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Notes
See: Annas (1993: 66–73, 1995, 2011), and Hills (2009: 108–13, 2015). Jason Stanley (2011, 2015, 2017) offers an influential account of skill that embraces intellectualist features. Rosalind Hursthouse (1999: 124) defends something like an intellectual requirement for virtue; however, she is careful to note (2011) that an agent exhibiting a virtue like practical wisdom might not be able to explain their choices in codifiable terms that inexperienced agents would understand.
In fact, the debate is more complicated, because Annas claims only that the intellectual requirement holds for virtues and the subset of skills for which we do expect intellectual mastery. Thus, Annas can grant that it is possible to be an expert with respect to some skills without intellectual mastery – just not the skills that correspond to virtuous activity. Stichter, for his part, remains skeptical that the intellectual requirement is accurate for even the subset of skills that Annas requires to maintain the skill/virtue analogy (2018: 57).
Thus, Stichter carefully emphasizes that, “There may be many good reasons to want a virtuous person to be able to articulate her reasons for action in terms of general principles, but the skill model rejects the idea that these intellectual requirements are necessary or sufficient for acting virtuously.” (2018: 81)
Moreover, as Ellen Fridland and Stichter (2020) recognize, even cases of seemingly spontaneous, intuitive skill or virtue displayed by experts occur only after a careful process of development that involves deliberate practice and a set of action schemas that integrate complex knowledge structures into action.
Montero’s “cognition-in-action” thesis is as follows: “For experts, when all is going well, optimal or near optimal performance frequently employs some of the following conscious mental processes: self-reflective thinking, planning, predicting, deliberation, attention to or monitoring of their actions, conceptualizing their actions, control, trying, effort, having a sense of the self, and acting for a reason. Moreover, such mental processes do not necessarily or even generally interfere with expert performance, and should not generally be avoided by experts.” (2016: 38)
For an influential defense of this view, see: (Driver 2013).
In the terminology provided by Philip Pettit and Geoffrey Brennan (1986), the virtues in these cases are calculatively elusive, because they do not obtain if pursued via explicit, self-conscious measures, and they may also be calculatively vulnerable because their value evaporates if they are monitored by justificatory reasons that undermine the authenticity of agents’ motives.
The delicate balance between the risks and benefits of self-effacement is nicely captured by Stichter when he notes that, “… while expert performance displays automaticity with respect to implementation control, some situational control and most strategic control requires the use of deliberative processes.” (2018: 51)
Cheng-hung Tsai (2020) presents a similar objection to Stichter on this point. He notes cases in which it can be appropriate for an expert for a particular practical skill to deliberate about the end of the skill, e.g. a swimmer “can re-specify his end or goal of swimming from the previously specified end – say, swimming 100 m in 1 min – to the newly specified end – say, swimming 100 m in 55 s – which exceeds his current level of performance.” (242)
For a more obscure example that perfectly exemplifies this point, Mark Hollis created some of his most profound work in the midst of questioning the point of continuing to record music at all. In an interview during this period, before he disappeared from public life, he famously supplemented his recommendation that people learn to play one note before playing two notes with the caveat, “and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.” (Petridis 2019) It is hard to make sense of Hollis’ minimalist musical skills without thinking they were mixed in with the deep reflection Stichter attributes to practical wisdom.
In effect, my point is that Stichter’s apt comparisons of technical skills and virtues tends to highlight what Rosalind Hursthouse (1991: 229–33) describes as the “major criticism” of virtue ethics.
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Woodcock, S. Thinking the Right Way (at the Right Time) about Virtues and Skills. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 24, 577–586 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10142-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10142-8