7.

3‘ Kant, Groundwork 4:397 - 401.

32 Dancy may be admitting their existence for purely rhetorical reasons. I can find no
instance where he preposes an instance of a feature with an invariant moral valiance. The

15

is impossible to find enough of these features to reason properly. (As Dancy states,
Mcularists “do not deny the possibility of finding some exceptionless general truths
linldng descriptive predicates on the left with moral predicates on the right.“3 What they
deny “is the possibility of finding (a sufficient range of) truths of this sort that specify
features that make actions right” or wrong.34 These predicates can vary from the explicit
moral predicate “is wrong making” to predicates which could be either descriptive or
moral in nature such as “is cruel”) While Dancy’s admission appears odd at first glance
for strong particularists to make, I read these moves toward allowing for the presence of
some invariant moral features as both in keeping with particularists desires to avoid
making universal claims and as attempts to attract individuals who are committed to
some particular principle but who otherwise acknowledge the metaphysical account
underlying strong particularism. We can read Dancy on this point in two manners.

Either he is claiming that even if there were some ethical principles we do not need them
to function ethically, or he is remaining committed to a strong metaphysical particularism
by refraining from making universal claims. Since the outcome of each case is to
conceive of an ethics that operates independently of principles, it is safe to categorize
Dancy as a strong particularist (a “strongest” reason and principle particularist in
Cullity’s schema.)

Particularism most often show the variability of moral valence of relevant features
by calling upon counter examples to proposed invariant principles/features. For example,
closest lusts; ofhamihg such a feature is when hestatesthat “probably the intentional
inflicting of undeserved pain, which necessarily constitute[s] the same sort of reason[s]
wherever” it occurs is not sensitive to context. (“Particularist’s Progress” 131)

33 Dancy, “Can a Particularist. . .” 61.
3“ ibid.

16

if we considered the claim that purposefully inflicting pain upon others is wrong we
would find wide agreement in the moral tradition. Not only does this conform to the
Utilitarian ethic, but it also calls upon common intuitions that pain is considered bad. We
could even utilize a Kantian test of universalizing the maxim behind a pain inducing
action to show that we ought to avoid inflicting pain on others. There seems to be good
grounds for believing that the feature of causing pain for others is morally wrong-making
in all instances. For example, consider a situation wherein one agent stabs another
seventeen times with a butcher’s knife. The wrongness of this act for the first agent (the
stabber) is displayed by the purposeful infliction of pain on another. This example
illustrates an instance where inflicting pain on another is wrong—making.

However, contrary to this position, the particularist could point to situations
where pain does not have this moral valence. For example, we could say that an athletic
trainer, Marine drill sergeant, and dentist all inflict pain upon others in instances which
do not carry any moral weight (strength training, conditioning, and root canals,
respectively.) Of course, each of these instances can to a large degree be thought of as
consensual. To that end, Dancy points to an occasion where be caused “considerable
pain” to his daughter when extracting “(not entirely with her consent)” from her foot the
spines ofa sea-urchin she had trod upon35 While we might not go so far as to say that
this pain was right-makin , it does not appear to be wrong-making.36 Here we have

3’ Dancy, Moral Reasons 65.
3‘ It could be claimed, as James Lindemann Nelson has in conversation with me, that
given the possibility of not causing pain but getting substantially the same results, the
moral choice would be to avoid the paineinducing option. While I am unsure of the
applicability of this in the military training possibility, where endlning pain appears to
have some training worth, I certainly think that this counterexample points to the
necessity of considering holistically the morality of the situation. Dancy’s pain-inducing

17

instances where the presence of the same moral feature (purposeful infliction of pain) is
wrongvmaking and neutral in valence. We need not find an instance where inflicting pain
is right-making to Show the variability of moral valence; we already have displayed that
the feature is not always wrong-making (i.e. does not always have negative moral
valence.) Particularists believe that any attempt to display the invariant moral valence of
any given feature will succumb to similar counter-arguments. Through consideration of
various cases we can find particular situations where the moral valence of individual
features change.

Based upon these and similar arguments, Dancy and other particularists have
come to embrace that moral reasons can have a variable valence. Something which
serves as a reason to make a given action in one instame right (a right—making feature), in
other circumstances would have no right-making weight or perhaps even serve to provide
reason against taking the action (a wrong-making feature). Given the particular nature of
the connection between features and their potential right-making status, Dancy rejects the
usefulness of ethical principles in decision-making processes because principles by their
nature are general.” As he states, “A principle-based approach to ethics is inconsistent
with the holism of reasons.”38 By rejecting the decision-determining properties of
principles, Dancy places them on par with all other features of a situation. In order to

 

action would appear to be wrong if he could have removed the spines without pain,
provided that doing so would not otherwise endanger his daughter. As he notes in a
possible world with a pain-free alternative causing the process of removing the spines
followed in the actual world would be “wrong, wrong because of the pain it caused, and
the worse for the pain.” (Ethics Without Principles 209). However, in the actual world
there was no alternative and holism explains how the action, while potentially wrong in
another world, is not wrong in the actual world because the totality of the features of the
world display that there is no better alternative available.

3’ Dancy, “Particularist’s Progress” 135.

38 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 77.

18

determine what is morally right to do in a given situation an agent should consider all of
the features of the situation. In other words, she should evaluate holistically the current
state of affairs. (1 describe Dancy’s more substantial explanation of this evaluation later
in this chapter.)

Holistic accounts are not limited to particularists, nor is holism merely appropriate
for moral reasoning. A non-moral instance of reasoning is provided by Dancy. When
one perceives an object in fiont of them which is red, normally this perception would be
reason to believe that there was a red object before oneself. However, if “I also believe
that I have recently taken a drug that makes blue things look red and red things look blue,
the appearance of a red-looking thing before me is reason for me to believe that there is a
blue, not a red, thing before me.”39 For strong particularists holism is accepted for all
reasoning attempts, not just instances of moral reasoning. The metaphysics of reasons
leads particularists to holism. Relying upon holistic awareness of the featmes of a
situation is not unique to particularism. Marilyn Frye in Politics of Reality famously
compares oppression to a bird cage. Focusing on each individual wire does little to allow
one to see the reality of oppression; it is only by seeing the larger structure composed of
manywiresthatwecanseeboththestrucmreofthccageandthebarriersto freedomthat
each individual wire working together creates.40 This account relies upon a holistic

evaluation of a situation", and (at least in this initial explanation) is not explicitly

 

’9 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 74.

4° Frye, 4 ~ 7.

41' Frye refers to the holistic evaluation as the macrosc0pic view, as opposed to the
microscopic view of examining each feature/wire individually.

19

ethical.42 The ethical aspects of the situation arise not fiom the consideration of the
individual elements, but rather from the understanding of how they collectively function
together (as a bird cage or an Oppressive society) to prevent escape, flourishing, and self-
determination.

One may object to accepting holism on the grounds that even if some features
have variable moral valence, not all features function in this way. A likely possibility is
that just the very example that Dancy was willing to admit may be invariant (“the
intentional inflicting of undeserved pain”)43 diaplays that some features do have invariant
valence. There are two clear answers to this objection. First, the particularist can hold
that if some (specific) featm-es do have invariant valence, “this will be because of the
particular reasons they are.”44 The invariant nature of these specific features arises fiom
their content, not the nature of moral reasoning. One way to read this reSponse is as a
claim that those who find that reasons function with invariant valence based upon a single
reason functioning in this manner have committed a category mistake by moving from
the particular to the general. Just because the content of one feature may be such that it
operates with invariant moral valence, does not mean that all reasons Operate similarly.
(In logical terms, we cannot properly superalternate from claims about one object to
universal claims about a class of objects.) Further, a particularist would bald that it is the
content of this specific reason, not the nature of how reasons function, that leads us to

believe the feature has invariant moral valence. Perhaps most linportantly, particularism

 

‘2 By this I mean that evaluating an actual bird cage in this fashion is not an ethical
evaluation; clearly, the metaphorical birdcage that Frye is using to discuss gender

0 pression is.

‘ Dancy, “Particularist’s Progress” 131. He also Speaks of “gratuitous pain on unwilling
victims” as a (probably parallel) possibility. (“Particularist’s Progress” 136.)

“ Dancy, “Particularist’s Progress” 136.

20

rejects not the possibility of finding a unitary reason of this sort, but instead rejects the
possibility of “finding (a sufficient range of) truths of this sort that specify features that
make actions right.”45 This response avoids the category mistake and places the
particularist phenomenological argument for holism as distinct from attempts to refute a
position “by producing one counterexample.”46 While the same objection could be
made about particularists’ use of counter-examples, they sidestep the category mistake
issue by refusing make any universal claims. (As such, Dancy generally tempers his
language so that he claims that most features have variable moral valence," or claims that
any feature could in principle change its valence.48 The stance that all features have
variant valences is only suggested.) The second response to this objection is that
attempts to find moral reasoning atomistic while believing otherwise in holistic reasoning
is unattractive.49 Further, since Dancy denies that atomistic reasoning or generalism
about theoretical reasons is accepted by anyone,50 he suggests that holism is the best
approach to adopt for morality. (His refutation of atomism/generalism in theoretical
reasoning does not rely solely on the lack of acceptance. He also provides plausible
examples of how we function holistically in those reasoning instances.S 1)

The second metaphysical argument for moral particularism rests upon the

acceptance of holism, but moves beyond this acceptance to show that we cannot codify

 

‘5 Dancy, “Can a Particularist. . 61.

‘6 Dancy, “Particularist’s Progress” 136.
47 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 81.
48 Dancy, “Particularist’s Progress” 130.
49 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 77.
5° Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 74.
5' ibid.

21

the relationships between features of the world and their right-making nature.52 or
course. if one accepts a radical particularism wherein all features have variable moral
valence then there is no need for further discussion. If we cannot show an invariant link
between a feature and the overall tightness of an action then we cannot put forth even a
limited listing of right-making attributes. However, weaker versions of particularism
which retain the possibility of some features having invariant moral valence also can hold
that it is not possible to determine a list of these attributes. This belief that we cannot list,
or codify, all features which are potentially relevant to moral decision making is referred
to as the uncodifiability thesis.

Acceptance of the uncodifiability thesis is the acceptance that we cannot provide a
complete listing of relevant features and their relationship to each other. That is, just as
in non-moral situations we cannot specify in the abstract in which situations it is
preferable to drive through or around a city, we cannot specify in the abstract in which
situations we should distribute scarce resources unequally. Both the non-moral and
moral situations can only be properly understood in their particular context; attempts to
pre-determine acceptable actions will necessarily be at a disadvantage since they would
omit features not discernable beforehand. The uncodifiability thesis holds that in light of
the incomplete nature of any listing or ranking of features, we should acknowledge that
we cannot create such a listing at all. Not all particularists agree that morality is

uncodifiable, but the acceptance of the uncodifiability thesis makes one a strong

A A.

52 Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge argue that arguments which attempt to link holism
with uncodifiability are weak. I disagree, and explain my disagreement below.

22

particularist.53

One argument for the uncodifiable nature of morality is to display via examples
that we cannot linguistically capture the content of the purported
rides/standards/principles of morality.54 We can start out by returning to the example
used above of avoiding pain. While generally we might say that the infliction of pain on
another is morally wrong-making, we ought not make this claim in this manner because
of just the variable valence pointed out previously. To account for personal trainers,
Marine drill sergeants and dentists we could modify this claim to involve the consent of
those upon whom the pain is being induced. However, we still have the problematic case
of medically treating those who object in some manner to the pain involved in the
treatment (as in Dancy’s daughter and the removal of sea~urchin’s needles). Cullity
proposesthatwecaninsteadscrapthis wholeapproachandconsiderthewrong—making
aspect to occur when “inflicting suffering on others for your own enjoyment?”
However, this seems to leave out the possibility of consensual cases of sadormsochism.
Perhaps Cullity’s claim could be modified to include the need for consent in pdn
inducing actions. Revising or specifying the principle in this manner seems to avoid the
difficult cases of sadomasochists. However, if we accept this amendment then questions
about so-called Ulysses contracts could be raised (wherein one initially agrees to an
action and stipulates that later attempts to withdraw consent are to be ignored)

Resolving this difficulty would have to require a fuller conception of consent than we

 

‘3 This dispute about the (un)codifable nature of morality is at the heart of disagreements
between Jonathan Dancy and Frank Jackson, Phillip Path, and Michael Smith (among
others) and is discussed below.

54 For ease of reading, hereafter I refer to all of these possibilities as principles.

55 Cullity, 182.

23

have previously used. In any case, arguments by example like these tend to devolve into
further and more complicated attempts to refine a principle in light of particular situations
in order to save a role for the principle.

Refinement of individual principles will fail because it seems inevitable that some
additional complication of that feature had not been considered. With the exception of
Kantians and other deontologists who believe that a proper rule can have no exceptions,
our intuitions about moral reasons seem to indicate that any principle will require quite a
bit of refinement. (Kant famously held that one has no moral right to lie even to someone
who is threatening harm to another.”) The process of displaying the impossibility of
understanding even a single feattne by continuing to add even more complexity to a
situation relies upon the particulars of odd situations to draw upon this common intuition.
The increasingly refined principle is always refined because of the presence in some
hypothetical of a particular feature which seems relevant. This approach, while non-
theoretical, relied upon strong particularism because it is exactly the particulars of the
situation that will always complicate the attempted use of any principle. The
uncodifiablity thesis can be understood as stating that ethical principles can be
understood only vaguely and incompletely. Further, our inability to properly formulate a
single principle displays that we will be unable to determine a complete listing of features
which are relevant. Strong particularism unifies this idea with the holism of reasons to
advocate that an agent should just examine holistically the situation and determine the

right action to take.

 

’6 Kant, “On a Supposed Right...” 8:426.

24

A more theoretical argument for the uncodifiability of morality could be made
that we cannot ever establish our list of principles because there is no end to the possible
test cases. In the absence of such a closed set of test cases, we cannot determine the
competence of any agent in using a list; without a complete list of possible cases we will
not know if our list is complete. In absence of such a complete list, we cannot require
that moral competence include the ability to determine, in practice or in principle, which
moral principles are relevant prior to encountering the situation. This argument draws
upon Wittgenstein (and Kripke’s Wittgenstein) in order to make some strong claims
about our abilities to learn rules. A rule must go beyond explaining what to do in
instances of which we are already aware. This claim is backed up by Wittgenstein’s
consideration of making mistakes in learning rules: we cannot tell that a rule has been
learned badly until is has been tested in a case that the learner did not previously lrnow.57
Of course, as there are an infinite number of lmencmmtered situations, we have a real
problem in determining how far to test a rule before we can say that someone knows the
hue.” 1n the field of mathematics we cannot be sure that the rule of addition has been
understood unless the rule has been tested against a large set of possibilities — including
possibilities beyond single, double, triple digits.59 Even at this point, we have no way of
knowing that the rule itself has been grasped; it is possible that some other, rather similar,
rule has been learned.

This uncertainty about grasping a rule leads to Saul Kripke’s skeptical paradox.

Simply put, Kripke points out that Wittgenstein (or at least “Wittgenstein’s argument as it

 

57 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §143.
58 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §l45.
59 cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §185.

25

struck Kripke’m) does not allow any rule to be understood. We cannot be sure that when
we learned the rule for ‘plus’ we were not actually learning the rule for ‘quus’ (which is
quite similar to ‘plus’ up to a certain point, after which the results differ.)61 The skeptical
paradox is drawn from a passage wherein Wittgenstein worries that “no come of action
could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord
with the rule.”62

Paul Boghossian tmderstands Kripke as offering up two considerations with his
skeptical paradox. First, there is no limit on the number of “truths about how I ought to
apply the term, namely to just the members of this set of triples and not to others, if I am
to use it in accord with its meaning?“ In essence, since there are infinite possible
understandings of a term, we cannot discern which meaning is the ‘correct’ one without
allowing for unforeseen cases. The second consideration focuses on the normativity of
meaning. Boghossian states that “if I mean something by an expression, then the
potentialinfinityofuuthsthataregeneratedasaresultalenormative truths: thereare
truths about how I ought to apply the expression, if I am to apply it in accord with its
meaning, not truths about howl will apply it?“ Where the first consideration focused on
demarcating the set of cases in which the term applies, the second consideration focuses
on cases to which the term should apply. One consideration wonders how to tell ‘plus’
from ‘quus’; the other wonders, given the existence of rules for ‘plus’ and ‘quus,’ when
we should use each. Strong particularists can utilize these rule-learning difficulties to
6° Kripke, S.
6‘ Kripke, 8 -- 9. (The discussion on this point actually continues through Kripke, but this
section is where it is most succinctly laid out.)
‘2 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §201.

‘3 Boghossian, 509.
‘4 ibid

26

show that we cannot codify morality because we have no way of knowing when we have
learned the proper principle, and even if we did come to know that we had learned the
principles, we would not know when to apply them. If we remain uncertain about both
aspects (the knowing and the application) of a codified list of principles, it is not clear
thatwereallyhave codified anything. Afterall,thepoint ofsuchalistwasexactlyto
knowwhattodo inagiven situation andatbestwe facethe possibilityofhavingalist
but not knowing how to use it.65

Margaret Little acknowledges that particularism can induce “a distinct sense of
philosophical queasinees,”‘56 but attempts to show that Wittgenstein can ofi‘er us
something like a philosophical Alka-Seltzer. While the uncodifiability thesis gains some
support from the Wittgensteinian rule-following considerations, particularism gains
fin'ther support from language-game concepts. While our awareness of mathematical
rules may be only approximate and lmcertain, we do share “things such as
understandings, skills, and practices, that outstrip finite sets of propositions.”67 We may
not be able to learn principles, but we can learn “to become competent with the concept”
such that we can use it under most normal circumstances.“ In essence, we can utilize
useful generalizations but we cannot say that we have knowledge of the truth of these

generalizations. Even though these generalizations seem to be true, Wittgenstein would

 

‘5 It is in this last aspect that the rule learning considerations in ethics and mathematics
seems to converge. We may be able to say that the rules of mathematics are codifiable,
though it can be lmrd to tell if one has really learned their proper application. Kripke’s
Wittgenstein focuses on that difficulty. A strong moral particularist can use the same
considerations to display how it can be hard to codify ethics because if we cannot test for
understanding of a set of rules/principles, then the set cannot be said to be codified.

66 Little, “Wittgensteinian Lessons. . .” 168.

67 Little, “Wittgensteinian Lessons. . .” 169.

‘8 Little, “Wittgensteinian Lessons. . 170.

27

be quick to point out that it does not follow that they are true};9 Fluther, while we
“recognize normal circmnstances” under which these generalizations hold we “cannot
precisely describe” these circumstances.70 “At most, we can describe a range of
abnormal” circumstances.71

For the strong particularist, moral reasoning is like a game played with the rules
discerned as the game is played.72 Moral concepts understood in a particularist manner
may be blurred or indistinct but often an indistinct concept is “exactly what we need.”73
The proper test for these indistinct concepts is to see the extent to which they are useful.
To the extent that the working-concepts “are too impoverished, thin, or conflicting to
’ reach a modicum of consensus, then we have formd grounds for concluding that the
discourse does not, in fact, describe the world.”74 Little’s approach, which emphasizes
the Wittgensteinian possibilities of understanding our practices as language-games,
allows particularists to both accept the uncodifiability thesis and still retain some role for
what can be termed “generally morally salient” features. Our understanding of these
features being relevant in most situations is not a codification of their worth. Further, by
bringing in the discmsive element of ethics this approach allows one to address partially
how to learn which features are salient while still accepting uncodifiable holism.

An attractive outcome of this Wittgensteinian argument for the uncodifiability
thesis is that this approach addresses how it is that agents are able to “go on” ethically

without needing to explain how they come to understand the rules they follow.

 

‘9 Wittgenstein, 0n Certainty §2.

70 Wittgenstein, 0n Certainty §27.

7‘ ibid.

72 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §83.
73 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §71.
7‘ Little, “Wittgensteinian Lessons...” 174.

28

Competence with ethical terms is ever challenged and no definitive knowledge is ever
reached. Further, this approach emphasizes that perception of what makes a particular
case different from other cases. This awareness of the particular and of the importance of
the ability to perceive what makes this case different from that case is both in keeping
with strong particularism and reaches back to an Aristotelian emphasis on moral
education as a process of perception sharpening. Proponents of this Wittgensteinian
approach believe that we cannot explicate or codify the rules that we use, though we are
able to “go on” without a firm footing in explicit rules.

Jackson, Pettit, and Smith have objected to arguments for the uncodifiability
thesis by calling for an acknowledgement that we can discern patterns of valence, even if
we cannot completely codify.” (While Dancy initially referred to the trio from Canberra,
Australia, as the “Cranberries,”76 he later amended this label to “Canberrans.”77 In the
following, I adopt the more recent convention.) The Canberrans accept the
Wittgensteinian rule-learning objection, but note that we are able (generally) to
understand to what the predicate ‘is right’ refers.78 We are able to find the referent of the
predicate because we utilize our awareness of patterns of regularity that, perhaps, do not
rise to level of rules of codification.” The perceived commonality of the features must
entail an acceptance of a pattern of rightvmaking features because otherwise “every new

case would call for decision, and any decision would be as good semantically speaking,

 

7’ While apparently an epistemic objection, they hold that their objection “turns more on
semantic and metaphysical considerations” than epistemic ones. (Jackson, Pettit, and
Smith, 81 .)

7‘ Dancy, “Can the Particularist. . 60.

7’ Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 109.

7‘ Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 87.

79 Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 82 ~ 83.

29

as any other.”80 The acceptance of patterns, and thus a weak-codification. does not mean
that decisions are always made on the basis of these protOoprinciples. They suggest that a
non-moral example of examining sentences for grammatical correctness displays how the
pattern approach works: “sometimes we do best to go by the fact that the sentence ‘looks
flmny’, and sometimes by the fact that it violates a principle” but in both cases we can see
a pattern of grammatical acceptability emerging.In Agents with awareness of these
patterns use them, as appropriate, in determining how to categorize the features of the
world. They hold that our ability to discern patterns of fit, even if we cannot pinpoint in
all circumstances what makes a case fit the pattern, shows that morality is in principle
codifinble.“2 Thus, they reject the lmcodifiability principle. However, by accepting that
moral decisions are made on a case by case basis and that resolving the patterns involves
an awareness of the features of the situation, they accept holism. They believe, however,
that holism will allow for codification of moral principles.83 While they would reject the
label (and they do by referring to themselves as “principle-ins“), in both the
strong/weak schema I presented, and in Cullity’s ordering, the Canberrans should be
considered weak particularists.

Dancy’s response to the Canberrans occurs in two ways. First, he states that even
if they were correct about the possibility for discerning patterns in moral reasoning, the

existence of the patterns would only show that “descriptive specification of the right-

 

” Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 88.

3‘ Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 91.

‘2 ibid

‘3 Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 98 — 99.
‘4 Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, 99.

30

making relation” would be shown.“ We can accept a description of the relation without
accepting “the existence of a descriptive specification of tightness, or of the right-making
properties?“ (As it happens, virtuous particularism relies upon an acceptance of just this
sort of description of the relationship between properties and right—making.) In essence,
Dancy’sfirstresponseto the Canberrans isto statethatthepattemsthey referto do not
provide an understanding of what makes a right-making feature right-making. The
Canberran patterns might show a general relationship between certain ‘thick’ moral
properties like “is an instance of cruelty” or “is an instance of pain inducement” and an
overall moral valence, but cannot determine in the abstract if a specific case conforms to
the pattern or not.87 Additionally, we cannot tell which, if any, of the ‘thick’ moral
properties are related, and in what fashion they would be related, to the ‘thin’ moral
properties of tightness, wrongness, etc. Their patterns merely describe the relationship
between the features, not the explanatory connection between them. Further, given the
complexity of placing a particular event in the pattern as shown in the first argument for
uncodifiability we may find that general understandings of these patterns are useless for
moralreasoning. Justbecauseweknowthatalightwhencastuponawallwillpresenta
general pattern of illumination, we cannot determine in the abstract if a specific spot on
thewallwillbeilluminatedtoaspecificdegree. Inordertodetermine ifaspecific spotis
lit, or if a Specific action is morally correct, we would need to consider the salient
features of that Situation, not our general awareness of the regular patterns of

morality/photodynalnics.

 

‘5 Dancy, “Can the Particularist...” 63.
‘6 ibid
’7 Dancy, “Can the Particularist. . .” 62.

31

Dancy’s second response to the Canberrans is to work through two models of how
one can acquire competence in a skill of discernment without relying upon a prineiple to
make decisions. Both examples (a connectionist machine and Roschian prototypes,
respectively) display how it is possible to “correctly” reason without needing underlying
principles.88 While Dancy does not use them, I believe that the Wittgensteinian
language-game considerations that Little utilizes in her account of moral particularism is
a nice supplement to his reaponses. The incomplete understanding of relevancy that the
Canberrans point to is comparable to our incomplete understanding of the rules of a
game. Each of these responses (Dancy’s and the Wittgensteinian approach) moves
beyond the metaphysics of reasoning to an understanding of the epistemic possibility of
practical fimctioning without deeper theoretical understanding. Just as the millipede does
not need to “know” what order to move its legs in order to move forward, ethical agents
do not need to be able (and arguably could not be able) to express principles of ethics
used in decision making. The lack of codified principles of movement/decision making
does not hinder either millipede movement or an agent’s moral decision making; both are
able to flmction, and flmction well, in the absence of relevant codified principles.

Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge object to the uncodifiablility thesis on
difl'erent grormds that any other thinker considered here. They claim that particularism
(by which I read them to mean strong particularism) entails uncodifiable holism only
because uncodifiable holism “simply is a form of particularism?” Their claim
acknowledges the separation of holism from uncodifiability as discrete elements of

particularism. Oddly while they, as I have done above, separate the question of holism

 

8‘ Dancy, “Canthe Particularist...” 66 -— 71.
89 McKeever and Ridge, 95.

32

from uncodifiability as two distinct theses, they do not consider arguments for
uncodifiability separately from holism. They appear to believe that if holism does not
independently lead to the acceptance of the uncodifiability thesis, then uncodifiable
holism is somehow an erroneous position to hold.

After describing and arguing for holism,90 they point out that particularists “do
not have a monopoly on holism.”91 They establish that utilitarian approaches to moral
reasoning are holistic.92 This claim is uncontroversial. However, their claim that
utilitarianism is an instance of codified holism is more controversial. They suggest as a
model codification principle (U *):

The fact that an action would promote pleasure is a reason

to perform the action if and only if the pleasure is non-

sadistic. The fact that an action would promote pain is a

reason not to perform the action if and only if the person

whowillexperiencethepainhasnotconsentedto

experiencing it. An action is morally right just in case it

promotes at least as great a balance of reason-giving

pleasure over reason-giving pain as any of the alternatives;

otherwise it is wrong. 3
Since the application of (U *) would require an agent to assess the totality of the features
in the circumstances prior to application, it is unquestionably holistic. The larger
question is if this codification of the utilitarian principle is complete. It certainly appears
so at first glance, even to the inclusion of premises which disallow sadistic action except
by consent. (1 do not know that they intended their first two premises to work in this

manner; they may have intended consensual but not sadistic pain to be allowable.)

 

9° McKeever and Ridge, 95 -— 96.
9' McKeever and Ridge, 96.

‘2 McKeever and Ridge, 96 -— 98.
‘3 McKeever and Ridge, 97 — 98.

33

On greater reflection, even this attempt at codifying a moral principle may be
incomplete. It seems that physical pain inflicted by World War II era drill sergeants on
draftees would be considered not only as a reason not to train draftees, but also wrong in
the account inasmuch as it is not clear that any “reason-giving pleasure” derives from the
training. Similarly, mental pain and suffering that an adolescent would experience after
being grounded would be wrong, if we accept the normal caveat that parental figures are
pained more than those punished. Considering these actions (training for national
defense and punishing a misbehaving teenager) as wrong seem unintuitive to me. In the
very least, we would need to consider more features to determine if the actions were
wrong. Was the training unusually harsh? Was the punishment justified and proportional
to the misbehavior? McKeever and Ridge could amend (U ‘) to address these situations,
but additional alternative cases could be formd. Prior to testing any revised theory, be it
(U "), (U "‘"), or any other revision, against all cases we would not know for sure that it
properly expressed the utilitarian claim they offer. Until we can be certain that any
model theory accounted for all possible scenarios, any Utilitarian model would be holistic
but not represent a codification.

The attempted use of Kant is more odd. It is the case that Kant allows at the
outset of the Groundwork tlmt some features of the world are “undoubtedly good and
desirable for many purposes” but not for all.94 Based upon this claim, McKeever and

Ridge see Kant as a holist. Roughly, their argument is that since “understanding, wit,

”95 ss

 

judgment, courage, resolution, and perseverance”96 all have variable moral valence
94 Kant, Groundwork 4:393.

9‘ ibid.

9‘ ibid.

34

that Kant embraces holism.“7 This claim in itself is odd given that Kant does not utilize
any of these features to establish his moral theory. Good will, the only thing “that could
be considered good without limitation,”98 forms the basis for his morality. In addition,
since Kant’s morality does not allow exceptions to moral dictates even on philanthropic
grounds,99 calling him a holist seems to be quite a stretch.

Their use of Kantian principles as an instance of codification of morality is also
distressing. Kant does call for moral agents to test their maxims against the Categorical
Imperative to discern the morality of the maxim. However, not only is it the case that the
Categorical Imperative itself can be codified in multiple manners,loo but the maxims
agents are testing remain throughout their own maxims.“" Testing a maxim for
universalizability does not codify that maxim; it merely tests it.

McKeever and Ridge move beyond their examination of the codified holisms that
they believe they have presented to another argument: even if holism is granted, we need
not accept the lmcodifiability thesis. In their analysis of the relationship between holism
and codifiability they rebut Little’s belief in the so-called “cosmic accident” thesis (the

belief “that any substantive moral principles would be a cosmic accident”)l°2, the

 

97 McKeever and Ridge, 98 - 99.

9‘ Kant, Groundwork 4:393.

‘9 Kant, “On a Supposed Right...”

'00 Kant states that he offers three formulations of the Categorical Imperative.
(Groundwork 4:436) Numerous commentators have parsed additional formulations and
corollaries in nearly as many manners as there are commentators.

101 Kant, Groundwork 4:402. In my reading of Kant, I place emphasis on the call that the
agent “could also will” the maxim “a universal law.” There is no requirement that the
maxim actually be accepted by all, nor that it be applied to anyone beyond the agent
whose maxim it is.

102 McKeever and Ridge, 99.

35

possibility that codification is unnecessary or useless given holism,103 and the possibility
that “whether a consideration counts as a reason depends in a way that transcends
codification on its context.”104 In each instance they display that holism need not entail
uncodifiability. They close their argument by considering the possibility that “once we
begin to notice some of the specific ways in which reasons can be context dependent, we
may suspect that they are so many and so various as to escape codification?“ They and
that this argument is simply an argument from cases, and does not depend upon holism
itself.

It certainly is the case that one can accept holism without accepting the
uncodifiability thesis. Weak pmticularists routinely do this. Further, most of the
arguments that they consider for the uncodifiability thesis do appear to have tentative
connections. if any, to holism. However, in quickly dismissing the final argument they
miss a strong connection.106 Acceptance of holism is an acceptance that the moral
valence of individual features is variable. Given this variable nature and the limited
experience base of any agent (or for that matter set of agents), it certainly seems clear that
even the best codification of moral principles will have to include a ceteris paribus (other
things being equal) clause. Unless one includes just such a clause, than any codification
can at best be considered temporary or contingent upon later clarification. But the
inclusion of a ceteris paribus clause net only requires a holistic approach, but also short

circuits any codification. Holism at its core states that other things are never equal. All

 

"’3 McKeever and Ridge, 100.

'°‘ ibid.

'05 McKeever and Ridge, 102.

“’6 I am excluding here, as they apparently do, arguments which move from
uncodifiability to holism.

36

relevant features need to be considered; no two situations are exactly the same, even if
different only by time of day. The incompleteness of any possible codification is
attributable to holism; fmther, attempts to acknowledge the variable nature of moral
valence in codifications display that holism disrupts codifiability.

McKeever and Ridge find that holism has “very little” to do with moral
particularismm They more pr0perly are claiming that holism has little to do with
lmcodifiability. They do show that most of the arguments made for the uncodifiability
thesis appeal to holism while they could be adOpted independently of a belief in holism;
to that extent it may be true that holism has “very little” to do with uncodifiability.
However, holism does have something to do with uncodifiability. We can come to accept
the Imcodifiability thesis independent of holism, but an argument can be made that the
incomplete nature of any holistic codification displays that holism has something to do
with uncodifiability. Holism does make “the prospects for substantial moral principles
‘bleak’ 3‘“ ifonly in that any holistic codification of morality must include an
incompleteness clause. Acknowledgement of the incompleteness of codification
certainly seems to display unmdifiability as well as the link between holism and
uncodifiability.

Depending upon the degree to which one is willing to accept the two theses cf
holism and uncodifiability, one can be labeled either a weak or strong particularist. (Of
course, if one denies both theses then one is not a particularist at all.) Weak particularism
generally accepts arguments for holism but desires to retain some role for a (likely

incomplete) directory of features which ftmction in such-and-such a manner. Essentially,

'07 McKeever and Ridge. 95.
"’8 McKeever and Ridge, 99.

37

these weak particularists want to retain some role for principles or standards of morality
while accepting a holism of reasoning. (Many who fall in this category, including
Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, would likely object to my labeling them as particularists even
of the weak variety, despite their acceptance of holism and situation particularity.) Those
who believe in uncodifiable holism in moral reasoning are strong particularists.

Strong versions of moral particularism, and specifically Dancy’s particularism,
rely metaphysically on an uncodifiable holism. In this view, agents should make
decisions about the morally correct action to take based upon the entirety of the situation,
not upon the mere presence of one or more features. This holistic account further
includes a belief that we cannot come to meaningfully understand which principles
necessarily are right-making for two reasons. First, most if not all features have variable
moral valence. Second, even if we admit some feature whose moral valence in invariant,
we would only tmderstand on the descriptive level the connection between the feature
and the right-making ability. We would not be able to express what about the feature is
right-making nor would we be able to discern what other features shared that
inexpressible feature. In the next chapter I put forth in more detail the specifics of
Dancy’s account and display how, while metaphysically strong, his theory is
epistemically weak.

38

CHAPTER TWO:
Dancy’s Theory and its Epistemic Shortcomings

Dmcy provides in his writings a thorough working through of the metaphysics of
strong particularism. It is natural to use Dancy’s account as the basis for any moral
dreary which is strongly particularist as his accormt is both a serious proposal and well
developed. Given the proceeding account of the metaphysical basis for strong
particularism, I largely omit his argmnents for moral particularism. In utilizing his theory
as a beginning point for my own theory it is appropriate to examine not just the
groundings of the theory (as I have done in the last chapter), but also to present the core
elements of his own theory. This chapter provides the latter explication, focusing on a
central element in Dancy’s theory (his shape metaphor). In analyzing Dancy’s strong
particularism, I find an epistemic weakness that is present in other strong particularisms
as well. Without an account of how agents come to know which features of a situation
are relevant for moral decision making one is left in a position in which any moral
decision can be rationalized and moral agents are left squinting at the salient facts in the
attempt to discern the shape that others see.

In traditional ethics, we test conflicting principles by considering (or facing)
dilemma situations; these tests cause us to revise, reject, or lexically order our beliefs
about moral actions. Moral particularism holds that testing principles in these methods
misses the point: the morally salient features of a situation could vary so greatly that there
isnohOpeoffindingthatwhatcountedas areasoninonesituationcancountasareason

in another situation. The variability of features in a situation is shown well by Marian

39

Vctitetit, et al. when discussing a “particular patient’s refusal to eat.”1 In order to
understand the morally correct act to take in this situation, we would need to consider the
patient’s

fears about her prognosis; her daughter’s continued attempt

at spoon feeding; the inoperable nature of her cancer; her

husband’s emotional distance; the nurse’s horror at the

thought of letting the patient starve to death; the

oncologist’s reluctance to override the patient’s wishes; and

the family practitioner’s impossibly busy schedule.2
All of these featmes, and others, combine to inform agents as to why to respond in “this
way rather than that one.”3 It would appear that the vast amount of possible differences
between one situation and another would make any attempt to think through what to do in
various instances difficult if not impossible. However, casuistry is not dead for
particularists; Dancy believes that case studies can be very handy for seeing which
features of a situation tend to be morally salient.4 Flnther, particularist “epistemology
tells us that moral knowledge comes from our knowledge of cases.”5 Comparison of the
situation before one to “other cases may help us to decide how things are here, just as a
long experience of car engines may help up to diagnose the fault this time.”6 Both in
. areas of mechanics and morality additional experience assiSts us in seeing propa-ly a new

case. However, particularism differs fiom casuistry in the questions that it asks. For

example, in both car repair and moral decision making we ought to ask not “‘which other

‘ Vcrkel‘k. ct a1. 32.
2 ibid

3 ibid. -

4 Dancy, “The Role ofImaginary Cases in Ethics” 141 - 142.
5 Dancy, “Ethical Particularism. . 534.

6 Dancy, Moral Reasons 63.

4o

case does this one best resemble?’, but rather ‘What is the nature of the case before us?”7
Where casuistry might call for us to look to which case is the most similar, particularism
calls for us to look who what sets this instance apart from others. From our knowledge of
and experiences with cases we can come to recognize salient features, but cases “cannot
help us in this decision at all.”8 Further, these cases cannot result in an universal rule
regardingwhattodoinasimilarsinrafionbecauseWemustbecarefirltoretainthesense
that considerations may not be functioning here as they have previously done.”9 We
cannot derive from these cases a decision “which we can transport to the actual case
before us.”10 In considering cases (real or imaginary) agents should consider them
training tools for proper observation, not the sources for math-like formulas or analogies
which allow for individual variables to be replaced. A reason which is sufficient for
moral judgment in one situation may not be sufficient in another because of differences in
both the moral and non-moral features of the situation.11

For the particularist, the world is just far too messy for us to rely upon guiding
rules as the final arbiter of morality. Each situation that we encounter in the world has so

many pressures, demands, and salient features that we cannot generate from our

" ibid

8 Dancy, “Ihe Role of Imaginary Cases in Ethics” 149.

9 Dancy, Moral Reasons 63.

'0 Dancy, Moral Reasons 68.

1‘ Dancy states this throughout his work. In “Ethical Particularism. . .” he first poses this
position as a question: “[W]hy should we admit that if a property ‘makes a difi‘erence’ in
a particular case, then it generally ‘makes a difference’? Isn’t it possible that
circumstancesinalatercasehasthe efl‘ectthatthepresencc ofthispropertydoesnot
make a difference there, though it does here?” (534, italics in original.) In Moral
Reasons he rejects an assumption that “if a state is anywhere suficient for action, it must
be everywhere sufficient.” (22) This position is presented in a positive light when he
claims that a state (of circumstances, reasons, etc.) “can in suitable circumstances be
sufficient for action, but which can also be present in other cases without leading to
action.” (24)

41

experiences some moral dictum to follow in all circumstances. When we try to apply
general principles to the world we can end up with conflicting principles. For example,
consider an ethical description of Jean Valjean’s attempted theft of bread in Victor
Hugo’s Les Illisérables.12 Prior to learning of the attempted theft, the reader learns both
that Valjean willingly took on the role of father-figure and provider to his sister’s seven
children13 and that he respected other’s ownership of property (as shown in his repayment
of the unauthorized “borrowing” ofmilk from neighbors by the children”) Since Hugo
has already established these features, the attempted bread-stealing (and similar
situations, such as Lawrence Kohlberg’s “Heinz Dilemma”) is rmderstood in most
conceptions of morality as a conflict between a general principle of providing for starving
relatives and a general principle not to steal. Conventional approaches conceive of
principles which an agent applies to the situation before her and derives the “correc ”
action. But these conventional accounts end up with problems explaining what to do in
situations like Valjean’s and others where more than one principle appears to apply.
Dancy avoids this problem by inverting the normal belief that it “is conflict between
principles that lies behind conflict between properties in a given case.”15 Instead, “it is
conflict between principles that needs to be explained by conflict between properties

”16

relevant in particular cases, not vice versa. In situations where principles appear to

come into conflict, we ought to turn toward the relevant features of the situation to

discover the reason for the conflict; we are looking in the wrong place if we believe that

‘2 Hugo, 84.
‘3 Hugo, 83.
" ibid.

'5 Dancy, “Ethical Particularism...” 534.
‘6 ibid.

42

the conflict springs forth from the principles unaffected by the facts of the situation to
which we are trying to apply them.

Instead of following any of the numerous theories which treat moral reasons for
action as different from non-moral reasons for action (such as Brad Hooker, Thomas
Scanlon, or Bernard Williams”), Dancy proposes that we consider moral and non-moral
decisions as working in the same way. In non-moral reasoning, we should not conclude
thatjustbecausewehaveawalksignalatacrosswalk,wearesafetocross. Ifwewere
aware that this particular intersection is prone to red-light running, we might decide that
we should cross precisely when we do not have a walk signal if traflic was clear, and to
hesitate in crossing with the signal if traffic is not already stopped. Similarly, in moral
reasoning when we discover a rare piece of art (such as the Mona Lisa) on the wall of a
known art thiet‘s residence we might take it without permission because it is wrong to
steal. In both situations, our larger knowledge of the situation and the salient features to
include in our decision making process could lead us to deviate from well-understood
precepts (about following traflic signals or respecting property rights.) Our observations
of the facts of the world could cause us to act against principles, or our understandings of
principles could cause us to break a principle in order to uphold another (or in my art-
thief example, the same principle.) Real life situations are just too complicated to allow
for generalized claim(s) that apply to all situations and derive “the” correct answer for all
situations.

My recent use of ‘principle’ deserves some clarification. Even given the
inflammatory title of his most recent book, Dancy does not totally dismiss principles. He

A..—

" Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 133.

43

refers to their existence in publications fi'om 1983 on, and even calls “rash” his
“occasion[al]” claim that “moral principles are impossible?“ While he “still think[s]
something of the sort... the passage of years brings caution.”19 The caution that he has is
that since he wants to reserve the possibility that because of the particular type of claim
that a specific claim is, it may be possible for there to be an invariant reason, then “there
certainly can be true general statements whose role is to articulate that rant.”20 Further, if
we call these statements principles then “holism will turn out to be compatible with the

”2' Be this as it may, the role that he conceives for

existence of at least some principles.
principles here is more a limitation of the possibility of moving directly fiom holism to
particularism, not an endorsement of ethical principles themselves. As he states, he
“certainly accept[s] that our actual morality is unprincipled.”22 I use this understanding
as both consistent with and constitutive of strong moral particularism.
Dancy holds that in an instance of moral decision-making, we are faced with a

variety of features to assist us in our decision-making. He writes that

Some of the properties of a situation are relevant to the

question what one should do, and some are not. And even

among those which are relevant, some are more relevant

than others. These relevant features are salient; they stick

out ogobtmde, and should catch our attention if we are

alert.

In any given situation, a full description of it would have to include many features. For

 

'8 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles, 81
19 - .

tbld.
2° ibid.
2‘ tbid.
22 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 82.
23 Dancy, Moral Reasons 112.

example, in Philippa Foot’s famous trolley car problem,24 these characteristics can vary
from the number ofpeople on the trolley car and the health ofthe person on the tracks to i
the day of the week. Some of these features will be relevant to a decision making
process, while others (such as the color of one’s Shoelaces) are generally not.” Some
features may only be relevant to particular individuals, such as a fastidiously observant
Jew who refrains fiom taking any action which could be considered work in light of the
admonition to rest on the Sabbath in Exodus 31:15 and 34:21.26 The facets which “stick
out or obtrude” are the salient features. Like equality in Orwell’s Animal Farm, some

. salient features “are more salient than others?” Just because a feature is salient does not
mean that it is the deciding factor; the various salient features each make “a difference to
what one should do in the case before one."28 Another way that Dancy puts it is that “to
see a consideration as a reason to act is to see it as salient.”29 The features relate to each
other in various ways. For example, potential loss of life, property rights, and personal
relationships with affected persons might all be salient features in a situation. In addition
to these salient features, there are multiple non-salient features such as (potentially) the
temperature, the average rainfall in Buenos Aries, and the logical status of the name of

the present king of France. (Of course, there may be a situation in which some or all of

 

2‘ Foot, 23. In Foot’s original example it is a tram, not a trolley car, out of control. The
change fiom British to American terminology appears to have occurred when Judith
Jarvis Thompson brought it over the pond in her “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley
Problem.”

’5 The shoelace example is adapted from Little, “Moral Generalities Revisited” 295.
2‘ Arguably an observant Jew would make a poor strong particularist as the codes of
behavior laid out in Exodus and Leviticus alone would clearly imply a codification of
some principles of morality, if not a codification of morality in its entirety.

27 Dancy, Moral Reasons 112.

2‘ ibid.

29 Dancy, Moral Reasons 114.

45

these feattu'es are salient.) When all of the salient features and their relationships to other
salient features are viewed together, we “grasp the shape of the circumstances?”

On one level, that of ‘thick’ moral concepts, we can understand the shape of a
situation as a narrative of the event. When we describe a situation to another, we
commme include only the relevant/salient featlu'es.31 An apt analogy to giving a
narrative is to describe a building to another. As Dancy says, “No description worth the
name would simply start from the left, as it were, and work its way along until it reached
the last redone on the right.”32 Instead of being a description, this would be nothing more
than a list of properties. Lists of moral properties, like lists of architectural features, do i
not provide us with any useful information to make decisions. A proper narrative of an
event lays “out how one sees the situation, starting in the right place and going on to
display the various salient features in the right way.”33 This narrative should not be
understood as an attempt at argument, but rather as an appeal to others to see the situation
as one sees it.34 “We succeed in our aim when our story sounds right.”35 When the
narrative “sounds right,” then others presumably are seeing the same shape that you are
seeing. Observing the shape of the situation is similar to the medical practitioner seeing

“the underlying coherence of a patient’s condition.”36 Both the moral shape of a situation

 

3° Dancy, Moral Reasons 112.

3‘ Dancy, Moral Reasons 112 — 113. (The ability to discern the salient features to
describe to another in a narrative is probably what separates “good” story/joke tellers
from “bad” ones.)

32 Dancy, Moral Reasons 112.

33 Dancy, Moral Reasons 1 13.

3‘ ibid

3‘ ibid

3” Tanenbaum, 63.

46

and a patient’s condition are made up of numerous attributes, all of which contribute in a
non-binding way to the understanding of the complete whole.

The other level ofunderstanding shape is to see the shape as “the so—called thin
moral properties of rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness.”37 The tightness or
wrongness of an action is not part of the shape, but is revealed through the shape. The
shape, which is the combination of the salient features (the ‘thick’ concepts), is the thin
concept. In this Dancy is establishing that thin concepts are not the result of salient
features, instead the combined salient features are and reveal the thin concept. The
shape/thin concept is not itselfa reason. As Dancy explains, the “wrongness of the action
is not a reason for not doing it; reasons for not doing it are more mundane features.”38
These mundane features, some of which are salient, combine to display the tightness or
wrongness of the action. Just as the shape is not separable from its features, and as such
cannot be a resultant of the saliencies, the thin concept ought not be understood as a
result of the shape. The thin concept is displayed by the shape, which in turn is nothing
more than the salient features understood in a proper narrative structure.

We can continue to use the process of medical diagnosis as a metaphor for shape.
In an initial encounter with a patient, a physician encounters “a vast amormt of
information: the patient’s lifelong personal and medical history; the patient’s report of the
emrent medical problem; and the results of numerous examinations, procedures, and
tests” among other aspects, and possesses “a tremendous amount of knowledge about
health and disease?”9 Some information normally considered salient to the situation may

37 Dancy, Moral Reasons 115.
3“ ibid.
39 Eddy and Clanton, 200.

47

be missing, or not readily discernable without causing great amounts of discomfort to the
patient. However, based upon her “own sensory perception and partly on” reasoning, the
physician fits these pieces into a coherent whole.40 The details are sorted, any confusion
cleared, and the diagnosis is made.“1 The total picture of the evidence can be understood
as the shape of the situation and the diagnosis is akin to the thin moral concept of
tightness/wrongness. The diagnosis is not a part of the shape, but is revealed by it, is
identical with a properly perceived shape, and could change given additional information
or the absence of some elements. Similarly, the thin moral concept arises fiom the salient
features of the situation, but is not itself a part of the shape which is composed of the
thick concepts. (A distinct difference between a thin shape and a diagnosis is that in the
end a diagnosis may be confirmable via autopsy, while the thin shape’s truth status may
be unconfirmable by any additional testing even despite particularisms’ reliance on moral
realism.)42

The shape metaphor is meant to explain how the salient elements of a situation
come together to form a totality that captures the situation. Although Dancy does a
thorough job of explaining how shapes work, his only explanation in Moral Reasons of
how we come to pick out the salient features is his belief that the features “obtrude” and
“catch our attention if we are alert.”43 (The shape metaphor is not elaborated upon in
Ethics Without Principles. Dancy only uses the term in two places, one of which is not

referenced in the index)“ He cautions that “skills in reason—discernment are not rule—

 

‘0 Tyrer and Eadie, 152.

‘1 Eddy and Clanton, 200.

‘2 This distinction was pointed out to me by Tom Tornlinson.

‘3 Dancy, Moral Reasons 112.

‘4 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 103 and 143. The usage on 103 is not indexed.

48

based.”4s By this he means that we do not extract rules from prior cases’ “reason-giving
featm'es” and attempt to “subsume new cases under these rules.”46 Any rules derived in
such a manner would at best be “a dispensable crutch rot judgement.”47 These crutches
maybeaccurate enough inmanycircumstanees, butwouldbeno betterthanrulesof
thumb which should only use for approximations and not accurate assessments of the
shape of the situation.

