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MORAL VIRTUE AND REASONS FOR ACTION

2009; Wiley; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1533-6077.2009.00156.x

1758-2237

Robert Audi,

Philosophical Ethics and Theory

Moral virtue is a central notion in ethics, and understanding it is a challenge for action theory and moral psychology. It is no easy task to provide an account of it, but even a plausible account of what moral virtue is leaves largely open the difficult question of what it is to act virtuously and the related question of how we can ensure that we do so act. To see the problem, I want to address, consider two points. First, although we can fulfill our obligations by doing the right things—call this behavioral fulfillment of obligation—we deserve little or no credit for doing them if we do not do them for one or more reasons of the right kind. Such creditworthiness is a necessary condition for virtuous fulfillment of obligation. Second, given that acting virtuously is in part a matter of acting for the right kind of reason, and that (as I shall argue) we cannot at will determine for what reasons we act, we cannot act virtuously at will. This holds even when the act that virtue calls for, such as apologizing, is one we can perform at will. Apologizing can be done for a reason of mere self-protection, which is inappropriate to virtue—at least to the kind of virtue, such as respectfulness, which an apology should express. This limitation on acting virtuously is disturbing, perhaps even paradoxical. We think of ourselves as having the voluntary power to conduct ourselves in morally admirable ways. Do we not have that power after all? I shall argue that, in certain ways and under certain conditions, we do. The theory to be presented here will indicate those ways and conditions. It will also bear on the extent to which Aristotle was right in thinking that virtue itself is up to us.1 My purposes do not require a full-scale account of moral virtue. I shall simply presuppose (drawing on earlier work2) that to have a virtue of character is to have a certain kind of trait, one appropriate to pursuing the particular good with respect to which the virtue counts as such. I shall also presuppose that moral virtues include justice, veracity, fidelity, respectfulness (toward persons), beneficence, and some related character traits. A concern with the well-being of others, for instance, is essential for moral virtue and, more specifically, for determining what counts as respectfulness or, especially, beneficence. In what follows, moral virtue will be my central concern, though much of what emerges will hold for other "practical" virtues and some of the points will also hold for intellectual virtues. I will not, however, provide an analysis of moral as opposed to other virtues of character, but that difficult task need not be undertaken for our purposes here.3 A trait constituting a virtue may be more or less deeply rooted; it may be more or less dominating in the person's behavior; and it may be variable in many other ways. We want our virtues to be inseparable from our very nature, but this is not always how it is.4 However deeply rooted a virtue is, both cognitive and motivational elements are central. A virtuous person, say owing to veracity, must have certain beliefs; some would say, indeed, that a weighted proportion of these beliefs must constitute knowledge, for instance knowledge of when it is appropriate to avoid an unjustified question rather than either answer it truthfully or lie. Knowing how as well as knowing that is important for the cognitive elements in virtues. Virtuous agents must also have desires (or other motivational elements, such as intentions) that are appropriate to the virtue. Fidelity, for example, requires a constituent desire (even if not always a preponderant desire) to stand by family and friends. The analysis of the notion of a virtue of character should cover at least six conceptually important dimensions.5 (Virtues of character overlap those of intellect but I will not here try to distinguish the two kinds, beyond noting that for some intellectual virtues, say for insightfulness, motivation and other elements connected with action as opposed to cognitive elements as constitutive manifestations, need not play the same kind of role, if any essential role at all.) These dimensions correspond to situational, conceptual, cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and teleological aspects of the trait in relation to the actions proper to it—actions from virtue, as I shall call them. Let us consider these in turn. The first dimension is the field (or domain) of a virtue, roughly the kind of human situation in which it characteristically operates, such as, for fidelity, standing by friends when they are under attack. The field for beneficence is even more open-ended and encompasses the wide range of actions affecting others, particularly as they bear on reducing others' pain, enhancing their pleasure, or providing something else that is broadly rewarding. The second dimension is a matter of the characteristic targets the virtue leads the agent to aim at. For beneficence, the major target is the well-being of others. In the case of honesty, there is avoidance of deceit. For humility, there is appropriate restraint about describing one's accomplishments. And so forth. If there is a single overarching target, say the good of others, we might speak of the telos of the virtue, as do some writers on Aristotelian virtue ethics.6 The third dimension of analysis of virtue as an element of character is the agent's understanding of the field of the virtue, for instance of criteria for benefiting others. Virtue is enhanced by a wide and deep understanding of this field, but having a virtue is consistent with limited understanding of the field. Still, one can hardly find a target with no sense of where it is or what means will lead to it. There are, then, objective limits on what range of actions