Abstract
Thomas Hurka has put forth a powerful account of virtue. The account rests on a specification of intrinsically good mental states and then explains what unifies them. On his account, virtue and desert also share the same structure. His theory of virtue has some difficulties that threaten the structure that unifies it. First, Hurka's account cannot provide a principled account of virtue and vice when they are constituted by attitudes toward things are not intrinsically good (e.g., nonexistent state of affairs). Second, Hurka's account does not have room for an important factor in determining the degree to which an attitude is virtuous or vicious: agent-relative goods. Hurka is thus faced with a abandoning the basic structure that makes his theory attractive or adopting counterintuitive positions.
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Notes
See Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Value, and Vice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Thomas Hurka, “The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert,” Ethics 112 (2001): 6–31.
There might be some additional conditions. One condition might be that an attitude not only is directed at an appropriate object but also that its intensity level is appropriate. For example, it is not clear that an overpowering love of a minor good is itself very good. A second condition might be that the appropriateness of an object not merely be a function of an object's intrinsic goodness but other factors as well. For example, it seems intrinsically better for a father to love his son's love for him rather than merely some son's love for his father. This allows an agent-relative condition to enter into the value of an attitude.
The notion of objective-list elements comes from Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 493–502.
Knowledge is a correspondence good in that it involves a relation between the person and the external world. This is characteristic of another objective-list element, meaningful relationships, and at odds with purely internalist accounts such as hedonic monism (pleasure alone is intrinsically good).
Arguments for a coherentist account of autonomy can be seen in Laura Waddell Ekstrom, “A Coherence Theory of Autonomy,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 599–616 and Marilyn Friedman, “Autonomy and the Split-Level Self,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 24 (1986): 19–35.
The role of pro and con attitudes is discussed in Stephen Kershnar, “Is Violation Pornography Bad for Your Soul?” Journal of Social Philosophy 35 (2004): 349–366.
Hurka would likely reject his as it would conflict with the structure of the recursive theory.
I am assuming here the modal realism of persons such as David Lewis is mistaken. See David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1973), 84–91 and David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
The notion that states of affairs that obtain are the bearer of intrinsic value can be seen in Ramon Lemos, The Nature of Value (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), ch. 2 and Noah Lemos, Intrinsic Value (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ch. 2. Events might, on some accounts, be bearers of value. Since the best view of them is that they are concrete particulars, see, e.g., Lawrence Lombard, Events: A Metaphysical Study (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), they exist only if they are exemplified. The idea that persons are the bearer of intrinsic value can, arguably, be found in the work of Kant.
A similar problem arises with regard to positive attitudes to symbols. For example, one might think that it is good that a person have a negative reaction to a Swastika or, depending on religious views, a positive reaction to the cross. However, if symbols represent or express the good (or bad), then the attitude aimed at a symbol might have the good (or bad) as its object. The notion that it is rational to give weight to symbolic meanings and utilities is discussed in Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 26–35.
The idea for this point comes from David Lyons, “Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence,” Ethics 76 (1986): 107–121. Note that the move made by agent-relativism (e.g., an act is morally right if and only if the agent's beliefs permit it) isn't available since the focus is not on actions.
I am grateful to Neil Feit and Thad Metz for their extremely helpful comments and criticisms.
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Kershnar, S. Hurka's Theory of Virtue. Philosophia 34, 159–168 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9015-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9015-y