For example, we can look to the life of St. Francis of Assisi as a “prototype of a
moral life,” and use Francis’ life as a sort of moral measuring stick, but we cannot tell
“which features of this prototype are not really contributing much at all, and which are
pretty central.“8 We can derive rules of thumb, such as to be kind to everyone, but not
be sure what aspects of Francis’ life are necessary to emulate to be morally correct in our
circumflances. For example, it is said that while still young Francis abandoned the bolts
of cloth he was selling in the market in order to seek out a beggar who had asked for alms
while Francis was previously engaged in a negotiation.49 As a prototype of morality we
should strive to follow this model, but ought we abandon our own work to do the right, or
only abandon the material manifestation of our work (i.e. our bolts of cloth), seek out the
opportunity to do right, or only seek out the opportunity to do right for those who have
first confronted us? Even with this prototype, we find little in terms of guidance for what

specific aspects of the moral life we ought to emulate.

 

‘5 Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 142.
46 . .
rbrd
‘7 ibid
4* Dancy, “Can a Particularist...” 71.
‘9 Chesterton 40-41.

49

While Dancy works out a nice ontology for moral shapes by omitting the
epistemic process of learning how to see shapes, his readers are left in a situation similar
to Polonius in Act III of Hamlet. Polonius is convinced (or at least agrees) that the same
cloud is shaped like a camel, backed like a weasel, and “very like a whale.”50 Dancy’s
conception of moral shape allows that the similar circumstances will result in different
“thin” moral concepts of tightness, but he does not address how to keep the very same set
of circumstances from having multiple thin concepts. By “the same set,” I mean identical
even to the persons involved. Polonius, perhaps only out of a desire to please Hamlet,5 1
concededthatthe very sameshape wasacamel, aweasel, andawhale. Even ifwe take
Polonious’s agreement to be less than genuine, it remains the case the nebulous shapes
were open to multiple readings in a manner that other perceptual tasks, such as the color
of a book, would not be. Unlike cloud-shapes, we should hope that our moral shapes
would provide only one thin concept —- at least to the same viewer. Otherwise, Dancy’s
moral reasons allow one to acknowledge any actions as being morally right, because the
shape can be read in multiple and conflicting ways.

One approach to solving this gap in Dancy’s accormt is to state clearly that it
takes skill to learn how to pick out the salient features and form them into a coherent
narrative. (T o be fair, Dancy hints at this approach throughout his work though he never
explains what these skills are or how one learns them.) This skill-based approach is

expressed quite well by Margaret Little:

 

5° Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene II.

5 1 The possibility of reading Polonius’ assents as being merely sycophancy was pointed
out by Fred Rauscher. I think that his ability to agree displays the same problems,
regardless of if the agreement is actual or out of an attempt to flatter.

50

Itisaskilltoreadtheworld-toknowwhat, inthefaceof

an infinite amount of change, would for a given purpose

count as a sufficiently relevantly similar world, to know

when a pattern is robust, to know how to navigate through

patterns of competing influences, to determine which

possibilities are epistemically relevant alternatives, to know

when you know enough and when you don’t, to know when

you have entered a context in which previous experience no

longer points the way. 52
To use Dancy’s own example, it takes skills to learn how to describe a building. Ftn'ther,
depending upon the level of skills that our narrator has, the description will be more or
less nuanced. It is easy to imagine the average American describing a building as having
decorative columns, while an architect or an art historian might note the flying buttress.
Both are describing a cathedral, and both are correct. It took skills to understand what the
features were, and even more skills to describe them most accurately. For this reason it
seems clear that we do not always need to be able to read the shape the same way. More
moral skill and knowledge could bring one to describe the same situation in more detail,
perhaps pick out additional features as salient, or even cause the overall moral verdict of
an action to change. Thus someone with more skill could tell at a glance that a particular
columned building was intended as a courthouse as opposed to a mansion, because of the
wider experience with columned buildings and skill at discerning the importance of
differences (such as the scale of the approaching steps, for example.) In a moral setting,
we can see how additional experience might bring one to parse the differences between a
physician acting paternalistically toward an individual with persistent short~term memory

loss and one who acts patemalistically toward an eighteen~year—old pregnant woman.

’2 Little, “Moral Generalities Revisited” 297.

51

While it seems appropriate to adopt an understanding of moral reasons that allows
for growth in both specificity and complexity, it strikes me that a weakness remains in
Dancy’s account and strong particularism generally. In the examination of our fictional
building, it may be that those with more sophisticated architectmal knowledge would
describe the building difi‘erently, or notice features that a less experienced observer might
miss. However, even given these differences in skill level, it remains the case that the
inexperienced observer would be able to see those salient features if they were pointed
out to them. Thus, J astrow’s duck-rabbit is understandable both as a duck and rabbit
head when the proper orientation is pointed out.” Similarly, the use of Nazi research
data on hypothermia survival rates can be seen as both life-saving and morally
reprehensible once the facts about the data are known. In both situations the shapes are
ambiguous until a viewing perspective is picked. (These examples also allow us to see
that some features can be both ducks and rabbits, or life—saving and reprehensible, at the
same time.)

However, morality does not always seem to work like buildings, duck-rabbit
figures, or clouds. Some salient moral features are unobservable unless one has
previously bought into a whole manner of observing the world. It seems implausible that
one could, by pointing out the proper features, convince an anti-abortion activist that in a
given specific instance an elective abortion was morally permissible. No matter how
calmly the salient featmes were narrated, the shape would never solidify in the suggested
manner. If one could convince this activist thata particular feature, such as that it is his

raped teenage daughter whose future is at issue, is pivotal, then we could have to

 

53 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations part II, §xi.

52

emphasize those features in the attempt to solidify similar shapes. The success of this
approach would vary depending upon the relative strength of values the activist holds. If
the activist is unable to see a particular abortion as morally acceptable, it could be
because he is seeing additional salient features, or it could come from his inability to see
some of the features salient to another. Either way, in this case it seems highly unlikely
that the anti-abortion activist and the abortion-rights activist would be able to see the
same shape. This goes beyond seeing the same cloud as a camel, weasel, and whale.
This is more akin to a friend pointing to the cloud and announcing its similarity to a
teddy-bear while you see an automobile. Despite all attempts to reconcile the two shapes,
you cannot figure out what is going on. There is a danger here that unless the salient
featmes are at least in principle observable to others, Dancy’s particularism could
dissolve into some sort of relativism. My shape is just as good as your shape, even if we
are looking at the same situation.

Ifwe limit acceptable shapes to those which others can see, we run into the moral
version of the problem of other minds. I cannot know that another agent has grasped the
salientfeatureslsee,thattheyseetheshapethatldo,noreventhattheyarcpereeivingin
a manner similar to howl am. Further, if one is in a position of relative power, their
shape-seeing abilities can never be adequately tested. It seems too much to ask that, like
the child in Hans Christian Anderson’s “Emperor’s New Clothes,” someone be brave
enough to point out that no one else sees the moral shape. Depending on how one reads
Hamlet. this is again a Polonius issue. We cannot be sure that Polonius really saw a
whale in the clouds, or if he was just agreeing with Hamlet. We have an additional

difficulty if we rely upon pepular assent, since it is possible that the population could be

53

wrong. We need only consider the extent to which slavery was considered acceptable to
see that popular assent can be in retrospect considered wrong.

Dancy appears to be aware of this problem, and believes that it is the objective
presence of the features, not our beliefs about the presence of the features, that (ought to)
ground our moral reasoning.“ Our ignorance of any facts of the situation is an additional
factor to be included in the forming of the shape of the situation. Ifwe are not properly
Socratic enough to know that we do not know,” then we would appear to be left with a
shape formed in part of our ignorance of some of the features of the situation. That
ignorance, even if we do not know it, would affect our conception of the shapes. This
leaves us in the difficult situation of trying to ensure that we are ignorant of as few
features as possible, which seems to entail a method of educating agents in discerning the

salient features of any given situation. While Dancy does not provide details on a method

of moral education, we can find such a theory in the works of Aristotle.

“A A A‘—

5‘ Dancy, Practical Reality 52.
5’ Plato, Apology 21d2~6.

54

CHAPTER THREE:
Aristotle’s Account of Moral Education

A significant problem for strong particularism is that while it may well be the case
that agmts make moral decisions in a particular situation based upon the features of the
world that are both present and salient in that instance, we do not currently have a well
understood process to determine which features are salient. As noted previously, Dancy
has hinted that a process of moral education may be necessary for an agent to become
fully competent. However, at no point do we have an indication as to how to educate
agents without giving up a morality which is both holistic and uncodifiable. The easiest
forms of moral education would seem to either focus on particular features of the world
(as in simplistic Utilitarian approaches) or to provide a set of features to be aware of (as
in Messianic commandment based approaches). These easy forms of education could not
be considered in keeping with the uncodifiable holism that is strong particularism. In
order to have a moral education which embraces strong particularism, we have to look
elsewhere.

In many ways, particularism carries echoes of Aristotle,l and Aristotle provides
some possible solutions to these difficulties for Dancy’s theory. In this chapter, I provide

a particularist reading of Aristotle2 in order to display how Aristotle’s system of moral

 

1 While not extensively deveIOped, Little refers to the need for particularists to utilize an
Aristotelian “skills model of moral discernment” in “Wittgensteinian Lessons. . .” ( 172). I
believe that the account I lay out in this section is in keeping with her intent.

2 Terence Irwin believes that a particularist reading of Aristotle is only one possible
readingandthatkeypassagesonmoral “prudenceandperceptiondonotrequirea
particularist interpretation.” (“Ethics as an Inexact Science” 129) His own exegesis
emphasizes that Aristotle’s practically wise agents bring to a particular situation some
knowledge of a universal rule. (“Ethics as an Inexact Science” 104, 112 - 113) I
consider his interpretation only indirectly in this section (when I consider the role of

55

education is an answer to the epistemic objections to strong particularism. His account of
how to live a moral life and how to educate others to live such a life provides a realistic
possibility for a strongly particularistic moral education. The education focuses on the
acquisition of experience and reflection upon it through awareness of legislation,
habituation to right action, and reflection under the guidance of a mentor. In the midst of
my exegesis, I confiont Terrance Irwin’s reading of Aristotle which is less amenable to
strong particularism. At the close of the chapter, I begin to consider how adopting an
Aristotelian conception of virtue leads to unique problems for determining what action is
morally correct. Resolving this problem is treated more fully in the next chapter.

In all fairness to Aristotle and Aristotelian experts, I want to acknowledge at the
outset tint my concern here is to establish not so much what Aristotle thought about these
questions, but rather how we can use Aristotle in resolving these issues. In the following
I explicate as clearly as I can a position which seems to run throughout Aristotle’s texts,
and in doing so I know I have walked into minefields of Aristotle scholarship without
taking positions on how to resolve some difficulties. For example, I use both books I and
X of the Nicomachean Ethics without attempting to work through the consistency and
coherence problems between them. Similarly, I use the Eudemian Ethics, even at points
where it closely parallels the Nicomachean Ethics, if it seems like the treatment in the
Eudemian is clearer. For these and other related reasons, it is perhaps best to read
‘Aristotle as it struck Krafi’ for most instances of ‘Aristotle.’

For Aristotle, the virtuous person is the individual who does the right action “at

the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right

incompletely comprehended universal truths), but I examine his approach more
substantially in the “Aristotle’s Particularist Metaphysics” section.

56

aim, and in the right way.”3 While all this discussion of various “right” aspects might
lead one to believe that Aristotle held that there was one correct manner of doing things
(or correct motivation for doing so, etc.), all of these “right” making attributes are relative
to the agent acting and the situation encountered. As he notes, in matters of living,
similar to “the art of medicine or of navigation,” “the agents themselves must in each
case consider what is apprOpriate to the occasion” without the use of “any art or set of
precepts.“ Without a set of precepts for agents to rely upon, it does not seem that we are

dealing with a system of ethical absolutes. The agent-particular nature of Aristotle’s

A if! hmfim1

ethics is reinforced when we consider how excellence is defined.

A central tenant of Aristotle’s ethics is that the various excellences or virtues are
understood to be the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiencies} The general
concept of each specific virtue is “equidistant fi-om the extremes,” while the specific
excellence of each individual is “that which is neither too much nor too little” for that
agent.‘5 This mean is not an arithmetic proportion true for all, but is an agent relative
mean] For example, just as we know that we need to fwd Milo the wrestler more than a
non-athlete, 3 we know that we cannot set the marker between conflicting passions to a
individual’s specific mean derived from any set of individuals. An action which is
courageous for one would be fool-hardy for another. Courage is the virtuous mean

between cowardice (a deficiency of excellence) and fool-hardiness (an excess).9 While

 

3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics “061320.24.
‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1104a6-9.
: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 11062130.
ibid
7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 106935.
" Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106b1 ~— 4.
9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 104a19 - 22.

57

generally an action like rushing into a burning building to save a child would be
courageous, if a particular agent is asthmatic then rushing in would be fool-hardy. Since
finding a specific mean between conflicting passions can be a tricky task, Aristotle
provides us with a method for how to gauge our excellence. He explains “[e]xcellence. . .
is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by
reason and the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”10
Comprehending the way that “the man of practical wisdom would determine” the mean is
crucial to acting virtuously because these individuals would understand how to find the
mean particular to the agent and the situation. Practical wisdom itself “is concerned with
knowingjustwhattodo inparticularcases,inorderto hitthemeamandinordernottlo
give the wrong amount, or to the wrong causes.”ll
Aristotle states that “choice is a deliberate desire attended with thought” about
what ends are desirable.” This choosing is done in concert with a capacity for practical
wisdom which is not “concerned with universals only - it must also recognize the
particulars; for it is practical, and practice is concerned with particulars?” Achieving
practical wisdom is not measured by understanding some set of rules, because
understanding is always comprehension of some knowledge. Knowledge of or
comprehension of some facts is always “of the definitions, for which no reason can be
given, while practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular, which is the

object not of knowledge but of perception. . . akin to that by which we perceive that the

 

1° Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106b36 - 1 107a2.
“ Sorabji, 113.

‘2 Aristotle, Magna Moralia 1 189327 ~ 32.

’3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 141bl4 - 16.

58

 

particular figure before us is a triangle.”14

This perception “is not a rule-governed
procedure, but rather a creative knack sharpened by discipline and experience?” Just as
a “geometer ‘sees’ that the complex figure can be broken down into a series of triangles”
and as such can find the area ofa many-sided figure, ‘6 the practically wise can ‘see’ how
the component features of a situation work together to form a complex whole. This
perception of the parts and the whole in a situation of moral decision making is the
perception of the moral shape of the situation."

Aristotle’s practical wisdom involves a synthesis in the particular case of the
universal rules and the specifics of any given case. These universal rules can best be
considered “primitive universals” which are familiar to agents through inductive
reasoning following perception.“3 We cannot be said to come to understand these
universals fully, only to come to an incomplete comprehension of them.” While
incomplete, the comprehension a practically wise agent has enables him to perceive what
virtue requires “0me, in the particular case, and it instructs him to act accordingly?”
The general and incomplete awareness that virtuous agents possess is functional only as

applied to specific cases. Further, specific cases allow agents to understand in a fuller

 

'4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1142a25 ~ 28.

‘5 Louden, 130.

‘6 ibid

‘7 I am here equating the perception of salience with other sorts of perception, such as the
perception ofcolors. Ifwe want to take the perception ofsalience instead as a process of
reflecting upon the world and determinging which objects are salient, then that process
would more properly be considered “drinking” in the Aristotelian sense. “Thinking,”

‘ however, requires both an awareness of the objects of perception (0n the Soul 431a15)
and affects the manner in which we process those perceptions (0n the Soul 432a10-14.)
‘8 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 100a16, 100b4.

19 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 100b9 - 12.

2° Sorabji, 113.

59

 

(but still incomplete fashion) how various aspects of the world work together to inhibit or
allow virtuous action.

With his concern with particular case and specific features of an instance and
since virtuous means are uncodifiable (in that they are agent and situation specific),
Aristotle is largely in tandem with strong particularism. However, unlike Dancy’s strong
particularism, Aristotle provides us with guidance as how to learn what particulars are
moreofien—than—not salient. Aristotle’s motivation in providing moral education is that
an agent “who has been well brought up has or can easily get” the facts of a situation and
will not “need the reasons” for acting virtuously as well.21 These facts are the primary
items in discerning what to do and we “see some by induction, some by perception, some
by a certain habituation, and others too in other ways.”22 As Randall Curren points out,
these methods of moral education can only fiinction properly if an agent is naturally
capable of being moral.23 Those who act against both “habit and nature” could possibly
be “moulded by the hands of the legislator,” but perhaps not.“ (Those who cannot or
will not act in conformity with practical. reason about morality are examined in the next
chapter.)

A key element in Aristotle’s account of moral education is that individual agents
need to become habituated to performing moral actions. This is because “moral
excellence comes about as a result of habit.”25 Further, just as builders become such by

building, and lyre-players by playing the lyre, “we become just by doing just acts,

 

2‘ Aristotle, Nicamachean Ethics 109de ~— 8.
2’ Aristotle, Nicomachcan Ethics 1098b3 .— 4.
23 Curren, 204.

2‘ Aristotle, Politics 1332b8 — 11.

’5 Aristotle, Nicomachcan Ethics 1103a16.

6O

temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”26 A child is not able to
perceive “what is required in the particular situation,” but “in time experience” and
proper training from elders “will enable him to make these particular judgments for
himself?” The ability to mold and shape the youth displays the importance of proper
moral education. Aristotle states that forming the right habits from youth on “makes no
small difference... it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difi'erence.”28
When an agent has formed the proper habits then she would find that the process
of perceiving the world properly would occur as if on its own. This prOper perception is
similar to the way that once one has learned to think through a process afterwards the
“thought is then able to think of itself.”29 The purpose for the process of habituation “is
not standardization ~— unchangeable moral efficiency -- but, to put the point boldly, an
assurance that critical morality is possible.”30 In order to be able to discern the moral
action to take or to discuss a disagreement with another agent about what the moral
action is, agents must know what it is that they are discussing. The possibility of this
knowledge is created by becoming exposed to moral situations, and through training to be
habituated in knowing what the commonly accepted right action in that situation is. As
Nancy Sherman notes, through “collaboration on projects and through listening to and
identifying with the viewpoints of others, an agent’s vision becomes expanded and
enlarged.”31 This process of relying upon others initially to assist us in seeing properly is

not unusual. As Aristotle states, we “call in others to aid us in deliberation on important

 

2‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1103a3 — 1103b2.
2’ Sorabji, 125.

28 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1103b24 -— 26.

29 Aristotle, 0n the Soul 429b6 — 9.

3° Henderson, 25.

31 Sherman, Fabric of Character 30.

61

 

questions, distrusting ourselves as not being equal to deciding.”32 Based upon the
ongoing advice from those who can better see the relevant features, agents come to pick
out properly those features and learn “difi'erent questions to pose in order to see the
picture with increased insight and clarity.”33

An additional method of becoming properly habituated toward correct action is
through the following of civic laws and social norms.34 Aristotle states that the best way
to foster practical wisdom is to “get fiom youth up a right training for excellence” which
is brought about when one is “brought up under right lower-‘5 Further, since it is not
clear that we will remain habituated to right action when mature, “we shall need laws for
this as well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life.”36 These laws are the
waysthatwelearnwhatitistobevirtuous, butthey cannotspeaktovirtuousness itself.
Far fi'om being bnly for the young, laws must continue throughout life because it is
helpful to point out to those who are not living virtuously that indeed it is wrong because
it is unlawful (as opposed to the reverse). Aristotle, as I read him, is speaking exactly to
those who will not or cannot learn how to live life virtuously — those who “obey necessity
rather than argument, and punishment rather than what is noble?”

Laws and norms not only serve to foster practical wisdom and habituation to
virtuous action, but also provide broad general rules that should be tempered in specific

situations based upon experience and the individual situation. We know from right

 

’2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1112b10 —- 11.

33 Sherman, Fabric of Character 30.

3‘ Aristotle refers to laws, but in my reading I bring this further to include not just civic
restrictions on killing, trafiic controls, and littering, but also the underlying social norms
and standards of politeness in a society that seem to be lmderlying the civic laws.

3‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1179b31.

3‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1180a3.

3’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1180a4 —- 5.

62

training that “light meats are digestible and wholesome,” and fiom experience that
chicken is light meat.” Thus, we can know that chicken is both digestible and
wholesome. But we might want to avoid a particular chicken dish if we know that it was
not properly cooked, because our experience with lmdercooked meats also tempers our
knowledge (acquired through experience and syllogistic reasoning) that chicken is
digestible and wholesome. The particular case may not function as the universal laws
proscribe because of additional features of the situation. Resolving how to balance
training and experience takes time and skill.

A similar relationship between training and experience can be seen in medical
diagnosis. A common test of orientation is to ask a patient the “year, the month, and the
exact day.”39 Medical students and professionals (as well as the regular television
viewer) know that not being able to accurately answer is an indication of diminished
cognitive awareness. However, since many people “pay no attention to the day of the
month” they are “technically disoriented to time” but are not cognitively impaired.40
Learning to distinguish the two cases involves both experience and discretion. We can
acquire this discretion and the skill of discerning the proper facts only through
experience, but we can augment our own skills by attending “to the undemonstrated
sayings and opinions of experienced and older people... because experience has given
them an eye they see aright.”" By following the lead of those who have been through
similar experiences, we learn not only the relevant features for this situation, but also

learn how to pick out those features. As an agent learns how to discern the relevant

 

38 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics ll4lbl7 — 20.
3" Sapir'a, 19.

4° ibid.

‘" Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics ll43b11 — 14.

63

features she will be able to demonstrate her reasoning to others.42 This method of
demonstration to display learning can be considered analogous to the medical student
presentations during rounds. As Tanenbaum notes, attending physicians routinely relate
their accumulated experience by noting that “you have to see enough” to know how to
diagnose.43 Further, medical students are “grilled about exactly how” diagnostic tests,
individual therapies, and “whole courses of treatmen ” fit into the larger picture of the
patient’s health.“4 Only when the students have learned to discern by experience what the
relevant factors are in a situation are they considered competent at diagnosis.
Experience also provides us with the ability to discern far better what the
appropriate response in a given situation is. As Aristotle notes, “it is no easy task to be
good.”45 This task is without doubt difficult, and especially so “in individual cases?“
Determining to what extent one can properly deviate from the mean “before he becomes
blameworthy. . . is not easy to determine by reasoning?" Over time, we “incline
sometimes towards the excess, sometimes toward the deficiency” until we learn the
proper actions to take to remain within our relative mean.48 A possible way of reading
Aristotle on this point is to acknowledge that in the formation of habits we would have
need to overcompensate for our current inclinations. Thus, to reform the indulgent in

pleasures we would need to first utilize an apparent excess of diet and exercise to not

 

‘2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1139b31 - 32.
‘3 Tanenbaum, 66.

‘4 Tanenbaum, 6S.

‘5 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109824.

‘6 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109b14.

‘7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109b21 - 22.
‘3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109b25 ~ 26.

64

only change habits but also “repair” the damage done fi'om prior indulgence.49
Additionally, we would need to learn which deficiencies of character do not occur in
degrees. For example, an adulterer cannot become less-so by having less intercourse
with married women; “the act is simply in itself wicked” and has no degrees.50

Aristotle states that “the mark of a man of practical wisdom [is] to be able to
deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself?”1 This deliberation
depends upon an agent having the “practical perception needed to determine what type of
circumstances he is in and what type of action he is actually doing.”52 David Wiggins
understands the practically wise individual to be one “who brings to bear upon a situation
the greatest number of genuinely pertinent concerns and genuinely relevant
considerations commensurate with the importance of the deliberative context?” In other
words, the practically wise individual is one who can both discern properly the situation
and reflect upon her own past experiences. Based upon this self and situation awareness
the practically wise agent will be able to choose properly.“ The choice between virtuous
actions is not an act of whim, but involves “consideration and deliberation” because
“choice is not simply picking but picking one thing before another?” Each possible

virtuous action is not only the correct action to take in this instance, but also expresses

 

‘9 Adapted from Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 1222a21 —- 30.

5° Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1221b20 — 22. Aristotle’s use of adultery as an activity
which holds no mean in Nicomachean Ethics 1 107al4-16 does not refer to the act as
wicked-in-itself, though it is one way in which “one must always be wrong.”

5‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1140a25 — 27.

52 Reeve, 97.

53 Wiggins, 234.

54 As Sorabji notes, strictly speaking, agents consider, seek, and deliberate about the
means and manner of performing an action “But this implies that we choose them, for
we choose what is decided upon as a result of deliberation.” (108n)

’5 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1226b6 - 7.

6S

the principles “for the sake of which they are to be done.”56 This is because “in choosing
we show both what we choose and for what we choose it.”57 In deliberating an agent
considers what will bring the desired end about, or at least what can be done toward that
goal?8 As such, the deliberation of matters of moral excellence requires one to consider
what action most closely brings the agent to acting out the virtuous mean (and by doing
so, becoming virtuous.) In order to undertake properly this deliberation an agent needs
practical wisdom in order to apply properly what one knows. Further, we should only
regard as practically wise those who observe “well the various matters concerning”
themselves.59 This self-observation is necessary because we cannot separate practical
wisdom as a concept fiom the agent who is practically wise.