can express a virtue of character or even be of a virtuous kind. Fourth, there is the agent's motivation to act in that field in a certain way, where that way is appropriate to the virtue, say a desire to contribute to the well-being of refugees, as opposed to wanting just one's own enrichment (the former but not the latter desire is appropriate to beneficence). Having a moral virtue requires not just doing good deeds or being suitably disposed to do them, but having certain good intentions. Fifth, there is the agent's disposition to act on the basis of the constituent understanding and motivation, for instance on the basis of a concern with justice to others rather than with one's own personal projects. The strength of this disposition is an indication of the strength of tendency for acts of the right type to be attached in the right way to the relevant aretaic cognitive and motivational elements in the agent. This notion is important for distinguishing actions merely in conformity with virtue from those performed from it, in the sense implying that they bespeak an element of good character. The sixth dimension of analysis we must take into account is the beneficiaries of the virtue, above all (and perhaps solely) the person(s) who properly benefit from our realizing it: for veracity, our interlocutors in general; for fidelity, family, friends, or larger groups such as one's community or country; for self-discipline, oneself; and so forth.7 (For intellectual virtue, say being logical, there may be no beneficiaries in this sense; but I am taking such traits to be virtues of intellect, not of character.) These six dimensions of virtues of character are particularly appropriate to explicating virtuous action and the richer notion of acting from virtue. Let us first consider the field of a virtue, with moral virtue as our main concern. The field of, say, the virtue of justice—which is a trait possessed in some measure by any person of moral virtue—might be roughly retribution and, more important, the distribution of goods and evils; that of fidelity might be conduct required by explicit or implicit promises; and so forth. Such fields may overlap other aretaic fields, but each has some distinctive features. There is no way to characterize moral virtue without a measure of vagueness. One reason for this is that the notion of morality itself is both vague and, even apart from that, subject to rational disagreement about its scope. Here I propose to represent it largely in relation to the Rossian obligations—those of justice and non-injury, of veracity and fidelity, of beneficence and self-improvement, and of reparation and gratitude8—taken in reflective equilibrium with Kant's Categorical Imperative. But note that one of these obligations is self-improvement, and this may be plausibly argued to be a matter of prudence rather than morality (an obligation can, to be sure, be both one of beneficence and a requirement of prudence).9 Nothing major in this paper turns on how this classificatory question is decided. Certainly anyone who has internalized the Rossian principles in a suitably balanced way has moral virtue, even if one could have it without internalizing all of them—though all correspond to virtues of some kind (e.g., self-improvement to pride, in the good sense of that term, in which it implies concern with maintaining some high standard). To understand acting virtuously, consider how a beneficent person understands the field of, say, charity. The appropriate understanding naturally manifests itself in believing that wartime medical emergencies create a prima facie obligation to contribute to relief efforts, to support initiatives for a cease-fire, and to replace hatreds by understanding. But suppose someone did not use the concepts of duty or obligation (at least here) and thought simply that it is good to do these things. We need not require of virtuous agents that they approach the domains of virtue with any specific normative concepts, only that they operate with any of a range of acceptable concepts and commitments. Beneficence, like most other virtues of character, represents a kind of practical success, not a theoretical achievement; its cognitive requirements are quite latitudinarian and can be met by a self-conscious rule-theorist, by a spontaneously good person, or even by a moral skeptic who is suspicious of ethical concepts. To be sure, a moral field cannot be understood without a sense of its (moral) normativity, but that sense is not restricted to either virtue concepts or hedonic ones (as a utilitarian might perhaps think) or deontological principles (as Kantians may tend to think). There are some general requirements for understanding any moral field, for example that a kind of impartiality be recognized as necessary10 and that the well-being of people must be given some weight. Beneficence, for instance, requires a sense of when to act to relieve someone's anxiety. A strong pattern of well-intentioned failures in such attempts is not sufficient for the virtue of beneficence, even if it might suffice for a measure of benevolence as a psychological disposition. This requirement expresses part of what it is to understand the field of a virtue, and—more broadly—to have practical wisdom. Particularly from the point of view of the theory of action, it is useful to conceive the relevant traits—at least traits of broadly moral character—as constituted by fairly stable and normally long-standing wants and beliefs, or at least beliefs, provided they carry sufficient motivation.11 Surely beneficence, for instance, requires appropriate wants, such as desires to help others, and certain beliefs, say the belief that the suffering of others is a reason to try to render aid, at least indirectly. The more self-consciously virtuous an agent is, the greater the moral content of the appropriate wants and beliefs tends to be, or at least the greater the tendency for the agent to entertain the relevant content; but even being spontaneously