Up to this point, the account of moral perception that Aristotle and Dancy
separately ofl‘er appear to work in conjunction with each other. Dancy, and strong
particularism, holds that it is the specific features of the situation that provide us, upon
reflection, with the awareness of what is the morally correct action to take in this
situation. Aristotle finds that in a situation an agent needs to determine what action to
take, when to take it, and to what extent to take it, depending upon the features present.
Both find that reflection upon past cases and experience will assist in understanding what
to do, at least in part because the experienced agent would be better at determining which
features are salient. Even Aristotle’s belief that a virtuous action expresses the principles
“for the sake of which they are to be done” can be understood as equivalent to the

relationship between the thick and thin features in Dancy’s shape metaphor. A properly

 

5‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1140b15 — 16.
5" Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1226a11 - 12.

5“ Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1227a20 — 21.

59 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1141a25.

66

perceived shape displays the thin concept of tightness or wrongness, but that action is
right/wrong because of the composite thick concepts. Similarly, the virtuous action is
virtuous because of the underlying ordering of features. Where Aristotle goes further
than Dancy is conceiving of the compounded impact of multiple actions and reflections
in forming the virtuous agent who has practical wisdom. Unlike Dancy’s examples
which focus always on each case, and never on the conjunction of multiple cases,
Aristotle reflects upon the character built and displayed by the exposure of an agent to
many particular events.

Practical wisdom “is not a concept that can be displayed, assessed, used, or
determined separate from the individual. Rather, it is part of who the phrbnimos is, is
part of the way that one goes about everyday life.”(’0 Because this self-knowledge is “to
be found only within particular situations, informed by parficular histories and societies,
and made strong by repeated encounters with” the agent’s prior actions and future
possibilities,61 virtuous agents cannot be said to know directly the good. They only know
their good. We discover the good “as we discover what a crab is, by experience,
empirical investigation, and dialectic.”62 This discovery through experience is what
allows Aristotle’s account of moral education to go beyond the moral perceptions where
Dancy and Aristotle are on similar ground. For Aristotle an agent learns to be moral
through stages of eXperience. No corresponding process occurs in Dancy. These stages
of moral education, combined with legislation, habituation, and mentorship are the

central figures of the educational system of virtuous particularism.

##A A A-

“ Noel, 284.
6‘ ibid.
62 Reeve, 82.

67

Sherman likens Aristotle’s process of moral education to the methods used in

. learning an athletic skill, and specifically how one learns to play tennis.63 First, a student
becomes skilled through repetition of the component parts of the full act. In tennis this
could involve focusing on the individual strokes through endless repetition, sometimes
with the assistance of instructors but often using ball machines or “uncompromising and
unfriendly backboards.”“ In moral education this repetition could come from the
ongoing use of careful consideration of various hypothetical cases; educated elders would
initially assist in pointing out the gross structures of the moral situation, but over time
novice agents are increasingly asked to work on their own to determine the moral
features.

The second component of training is the enjoyment that an agent derives in
“exercising our skills the more developed they are?“ As agents become more skilled at
tennis or moral discernment they begin to derive satisfaction and pleasure from
completing the tasks. As Aristotle notes, “the pleasures arising from contemplation and
learning will make us contemplate and learn all the more.”66 In addition, “activities are

made more precise and more enduring by their proper pleasure.”67 Rawls draws upon

 

‘3 Shermanusesthismodelto specificallytestifskilltrainingcanbeusedtoeducate
courageous individuals. In the end, she thinks not because agents, unlike athletes, need to
form their virtues “in relation to others and our ability to be moved by their interests and
desires as well as our own.” (“Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 74) However, she
believes that there is some similarity between the method of acquiring technical abilities
and acquiring the proper moral skills. (“Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 76)
Since I am not concerned here (as Sherman is) with training agents to have individual
virtues (i.e. courage), but rather with the method for training agents to perceive which
actions are virtuous I believe my use of Sherman’s rejected analogy is appropriate.

64 Sherman, “Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 62 — 63.

65 Sherman, “Aristotle’s Theory of Mora] Education” 64.

6“ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1153a21 — 22.

‘7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 175b14 — 15.

68

these comments to propose the ‘Aristotelian Principle’.‘58 The Principle itself is that
“other things being equal, human being enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities
(their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is
realized, or the greater its complexity.”69 Another way of understanding the Principle is
that that “human beings take more pleasure in doing something as they become more
proficient at it.”70 The implication of the Aristotelian Principle is that as an agent’s
capacities increase over time she will “in due course come to prefer the more complex
activities” which call upon the more developed abilities."l

Sherman’s third component to moral training is that at some point “we become
inspired to perfect our own competence by witnessing the exemplary performance of
others.”72 Just as a tennis player enjoys, and learns fiom, watching good tennis, moral
agents would enjoy and learn from watching others make moral decision. In this
understanding, a moral agent would enjoy observing ethical action taking in much the
same way that a tennis player would enjoy watching a match at Wimbledon.

The final component of training is the “cultivation of technical reason.”73
‘Intelligent’ or ‘smart’ tennis players “execute their game thoughtfully” and modify their
play to fit the new requirements/facts of the situation.74 Similarly, moral agents can use

reason to determine subtly different actions will result in different outcomes. To utilize

 

6‘ Rawls team this the Aristotelian Principle as opposed to ‘Aristotle’s Principle’ because
Aristotle “does not state such a principle explicitly, and some of it as at best only
implied.” (Theory of Justice 374a)
69 Rawls, Theory of Justice 374.
7° ibid.
7' Rawls, Wary of Justice 375.
72 Sherman, “Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 65.
:: Sherman, “Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 66.
ibid.

69

Dancy’s terms, the agent would be able to see not only the moral shape of the situation,
but reason through which of the competing moral acceptable actions will produce future
situations which could result in the possibility of ever better morally acceptable actions.
Like the tennis player who hits a shot not only to remain in play, but to bring about a
potential later pointoscoring play, the moral agent can take an action that is not only
morally acceptable in this instance, but that creates the possibility for future actions
which are also preferable to other alternatives. At the end of this process, perception of
morally salient features, like tennis to a skilled player, “has become habitual. . . [and]
comes to us almost naturally; once we have the knack of it, we can do it without actually
thinking through the steps of how it is clone.”75

Educating moral agents to perceive properly what is morally salient in a situation
is done through stages of moral education. First, agents need to become sensitive to
features which we commonly think of as salient. This is accomplished through both civic
law and social norms. As these understandings, or partial codifications of morality, are
by necessity flawed, agents need to become habituated to seeing which aspects of a
situation are salient and how those saliencies interact. This process of habituation is
achieved through the consideration of cases, practices at proper perception, and attempts
to act. Throughout this process, agents would need guidance from mentoring figures who
can serve to assist in the transition from inexperienced agent through to capable agent.
5111' totle’s Particularist Metaphysics

The account that I have provided for Aristotle’s method of moral education is one

which appears to aptly provide a solution to how strong particularists can come to know

 

75 Sherman, “Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Education” 62.

7O

what particular elements are relevant in a given moral decision. Aristotle’s account
emphasizes that these decisions will be particular to each agent, situation, place, and
time. Yet, through habituation and experience agents come to know their own particular
virtuous means; based upon this self-knowledge (and knowledge of their situations) they
can come to make the correct decision about how to act in each situation. The epistemic
benefit of bringing Aristotle’s moral education to strong particularism seems clear: agents
now could come to know how to discern which particular features of a situation are
relevant. To use Dancy’s terms, Aristotle’s virtue education provides a mechanism to
discern the salient features which make up the moral shape of a situation. However, this
epistemic fit would be all for naught if the metaphysics that it relies upon does not mesh
well the strong particularism. In this section, I examine the metaphysical basis for
Aristotle’s virtue theory76 and compare it to the metaphysics of strong particularism.

For Aristotle the physical world is in a constant state of flux. Individual
substances are moving in location, growing and diminishing in size, becoming healthier
or more diseased, being generated and being destroyed.” In addition to these changes to
particular entities there are the larger scope changes such as “the ceaseless movement of ,
the heavenly bodies, the coming to be and passing away of living beings, the alternation
of seasons, the local, qualitative, and quantitative changes that constantly take place in
sensible things?”3 Individual aspects of the world can be changed in contrary fashions.

For example, a tub of water can be made either hotter or cooler, depending upon what

 

7‘ Though it could probably go without noting, I do want to note that I do not provide a
complete picture of Aristotle’s entire metaphysics. In this section I merely focus on the
elements of his metaphysics which are relevant to morality and decision making.

’7 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1042a34 — 104sz.

7’ Verbeke, 192.

71

particular force is brought upon it. A “non-rational power produces only effect; c. g. the
hot is capable only of heating.”79 However, rational processes can work in either
extremity. For example, “the medical art can produce both disease and health.”80 Of
course, it is not possible for a process to move toward both extremes at the same time.
When “one has a rational wish, or an appetite, to do two things or contrary things at the
same time, one cannot do them.”81 A physician cannot both heal and poison a patient in
one action (assuming that in instances like chemotherapy that the “poisoning” is a
healing.) A rational agent in acting is acting toward a potential extreme, and distancing
herself from the companion extremity. This account of both choice and extremes can be
seen in Aristotle’s account of the virtuous means. In doing the courageous action, an
agent is acting in a manner in contrast from cowardice, but does not go to the extremes of
fool-hardiness. In order to make this proper choice the agent needs to be aware of the
ever-changing sensible world around her, and act appropriately. It is perhaps for this
reason that Aristotle emphasizes that knowledge of the facts of the situation (i.e. “the
that”) needs to come before knowledge of the reasons for action (i.e. “the because”)82
Our understanding of the situation will always be incomplete, but at the same time
will always be of the particulars of a situation. This is appropriate, however, in that even
Aristotle’s unmoved-mover, or God-like first cause of the universe,83 does not issue forth

rule-like commandments for proper action.84 As individuals we must be aware of the

 

79 80Aristotle, Metaphysics 1046b6— 7.
:oAristotle, Metaphysics 1046b7.
:zAl'istotle, Metaphysics 1048a20— 22.
:Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095b6— 8.
:Aristotle, Metaphysics 1072a19 — 1073a13.
8"Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1249b13 — I4.

72

particulars of a situation and act to gain “the highest of all goods achievable by action”85
or happiness. Happiness itself “is an activity of soul in accordance with excellence, and
if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete.”86
Further, this complete conception of happiness is the “human good” and needs to be
considered as the goal for a complete life. The complete life needs to be understood in
both senses: fulfilled and finished. Happiness brought forth from ethical action will
cause one to be complete. However, this completeness needs to be considered in the
context of a whole life because just as “one swallow does not make a summer, nor does
one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.”87
This conception of the complete life, and of the goal of humanity being happiness, plays
out in Aristotle’s conception of moral education. Agents need to become attrmed to the
larger picture and act always in the best manner, though the happiness that comes from
that action ought not be considered in the short term.

This life-long look at completeness also relies upon the necessity of change for all
individuals. Just as the particulars of a situation are constantly changing, so to are the
characters of agents as they grow and mature. Aristotle contrasts the youth who are
“changeable and fickle in their desires”88 with those in the prime of life who “have
neither the excess of confidence which amounts to rashness, nor too much timidity, but
the right amount of each)” (Implicit in this contrast is the character of the elderly who

are apparently self-controlled but in actually “have lost their vigour: consequently they do

 

“5 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095a15 - 16.
8‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1098a16 - 18.
*7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1098a18 - 20.
88 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389a6.

‘9 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1390a31 - 32.

73

not feel their passions much.”90 As Eugene Garver notes, the Rhetoric depiction of “the
old do not at all sound like the outcome of an ideal moral education.”91 I believe that
given Aristotle’s belief in opposing extrema of inclinations, we should read Rhetoric as
portraying the uneducated youth and uneducated elderly in contrast to the “virtuous
mean” of educated citizens in their prime.) The youth make mistakes “in the direction of
doing things excessively and vehemently,”92 “think they know everything, and are quite
sure about it,”93 and when they wrong another it is not to harm them, but to insult the
other.94 The youth live in a state of “expectation; for expectation refers to the firture,
memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it.”95
They “think themselves equal to great things” and prefer doing “noble things?“S Perhaps
most important to a consideration of the disposition of youth in light of moral education,
they “are regulated more by their character than by reasoning?” All is not lost for the
youth, because while their deliberative faculty is immature,” we can come to understand
an individual youth’s faculty of reasoning by relating his current ability to “the perfect
man and to his teacher.”99 As Sherman reads it, these comments “openly invite a
developmental model in which the child is not viewed statically, but as in progress

toward full humanity, on his way towards some end.”100 In short, Aristotle sees the youth

 

9° Aristotle, Rhetoric 1390a12 — 14.
9‘ Garver, 177.

92 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389b2.

9’ Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389b5 - 6.

9‘ Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389b7 — s.

9’ Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389a22 — 23.
9‘ Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389a33 — 34.
97 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389a35.

9‘ Aristotle, Politics 1260a13 — 14.
’9 Aristotle, Politics 1260a31 — 32.
10° Sherman, Fabric of Character 161 .

74

as passionate, noble, and mutable individuals. The conception of youth that Aristotle has,
whether charitable or not, is reflected in his methods of training. Like an untempered
piece of steel, these internperate individuals can best be molded by deliberately testing
them and shaping them towards their ultimate purpose.

Even given Aristotle’s somewhat dim view of youth, be strongly believes that
their capricious nature is curable through education. This is in part because “all men by
nature desire to know.”101 Fulfilling this desire to know is difficult because “no one is
able to attain the truth adequately.”102 All our knowledge can at best be considered
approximate since “no one fails entirely, but every one says something true about the
nature of things?”3 At best we can be grateful for the advice and teaching of our elders
because they have developed “before us the power of thought.”104 As any student and
any teacher can attest, the ability to learn through the hearing of lectures is not innate, and
individual success varies by student depending upon her habits.” For this reason we
should also acknowledge that we learn through habituation with the customs of a culture,
which are often captured in the laws of a society.106 Because of the incomplete nature of
our knowledge and the variable nature of our ability to learn by hearing we should not
seek the “minute accuracy of mathematics” for all subjects. “’7 These comments appear to
both bolster an experiential learning and gives some evidence to support that Aristotle

would accept the uncodifiability thesis.

 

"” Aristotle, Metaphysics 979b22.
“’2 Aristotle, Metaphysics 993a28.
“’3 Aristotle, Metaphysics 993b1 — 2.
"’4 Aristotle, Metaphysics 993b14.
'05 Aristotle, Metaphysics 994b31.
“’6 Aristotle, Metaphysics 995a3 — 5.
'07 Aristotle, Metaphysics 99Sa15.

75

Irwin presents in his writings an interpretation of Aristotle which is at odds with
mine and represents a likely objection to my attempt to utilize Aristotle in a strong
particularism. He provides exegetical evidence in the attempt to show that Aristotle is
not a particularist, even if there are elements of Aristotle which are amenable to
particularism.108 IfIrwin’s account of Aristotle is accepted, then at best I would be left
with bringing into particularism a process of moral education that amenable with
particularism, but could also be used to educate agents in principleism. I believe that this
possibility is less attractive than finding a theory which brings agents to particularism
alone, and for this reason take this objection seriously and consider it here in the midst of
the consideration of Aristotle’s metaphysics of morality.

Irwin states that in order to understand properly Aristotle’s claims that the
discipline of ethics is built upon the knowledge of the ultimate end of humanity we need
more than “some implicit, partial, not always completely coherent overall end reflecting a
rough structure and order in [agent] desires.”109 Instead of aiming at some incompletely
captlned idea of the end, the “rational agent is supposed to aim at an overall end guided
by some systematic reflective conception of his good.”l 10 At times Aristotle claims that
agents have knowledge of their ends; for example, his claims that “all knowledge and
choice aims at some good”1 u and that the happy man will throughout his life always “do
and contemplate what is excellent”112 can only be understood together if the happy man

has always had knowledge of the good. However, by emphasizing that agents are

 

‘08 Irwin, “Ethics as an Inexact Science.”

“’9 Irwin, “The Metaphysical...” 47.

”° ibid.

“1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095al4 — 15.
”2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1100b] 7 — 20.

76

fallible, sometimes act contrary to virtue, or act without knowledge,113 Aristotle also
seems committed to state that agents need to come to understand the good. Irwin finds
that “Aristotle’s claim about the final good seems to equivocate between psychological
description and ethical advice; sometimes he appears to think that everyone has a
conception of the final good, sometimes to advise people to acquire it, without realizing
that he is making different claims.”114

Given Irwin’s reading of Aristotle’s mixed message on knowledge of the final
good, he could correctly point out that the account of moral education I depend upon
emphasizes one aspect of Aristotle (that we can have a proper method of acquiring moral
knowledge) while denying that we can ever come to know the final good. In other words,
while Aristotle is conflicted as to whether agents possess knowledge of the good
throughout life or come to know it fiom a process of moral education, virtuous
particularism calls for moral education without an end goal of possessing knowledge
about the final good.

Does Aristotle really believe that agents can possess knowledge of the final good?
Irwin seems conflicted on this point. On one hand, Aristotle makes claims comparing our
knowledge of ends to knowledge of first principles (such as at Nicomachean Ethics
1151a14 — 18 and Eudemian Ethics 1227b28 — 30‘”). However, he continues to claim

that no one can demonstrate the truth of these principles, as all principles are

 

“3 These possibilities and the difficulties that they represent for both Aristotle’s theory
and virtuous particularism are considered in the next chapter.

“4 Irwin, “The Metaphysical. . .” 47.

“5 The Ross translation I am using, translates arche’ as “starting-points.” Irwin translates
it as “first principles.”

77

undemonstl'able.116 Irwin concedes, “Aristotle does not explain what is required to
‘define’ the end, whether ‘prove’ refers to demonstrative proof or some other kind of
argument.”117 Irwin generally desires to read Aristotle not as “a series of rather acute
discussions of various philosophical topics” but as a “comprehensive theory.”l '8
However, this leaves him with a difficulty. He needs to explain how Aristotle can hold
both positions. They cannot simfly be explained away by considering the works
chron010gically and seeing a development in Aristotle’s thought, because both the
Nicomachean and Eudcmian Ethics have common passages which use both conceptions.
Irwin proposes that perhaps the conflict stems from Aristotle’s attraction to
“demonstrative structure of science” and the realization that this method has limits “as a
model for rational deliberation.”l ‘9 By acknowledging this dual nature, and the
shortcomings of the demonstrative model, Irwin has opened the door for the possibility
that unlike science (which inductively infers its first principles through demonstration),
ethics does not rest upon sure knowledge of the good.120 Lacking that sure knowledge,
agents can be working toward a better understanding of the world and more refined
observations of a situation without relying upon principles or rules. This possibility is in
keeping with the way I am using Aristotle’s account of moral education.

In the end I do not believe that Irwin’s reading of Aristotle is that problematic for

virtuous particularism. After all, I am not claiming that Aristotle was a strong

 

"6 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1218b20 —- 24.

“7 Irwin, “First Principles in Aristotle’s Ethics” 264.

“3 Irwin, “The Metaphysical...” 36.

“9 Irwin, “First Principles in Aristotle’s Ethics” 265.

'20 Of course, as any logic student could tell you induction will never get you certainty, so
we ought speak of strongly held accepted understandings, rather than sure knowledge of
the first principles of science.

78

particularist and as such the adOption of Aristotle’s education is easily done. Instead, I
draw upon Aristotle to show that elements of his corpus can be, and should be, used to
answer a substantial epistemic shortcoming in strong particularism. Further, given that it
is possible to read Aristotle through the lens of particularism, we can see that significant
portions of Aristotle’s metaphysics can be used to shore up this particularist reading of
Aristotle as an acceptable (if not the only possible) reading. For this reason, it is not
inappropriate to rely upon Aristotle to immove upon strong particularism.

Having said that, and confronted Irwin’s reading of Aristotle in order to show that
the metaphysical accounts are not necessarily at odds, there is an element of Aristotle’s
metaphysics which establishes a problematic aspect of his ethical thought. Immicit in
Aristotle’s account of virtuous action is his belief that when one reasons properly about
action the conclusion itself is an action which is undertaken. To use his example,
“whenever one thinks that every man ought to walk, and the one is a man oneself,
straightaway one walks; or that, in this case, no man should walk, one is a man:
straightaway one remains at rest.”121 The conclusions of these syllogisms are themselves
the actions,122 and the thought of a particular conclusion brings about the desire to
undertake it. 123 This same vieWpoint is expressed in the Nicomachean Ethics when
Aristotle states, “that we must act according to right reason is a common principle and
must be assumed.”124 (Sherman notes that in this mode of reasoning “Aristotle must be

assuming that if a desire to bring about some end cited in the major premiss is in fact

 

12' Aristotle, Movement 701a11 — 15.

‘22 Aristotle, Movement 701a23.

‘23 Aristotle, Movement 701a34.

'2‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1103b31 — 33.

79

occurrent, then the necessary inspection of the particulars has been met.”125) The
assumption that an agent will always act in conformity with a practical syllogism appears
to cause the greatest difficulty for augmenting strong particularism with Aristotle’s
account of moral education. This is because if action necessarily follows from reasoning,
than strong particularism must entail a strong intemalism and the relationship between
reasons for action and actions themselves becomes much more complicated than in
Dancy’s weaker intemalism. This problem is considered more fully in the next chapter.
The Difficult Discernment of Shapg in Invirtuous A ction

Dancy’s moral particularism relies upon the agent’s ability to discern the shape of
a situation by picking out those salient features of the situation. Upon determining the
shape of the situation, the agent will know the thin moral concept of lightness/wrongness
of a given action, and the morally correct action to take will be clear. Missing from
Dancy’s accmmt is an indication of how agents learn to pick out salient features. For this
reason, I have proposed augmenting strong particularism with Aristotle’s account of
moral education. In Aristotle’s theory agents would become habituated to performing
right action through conforming to society’s law and modeling actions performed by
elders. Eventually agents would come to have the ability to reason about the correct
action to take in a given situation based upon their experience and knowledge of the
feattu'es which tend to be important.

This augmentation at first glance appears to be especially fitting given that
Aristotle’s virtue theory, like strong particularism, emphasizes the need for particulars to

be considered instead of relying upon universal truths. Aristotle takes pains to show that

 

'25 Sherman, Fabric of Character 41.

80

the particulars of a situation are relevant"126 Virtues of character, understood as means
between the extremes of deficiencies and excess, are particular to each agent. Further,
intellectual virtues come from understanding what the correct action is at the correct time.
It is not enough to do the “correct” action at the “incorrect” time; the particulars of the
situation need to come into play. Dancy, by focusing on the ontological character of
moral reasons, omits how one becomes aware of the salient features. Aristotle provides
an answer: we learn to be virtuous through legislation, habituation, and mentorship.
However, Aristotle’s belief that the result of practical deliberation is an action
taken causes problems. By assuming that an agent will necessarily take the action which
conforms with what reflection upon a situation in light of experience reveals as morally
correct, Aristotle has a hard time explaining how it is that agents can take actions which
are contrary to the decision that a particular action was morally right. (In this category I
am temporarily including not taking actions conforming with the decision made; in the
next chapter I more fully distinguish the difl‘erence between not doing a given action and
taking a contrary action.) Aristotle spends some time in Nicomachean and Eudemian
Ethics, as well as elsewhere, trying to explain these sorts of actions, but his distinctions
are uncharacteristically confusing and convoluted. However, just as Aristotle was able to
augment strong particularism, Dancy’s work in turn can be used to clarify the distinctions
that Aristotle makes. Dancy provides an account of moral motivation (and the lack
thereof) which can be used to better schematize Aristotle’s differentiations. Once
properly schematized, these distinctions become a useful component of moral education.

For this reason, using Dancy’s account of moral motivation allows us to use Aristotle’s

 

‘26 Recall, for example, that Milo’s mean for calorie intake would differ from that of a
non-athlete.

81

account of actions against moral reasoning in the training and education of our strong
particularist moral agents.

In the next chapter, I utilize Dancy’s theory to re-order Aristotle’s account of
actions which do not appear to conform with what practical wisdom would demand.
Following that, I return briefly to Dancy’s shape theory to display how it accounts for the
same sorts of actions. I close the next chapter with a comparison of Aristotle and

Dancy’s accounts of actions apparently taken against what reason would dictate.

82

CHAPTER FOUR:
The Problems of Using Aristotle
Whether tmderstood as conforming with action dictated by the thin moral concept
(as revealed by the moral shape), or as an action which is in keeping with the agent’s
particular virtuous mean, both strong particularism and Aristotle have an account for
understanding actions which are morally correct. Further, since Dancy’s shape approach
can be understood as a method for perceiving an action consistent with an Aristotelian
perception of agent and situation particularity, we can see both approaches as working in
harmony when it comes to perceiving right actions. In the previous chapter, I laid out
both theories and showed how that can be understood as complementary to each other.
Both strong particularism and Aristotle’s account of morality have to grapple with
explaining how to understand instances of agents not performing actions which appear to
be called for. This is particularly the case with any account of moral education, because
we need to be able to explain why instances where an agent discems a moral shape but
does not act upon it are not necessarily instances of insufficient moral education.l Given
this, it is not unexpected that the augmented theory I propose has to explain such cases.
Additionally, we can see that there is a benefit to augmenting strong particularism with
an Aristotelian understanding of action since we can come to better understand the fine
distinctions between various manners of taking (and not taking) action. While it is
problematic for virtuous particularism that these sorts of cases occur, the posm'bility of

utilizing the consideration of these cases in a moral education display the strength of the

 

' Many of these instances can be used for continued moral education, as I lay out in this
and in the sixth chapter. From my perspective though it is important to realize that some
of these “actions against reasoning” are instances of incorrect evaluation by third parties
about what an agent ought to have done.

83

accormt. Strong particularism, especially Dancy’s particularism, can do little more than
explain these instances. Virtuous particularism can, because of the groundwork laid by
Dancy and Aristotle, eXplain these instances and show how to use them in providing a
moral education.

In Dancy’s shape metaphor, an agent perceives the moral shape of a situation by
observing all of the salient features in the situation. It is important to remember that a
feature which is relevant in one situation may not be relevant in another situation and that
the moral valence of reasons is not fixed. To return to a previous example, that a
particular piece of art belonged to another individual may in one situation provide a
reason not to take it and in another a reason to take it. In yet other situations, the
ownership of a piece of art could be irrelevant. These accounts all present instances of
perception and observation, not accormts of action or even of motivation for action. That
we often take action based upon our observations about what is morally right seems
unquestionable, and perimps the routineness of our actions can be collapsed back into our
observation of the situation.

Since the moral shape is composed of the salient features of the situation, it is
only natural to assume that any reason not to take action would be a salient feature, and
thus a component of the shape from which we can see the thin-moral concept of tightness
(or wrongness). For example, in determining if we should rush into a burning building to
save a child, one salient feature might well be our lack of training in performing such a
maneuver. This prudential reason not to act would naturally be a component in our shape

and affect our understanding of what is morally right in this situation. In this conception

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of understanding the moral shape I am going farther than Dancy does.2 Even if one, like
Dancy, is a weak intemalist, the understanding of moral actions that I present here is still
helpful because it allows agents to understand more precisely some of the possible ways
in which moral knowledge provides insufi'rcient moral motivation. Reflecting on these
different methods could allow an agent to discern more clearly the salient features of a
situation and the manner in which they come together in the moral shape.

I am claiming that since any feature of the world is potentially a morally salient
feature, it is only understandable that the features of the world which would
contraindicate taking a given action would be considered as part of the moral shape of a
situation. Just as the outcome of moral reflection ought not require us to do something
which we cannot do (such as successfully hold our breath for fifteen minutes) in order for
the morally correct action to occur, the outcome of moral reflection ought to include an
awareness of what sorts of action we would be (dis)inclined to take. When speaking of
the individual features which compose a moral shape, Dancy notes that

There are weaker and stronger moral reasons. . . and it
would be better in the end to think only of the strongest
moral reasons as requiring [action]. Less strong ones
demand without requiring, perhaps, and yet weaker ones

dy afl for the relevant action or the adoption of the
m aim.3

 

2 In private correspondence, Dancy agreed that these prudential reasons would certainly
be part of the shape. Thus, one’s own lack of training would be a reason to allow another
to go in. Additionally, the reason could through supererogation count both as a neutral
reason for one not to go in and an agent-relative one for you specifically not to go in. All
of this points to the appropriateness of thinking that prudential reasons not to act would
be included in the shape. However, Dancy was less comfortable, given his weak
intemalism, of accepting that since prudential reasons would be included in the shape, the
outcome of a reflection on the moral shape would by necessity involve action.

3 Dancy, Moral Reasons 47.

85

From Dancy’s perspective, it is incorrect to believe that all moral reasons are sufficiently
motivational that they require action. What we need to remember though is that at this
level he is speaking of individual aspects (the ‘thick’ concepts) of a moral shape, and not
the revealed moral shape itself (the ‘thin’ concept). Is it necessary for agents to act upon
the revealed morally correct actions? Dancy does not claim so, and perhaps cannot say
so given his weak intemalism.

From a strong particularist perspective believing that the outcome of an
observation will always motivate is to fly in the face of what we have seen how reasons
fimction. At some level, we can conceive of the reason for taking an action as the fact
that moral observation and reflection determined it to be proper. Yet, if we claimed that
this would always be the case, we would be admitting that some feature of the world has
fixed moral valence; strong particularists cannot properly claim that the outcome of
reflection on the moral shape is always morally correct, at least in part because as a moral
realism it nwds to be possible for agents to see incorrectly the shape (and thus the ‘thin’
concept of rightness/wrongness.) Just as Dancy holds back from saying that all features
are variable, I read this hesitancy in saying that actions will be taken following perception
as keeping with a desire not to think in terms of tuliversals, but always of particulars.
Dancy’s own language quoted above implicitly provides evidence that we will act in
accord with our reasoning and perception; the strongest moral claims demand action in
accord with what is right in this situation. Yet, these moral demands might incompletely
motivate an agent to take action.

In contrast to Dancy’s approach which appears to have a place for not taking

action, and as mentioned in the last chapter, Aristotle’s account of moral reasoning

86

includes the belief that individual reasoning processes function as practical syllogisms. If
one determines that in a given particular situation the proper action to take is x, and that
this is that particular situation, then it is a given for Aristotle that action x is taken. Here
we face the inverse problem that was seen with strong particularism. Where
particularism seems to allow as open the possibility of knowing the right thing to do
without actually doing it, Aristotle apparently allows no room for an agent not to act in
accord with what she sees as correct in this situation. But both our own experience and
the observations of other’s actions display that this is not always the case. We do not
always act in a manner that is consistent with our perception of what is moral. Our
failure to act in these moral ways could be considered a failure of moral education, just as
a student’s failure to properly do long division could be considered an instance of a
failure of mathematical education. In contrast to seeing this as simply a failure, in
Aristotle we find a complicated understanding of various ways to fail to act. These
lmderstandings become important both in developing a richer theory of moral education
and in addressing the possibility in Dancy’s particularism that an agent perceives the
right action and perhaps does not act accordingly. Regardless of whether one accepts
weak or strong intemalism the typology of these actions allows us to see instances that a
good moral education ought to consider, providing a systematic understanding of the
possibilities that an agent should be aware of and should regard with have some amount
of concern.

Aristotle was not unaware that people do not always act in a manner consistent
with what perception of the virtuous action would be. His discussion of this is scattered

throughout his moral works, is difficult to systematically grasp, and perhaps most

87

 

problematically for my purposes here is not linked into his system of moral education
The first difliculty (the scattered approach) is surmountable. The difficulty of
systemization I believe is greatly helped by considering Aristotle’s distinctions in terms
of particularism, and thus perhaps reinforcing the symbiotic relationships between virtue
based ethics and strong particularism. The final difficulty, that these distinctions are not
integrated into Aristotle’s system of moral education, is easily resolved. In the process of
moral education brought forth from bringing virtue ethics and particularism into dialogue
these distinctions ought to be explained and analyzed along with the facts of a situation.
In this chapter, I explain how to best understand instances where an agent does
not act in the expected morally correct manner, and in doing so clarify the distinctions
between varieties of moral (in)actions and moral errors that Aristotle provides in Book
VII of the Nicomachean Ethics. Following this clarification I return to Dancy’s shape
metaphor to show how we can explain within the framework of his theory how an agent
can take non-right (and arguably wrong) action, and compare the accounts provided to
address lingering questions about the appropriateness of augmenting Dancy with
Aristotle. The typology that comes from these considerations ought to be considered one
of many possible typologies, as is perhaps in keeping with a strong particularism that it is
the salient featmes in a specific case that bring about an understanding of the morally
correct action. The schematic that I lay out focuses on paradigm cases that display
distinct possibilities; the danger in doing so is that the gradient possibilities between
cases can be obscured or lost. A good particularist would see these paradigm cases as
instances that could be learned from, not as the final word on the possibilities of not

taking action in accordance with moral knowledge.

88

 

 

Throughout I am using terminology that is familiar in moral philosophy, but using
them in manners which are slightly divergent from the norm. In each instance I utilize
the words because they both carry an echo of how we normally conceive of them and
appear to aptly fit in this approach. Thus, for example I discuss below that the outcome
of a moral reasoning could be ‘silenced,’ though this term is generally used only to refer
to specific reasons/featm'es of the entire reasoning process. There seems to be a clear
parallel between the manner of silencing, and the term seems appropriate, thus the
somewhat idiosyncratic usage.

Before we can examine theories about how to understand those who do not take
action conforming with what practical deliberation upon the moral shape determines, we
need to first have an understanding of the variety of ways that one can do so. Even given
the number of possible shapes, and the number of possible agents, it initially appears that
there are only four ways for an agent to act against moral reasoning. These four methods
can best be understood in two possible sets each with two possible durations of action.

The first set is composed of those actions which are performed when an agent
does not act. While it may seem odd to consider the lack of action on the agent’s part to
be an action, this idea meshes well with our experiences in the world. When an angry
parent asks why an older sibling did not stop a younger child from doing some action (i.e.
cutting the family pet’s hair), the parent sees the lack of acting as itselfan action. This
same perception is used in legal findings such as negligent homicide. If we look at this
question theoretically, we see that the claim that the lack of an action can itself be

considered an action is at the center of James Rachels’ killing/letting die distension.4

 

4 Rachels, “Active and Passive Euthanasia.”

89

Rachels argues that the distinction between actively killing someone and passively
standing by while another dies is a false distinction. For example, we wouldfind an
individual who stood by and let a child drown in a tub when a sirnple action could
prevent it equally in the wrong as someone who actively held a child underwater in the
tub. The lack of action in the first case, the not saving of the child, is taking an action
just as much as is forcefirlly drowning in an action.

Ifwe accept that the lack of action is itselfan action, then we can understand
these non-acting actions as occurring in one of two manners. Ifthe action not taken is
one which the agent’s moral reasoning would normally have called for, these non-acting
actionscanbestbeunderstoodasactingagainstreason. Ifthe lackofactionisnot
limited to this single case, but instead is part of some larger set of non-acting, then the
agent appears to be suffering from accidie, or sloth. Ifthe lack of action is more limited
in scope then the agent may be acratic, or intemperate.

The second set of possible actions which do not conform to practical deliberation
upon moral shape is composed of actions which are actively taken against what an
agent’s reasoning process would call for. Ifthe action is more limited in scope, and in
many respects resembles acrasia, then moral reasoning can be said to have been silenced
in this instance. The final category is made up of actions against moral reasoning which
are repeated time and time again. In these instances, moral reasoning (at least as regards

the scope of the continual actions against reasoning) is defeated. These four possibilities

90

and their relationship to the taking or not taking of an action is displayed in the following

 

 

schematics
Figure 2: Preliminary Typology of Actiom against Moral Reasoning
Lack of Action Action Contrary
F l l W
Broad ScOpe Limited/One Time Limited/One Time Broad Scope
(Accidie) (Acrasia) (Silenced) (Defeated)

The first possibility (accidie) is considered prior to turning to Aristotle. The other three
possibilities (acrasia, silenced reasoning, and defeated reasoning) are considered while
clarifying Aristotle’s own distinctions.

Accidie is a condition where an otherwise moral agent continually does not take
actions which her moral reasoning would call for. As opposed to the amoral individual,
who cannot tell the difference between the right and wrong action, the accidic individual
knows the right action, but does not take it As Dancy explains, “People who suffer from
accidic are those who just don’t care for a while about things which would normally seem
to them to be perfectly good reasons for action.”6 These individuals are not amoral; they
know what the proper action to take is in a given situation. However, they do not take
action. While not in the moral sphere, the most familiar instance of accidic is Bartleby
from Herman Melville’s short story of the same name. Bartleby was a scrivener, or law-
copyist, who initially upon employment “did an extraordinary quantity of writing.”7

However, within a few days he began to respond to all requests with the polite response

 

5 Since the lack of action is itself an action, this typology is organized such to show
several paradigm cases that are less clear if we consider just limited and broad actions
contrary to reasoning, regardless of if the action is a specific contrary action or an action
through omission.

6 Dancy, Moral Reasons 5.

7 Melville,12.

91

of “I would prefer not to.”8 After Bartleby’s refusals reach even to not leaving the office
after being fired, the un-named narrator goes so far as to move the office out from under
Bartleby.9 (It had already been established that Bartleby lived in the office, without prior
permission.)10 The new tenants of the office forcefully remove Bartleby from the room
when he continues to prefer not to leave.11 When he prefers not to leave the building, the
landlord has Bartleby arrested and brought to the Tombs.” Preferring not to eat, Bartleby
starves himselfto death in prison. ‘3 Perhaps it is an understatement to note that there was
obviously something wrong with Bartleby. No rational person simply allows these

events to happen to them, refusing to acting simply because he “prefers not to.” But this
of course is the point made manifest by the accidic, those who are not rational may find
themselves unmotivated to take actions which they can be in normal circumstances drawn
to undertake because their reasoning recommends them as the proper action. After noting
that depression is a cause for accidie, Dancy explains that “The depressive is not deprived
of the relevant beliefs by his depression; they just leave him indifferent.”l4 This
universal indifference” causes an agent to act in some instances against moral reasoning,
and in other instance in conformity with it. Just so long as the “act” in question involves

an active role by the agent, then it is not taken. In a moral sense, we can see that those

 

8 Melville, 1 3, and throughout.

9 Melville,37. The firing occurred at 29 - 30.

1° Melville,21 — 24.

" Melville,39.

'2 Melville,42.

‘3 Melville,45.

1‘ Dancy, Moral Reasons 5.

‘5 Interestingly, Bartleby continues to insist throughout the narrator’s attempts to find a
suitable job for him that he is “not particular.” (40 - 41) This lack of particularity can
only be understood in a logical quantifier sense, as his continued declinations of various
possibilities show that he indeed is quite fastidious in his choices.

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withaccidiefailtoactinaccordancewithmoral reasoning, butthatfailuretoactactionis
only telling of the lack of motivating force from their reasoning (and perhaps all other
aspects in their life.) An excellent example of moral accidic occurs in Les Mr'sérables
when Grantaire, a drunk who despite (apparently) believing in the values of the
revolution, sleeps through the entire battle, only to be shot by the guards upon
awakening. ‘6 If this case, and similar other cases, are integrated into the moral education
of agents they would come to see that consistently not acting in accordance with moral
reasoning is a cause for concern, perhaps bringing the agents to seek out medical or
psychological care.

gym ' g Aristotle’s Distinctions

Since Aristotle is concerned with individual actions, he did not consider the
accidic individual. Throughout his moral works he attempts to explain the problem of the
incontinent agent who appears to act against moral reasoning by clarifying the ways in
which to understand these actions. However, as he does not distinguish between cases
whereanagentdoesnotactandcaseswhereanagentactscontrarytoreasoninghis
distinctions come across as convoluted and confusing. In this section, I clarify Aristotle’s
distinctions, in part by separating cases of acrasia and silencing.

In contrast to accidie’s broad scope lack of action upon moral reasoning, acrasial7
is the occasional action done against reasoning because of a lack of will. Philosophy’s
understanding of these acts of incontinence goes back to Plato, who considers in the
Protagoras “a man, knowing the bad to be bad, never the less does that very thing, when

he is able not to do it, having been driven and overwhelmed by-pleasure” or “a man

 

‘6 Hugo, 1098 — 1099, 1252.
17 Since the original Greek is alcrasic‘i, this phenomena is sometimes referred to as akrasia.

93

knowing the good is not willing to do it, on accornu of immediate pleasure?” While the
dialogue is complete, the discussion is not, as Socrates, Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus
are not able to determine in the end if knowledge of the virtues is enough to ensure that
proper action is taken. In contrast to Plato’s account, for Aristotle the agent does not
even need to have knowledge of the right; strong opinion of the right is enough as those
“in a state of opinion do not hesitate, but think they know exactly.”19 In these instances
where our will succumbs to our passions, we are acratiac. While the literature on acrasia
includes consideration of actions done against moral reasoning, in my schema I reserve
acratic acts to actions against reasoning done by not acting in a given situation. By
clarifying the categories in this manner I am able to establish a system of understanding
moral actions which is both in keeping with Aristotle’s distinctions and Dancy’s account
of strong particularism. An additional benefit is that by clarifying the categories in this
manner Aristotle’s understanding of impetuousness, weakness, and involuntary action
become clearer, which allows for a stronger system of moral education.

Aristotle believes that the “primary source of movement” behind any action is the
principle of the action, and that those principles have necessary results.20 As he states,
“all the acts of which man is the principle and controller may either happen or not
happen, and that their happening or not happening. . . depends upon him.”21 Further, what
leads the acratic astray is an “internal tendency” which should be considered

“voluntary.”22 As mentioned previously, for Aristotle a conclusion of a syllogism of

 

“ Plato, Protagoras 355b1 — 4.

'9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1146b26.
2° Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1220b20 — 22.
2' Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1223a4 — 7.

22 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1224b9 — 11.

94

practical reasoning is an action,23 and the thought ofa particular conclusion brings about
the desire to undertake it.24 The role of individual motivation, and the extent to which the
conclusions of our practical reasoning ought to be binding are both shown in instances
where there is a “necessity of indifierence” wherein a man “though excwdingly hungry
and thirsty, and both equally, yet being equidistant from food and drink, is therefore
bormd to stay where he is?” Jean Buridan’s commentary on this and other pmges of
Aristotle on motivation later came to be ridiculed, giving us “Buridan’s Ass” or a donkey
which cannot choose between two equidistant piles of hay, and thus starves to death.
(Spinoza commented on Buridan’s example, and considered it a proof that Aristotle was
incorrect in placing a strong emphasis on the necessity of action conforming with the
conclusion of a practical syllogism.)26 Through discussion of incomplete motivation and
cases where an agent is torn between two equally correct choices into moral education,
agents can cOme to see that motivation and prudential reasons against acting nwd to be
considered along with the other salient features. In addition, cases like Buridan’s Ass can
be useful in displaying that the difficulties of moral motivation are neither unique to a
particular agent nor a new consideration arising from societal pressrues.

Since Aristotle’s conception of virtue is tied up with habitual action, the problem
of acrasia is quite important for him. A virtuous agent must not just have knowledge of

the right act, but must actually perform the right action. For this reason, when one has

the possibility of living a just life, she needs to do so, because simply willing that she was

 

23 Aristotle, Movement 701a23.

2‘ Aristotle, Movement 701a34.

’5 Aristotle, 0n the Heavens 296b30 — 34.
2‘ Spinoza, Ethica II Corollary to Prop. 49.

95

just after the fact is an ineffectual as attempting to un-throw a tossed stone.27 Thomas
Aquinas interprets this passage to mean that the actual performing of just actions lies
within the agent’s grasp, until she has formed unjust habits after which point great effort
and practice are required to reform.28 But just as clearly present here is that, since our
habits/virtues can so strongly be affected by actions which we undertake despite our
belief that they are wrong (or perhaps, less right), it is possible that acrasia could lead to
the unvirtuous habits.

While some may wish to find an agent acratic “in respect to” some particular
aspect, such as not sending money for humanitarian efi‘orts in Darfur despite knowing
that they money is sorely needed, Aristotle holds that this wish is not in keeping with a
correct understanding of acrasia. An agent does not act acratic through choice, but rather
“contrary to his choice and his judgment,” and as such we ought not speak of an
incontinent action as if it was performed through agent choice.29 Though this is the case,
we can classify acrasia into two types: impetuousness and weakness.30 Impetuous acrasia
originates from not taking the proper time to deliberate upon the situation; acrasia
through weakness is acting against deliberation because of one’s passions/appetites.“ or
the two types, “excitable people [are] more curable than... those who deliberate but do
not abide by their decisions.”32

An excellent example of acrasia is shown by Les Misérables when Valjean while

(apparently) lost in thought following Bishop Bienvenu’s command that he become an

 

2’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 11 14a] 6 —— 18.

2‘ Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics {5513.
29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1148a10.

3° Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 1501319.

3’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1150bl9 — 28.

3’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1152n27 — 29.

96

 

honest man33 steps on a rolling forty-sous piece belonging to a young chimneysweep
(Petit Gervais) and does “not seem to understand” Gervais’ repeated requests for the
return of his coin.34 This theft of the forty-sous was accomplished by not acting (i.e. not
lifiing his foot), and having been given Bienvenu’s pardon, Valjean was again an ethical
agent. Yet, he was unable to take the only action required to uphold the previously
established belief in property rights — which was to raise his foot off the coin. He knew
the right action, but was unable to take it because he lacked the will to do so. In this case,
the lack of will is traceable to his own processing of the implications of the bishop’s
actions. Ifwe take Valjean’s actions here to be acratic, then the theft is outside the scope
of morality. He did not act against his reasoning, as his lack of action was not in any way
a reaction to a moral reasoning. Examples like this enable us to show novice agents that
not every action contrary to moral reasoning/perception is an action that carries moral
culpability. Sometimes we are not able for a variety of reasons to act in a manner that we
realize is the morally best course of action. Educating agents to the possibility of
weakness of the will both enables them to understand what may occur to them and
potentially to prevent them from becoming overly critical of others who fail to act in a
manner corresponds to the morally correct action.

Understanding acrasia as a condition wherein an agent holds a belief but does not
act upon it due to weakness of the will is not a very popular idea. Since, as I noted
above, some of the literature on acrasia does not distinguish between the active taking of
an action against values (by performing an action contrary to a value) and the passive

taking of an action against values (by omission of action), some objections to the

 

33 Hugo, 106.
3‘ Hugo, 106 - 108.

97

possibility of acrasia are passed over here. One reason for attempts to refute the
possibility of acrasia is that if one wishes to adopt a conception of ethics where one‘s
beliefs necessarily motivate action, then accidic and acrasia (which often get lumped,
intermixed, and confused for each other in their joint denial) present a serious challenge.
If beliefs necessarily motivate action, then it is not plausible for an agent to not act upon
her beliefs. While there are many subtle differences between accormts which dismiss
acrasia, they can generally be categorized in two manners. The first approach,
represented here by RM. Hare, is to simply deny that acrasia is a problem for the theory
at hand. The second approach is to differentiate the necessary motivation fiom belief and
the constant conjunction of motivation and belief.

While R.M. Hare states that “moral weakness is the tendency not to do ourselves
something which in general we commend, or to do something which in general we
condemn,”35 he also labels those who knowing act in such a manner “hypocrites.”36 In
this schema, Hare admits that psychological weakness provides a legitimate exception to
action in conformity with values for those who genuinely believe but do not act, elevating
the acratic’s ‘shall not’ to ‘cannot.’37 (For those who can, “in every sense” of the word,
perform an action they believe is right, but do not do so, they are either hypocrites,
insincere, or self—deceived”) In short, Hare’s reaction to acrasia is that the un-taken
action was a) not taken because of force, b) not really believed to be correct, or c) the
agent is a hypocrite, whose actions do not match her beliefs. His three distinctions are

interesting. Of these possibilities, the first matches more closely to the involuntary

 

3’ Hare, 72.
36 Hare, 77.
’7 Hare, 80 - 81.
3‘ Hare, 82 — 83.

98

actions considered next in the chapter than to a discussion of acrasia. The second
possibility corresponds in many ways to the voluntary actions considered at the close of
this chapter. The final possibility of hypocrisy is a value judgment about the moral status
of the acratic, with no reflection given on the possibility of this value judgment being
necessary or not. Here’s dismissal of acrasia is in essence to deflect two of the three
possibilities (admittedly, in a manner similar to my own schema) and to judge badly
those who do suffer fi'om acrasia as it has been used here. This value judgment does not
protect his own theory from having to explain how acrasia occurs; it simply labels the
acratic bad moral actors.

A difl‘erent approach is taken by others in the analytic tradition who would
differentiate more subtly the relationship between knowledge/belief, motivation, and
action. For example, G.E. Moore believes that “to think a thing good” and willing it to
be the case is not identical.39 However, the willing “always both accompanies and is
accompanied by the thinking good”40 Two things are interesting in Moore’s account.
First, the (implied) causal relationship he is concerned with is that willing leads to
thinking good, while acknowledging that willing and thinking are concurrent. Secondly,
in this conception Moore does not have a place for actions “willed” by passions (i.e.
smoking, eating volumes of bon bons)41 rather tlmn intellect, nor does he have a place for
thinking an action good but not performing it. He allows that actions (rationally) willed
must be thought good, but does not provide for thinking an action good but not willing it

William Frankena is willing to admit that “all men are psychologically so constituted as

 

3“ Moore, 135.
‘° ibid.
‘“ This example is borrowed from Kubara, 218.