virtuous is more than a matter of simply doing the relevant kinds of deeds. The deeds must be appropriately aimed, in terms of what the agent wants and believes, or they are not moral—in the sense of morally performed—but at best merely consistent with morality. We have now implicitly described acting virtuously. It is acting on the basis of motivation and beliefs whose content has a sufficiently close relation to the elements essential in the trait constituting the virtue in question. But although acting virtuously is necessary for acting from virtue, it is not sufficient. The point is not that one can do what virtue requires for a reason that, like self-aggrandizement, is inappropriate to virtuous action. This is merely acting in conformity with virtue. To be sure, it is important to see that acting virtuously is not entailed by acting in conformity with virtue; but the point here is that, creditworthy though it is, acting virtuously does not entail acting from virtue. Consider a person who is often generous but could not be said to have the virtue of generosity. In Aristotelian terms, generosity is not a "firm and unchanging" element in the person's character. (See Nicomachean Ethics 1105a30–35.) Generous feelings and beneficent giving might, in people with a certain character, be sufficient to indicate acting generously; but this pattern does not always yield such action, and if a generous action is not rooted in character, it would not imply having the trait, generosity. Granted, as with most kinds of virtuous actions, regularly acting generously is likely to lead to developing the trait in question; but the possession of the trait is not a condition for acting in ways that are characteristic of it. In speaking of motivation as I have, I do not mean to imply that there are not also external constraints on acting virtuously. There are limits to how far from a sound normative view one can get and still qualify as acting virtuously.12 But here I presuppose no specific normative view. The main idea is that acting virtuously implies acting for a reason appropriate to the virtue, whether or not one has the virtue. The question, then, is how we can act virtuously as often as possible and at least in important things. This brings us to the question of the kind of control we have over our reasons for action. There are many kinds of control we might have regarding our reasons for action. One kind of control over such reasons is generative: an ability to produce (as opposed to simply recalling) such a reason at will or, if the power in question is indirect, to produce it by doing something else. Another main kind of control is an ability, given that we have a reason to do something, either to harness it to the action, i.e., bring it about that the action is performed at least in part for that reason, or to unharness it, i.e. bring it about that the action is not performed even in part for that reason. My main concern will be harnessing of motivational elements and its implications for moral virtue. The importance of harnessing can be seen by reflecting on the point that myriad reasons for action are always with us, and our practical challenge is largely to see how to do, or to bring about our doing (in the right way), the deeds for which they (or a properly weighted subset of them) are reasons. To see this clearly we should distinguish two cases. There are (1) motivational reasons, paradigmatically desires, which, together with instrumental beliefs, generate actions and action tendencies, and (2) normative reasons for action: roughly reasons that support it, in the sense that they count toward its rationality, as do its reducing pain and its promoting pleasure. Since moral reasons are normative, it is easy to see why we always have them. Even if we should have no personal relationships that ground obligations, we have obligations of beneficence (given a world at all like this). In my view, moreover, one has obligations of self-improvement (or at least self-maintenance) quite apart from obligations to others. Normative reasons are also generated by a certain kind of need. I refer to normative need, the kind that, like avoiding pain and remaining healthy, there is reason to fulfill. Normative needs are of course pervasive. Whether or not we take avoiding pain and remaining healthy to be basic normative needs, i.e., those that (prima facie) ought to be fulfilled independently of their role in bringing about anything else, it is nonetheless true that failing to do what is needed for continued life would cause pain and reduce enjoyments and satisfactions. Norm-based desires—desires based on a normative ground, paradigmatically a moral one, but including desires normatively need-based in the way just illustrated—are pervasive. They include many involving comfort and bodily needs. At any moment in a normal life, then, an agent has desires that provide both normative and motivational reasons for action. To see a main question confronting us here, consider six kinds of case, each of which can be fruitfully viewed in relation to the virtue of beneficence. In each, S already wants to help a colleague, Sanja, and the question is what S can do at will in relation to grounds for the beneficent deed in question—call it A-ing. I refer both (1) to normative grounds, whether propositional or not and whether potential—hence not a psychological basis of desire or belief—or actual, and (2) to psychological grounds, whether normative (as in the case of a justified belief that supports A, e.g. believing that it is obligatory) or not, as with an irrational desire that is a causal basis of A-ing but provides no normative support for A-ing. A normative ground may be practical, say a moral reason to do a particular deed, or epistemic, as in the case of perceptual evidence for a proposition. The analogy between the practical and the epistemic is illuminating and will be considered, but practical grounds (and especially moral ones) are our main concern here.13 First, suppose