99

to be moved by the recognition that something is right.”42 Despite this psychological
connection, he believes that there is no logical necessity for action.43 “I should” and “I
shall” are logically distinct terms, and phrases such as “I ought but I shall not” are
perfectly understandable.“ Robert Richman picks up on this distinction between the
psychological and logical requirements to act (also bolstered by Donald Davidson’s
“How is Weakness of the Will Possible?”) and finds that there is only a “logical relation
between an agent’s believing that he ought to perform a certain action and his performing
it?“ He sees this relation as between belief and action, not between obligation and
action.46 Richman, however, admits that he “assume[s] that most persons’ motivational
structure is such that, having made such judgments, they will have some tendency to act,
or to form an intention to act, in accordance with the practical evaluation in question?“
This simply returns us to the problem of acrasia for action. If an agent has a value, which
in normal circumstances would lead one to act in a particular manner, and the agent does
not possess the will to take the action, then she is outside of “most persons’ motivational
structure,” but none the less corresponds to Richman’s own description. All that the
separation of obligation from motivation does in all these cases (Moore, Frankena,
Richman) is to underscore the universal acceptance that in some cases an agent will
believe in a given value, but lack the motivation to take action. This lack of sufficient
motivation is a problem of the agent’s psychology, because there is a logical connection

between belief that one should act in a manner and the attempt to do so. In those

 

’2 Frankena, 68.
‘3 ibid.

‘4 Frankem, 71.
‘5 Richman, 250.
‘6 ibid.

4" Richman, 256.

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instances where the logical connection does not function as we would expect because of
incomplete motivation, we can understood the weakness to be acrasia.

i In educating agents to the complexities of (not) acting on moral reasoning, they
need to become aware of the possibility of acting against reasoning by not taking an
action. If the lack of action taken applies not only in a narrow range of possibilities, but
to each possible action, then we should understand the lack of action as originating in the
agent’s accidic. For any number of reasons an agent declines to take action, any action,
and as such the acting against reasoning ought not be considered as indicative of anything
about the reasoning. Instead, the lack of action relates to the agent’s underlying
condition. Ifthe lack of action is more limited in scope, such as a particular instance of
non-acting, then the agent could have suffered from acrasia. Acrasia is in many respects
(in this schema) a limited form of accidie, and the lack of action is related solely to the
agent’s inability to bring forth the will necessary to perform the recommended action.
Aristotle’s distinction between the two varieties of acrasia (irnpetuousness and weakness)
provides further categorization of lack of action dictated by moral reasoning. In my
proposed moral education, these distinctions could be illustrated to novices and students
through the use of cases and reflection upon observed actions (their own and others) to
see more clearly which aspects of the world impact the shape of the situation. Discerning
if flair own lack of action is fiom weakness or impetuousness would allow these agents
to either build these salient features into the shape of the situation (i.e. “I really ought to
admit that I generally cannot follow through on long-term financial commitments, so the
best action to take would not be to promise to send regular payments to aid workers in

Darfinz”) or retroactively understand what went awry in their understanding of the

101

situation. As agents are in the situation they are evaluating, self-evaluation on these
grounds would be an important consideration in learning how to properly discern the
he of the situation (and thus, the morally correct action.) Additionally, as virtuous
particularism draws upon a virtue-based approach of life-long improvement, awareness
of this: inclinations would allow them to shape themselves into better ethical agents.

In contrast to acting against moral reasoning by not taking an action, it is possible
for an agent to take an action which is against the conclusion of a practical syllogism.
These actions against reasoning can be understood to be voluntary or involuntary in
natme and to be limited in scope or long-standing. When the involuntary action against
reasoning is limited in scope, it is most similar to acrasia, and as noted above, these
instances are often raised in the discussion of the acratic. These situations will be
discussed prior to the voluntary actions against reasoning.

In the Aristotelian tradition, we can act against our values either voluntarily or
involuntarily. To borrow Aquinas’ distinction, “Involuntary action is against the will,
non-voluntary action is without the will.”48 Thus if one is ‘unwilling to read,’ in the

normal circumstances this would be understood as a voluntary non-action if one does not.
If an is lmwilling to read and does so anyway, that action could be a non-voluntary
action or an involuntary action depending upon if force is used upon the agent.49
Involtmtary actions are those performed (or not performed) because of threats or use of
force upon the agents0 In all cases, Aristotle believes that involuntary actions need to be

’8 Aquinas, Summa Theolgice Ia2ae. 6,3, footnote d.

‘9 Aquinas, Summa Theolgiae Ia2ae. 6,3.

50 The parenthetical comment here is intended as acknowledgement that it is possible to
use Aristotle’s distinctions equally to consider actions not taken. As explained above I
do not do so both for simplicity of modeling and to make paradigm cases clearer.

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painful and involve regretsl An involuntary action is one “which impedes and hinders
contrary to impulse and choice?”2 These compulsory actions are necessary, and as
necessary “is painful” because they are “contrary to the movement which accords with
choice and with reasoning.”3 This contrary nature is important. We ought not say that
an agent involuntarily performed an action which they desired to do. Only “when
something external moves a thing, or brings it to rest against its own internal tmdmcy,
that we say this happens by force?“ Further, “when the principle is fi'om within, there is
no force?”5 It can be diflicult to determine if an action by another agent was undertaken
because of force, but Aristotle provides the general rule that it is more likely that an agent
acted involuntarily “if he acted to escape violent than if to escape gentle pain, and
germally to escape pain than ifto get pleasure?”6 Ifunder duress an agent does an action
against values, then that action deserves forgiveness.” This forgiveness comes because
the act, though against agent moral reasoning, does not originate with the agent but in
external circumstances8

However, even in the face of a possible involuntary action Aristotle appears to
believe that it is better “to face death after the most fearful sufl'ering” than to take some
actions, such as slaying one’s own mother.59 Setting aside the noble death of refusing to

take improper action, it is clear that Aristotle believes that forced or coerced actions are

 

51 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1110bl7 - I8, 1111a33.
52 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1015a26.

53 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1015a29, 1015a32 — 33.

54 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1224b6 -- 9.

55 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1224b14 — 15.

5‘ Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1225a22 — 24.

’7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1110a24.

58 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 1 10b] .

59 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1110a25 —- 28.

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outside the scope of morality.60 When an agent is considering the morality of possible
actions the only options that she can reasonably deliberate about are those which are in
her power and could be done.61 For example, when Valjean (then living as Madeleine,
the mayor of Montreuil-sur—mer) was in the throws of his deliberation of disclosing his
true identity to the another (Champmathieu) who was falsely accused of being ‘Valjean
the escaped convict,’ Valjean could only consider actions that he could do: turning
himself in and freeing Champmathieu or not and retaining his position in Montreuil~sur-
mer.62 Valjean could not in his deliberation determine that what was necessary w a
pm firm the king, nor could he deliberate upon the necessity for aliens to solve his
problem. It is possible for agents to wish such easy solutions to their conflicts, but these
imagined solutions ought not be considered deliberation.63 Assuming that one has
already decided to act morally/virtuously then a deliberation decides “how and by what
means it is to be attained; and ifit seems to be produced by several means they consider
by which it is most easily and best produced.”64

So far, I have considered actions taken involuntarily against moral reasoning.
However, it is also possible to consider actions invollmtarily not done as fitting nicely in
this category. One of Hare’s attempts to deny acrasia was based upon the supposition
thattheagentwasnotabletoactbecauseofforceuseduponthe agent. Farfrombeing
properly considered acratic non-action, those instances would firmly lie here with

involuntary action. In those instances of non-action, force would be involved to prevent

 

6° This interpretation runs counter to Aquinas who believes that all acts are moral acts.
(Summa Theolgize Ia2e. 18,9)
' Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1112a3 1, Eudemian Ethics 1226a1 - 2.
‘2 Hugo, 219 - 239.
63 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics llllb20 — 30.
6‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1112b15 — 17.

104

action, and one would assume that our agent would feel regret later for not taking the
right action, despite her inability to do so.

In involuntary action we find actions (or non-actions) performed against one’s
will and inclination and against one’s normal moral reasoning. In these instances, we can
understand the agent’s reasoning process to have been silenced as the moral shape
changes in light of the prudential reasons coercing action. For John McDowell when an
agent apprehends the constitutive aspects of a situation and sees that some feature (or set
of featmes) provides “a reason for acting in some way,” that reason did not outweigh or
override the other reasons, but instead silenced them.“ The other reasons for action (in
manners contrary to the method taken) did not go away; they were simply found not to be
pertinent in that situation. In these invollmtary actions, the force (real or threatened)
utilized upon the agent is an external fact of the situation which silences the motivating
force of the agent’s reasoning. The reasons for right action have not changed, as they
were neither outweighed nor overridden by other more powerful values. Instead, the
reasoning was found not to be applicable in these instances as the agent was not flee to
act as she otherwise would. Another way of considering the silencing which occurs in
involtmtary action is to conceive of a syllogism whose major premise is “When one is
free to do so, one should act in manner x, as that is the virtuous/right action” and whose
conclusion is the action to perform in such a prescribed manner. When silencing occurs,
the minor premise shifts from “This is a situation where one is he to act in such a
manner” to “This is not a situation where one is fiee is act is such a manner.” The

silencing which occurs in involuntary action is a rational understanding of the agent’s

 

‘5 McDowell, 335.

105

ability to perform the action, without the major premise (which contains the value) being
atrectod at all.“6 The observation ofa salient fact (in this case the inability to perform an
action) replaces the minor premise with its complement. This observation “silences all
other” salient features which would normally apply and bring about a different minor
premise.67 While McDowell’s discussion of silencing ranges more broadly than
involuntary actions, his observations are particularly key to the understanding of these
incidents.

The evaluation of these invollmtary actions/silenced moral reasons can be
integrated into moral education in the same manner that other aspects of moral education W
are done: consideration of paradigmatic case studies, observation of the world, and
reflection upon experiences. An excellent example of a moral decision that was altered
via silencing is Valjean’s initial ethical encounter (the bread stealing scenario). While he
believed that thefi was wrong, he nonetheless broke a windowpane and attempted to
steal bread.“ At the surface level, this is an action against his general moral reasonings
with no force involved. However, while no one had a gun to Valjean’s head, it is
possible to conceive of Valjean’s concern for the health of his nieces and nephews as
indicating a potential threat: without action, his family would die. Ifread in this way,
then Valjean’s respect for property would have been silenced by the threat of death to

loved ones. As such his action, though against his normal moral reasoning, was not a

changing in his moral reasoning process as much as it was an action regardless of his

 

‘6 McDowell quotes David Wiggins in a similar vein in McDowell 343. Wiggins’
analysis however pertains to the desire to do the action whereas mine pertains to the
applicability of the virtue in question.

6 McDowell, 345.

‘3 Hugo, 83.

106

reasoning. Interestingly, Aristotle’s two telling points for involuntary action are present
here. Valjean sufl‘ered immediate pain from cutting himself, long-term pain from
imprisonment, and took the action in order to avoid the real pain to his wards and
psychological pain to himself that starvation would have brought. He also came to later
regret the action, believing that he was wrong in doing it. We can rmderstand the action

to be involuntary; a perceived threat to others brought about action which in turn brought

 

about pain, and the action was later regretted. In the course of the action, no thought was
apparently given to the dictates of his moral reasoning, which seems to show that it was
silenced.

I should note again that I am using silencing in a different way then it is
sometimes used. One possible use of silencing is to explain how one moral reason
trumps other reasons.69 However, as Dancy’s shape theory already has a role for the
balancing and integration of individual moral reasons into a larger whole which reveals

the overall moral shape and thin moral concept of rightness/wrongness, we need not be
concerned with the manner in which the reasons fit together. For this reason, I am using
the term in a slightly different sense to apply only to situations where the generally
morally correct action is not followed. In this case, we see not some featrue of the
overall shape silenced. Instead, we see that a moral shape changes because some morally
salient feature silences the result of a previous moral reasoning of the shape of a situation
(by silencing the saliency of the individual features which had previously made up a
moral shape.) When force enters into the picture, it alters the shape of the situation,

silencing the previous thin-concept of rightness and allowing a different thin-concept

 

69 This is the case in, for example John McDowell’s “Are Moral Requirements
Hypothetical Imperatives?”.

107

(and different action) to become apparent. Using Dancy’s shape theory we can best
explain the broader use of silencing as equivalent to what occurs when features of the
world are not morally salient. No one disputes that a feature is there, but in not being
salient in this decision making process the featme has been silenced (in the broader use.)
This distinction is important because had the feature (such as real or threatened force)
been included in the formation of the shape because it was salient, then the shape and the
resultant thin concept could be different. The broader context of silencing is akin to
determining that a feature, such as the day of the week, is not salient here. The narrower
context is one wherein the silencing of a saliency causes a shifl in the overall moral
valence of a potential action. I believe that the narrow context is the best way to
tmderstand when a generally morally correct action is not taken because if we understand
silencing in this way we can explain these actions in both Aristotle and Dancy’s schemas.
In contrast to the involuntary actions that involve a silencing of saliency, a
voluntary action is one where we act without any external compulsion.70 These voluntary
actions are the next possibility of actions against moral reasoning to be considered in
moral education. Aristotle provides as an example of voluntarily acting against normal
reasoning the “throwing of goods overboard in a storm” because “in the abstract no one
throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himselfand
his crew a sensible man does so?" Further, as the throwing overboard of cargo did not
involve pain, it ought not be considered involuntary. An interesting implication of this
example is that apparently Aristotle believes that even external pressures do not shifl an 1

action from voluntary to involuntary. In McDowell’s terms, the overriding risk to a

 

7° Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109b35 — 1110a2.
7‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 1 10a9 — 1 l.

108

 

captain and crew’s lives could silence their (assumed) belief that one ought to deliver a
promised shipment. The jettisoning of cargo was understandable in light of external
conditions, and as such, Aristotle submits that this action may be considered neither
voluntary nor involuntary but “mixed” and “more like voluntary actions” than not.72

This tricky example shows the attractiveness of Dancy’s shape metaphor. If the
situation is pr0perly seen in light of all salient features, then the morally correction action
becomes clear. In most situations, the intensity of the storm and the apparent danger to
the life of the crew would lead the captain to throw the cargo overboard. While not
strictly speaking an involuntary action, the external circumstances clearly play a central
role and act in a manner akin in silencing a “normal” moral reasoning which would
require the delivery of goods. However, if the ship was delivering precious but very light
cargo, such as a single dose of a rare antivenin, then we would not say that jettisoning
was the correct action. In cases like those, the captain’s acts should and would be
considered voluntary, and as such silencing would not come into play. This example, the
jettisoning of cargo, is an excellent case to consider in educating agents because it allows
us to question the ease of separating voluntary from the involuntary actions. The cargo
example is especially nice in that it is odd paradigmatic of the various instances where
there is little theoretical and generalized clarity to the situation, and as such individual
factors and salient features need to be considered to determine if the jettisoning was
voluntary or not

In contrast to the muddy example of the ship’s cargo, we do have clearer

examples of voluntary action contrary to moral reasoning. Aristotle behaves that one

 

72 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 11 10a] 1.

109

 

would voluntarily act contrary to reasonable deliberation in only three ways: mistake,
misadventure, or to perform an act of injustice.73 A mistake occurs when an agent is

immant of the likely outcomes." Another sort of mistake occurs when the likely

 

outcomes are known, but the agent is mistaken “in what contributes to that aim” or the
steps to take toward the desired outcome.” A third class of mistake is those cases where
the agent incorrectly knows both the desired outcome and the steps leading to it.76 A
misadventure occurs when injury occurs “contrary to reasonable expectations?" An act
of injustice occurs when an agent acts with knowledge of likely outcomes but without
undertaking deliberation on the proper course of action.78 (If an agent knowingly takes
the unjust act alter deliberation then “he is an unjust man and a vicious man.””)

We can see then that for an agent to be virtuous they need to undertake virtuous
actions, which are tmderstood to be the appropriate mean between excess and deficiency
in this particular instance. In order to properly reason through what the proper action and
appropriate mean are agents need to know not only the theoretically correct action but
. also tmderstand the reality of the situation. Making these sorts of decisions requires one
to be practically wise. Practical wisdom might lead one to discover that in this instance it
is not possible for the generally right action to be done, in which case the reasoning

which underpins the action can be said to be silenced.

 

73 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1135bll — 25.

7‘ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1135bll - 13, 1135b18.
’5 Aristotle, Eudernian Ethics 1227b20.

7" Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1227b23.

77 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1135b13 - 17.

7" Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 13519 -— 24.

’9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1135b25.

110

If as a vohmtary matter the right action is not performed, we cannot say that the
value was silenced, since there was no force or external hindrance to acting in conformity
with one’s values. Perhaps the agent was mistaken in (her understanding of the situation.
This could occur if an agent who believed that violence was a wrong action did not stop a
minder from occurring on a theatre stage because she behaved that the violence was part
of a play being seen. She would have made a mistaken voluntary action and, while
regrettable, does not display that her understanding of how to correctly see the moral
shape of a situation is deficient. Her moral reasoning was not incorrect nor was it
silenced as much as it was not activated. Similarly, if an agent has an ethical
misadventure wherein she brings about a violent reaction in another then this also has no
bearing on her reasoning process. An example of this would be a stranger returning a
dropped expensive toy to a child, when the parent knows that the only way the child
could have gotten it is through theft. Any angry and/or violent action on the parent’s part
would be, again, regrettable, but would not affect the agent’s understanding of the
situation. The stranger saw the moral shape correctly insofar as her available information
provided. Working through these possible understandings and cases of moral mistakes
and misadventures would allow a novice who is being educated in moral perception and
reasoning to see more fully that part ofwhat makes up the moral shape is the projected
outcomes of an action. When a shape is revealed, and with it the thin-concept of
rightness or wrongness for a given action, built into the shape is a belief about what the
outcome of the action will be. Understanding that we can be wrong about the outcomes

(though mistake or misadventure) reinforces the importance of considering properly the

111

actionandatthesametimereinforcesthatparticularismisamoralrealism,and
sometimes we just get the wrong result fi-om our reasoning process.

Aristotle also considered that one could act voluntarily to take an action that she
knows is wrong. There are two possibilities for these voluntary injustices. Either the
action was limited in natlne and as such would fall into the purview of Hare’s
hypocritical attack, or the action would be longstanding and constitute something like an
overturning of the reasoning process. Ifhypocritical, then the action is indeed wrong and
against moral reasoning in the clear and normal sense. For example, if one behaves in
property rights, yet robs a bank simply to gain more money, then she has acted injustly.
This wrong action would hkely involve no internally immsed regret, but does call the
acceptance of a proper moral reasoning into question. If our agent continues to act
against this reasoning, then we would claim that the reasoning in question has been
defeated or never accepted. Ifthe value is abandoned totally, then we would claim that
the value has been totally defeated. An alternative is that the reasoning is defeated in
only certain circumstances, and only if it conflicts with other particular values. In those
instances of defeated reasoning, we can claim that the values have been ordered in some
fashion. The possibilities for value ordering are examined in the next chapter while
considering objections to virtuous particularism, so I pass over a discussion of them at

As I mentioned at the outset of this chapter, a potential difficulty for the virtuous
particularism I am laying out here is understanding how agents can act against what
moral reason would appear to dictate. This is a problem for systems of moral education

because it potentially leaves agents knowing the right thing to do, but not taking it. This

112

 

situation is problematic for education because if agents do not display the outcomes of
the processes of education then we would not know if they had successfully been
educated. Aristotle’s distinctions provide us, however, with more than just the abstract
understanding of the complex nature of acting against reasoning, they also provide us
with additional tools for a moral education. Awareness of the various ways that we can
act would allow agents to see both prudential reasons which ought to be included in
perceiving the moral shape of a situation and an understanding of their own reactions to
the results of moral reasoning. By using these classifications for actions against moral
reasoning we can assist those learning to properly perceive the sahent features of a
situation that they need to be attentive to the external factors which are sahent (the
features that we have routinely been discussing, such as “is an instance of causing pain”),
the internal factors which may be sahent (i.e. “I never seem to follow through on long
range plans), external forces which may alter the outcome of a moral reasoning process
(i.e. “But wait, the man with a gun wants me to do something else”). In addition, we can
see that even when we take an action that is contrary to what we thought we should do,
perhaps we were mistaken (“I thought the mayor said come on Tuesday!”), or incorrectly
predicted the outcome of an action (“Ah, perhaps I hit him a bit too hard.”)

Thus far, I have shown how we can understand both an agent not taking an action
which appears to be morally correct, and the taking of an action which appears contrary
to what is morally correct. By utilizing Aristotle’s distinctions between various types of
incontinent action, and more carefully schematizing them, I have augmented and
amended the preliminary typography presented earlier. The following figure displays the

richer and more nuanced understanding developed in this section.

113

P.

Figure 3: Augmented Typology of Actions against Moral Reasoning

 

 

 

 

Lack of Action Action Contrary
F fl F 1
Broad Scope Limited/One Time Limited/One Time Broad Scope
(Accidie) (Acrasia) l (Defeated)
F 1 F fl
Impetuous Weakness 111”th Vohmtary
(Silenced) J

 

I 1 1

Mistake Misadventure Act of Injustice

What these distinctions show is that it is possible to have a nuanced understanding of
how one can act against moral reasoning. For Aristotle, these distinctions are useful to
understand how an agent can fail to take the virtuous action. For strong particularism,
these distinctions enable us to see both that not all actions against moral reasoning
function in the same way (thus reinforcing the particularity of even the reasoning
process) and that there is a manner to explain and contextualize instances where people
act in manners at odd with their moral reasoning. In that virtuous particularism draws
upon both Aristotle’s moral theory and strong particularism, it is useful that both
accormts are strengthened by this understanding of actions against moral reasoning.
However, since I rely heavily on Dancy’s theory’to establish the attractiveness of strong
particularism, a question remains: to what extent does this typology conform to Dancy’s
shape metaphor? In the next section, I return to Dancy’s theory to display how these
same actions are captured in his view.
Lang’s Shgpg Theon

As I laid out in the second chapter, Dancy’s particularism utilizes as a metaphor
for the moral reasoning process the perception of the moral shape of the situation. This
shape is composed of and the result of the various salient features of a particular
situation. The correct observation and understanding of this moral shape is crucial to

being a completely moral agent, which is what led me to pr0pose that Dancy’s theory be

114

augmented with Aristotle. From Aristotle’s account of moral education we can see how
our agents can be trained and habituated to discern a correct moral shape. But it is just
the correct discernment of the moral shape that remains a problem. How are we to
tmderstand agents who appear to have perceived a correct moral shape, but do not act
upon the thin moral concept which is the result of that shape? As it turns out, the
rmderstanding just developed serves to explain these situations well. In this section I
briefly look at the possibihties previously considered and show how they are accounted
for in Dancy’s moral shape theory.

The first possibility considered was the accidic individual, who has a broad scope
lack of motivation to act. These individuals do not take moral action, but more
importantly they do not appear to take any action tmless forced to do so. The accidic
individual does not represent a problem for the motivating force of moral reasoning, but
. rather represents individuals who lack all motivating forces. As Dancy notes, a possible
cause of accidic is depression.80 Ifthere is a lack of motivation flowing from successful
moral reasoning (which is to say, “seeing” a thin moral concept), we could safely claim
that the agent does not really tmderstand what is occurring. Such a lack of
comprehension might be akin to the manner in which we when watching a theatrical play
“know” the morally correct thing to do in the situation but do not actively interrupt the
performance to ensure that the action occurs. In this understanding the accidic individual
might “see” the shape, but not know that it is relevant.

Another possibility is that the accidic individual does not see the moral shape

herself as much as she knows that others would see it in a certain manner. These agents

 

8° Dancy, Moral Reasons 5.

115

 

might understand and be able to explain why the shape is structured in the way that it is,
but have no more involvement with the actual outcomes of the shape than an
undergraduate philosophy student who has written a paper on how a Kantian would
understand suicide. In both the case of the undergraduate and the accidic agent the total
picture may be correctly seen, and even the reasons for the thin moral concept being what
they are understood, but there is a lack of involvement in the outcome. In Dancy’s
theory, we are served best to understand accidic individuals not as moral agents
themselves, but as those who merely know what moral judgment others would make.“

As acrasia is a more hmited non-action than accidie, some of the previous
understanding follows in these cases as well. It should be noted that in Dancy’s theory
we are not concerned with agents who appear acratic because in one situation they act to
stop a robbery and in another robbery situation they do not act. Acrasia ought only be
applied to agents who seem to not act in conformity with the overall thin moral concept;
for particularists one is not acratic for recognizing that a reason sufficient for action in
one case is not suficient in all cases. Thus, we really are only concerned with actions
against the total moral shape, not actions against elements of the shape. (When speaking
of this more broad sense of acrasia, Dancy notes “the weak-willed person is motivated by
every consideration he recognizes as a reason.”82 But it is not with every consideration
recognized as a reason, but with the resultant shape fiom all reasons with which we need
to concerned.) There are some possibilities here. The acratic individual may “know” the
shape without understanding that the case at hand is not an exercise in proficiency

training. The agent may be impetuous, and act prior to actually seeing the moral shape.

 

8’ Dancy, Moral Reasons 5.
‘2 Dancy, Moral Reasons 16.

116

(I am envisioning a situation like leaving a room and only later realizing that something
awful, like child abuse, was occurring.) A third possibility is that the agent actually is
weak of will, in which case their action in this limited case is likely a weaker form of
accidic. None of these possibilities diminish Dancy’s overall theory. The mistaken
trainee can be said to have not properly seen the shape, as it appears that a necessarily
salient feature would be accepting the reality of the case at hand. The impetuous agent
cannot be said to have acted against the shape by not acting; their lack of action occurred
prior to the shape becoming clear. In the third case, the case oftrue weakness, I again
believe that the best way to understand these situations is that the shape is not so much
seen as lmderstood.