we have in consciousness a normative ground for A-ing, as where we want to help Sanja with a report and are aware that helping her is a good thing to do. May we at will act on it? We would then act virtuously if our beneficent desire were a sufficient motivational ground (adequate by itself, given a suitable instrumental belief, to yield a motivational explanation of the act). But suppose we also have a selfish reason for the act, say, to curry favor with Sanja as an influential person; we might then think we acted for the beneficent reason when we did not. Call the view that we can achieve motivational grounding at will the direct harnessability thesis. I am not aware of any sustained case for it; but that it is sometimes presupposed is suggested by certain uses of the phrase 'Do it because', as in 'Do it because it's your duty, not because you will be paid for it'. Consider a case in which one spouse offers to do for the other something that is burdensome. A natural response might be 'I don't want you to do it because you have to; do it because you love me'. This is a request to act for a kind of reason. Can one fulfill it? If so, how? A person can also be urged not to do a thing for a given reason, as where I say that I am going to disallow a student's appeal owing to a late paper (and am told that I should not do it for this reason, since many with late papers were allowed the privilege this student asks for). Such locutions as 'Do it because' and 'Don't do it for that reason' create the impression that their users think it is sometimes up to us what to base an action on. If decision is considered an action, as it should be in certain instances, there is no question that we may sometimes think we can at will bring it about that we can decide on a given reason. Second, suppose a reason for action is expressed by a belief and that the self-control question concerns whether we can act at will on this belief. Consider the testimony of someone we respect yet think unreliable on the subject of what we should do now. The person says that we should A, but we have independent, if limited, evidence supporting A-ing and we see that the evidence is good. May we at will bring it about that we A only on the latter ground and not on the basis of the unreliable testimony? The view that we can might be called the direct selective harnessability thesis. This thesis is suggested by teachers' saying to their students such things as 'You're welcome to write on a topic not listed, but please don't do it just to show how inventive you are'. The students are supposed to consider their grounds and avoid basing their action on any grounds that do not pass muster. Third, suppose we have a merely motivational reason to A, hence not a normative ground at all, but only a reason which, if we act on it, is a psychological basis of action, as envy may be.14 We can sometimes be quite tempted by a bad reason. Someone in the grip of the gambler's fallacy, for example, might, after six successive appearances of heads on a coin toss, bet heavily on tails, thinking it now more likely. May we, at will, block our inclination to act on such a basis? Call this direct veto power over a would-be ground of action. The fourth case emerges when we see that we could have veto power and thereby prevent a potential reason from becoming an actual one—one for which we act—even if, given that we are A-ing for some other reason, r, we do not have the power to cease, at will, to have r as an actual reason for our present action. Call this "detachment" power the power to unharness at will. The point here is that detachment power need not accompany veto power. There could be reasons such that one can prevent their becoming reasons for which one acts but, once they are not vetoed and are operative in determining action, they become like a glue too strong to overcome. The ability to prevent a glue from joining two pieces of wood does not imply the power to separate them once glued. The fifth case to be considered concerns the possibility of enhancing or reducing the psychological support that a reason gives to an action based on that ground, whether wholly or in part. (The latter case occurs where the ground is only part of what sustains the belief, which is also partly sustained either by another ground or by a causal factor, such as wishful thinking or posthypnotic suggestion, which is not a normative reason for acting, though it may produce action, if only by producing desire or belief.) Call this power sustenance control of a ground. Where it is positive, one can enhance the sustaining support of a ground; where it is negative, one can reduce that support. As with harnessability, sustenance control admits of a distinction between direct and indirect forms. One might think that sustenance control is implied by harnessability or unharnessability; but this is not self-evident. Our psychological make-up could be such that we might be able, say, to harness a ground to an activity we are engaging in, or to unharness it, without being able to affect what degree of psychological support it adds or subtracts. Even if we cannot affect the degree of psychological support a reason gives to an action performed at least partly for that reason, there should be no doubt that the harnessing of an additional reason adds some degree of such support, hence one kind of strength. One would expect, for instance, that an action actually based on an additional ground gains at least some resistance to being stopped by contrary motivation. There is, after all, one more "foundation" to be crushed. This is a kind of motivational strength. Another kind of strength is broadly memorial: a matter of resisting the tendency to forget, as some might resist forgetting desires to make amends for a wrong. Whether the addition of a reason to act might also enhance this kind of strength is not a philosophical question (I would think adding a motivational reason would be enhancing); but there is a normative contrast here: whereas the addition of a normative reason to one's basis for A-ing does not imply that one is less likely to fail to A, it does imply that, other things equal, one ought to be less likely to fail, even under the pressure of counter-reasons. A sixth case, closely related to the fifth, concerns intensity control. Here the relevant variable is the degree of felt commitment to an action with which that action is performed. This variable differs from strength of motivation, understood as resistance to cessation of the action in question, say by intimidation or fatigue. An activity might be engaged in with only moderate energy or resolution yet be highly resistant to foreshortening or prevention; an activity engaged in with the great resolution of a enthusiastic new convert may be readily abandoned by exposure to a charismatic speaker who urges something different. With intensity as with strength, one might expect harnessing an additional ground to produce an increase. But it need not. The case might be like that of a siren that, having no volume control, cannot be made louder or softer, but only turned on or off. The possibility of unalterable intensity does not imply that the relevant motivation must be maximally strong (a notion that, to be sure, needs analysis). Some people might simply reach a point of motivational fixity at which, barring new considerations that call for additional thinking, they simply store new evidence along side the foundation(s) of their belief. It may add potential resistance to ceasing to be motivated to A yet leave the level of motivational attraction, conceived as a kind of psychological determination, as it is.15 All six of the theses that have emerged—the two harnessability ones, the veto thesis, the unharnessability thesis, and the sustenance and intensity control theses—are important. We are told by philosophers and others not only that we ought to do the right things, for instance those morality requires, but also that we ought not to act for selfish reasons and ought to act for good reasons. This sounds like an imperative applying to actions, but, taken literally, it is not: expressions of the form of 'A-ing for reason r' do not simply designate acting. They are double-barrelled: they designate both what is done and an explanation of why it is done. These are quite different; 'A-ing' is an answer to 'What is S doing?' whereas 'For r' is an answer to 'Why is S doing that?' It is true, however, that one's intellectual responsibilities extend to "doing" such things as acting for appropriate reasons. Partly for this reason, one might think that harnessing, vetoing, and unharnessing of grounds are actions; but I doubt this and will shortly explain how the relevant intellectual responsibilities can be understood without granting it. There are, then, at least six positions to be considered regarding voluntary control of reasons for action: harnessability, both selective and non-selective, veto power over grounds, unharnessability, and sustenance and intensity control.16 In each case we must distinguish direct from indirect control; and, as with control of belief, indirect control over motivational grounding seems more nearly within our reach than direct control. The two dimensions of control—one concerning action itself and the other reasons for action—are logically independent, though surely psychologically connected. The same holds for the positive and negative direct theses: it could be, for instance, that we can unharness directly but cannot harness directly. Given the tentative conclusions so far reached concerning control of our reasons for action, much can be said about how moral responsibility—a major element in moral virtue—applies to our conduct and attitudes toward our own reasons for action. Let me suggest five general points. First, in regulating our conduct we should in many instances seek reasons and counter-reasons for actions relevant to whatever matter is at hand. This is not something we need to do, or can do, for every action, even every important one. It is sometimes obvious what should be done and why. But some actions are particularly important. Some are also credibly challenged; and at least for important actions, credible challenges should be taken seriously, and a good response typically requires seeking reasons and counter-reasons.17 Some categories of people, moreover—for instance, philosophers—tend to have a greater obligation to seek reasons and counter-reasons. Rational persons tend to be responsive to reasons for action that they are aware of, for instance to be motivated to act accordingly (at least where they see the reasons as sufficiently strong); and, in explaining or justifying their conduct, they tend to appeal to reasons they think they have or had for the action(s) in question. The search for reasons and counter-reasons, then, can give wider scope to nature in regulating conduct and richer content to our discourse in explaining or justifying our actions. Second, as rational persons, we should seek a kind of reflective equilibrium, both in our overall view of the world and in important aspects of that view. We should try to achieve a view of the world and, if we are virtuous, of our responsibilities, that has a high degree of unity and minimal internal tension. We should periodically review our outlook on important matters. Some are ethical, some political, some personal, and some, of course, intellectual. Third, even apart from direct voluntary control over our reasons, identifying and focusing on reasons with the aim of clearly assessing them is salutary. Focusing on reasons may result in automatic adjustments that enable moral virtue to manifest itself. We may, for example, see by reflection that a reason is unclear or not supportive of A-ing to the extent we might have presupposed. It is useful in any case to identify our actual reasons for action. We can then explain ourselves better and are less likely to miss some basis of action or, worse, to rationalize by seeking rea