The various forms of actively taking action contrary to what the thin moral
concept of tightness or wrongness calls for (as revealed by the moral shape) are fairly
easily understood. The involuntary taking of action against moral reasoning (silencing),
as well as the voluntary acts against moral reasoning through mistake or misadventure
can all be understood as instances of not properly seeing the moral shape. If silencing is
understood to be occurring only in cases where one is forced to take action, then the force
needs to have been an element in understanding the moral shape. Seen properly in light
ofthe impending (orthreatened)harms, the shapewouldseemto shifiinamannersuch
that the (forced) action would be the action the shape would reveal as correct. Similarly,
if an agent voluntarily takes action and discovers through action that they were mistaken
about what was correct (perhaps resulting in a misadventure) then we would again say
that they had not properly seen the shape. Here, and throughout, I am accepting Dancy’s

claim that it is the objective presence of the salient features, not the perception of them,

117

 

that matters.83 Silencing, mistakes, and misadventures occur when the perceived shape is
not identical with the objective shape. (We come to see the objective shape through the
process of moral education I am advocating to augment Dancy’s pure theory.)

The final two possibilities of acting contrary to moral reasoning are more difficult
to understand. Individual acts of injustice and long-standing dispositions which appear to
indicate that moral reasoning have been defeated appear to be contrary to Dancy’s theory.
If we conceive of a moral agent who has been sufficiently well educated to be able to
discern and act properly in every proceeding situation presented, and then on one
occasion, and one occasion only, acts contrary to what the shape reveals is correct (and,
indeed, can explain the ‘right action’ shape to others if asked) we can only say that this
agent performed an act of injustice. They knew the morally correct act, and without any
force or external stimulation did the wrong act. This limited action appears to be the
active parallel to acrasia through weakness. The only possible explanation of the action
against reason would be something like claiming that she “knew” the shape, but did not
see it as her shape. In not enacting what the thin moral concept calls for, the agent would
lmve performed a wrong action. If she understood the correct shape, but did not accept it,
we could perhaps consider the revealing case of insuflicient moral education.
Alternately, if this action and others which follow are consistently seen as actions
contrary to knowledge of the right action(s), then we should understand om agent as

either evil or a sociopath who understands but does not accept moral reasoning.

 

83 Dancy, Practical Reality 52.

118

Comm“ g Accogts
Dancy’s pure theory and the augmented theory I have presented both have

adequate accounts for how to understand actions (and lack of actions) contrary to what
proper moral reasoning calls for. Interestingly, since Dancy’s consideration of these
problems tends to occur at the level leading to his overall theory, his pure account for
these actions comes down to two basic possibilities. Either agents who act contrary to the
thin moral concept of right action did not properly see the moral shape or they ought not
be considered moral agents. Correct perception of the moral shape avoids the difficulties
of impetuousness, silencing, mistakes and misadventlnes. The remaining problems of
accidie, true acrasia, and acts of injustice (both short and long term) are best understood
as occurring to non-moral agents.

In virtuous particularism, we can see the richness of possible understanding of
these various acts, and in all but the most extreme ofcases can see them as revealing the
need for further moral education. Since it, unlike Dancy’s pure theory, provides an
account for how moral education can occur, virtuous particularism is uniquely situated to
accormt for how to address these situations going forward. Dancy’s pure theory can only
call for a better understanding of the moral shape in instances of silencing, mistake, and
misadventure. Virtuous particularism can utilize the fine distinctions between the sorts of
conceptual errors involved in these actions, and utilize them not only to train this agent,
but also include such cases in the training and habituation of other agents.

Both strong particularism generally and my theory (as a strong particularism) rely
upon the acceptance that the analysis of the rightness of an action should occur after the

perception of the moral shape. (Though this in many ways complicates the situation; the

119

perception of the moral shape includes the awareness of which action is right.) Other
accounts which reject the shape theory and rely instead upon principles can utilize the
same terminology used here to account for the ordering in various ways of pluralistic
principles and values.

These other accounts, which could usefully accept elements of the schematic

account I have offered for actions against reason, suggest some possible objections to my

 

account of moral education. The first possibility is that the moral education that I suggest

is in fact not a training in how to discern moral saliency, but instead an implicit teaching

 

of rules to follow to discover saliency. As strong pmticularism entails the belief that
morality is uncodifiable, it would be odd indeed to use rules to discern morality. In
answering this objection, I need to be throughout aware of that moving too far fi'om
particularism (as this ‘rules’ education objection seems to be asserting) is not the only
problem. Perhaps by holding firm to particularism I am left with a moral education that
cannot educate in that there is no essential moral character in the features of the world
that we can teach others to observe.

In the next chapter, I confront these various pluralistic accounts and the objections
that they could bring to my virtuous particularism by conceiving of them as bringing
forth a dilemma. Has my theory in embracing Aristotle’s moral education moved away
from particularism, or, in remaining true to particularism, have I established a moral

education that is empty of any content?

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CHAPTER FIVE:
Confronting Objections, Facing a Dilemma

Two hmic sorts of objections can be raised to the augmented strong particularist
view that I have laid out here. The first variety concerns the manner in which agents
would come to appreciate the salient features in a given situation. Some might claim that
by augmenting Dancy’s pmticularism in this manner I am accepting a variety of ordering
procedures to be taught and thus allowing generalism to creep into a particularist ethics.
This class of objections operates from the rmderstanding that individual reasons function
as primafacie or pro tanto reasons for action, or that individual reasons for action can be
ordered on a limited or formalized manner. In order to respond properly to these
objections I explicate the possible stances, and show how these charges are based upon a
misreading of Dancy’s project, not on the augmentation that I offer here. These
objections, while apparently directed to my project, in fact are against strong
particularism.

The second variety of objections focuses not on the content of the education
system I offer here, but on the possibility of discerning morally salient features at all. I
have situated my proposal as filling in an epistemic element missing in Dancy’s pure
theory and some may object that my solution still does not address the central difficulty
of difi‘erentiating the morally salient from the non-salient. I respond to this objection by
showing both the metaphysical basis of the epistemology I ofi‘er and by suggesting that
no one else is in a position to make this claim. I close my consideration of this objection
by partially conceding that my account does not provide this mechanism, but believe that

this is a strength of the account.

121

 

 

 

Both classes of objections taken together should be understood as attempting to
display in differing fashions a dilemma. By augmenting strong particularism in the
manner that I have, it is possible that either I have become a generalist (thus turning away
fi'om particularism), or that by holding onto particularism (and rejecting generalism) I
have not sufliciently explained how we come to know which terms are salient. The
objections that I consider here can thus best be understood as claiming that I have either
abandoned the particularist project, or in not abandoning it have failed in my own. Of
course, I do not believe that either claim is correct, and respond to the attempted dilemma
by rejecting the implicit either-or of these claims. My responses to the claims show that
it is possible to reject both horns of the dilemma, without being caught under the
(metaphorical) hooves of those who would reject particularism.

In this chapter, I consider in turn these sorts of objections in three major
groupings. First, I turn to and dismiss the possibility that my proposed moral education
rests upon a formalized ordering of moral saliencies. Next, I look at the possible grounds
for objecting from those who believe that virtuous particularism while rejecting
principles maintains something akin to primafacie or pro tanto ordering of salient
features. These two possibilities can be understood as the first horn of the dilemma: the
possibility that I have embraced generalism through moral education. Finally, I consider
the extent to which my view does adequately explain how to discern the situation-

particular saliencies. This objection is the second horn of the dilemma: by remaining

particularist I am unable to explain what moral agents ought to learn.

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Fo ° 0rd

After the discussion in previous chapters about the metaphysical basis of strong
particularism it should be apparent that particularism cannot accept any system of
ordering of saliences. Since the moral shape of a situation, and the resulting valence of
an individual possible action, is determined by the relationship between all the features of
a situation, and every situation is different, particularists believe that it is not possible to
rank a priori which feature is more relevant than another. However, in formalized
ordering approaches there is an explicit understanding of a hierarchy of relevancy. When
features which are generally salient come into conflict there is an understanding of which
feature will carry the most weight in the situation. Since their prioritization is done in
advance these theories need not include an account of how one distinguishes the feature
with the most weight. If my account of moral education included, even implicitly, such a
weighting of features then my account could not properly be said to be strongly
particularist. I can continue to term my account particularist because it does not include a
ranking of this sort.

At first glance, it would seem obvious that virtuous particularism does not
embrace any formalized ordering of principles. Based both in strong particularism and an
Aristotelian moral education, my approach rejects the possibility of even codifying
attributes which are morally relevant. However, given that the system of education I
have proposed would include reflection of cases and mentoring by others a plausible
objection could be raised here. Without explicit safeguards to protect the mentors fiom
both modeling behavior and bringing forth cases which lead to an immicit formalized

ordering, moral agents could become convinced that they understood which features were

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not only commonly salient and also in what way the features interact. For example, an
agent might come to believe that while salient, property rights are rarely the deciding
factor in a moral decision after considering cases including Valjean’s thefi of bread,
governmental seizure of private property for purposes of economic development,
instances of communal ownership, and municipal seizure of automobiles for unpaid

parking tickets. This agent however will be unprepared to properly determine that it is

 

generally morally wrong to commit armed robbery, at least partially because a salient

feature in these instances is that it represents a violation of the property rights of the

 

owners of the property being taken.

At one level, we can easily dismiss agents who would incorrectly make these
decisions as those who need more moral training. Further, since the moral education I
am proposing, like Aristotle’s, retains a role for laws we have some safeguard. The first
step in moral education would have to include bringing agents into familiarity with at
least the brow outlines of the sorts of behaviors and actions which are illegal, impolite,
and generally discouraged by society as a whole. At later stages of moral education
agents would come to see that legality need not always be conformed to (as in protests
advocating for broader civil rights, or in speeding to take an expectant mother to the
hospital.) But both the incorrectly and incompletely educated agents could come away
with an understanding that there are potentially some moral features which have unitary
moral valence (i.e. ‘is wrong-making’).

Yet, virtuous particularism denies this unitary metaphysics. It is not the case that
a feature or principle with right-making attributes in one situation will have right-making

attributes in all situations. Far from promoting that a given feature is always valuable,

124

the process of moral education that I offer displays to students throughout the variability
of moral valence. No account of formalized ordering can accept morally variable
features. As the variability of saliency is key to the proposed moral education it should
be clear that my account does not rely upon formalized orderings. Virtuous
particularism, like all strong particularisms, calls for agents to make moral decisions afier
reflecting upon the totality of the features of a situation. The phenomenological approach
embraced by particularists is geared toward the eventual acceptance of the variable and
uncodifiable nature of morality.

The best response to the possibility that incorrectly or incompletely educated
agents would make mistakes is to insist that the problem here lies not with virtuous
particularism, but with an incorrect or incomplete education. Just as in mathematics,
science, geography, or any other field it is possible for students to be incorrectly or
incompletely educated. Yet when citizens oversimplify in mathematics or science, or
incorrectly remember their state capitals, we do not say that the field itself is flawed.
Instead, we claim that they either did not learn it properly, or unfortunately had a bad
teacher. The same may be said for virtuous particularism; some agents will not learn
properly and others (hopefully few) will have bad teachers. Neither account makes it
necessary or likely that my approach will lead to a formalized ordering of salient featmes.
W

As my account denies the central feature of formalized ordering (invariant moral
valences), my account clearly cannot be said to have shifted to generalism by adopting
some sort of formalized ordering. The situation becomes, perhaps, less clear if we shift

fi'om formalized and hierarchical ordering systems to more limited orderings. These

125

limited orderings are similar to strong particularism in paying attention to the particulars
of the situation, but continue to hold that certain features remain morally salient in the
same manner whenever they occur. They are generalist in their acceptance of principles
to guide moral decision making, but particularist in applying these principles to
individual situation. Ifmy account of moral education can be shown to have implicitly
adopted a limited ordering process, then it rightly can be said to have brought generalism
into particularism. Since my proposed moral education would include consideration of
cases, agents could come to see that while not formally ordered there are features of the
world which tend to function in set fashions. The observation would not be totally in
error as part ofthe process ofmoral education would be to bring agents to be atuned to
which aspects of the world are generally salient. But education about what
considerations are generally salient could be considered to be an education into the
incomplete, and perhaps imprecise lists of features which are relevant. When we recall
that strong particularism holds that there is no reason to believe that because a feature
was relevant in one case that it will be relevant in the same manner in another case, these
general saliencies become problematic. Virtuous particularism would not be a strong
particularism if the education process offered included a partial codification of moral
features. To confiont this objection I look at the possibilities and problems in views
which provide partial making of values, such as W.D. Ross’s primafacie duties, or duties
“at first sight,” Shelly Kagan’s pro tanto obligations, which hold only to a partial extent,
or Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’s principle based approach to biomedical ethics.
Different theories of partially ranked ethical duties or obligations are commonly

considered. Ross’s theory of primafacie duties relies upon the earlier work of H.A.

126

Prichard. (Ross was Prichard’s student, and acknowledges his debts to Prichard in the
Preface to Right and the Good.)' Ross’s work is in turn used by Kagan in his pro tanto
obligations, and in a different manner in Beauchamp and Childress’s principles of
biomedical ethics. These various accounts of “conditional duties”2 differ in both
terminology and the duties/obligations/principles (hereafter duties) that they consider, but
they share a common belief that these duties are “more or less incumbent on [an agent]
according to the circumstances ofthe case.”3 In this way, these accounts can be said to
resemble particularism because the individual circumstances of the cases can cause the
overall valence of an action to change flour “is right” to “is wrong.” However, wlmt
separates these accounts from strong particularism that these approaches hold that we can
make general claims about ethical duties of fidelity, non-maleficence, respect for
autonomy, etc. Various duties are proposed by individual thinkers, but they all accept
that there are duties which generally hold and that one ought to act upon a duty unless
obligated by some other, and stronger, obligation originating in another duty.

The primafacie duty concept (understood here as applying equally to Kagan and
Beauchamp and Childress as well) does quite well explain some possible moral actions.
For example, if we consider both Madeleine/Valjean’s duties to Montreuil-sur-mer and
F antine to be primafacie duties of beneficence and his duties to Champmathieu as
originating in the primafacie duties of justice, then we can understand why alter
confessing his true identity he returned to Montreuil-sur-mer. I-Iis duties of beneficence

were not defeated, but simply found to be primafacie less obligatory than his other duties

 

1 Ross, Right and the Good v.
2 Ross, Right and the Good 19.
3 Ross, Right and the Good 19.

127

in this instance. In confessing his true identity, Valjean will have taken an action which
was at the same time right and wrong. Valjean’s action fits the classic account of
Rossian primafacie duties: “In virtue of being the breaking of a promise, for instance, it
tends to be wrong; in virtue of being an instance ofrelieving distress it tends to be right.”4
Further, having acted against some of his duties, Ross believes that an agent will feel that
it is his “duty to make up somehow” for the obligations not followed? This new
obligation can explain in part Valjean’s continual care for Cosette, though in this case
there is the additional new promise made to Fantine on her deathbed. Having defeated in
this instance one primafacie duty, he stones for his not following through on prior
obligations by taking on a new, more onerous obligation.

However, the ease of using this conception to explain some moral decisions
disguises that this conception erases multiple differences between situations by pointing
out the similarities that exist. If we continue to look at Valjean’s moral experiences we
see that strong particularism does a much better job of explaining them all. The
differences between Valjean’s theft from the baker, the bishop, and the boy Gervais
cannot be lmderstood as equal in any manner except that all three involved the potential
for him to uphold a property-rights belief. In each instame, he did not uphold the belief;
but each “failure” of his value to hold came from different conflicting values (more
precisely, the first two deal with family health, and justice while the third can best be
described as a. mistake in the Aristotelian sense.) Accounts which rely upon primafacie
ordering point out the feature which is consistent between all situations while obscuring

the very real differences between the situations. It should be clear that strong

 

4 ibid.
5 ibid.

128

particularism is not compwble with these approaches for both metaphysical and
epistemic reasons.

Metaphysically, these accounts all conceive of reasons for action as functioning in
an additive fashion. This conception of reasons to act is not unintuitive. Louise
Dickinson Rich draws upon just this sort of conception when she writes “When a

problem comes up of decision between the friend who is loyal, steadfast, and trustworthy .

 

and the fiiend who is truly all this and charming as well, the charming fiiend wins.”6
Similarly, in these accounts the additional presence of one duty induces action
accordingly. However, as was shown in the explication of strong particularism reasons
do not act only in an additive fashion. A feature which is a reason for action in one case
might be a reason to withhold action in another. Consider the standard example of an
individual who likes both chocolate sundaes and anchovy pizza. While our agent enjoys
each, it seems unlikely that she would enjoy either anchovies in her chocolate srmdae or

ice cream on her pizza. On a moral level, consider the manner in which the feature “is

 

likely to cause happiness” functions. Even outside of a utilitarian perspective the
presence of this feature in a situation might induce one to act in a particular fashion, such
as when returning a puppy found wandering the streets to the house displayed on the
puppy’s identification tags. However, as Roy Hattersley points out, the happiness that
fox—hunters derive fiom their hunting might be a reason not to support the hunting.7 The
feature of predicted happiness supports an action in the first (puppy-returning) situation,
while it detracts in the second (fox-hunting) situation. (An alternate to the fox-hunting

example is that predicable happiness in both the executioner and crowds in instances of

 

6 Rich, 232.
7 Hattersley. Quoted in Dancy, Moral Reasons 61.

129

public hanging of rapists is a reason not to conduct the hangings publiclyf’) A reason for
an action in one situation is not necessarily a reason for action in another; further, the
changing valence of a feature shows that reasons do not necessarily flmction in an
additive manner.

Metaphysically much depends for Ross, et al. on consistency being a
praiseworthy thing, but given the variable moral valence of salient features, even if those
features are understood to be primafacie duties, pro tanto reasons, or key principles for
applied ethics, consistency is not a good on its own. These accounts fail to explain as
well as strong particularism how moral reasons function at the metaphysical level, and as
such objections originating fiom these theories (to the extent that the objection proposes
integrating the theory, as opposed to Aristotle’s accormt of moral education) do not meet
expectations.

These accormts also face epistemic challenges fi‘om virtuous particularism.
Where my account provides a description of how it is that an agent learns to pick out the
morally salient features in a situation (which may well include the features these accounts
assume), these accounts do not. While all the accounts considered (including virtuous
particularism) suppose that moral knowledge begins with the observation that a given
feature makes a difference in a particulm' case, the accounts quickly go in different
directions. Ross believes that through a modus ponens deduction we find some set of
truths which are necessary at the universal level if not at the particular.9 Ross likens the

learning of the “general principles of duty” to the manner that we learn mathematical

 

: Dancy, “An Ethic ofPrima Facie Duties”, 223 and 223.
Dancy, Ethics Without Principles 155 - 156.

130

axioms. 1° He states, “What comes first in time is the apprehension of the self-evident
primafacie lightness of an individual act of a particular type. From this we come by
reflection to apprehend the self-evident general principle of prima facie duty.”ll Of
course logically this makes no sense. Something true at the universal level is true at the
particular level by subaltemation. Since strong particularism never codifies a set of
features as relevant, there is no parallel difliculty for virtuous particularism. Further,
since the salient features in a given situation can include normally mundane features
(such as the color of one’s shoelaces), strong particularism need not explain how we learn
to distinguish moral fi'om non-moral features. Virtuous particularism presupposes that all
reasoning (moral and non-moral) functions in the same way. By providing privileged
positions to some aspects in moral reasoning, these various accounts ought to provide a
description of how and why the moral reasoning process differs from the non-moral.
They do not do so. These theories may have been able to pick out some features which
are generally salient in moral decision making, but by reserving a strong role for these
features they retain problems that they need not retain. Each theory embraces in some
fashion the particular nature of moral decision making, but the privileged position they
retain for some features prevents them fi'om being sufficiently particular. Virtuous
particularism is a preferable theory because it both explains how we learn what features
are salient and is a strong particularism.

The remaining claim to be considered is that by augmenting strong particularism
with virtue-based moral education I have slipped into advocating a training in the

generalism that is foundational for Ross. This claim is possible only because of the

 

1° Ross, Right and the Good 32.
” Ross, Rightandthe Good 33.

131

surface acceptance by Ross, et al. of the importance of particulars. Where they have
proposed a (sometimes fi'agmentary) list of duties to be upheld, the moral education I
propose here does no such thing. In the education of moral agents individual features of
situations can be emphasized, but the differences between all of the features is not
diminished. Perhaps this is best shown in the above examples drawn fiom Valjean’s
moral experience. It is possible to show a continuity between the manner that Valjean
acted, but if we turn to each instance of moral decision making we see much more clearly
that in each instance he was making a lmique decision for action based upon that unique
situation. Cases can be used to teach how to pick out moral features without showing
that all cases involving similar features are decided in similar manners. These cases
serve not only to display the salient features but also assist in reinforcing the strong
particularist claim that no two situations are the same.

In refuting the possibility that my account has embraced generalism I have
diffused the first horn of the objection dilemma. As I noted at the outset of this chapter,
virtuous particularism can fail in two manners, either by accepting generalism and thus
not longer being particularism, or by rejecting generalism and thus not providing an
account of how we come to know what features are morally salient. I now turn fiom the
first horn ofthe dilemma to the second.

All Epistemig Qbim'on

A strong objection to the augmentation that I provide is that the moral education
that I propose here does not provide a manner of distinguishing moral from non-moral
features. If every feature of a situation is potentially salient for a moral decision, then

particularist agents in each instance would be reasoning with an almost infinite

132

conjunctive series. In the consideration of a given moral shape an agent would have to
evaluate the presence of every possible feature in order to determine the proper action to
take in this instance. This seems unwieldy and inappropriate. A system of moral
education ought to train agents to discern what features are important, and to do so must
have some methodology for distinguishing the salient fiom the mundane features of a
situation. By avoiding general rules, I may have inadvertently proposed a moral
education which does not educate.

It is worth noting that this objection, in contrast to the prior objections considered,
cannot be easily answered by returning to the metaphysical basis of strong particularism.
Unlike the other horn of the dilemma, this objection does not rely upon a metaphysics
which is contrary to particularism. Instead of proposing that virtuous particularism is not
particularist enough, this objection probes the epistemic component of the education to
test if moral education can remain particular.

An initial response to this objection is to return again to the metaphysical basis of
virtuous particularism. All reasoning processes, and all reasons, function in the same
manner. Claims that there are special features (the “I’m morally salient” tag in this case)
for some reasons and not others is to mistake entirely particularism. We cannot in the
abstract and beforehand decide what features are morally salient; in an instance of moral
decision making the agent apprehends the total moral shape of a situation and
understands the morally correct action to take. This approach reinforces why the
ordering approaches cannot be said to work, but admittedly does not address if moral

education occurs. I can claim that virtuous particularism will not allow a feature to be

133

known to be salient prior to experiencing a situation, but this simply reinforces the
objection.

An alternate response to this objection is to engage in a bit oftuo qua que attack.
Even Kant, who believes that moral law is known a priori,l2 retained a role for
observation and reflection. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant addresses that given the
“latitude” ethics “allows in its imperfect duties, unavoidably leads to questions that call
upon judgment to decide how a maxim is to be applied in particular cases.”13 In addition,
there are multiple maxims that could potentially be tested in any situation. 1‘ For this
reason, Kant finds that “ethics falls into casuistry” which he understands as “a practice in
how to seek truth.”ls Kant’s method of considering cases to discern using our skill of
judgment what is relevant is remarkably similar to the process of moral education that I
offer. For example, while Kant generally believes that killing oneself is wrong,16 by
considering cases of both what may be termed “small deaths,” such as offering one’s
tooth to another, amputation of diseased organs, and the suicide of a man bit by a rabid
dog, he shows that the prohibition against killing oneself is not a clear cut as it first
appears. '7 We would through interaction with individual cases and the world mound us
test our moral judgment by first reflecting upon the likely outcome of the action, and then
reflecting upon any difl‘erence between the actual and projected outcome. With

continued observation our skills at discerning morally salient features would increase in

 

12 Kant, Groundwork 4:411.

‘3 Kant, Metaphysics 6:411.

1" ibid.

‘5 ibid.

‘6 Kant, Metaphysics 6:422. cf. Groundwork 4:422.
‘7 Kant, Metaphysics 6:423 — 424.

134

ability, though it would remain the case that these features would not be distinguishable
from non-morally salient features.

While I admit that establishing that even non-particularists, such as Kant, share in
the some fashion the methodology that I propose for educating agents in morality is not a
strong response to this epistemic objection, it is a response. Perhaps the best response to
this objection, which I understand to be pointing out that my methodology does not
sufficiently provide a manner to distinguish the morally salient fiom the non-moral (or at
least not-morally salient) features, is to acknowledge that this is the case. Virtuous
particularism does not provide a methodology for distinguishing the moral from non-
moral. The lack of this element in the account is not a flaw but a strength of the accormt.
Individual features of a situation, even those considered generally morally salient, are not
always morally salient. Other features which are generally not morally salient may well
be so in some isolated case. Rather than providing an incomplete and flawed list of
features to be aware of, Aristotle’s process of training agents to be virtuous established
that moral decisions are made by individuals, in individual circumstances, and that the
proper action to take is the one that is done at the right time, in the right place, and to the
right degree. Further, in my approach the distinction between moral and non-moral
features of the world is apparent only in their relationship to the other features of the
world. Every feature is potentially a morally relevant feature, and every feature which
sometimes is salient not always salient. In addition, salient features do not always
function with consistent moral valiences, and salient features do not always carry the
same weight in moral reasoning. These complications lead us to turn back to the

particularities of a case, rather than focusing on generalities, trends, and protypes of rules.

135

Moral decisions are necessarily particular, and can be made in better or worse
manners depending upon the background that an agent has. Moral education in how to be
virtuous enables agents to make these particular decisions, and do so in a better manner.
Through virtue based moral education agents come to both reflect upon their own past
experiences, their understanding of the world, and what those believed to be wiser have
done in similar (though not exactly identical) situations. This education will lead agents
to see more clearly which features of this situation are relevant, and in what way they
interact with each other. Further, having previously considered many different instances
of moral decision making, they could come to see not only what action is morally correct
in this instance, but when there are multiple morally conect actions, predict which action
will lead to better possibilities in firture situations. While strongly particularist, the
agents should come to take actions that are morally correct in this instance and avoids
potential unpleasant situations.

An interesting thing about the line of thinking underlying this objection is that by
attempting to separate the morally salient fi'om the non-morally salient, saliency itself
becomes a factor in the understanding of the world. While we can hold ourselves apart
from those who believe that there is a “I’m morally salient” tag attached to discrete
objects, we cannot in the end separate the act of perceiving something as salient from the
thing itself. As Wittgenstein noted how it was that we could pay attention to the shape of
an object thing without paying attention to its color,18 when we note the salient features
of a situation we are struck by some portion of the total picture. There is nothing unique

in the feature which makes it salient; this very observation undergirds particularism.

 

'8 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations part II, 180.

136

Something which is salient in one situation may not be salient in another, or may be
salient in a difl'erent valence.

This objection is in many ways a daunting one. By questioning if the moral
education that I propose here is able to fulfill the promise of learning how to pick out
morally salient features we are brought to an odd theoretical discussion. While this
objection appears to asking “well, did you do it?” in reality it is asking if strong
particularism can measure up to an epistemic standard that is not met elsewhere. When
we teach another to do any task we test for comprehension by testing in new cases. Since
every case is a new case, every case is distinct from the prior cases, and each case has
features that other cases lack, we can apparently never know for sure if someone has
learned what we attempted to teach. Far fi‘om just being Open to rule-learning/rule—
following considerations, virtuous particularism faces an odd trade-off.

Ifthere is some feature in the world that allows us to test for saliency, then strong
particularism is wrong in that it is possible to codify in some fashion what features
matter. However, if there is no such feature in the world, then it appears that we are
stuck agreeing with Wittgenstein that our perception of the situation is “an internal
relation between it and other objects?” The relationship between the facts of the world
and our perception of these facts creates and is identical with the “moral shape” of the
situation. For this reason it is not possible to separate the seeing of the situation fiom the
seer of the situation, or the situation that is being seen. The moral education that I offer
here brings agents to the point where they can be aware of seeing the world, and that their

observations of the world invariably affect what they view.

 

‘9 ibid.

137

Avoiding the ngns
In answering these objections, it is always possible that I have muddied the waters

more than they were before responding. As I sketched out these objections I proposed
that while they can be understood as three separate objections, they represented the two
horns of a dilemma. The first horn is represented by those who might claim that by
advocating for this form of moral education I have embraced generalism, and thus turned
away fiom the strong particularism that grormded the theory. This horn was represented
first by those who might believe that a formalized ordering of morally salient features
would be presented, and secondly by those who see in the limited ordering approaches of
Ross, et al. something akin to the moral education I ofl‘er. My response to both of these
classes of representatives was to show the manner in which my account is not generalist
at all.

The second horn of the dilemma, the epistemic objection, comes from those who
would claim that by not embracing generalism I am left with a moral education which
offers no education in how to pick out the particulars of a situation that matter. Since my
project is to provide just this sort of education, this objection is a serious one. My
response to this objection is to agree partially. Moral education in light with virtuous
particularism will not tell agents that this and not that feature is salient. Doing so would
undercut the very particularism that is advocated by the moral education. However,
conceding this point is not to concede defeat. My moral education model does not
provide this ability because it is not possible to provide this ability through a closed set of
lessons and cases. Instead through the use of lessons, cases, mentoring, reflection, and

reinterpretation, agents come to see how every feature of the world is potentially salient,

138

the features contribute in various ways to the moral valence of potential actions, and that
it is important to reflect on both the situation and prior experience to come to understand
not only what action is best in this instance but also how to explain to someone else what
moral shape was present, and why that shape led one to take a particular action.

Strong particularism holds that the features of a situation when observed come
together in a moral shape which displays the morally correct thing to do for this agent in
this situation at this time. There can be no substitute for actually experiencing the world
and diverse situations. For this reason the moral education that I offer is based upon
mentorship, modeling, and consideration of cases and the world. With time and more
experience agents come to know better how the see the world and the shapes of
situations. The education that I ofl‘er is designed to bring agents to the point that they
also cannot only be aware of the features of the world that impact their decisions, but
understand that their seeing of the features is itself contestable and variable.

I have rejected both the possibility that virtuous particularism has become
generalist and that it needs to become generalist. My hope is that by dodging both horns
of the dilemma I have left virtuous particularism in a theoretical space that is safe from
both forms of objection. However, the possibility remains that in confionting these
objections the shape of the theory began to shift as some theoretical features came to
greater saliency while others diminished. The testing and probing of this account serves
on one hand to strengthen its legitimacy by displaying that it contains responses to likely
objections. Yet, by focusing on the areas of likely objection, this account of the theory

serves to also lessen its impact.

139

The discussion in the present and preceding chapters has at many points been
driven by the need to explain and respond to various alternatives and objections to both
strong particularism generally and virtuous particularism specifically. This structure
should be considered neither shocking nor unnecessary. In order to understand a theory,
one must often distinguish it from other possible theories if only to note how the theories
differ. However, there is a problem inherent in theoretical discussions: the belief that by
simply shifting theoretical markers around in our head we had made progress?" In order
to both more clearly delineate the theoretical boundaries of virtuous particularism, in the
concluding chapter I present both a summary and restatement of virtuous particularism

as its own theory, noting only in passing what differentiates my work from others.

 

2° MacKinnon, 13.

140

 

 

CHAPTER SD(:
Virtuous Particularism

There should be two goals for any process of moral education. First, the morality
which is taught should be bamd upon a sound understanding of the nature of morality.
Secondly, the education that is offered needs to be one which provides touchstones and
guidance for firture moral experiences. These goals should not be shocking, as they
ought to be the goal of any education, be it in mathematics, engineering, or literature. An
education in mathematics which contradicted expert understandings of the unique
properties of zero (for example, in division), an education in engineering which ignored
exposure to past failures of the discipline (i.e., the Tacoma Narrows Bridge), or education
in literature which did not provide the means to determine the meter of a previously
unseen poetic form (perhaps the fairly rare octameter septet) would all be considered to
be a failed education. Moral education needs to meet the same standard. In this chaper
lay out virtuous particularism and show how it meets this standard. In doing so, I draw
together and summarize the previous chapters.

Virtuous particularism draws upon two approaches in ethics: strong moral
particularism and Aristotelian virtue theory. By bringing together these two I am able to
provide to moral particularism a method of moral education while bringing to virtue
theory an account of moral motivation. If my bringing together of these approaches does
nothing else, assisting in these difficulties is a helpful contribution to moral theory.
However, virtue particularism goes beyond just clarifying confusions and filling in

lacunas. By clarifying the confusions and filling in the lacunas I have also established

141

more fully what sorts of moral education are possible, and what the limits of moral
education are. I

At the center of virtue particularism is the acceptance of the thesis that morality is
best explained in light of uncodifiable holism. In moral reasoning, just like with any
other reasoning, we make decisions based upon looking at all of the relevant features in
the situation. The possible features of a situation are numerous and we cannot tell in
advance which features will make a difference in determining the morally correct action.
Further, in one situation we might find that the presence of a feature, for example ‘is
owned by a third individual,’ is more likely to make the removal of the property wrong.
This would be the case in evaluating if one should attempt to take the Mona Lisa from the
Louvre. However, in another situation if we were to stumble upon the Mona Lisa in an
acquaintance’s living room, the presence of the ‘is owned by a third individual’ feature
would be more likely to make the removal of this property right. Thus, morality is
uncodifiable both because of its complexity and the variable moral valence of morally
salient features of the world.

One of the implications of accepting uncodifiable holism is that moral decisions
can no longer depend upon a set of rules or principles to guide actions reliably toward
what is morally good. These sets would at best be an incomplete list of features which
are relevant in some, but not all, situations. Perhaps more problematically for those who
seek moral codification, the use of these sets of moral rules could blind an agent to other
features uniquely relevant in a specific situation. Instead of relying upon anything like a

checklist of moral features, agents instead should examine the situation at hand, consider

142

 

all the features which appear relevant to a moral decision, and act upon the potential
action which is clearly morally right in this situation.

The discernment of which action is clearly morally right arises out of the
appreciation of the salient features. The presence or absence of individual features
fimctions in two manners. First, they function to close off options until there remain only
few potential actions. In this manner the combination of various features works like the
individual tiles in a sudoku munber game or the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. On some
occasions, the correct choice will be clear as there would be only one option. In other
instances, an agent has to follow a combination of reasoning about consequences and
stepping back and looking at the larger shape being formed by the individual features.
Some moral decisions, like some puzzles, are easy to solve. Others require that agents
are experienced and observant. To this point my description is true of all strong moral
particularisms. But, missing fiom other strong particularisms is a recommended manner
for bringing agents to the point where they are experienced and observant enough to
make correct moral decisions in instances where there appear to be multiple morally
correct actions, or in situations where it is hard to discern the overall moral shape of the
situation.

Just as particularism holds that agents determine what is correct in an individual
situation based upon what features are present, virtue theory holds that the correct action
for an agent is going to depend upon the particulars of the situation. The virtuous agent is
one who consistently is able to discern not only what action is correct, but how the proper
action is to be done in terms of timing, intensity, tone, etc. In addition, through virtue

theory we come to see that it is a mistake to both over- and underemphasize the

143

importance of any particular feature. We can go wrong both by foolishly risking our
lives by rushing into je0pardy needlessly and by cowardly shirking any danger. For this
reason agents need to be aware not only of the world around them, but also of their own
inclinations so that they can be aware of how their passions could be shaping how they
see the world.

Additionally, virtue theory brings with it a process of moral education so that
agents can come to understand how the various aspects of the world interact with each
other to form lmique situations. It is this moral education which is at the center of the
bringing together of moral particularism and virtue theory, though virtue theory can be
understood in a manner generally consistent with particularism.

Though it seems like an odd starting position for educating agents in strong
Mcmarism, the starting point for virtue particularism is the same starting point as in
Aristotelian virtue ethics: laws and social norms. The first step in moral education needs
to protect society from those who are \mable to properly reason through moral decisions.
These non—moral agents include the very yormg, the immature, the incompetent, and
those who are prevented in some fashion fi'om reasoning well. Laws based upon
generalized standards of right action would by necessity focus on activities which are
dangerous to oneself and others, such as violence, traffic control, intoxication, etc. In
addition to these civic laws, citizens would become aware of what could be termed social
laws, or etiquette. Beyond activities prohibited by criminal law are a host of behaviors
that need to be observed to live in polite society. These laws would focus on behavior
that makes life (un)comfortable for oneself and others, such as keeping appointments, not

telephoning or visiting others late in the evening, and topics to avoid in conversation. (It

144

is worth noting in passing that much of what makes up non-criminal civil law consists of ‘
attempts to codify just these sorts of social behaviors. For example, zoning laws are an
attempt to formalize how to be a good neighbor.) The purpose in learning these laws
(criminal and social) is not to inculcate citizens into a set manner of behaving, as this
would be both against virtue theory and strong particularism, but to establish a baseline
of behavior which those who cannot be brought to moral competency can use to guide
their behavior. However, there needs to be an acceptance on the part of the moral
community that those who follow these dictates are exempt from (at least severe) moral
sanctions, as following the law is a minimal level of moral awareness.l
Obviously, this cannot be the ending point for a system of ethics which rejects
principles as action-guiding. The next stage of moral education is to take agents through
an understanding of how these laws can be found to be inapplicable, or even if applicable
irrelevant to making a morally right decision. At this point, some person or group of
persons would begin the process of mentoring agents as they become more morally
mature and assist them in sharpening their skills of moral observation. Parents and
teachers seem to naturally fill this role in western democracies, but this role could be
filled by anyone. The Christian tradition of naming a fi'iend or relative a godparent
nominally in charge of religious education is an apt model for non-parental matting.
The early stage of mentoring would include bringing agents to see that laws and
norms necessarily are flawed because they cannot capture all possibilities. Ifconfronted

with a violent attacker, it is appropriate to use violence, though violence is generally

 

1 I am thinking here in a fashion I take parallel to Kant’s reasoning in “On the Supposed
Right to Lie. . .” that “public justice can hold nothing” against an agent who tells the truth
in all occasions. (8:427)

145

illegal. Similarly, rushing the victim of a violent attack to the hospital is cause to ignore
traffic laws. In the social realm missing one’s appointment because she was rushing a
friend to the hospital is generally morally acceptable, as would be calling the spouse of
the victim to have them come to the hospital regardless of the time of the call. Further,
while in the hospital the victim may have need to explain her religious beliefs or how
medication is affecting her digestive system. This early stage of mentoring is intended
purely to show agents that sometimes laws and social practices need to be violated, and
that often these violations are acceptable, understandable, and praiseworthy.

The next step in moral education is for agents to become more aware of what
makes an action morally correct. Two processes would occur concurrently hue. Agents
would work through a series of cases and stories of moral decision making to become
exposed to how particulars of a situation can make the moral valence of an action change.
At the same time, agents would be shown how attempts to codify morality at this stage,
be it Rossian primafacie duties, Canberran moral patterns, or religious doctrines end up
either with the same problems as societal laws, or lack clarity in guiding actions. These
two elements should occur concurrent to each other so that agents do not come away
from a series of case studies with a formalized or limited ranking of morally relevant
features. The cases considered should be drawn from a rich variety of sources, and
would almost certainly have to be introduced in a manner that is different for different
agents. Thus, if an agent is consistently finding that pain is a ‘wrong—making’ attribute,
consideration of cases of athletic preparation, military training, and dentistry should lead
her to perceive that this feature is not universally wrong-making. If one is not able to

conceive of a counter-example, it may be enough for the agent to have discovered

146

through moral education that cormter-examples do occur and that our understandings of
moral valence needs to contain an expectation that we may eventually discover an
instance where the valence diverges from our previous experience.

During all stages of moral education, from inculcation to laws, through
consideration of case studies, agents would find that around them moral behavior is being
modeled by their mentors, parents, teachers, friends, and neighbors. This modeling, of
course, never ends, but it is really at the stage following the consideration of cases that I
believe agents would come to question these diverse individuals as to why they took (or
did not take) a specific action, how they reason through their moral decisions, and how
they determine what laws will be followed in which instances. The process of modeling
both allows for more cases to be considered and displays that there are people who are
better and wome at making moral decisions. Agents will come to see that there are some
individuals whose actions can be used as a model for moral decisions, and others who
cannotbe. Whatsetsthese modelsapartfi-omcasesconsideredisthatgenerallyitwillbe
possible to ask others why they took the action they did, a possibility that is not present
for individuals in a case study, like Francis of Assisi or Atticus Finch.

In this process agents come to see that correct moral decisions are made based
upon the circumstances before them. From the available possible actions, agents need to
come to the morally correct action based upon the features which are present here, as well
as determining the proper timing and intensity of action. A specific action, for example
using force to subdue a bank robber, is not always appropriate. In some instances, taking
this action could cause others to come to harm. Even in an instance where this would be

a morally correct action, agents need to be aware that the extent to which they use force,

147

as well as the timing ofthe action, could change the action from morally correct to
morally wrong. Thus, using too much force as the robber is surrendering to the
authorities2 would make the action wrong, precisely because of the extent or the timing.
Right actions occur not only because the action is right in light of the salient features, but
also because they are taken at the proper time and using the proper amount of
“enthusiasm.”

As agents experience more of the world and encounter the various ways that one
can be brought to make a moral decision, they should be encouraged by their mentors to
be utilize self-reflection. Just as they consider cases to hone their ability to discern moral
saliences and question mentors and models for understanding of moral decisions made,
agents need to consider their experiences. These reflections could enable them to see not
only where they have previously gone awry in making moral decisions, but also enable
them to see their own predilections toward what features are salient. Just as the mentors
previously should have introduced cases for consideration that were at odds with what
students tended to determine, agents need to take up for themselves the burden to
determining if they are weighing a feature too heavily. Perhaps if they were inclined to
value property rights heavily, they would (re)consider cases where it is not clear that
property rights are paramount, like a Valjean bread-theft, Kohlberg’s Heinz Dilmma,
Robin Hood stories, or governmental taxation. From this stage of self-reflection the
assumption is that agents would come to rely less and less upon their mentors and would

instead seek out the opportunity to better understand morality on their own.

 

2 I am assuming here that our agent is not a member of the class of authorities (i.e. police,
Secret Service, FBI) normally involved in resolving a bank robbery.

148

At this point it seems to proper to note that not all agents will continue to
rmdertake self-evaluation, seek out new cases or experiences, or work in 0th:- ways to
increasingly fine-tune their moral perception and reasoning. While unfortunate, those
agents who do not continue to become “experts” in moral decision making will have
available to them the skills and knowledge that they had previously gained. Some of
these skills may degrade over time without continual practice, much like an individual’s
ability to calculate the first derivative of a formula in calculus. However, since the
earliest stages of this moral education is awareness of societial laws and norms, it seems
that for those who are not able to continue to develop their moral perception they will
remain bound by laws and norms as these will be continually reinforced. Others will see
that sometimes it is appropriate to break laws for a moral purpose. Some will retain
knowledge or awareness of particular cases, models, or mentors that they encountered.
However, the hope is that like someone learning to cook that eventually agents will come
to enjoy not only the end-product of decision making, but also find the process of making
a moral decision is enjoyable. These experts could come to take pride in their ability to
discern salient features and act properly, while always looking for a new feature or means
of considering a situation. While they may not be able to have their cake and eat it too,
they certainly can prepare their environment such that when the Opportunity comes to
utilize an ingredient/skill they can do so.
While the training I have described thus far is generally in keeping with strong
particularism, it draws heavily fi-om an Aristotelian virtue education. At the stage of self-
reflection we see how strong particularism can assist in an agent’s understanding her

actions. Perhaps most problematic in self~reflection is coming to grips with instances in

149

which it is clear that one did not take the proper action. By revising slightly the
augmented typology of actions against moral reasoning presented in chapter four, we can
get a typology which is useful for self-reflection.3

Figure 4: Virtuous Particularist Typology of Actions against Moral Renaming

 

 

 

 

Lack of Action Action Contrary
F l r wl
Broad Scope Limited/One Time Limited/One Time Broad Scope
I l f l
Impetnous Weakness Involuntary v hm,
(Silenced) o 1

 

l l 1

Mistake Misadventnre Act of Injustice
As strong particularism rejects overarching principles for moral decision making, the first
two categories that should be considered are the ‘broad scope’ categories. If an agent
finds that she has consistently not been acting upon moral decisions, then it is likely that
she is suffering from accidie, perhaps due to depression. After becoming aware of this
fact, she should seek out clarity as to what is causing this. Ifthe cause is depresm’on, then
medical or psychological care (or both) may be indicated. At the other extreme, if an
agent is routinely acting against what she believes is the moral action, it may be that the
agent has come to consider herself amoral, or that morality does not apply to her. She
could have a firm grasp of what morality would call for, but find that there is no real
reason to follow morality’s dictates. Again, in this instance medical or psychological
care may be indicated as amorality is understood as concurrent with sociopathic behavior.
In the middle cases, the agent can come to understand that her lack of action could be

caused because she succumbed to her passions either by not reasoning (impetuousness) or

 

3 This typology is one of many possible understandings of actions apparently against
moral reasoning, and emphasizes paradigm cases rather than the gradient differences that
couldoccurbetweenthem. Having saidthatthisorderingisonethatlfeelisparticularly
useful for self-reflection in that it allows agents to discern patterns in their own behavior
that may need additional attention.

150

by ignoring reasoning (weakness) In some instances we are involuntarily forced to take
actions we do not believe are proper (silencing), commit mistakes of reasoning, or
accidentally take an action contrary to our reasoning (misadventure). In each of these
cases, knowledge of how these occurred can assist in understanding later chances at
moral decision making. Finally, and h0pefully rarely, it is possible that an agent
willingly did an act of injustice. Understanding that this wrong action fits into the overall
scape of one’s life could lead an agent to determine that the wrong action had its own
consequences (perhaps punishment by authorities for violating the law.) ‘

While these classifications are derived from Aristotle’s distinctions, ordering
them in this manner is most helpful for strong particularism. From particularism we can
come to see that these actions are unique, and need to be understood only in the context
of an overall discernment of what is moral. Just as agents look at the particulars of the
situation to determine which action is correct, they can, through looking at the particulars
of their moral decision making, come to understand their unique moral difficulties. By
looking at the moral decisions and moral actions that one has made, an agent can come to
see the shape of the sort of moral agent that she is. This process of self-reflection would
take skill, practice, and some would be better at it than others, just as some are better at
describing a building, or the moral shape of a particular decision, some would be better at
seeing their own placement in the typology. The agent who is apt to impetuous actions
can attempt to learn from this awareness to slow down and consider more fully moral
features even in situations that do not appear at first glance to involve morality. The

agentpronetomisadventmecanrealizethatsheneedstofocusagainmorefullyonthe

151

outcomes of situations, and perhaps return (again) to case consideration so that she can
become more competent in this area.

The fully competent agent would enjoy mentoring others in the process of
becoming a more astute at making moral decisions. The process of mentoring was laid
out above, so I do not repeat it here. However, it is worth noting that even at this stage
our agent finds herself with the possibility to see anew aspects that perhaps had become
customary or usual. Just as children’s questioning of their environment can lead parents
to becomes more aware of their own thought process, mentoring others in the process of
becoming a full moral agent could involve a re-appreciation for the basic skills of
appreciation of the environment and the manner in which featmes interact with each
other in particular ways for each situation of moral decision making.

While this education includes both awareness of laws (criminal and etiquette), and
the consideration of limited orderings, at no point in this moral education are moral
agents encouraged to follow these orderings at the expense of particularism. The only
individuals encouraged to (somewhat) blindly follow these methods are those who for
one reason or another are not able to be moral agents, like the young or incapacitated By
not providing a list of features of which to be cognizant, this theory avoids metaphysical
problems that theories other than strong particularism cannot. However, by refusing to
provide this list, it may be that this education is less than complete. Agents will not be
able to, without fail, discern that a certain feature is morally salient or not. Though this
may be a weakness of another account of moral education, in this instance it is a strength.
As a strong particularism, virtuous particularism holds that a feature which is relevant in

one situation need not be relevant in another. In addition, it is possible for similar

152

features in different situations to act in difl‘erent manners (i.e. in one instance be a ‘right-
making’ feature, and in another be a ‘wrong-making’ feature.) The educational account
that I have offered, while it does not provide a list or codification of morally salient
features, does enable agents to come to see both how these variable valences occur, and
to have experience with them. In this way they come to be educated, though perhaps not
in a fashion that is easily recognizable.

At the outset of this project I laid out that a problem for theories of strong
particularism is that they lack a means of explaining how agents come to discern which
aspects of a situation are morally salient. As strong particularism is as an understanding
of morality which believes that what is moral is determined by the interaction of all the
features of a situation, and that it is not possible to codify which featrues will be
important nor how features interact with each other, the lack of a process of moral
education was particularly troublesome. If agents cannot rely upon a list of principles for
moral guidance, how are they to determine in the abstract if an action is morally correct
or not A partial answer is to reject that agents can determine in the abstract at all. Moral
decisions are always tied to the situations in which the occurred, and the morally conect
action is the one which becomes clear upon consideration of all the relevant features.

In the preceding, I have presented a fuller solution of how to bring agents to be
able to determine for themselves which action is morally correct. Borrowing fiom virtue
theory, we can see that agents need to be able to find the right action to take at the right
time, in the proper setting, and to the proper degree. These particular features cannot
simply be taught to another, but instead can only be inculcated in another through

exposure to laws, mentored guidance in selective rejection of those laws, consideration of

153

cases, observation and questioning of mentors and models, and self-reflection. This
model of moral education is in keeping both with the broader tradition of virtue ethics
and with strong moral particularism. As such, this augmented moral particularism can

aptly only be termed virtuous particularism.

154

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