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Cites

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1		-Ethics must be situational, we must ground moral judgments in the context of the particularities of agents.
2		-Aristotle and Leibowitz
3		-PARTICULARISM IN ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS Uri D. Leibowitz (uri.leibowitz@nottingham.ac.uk) University of Nottingham (Forthcoming in The Journal of Moral Philosophy)
4		-1 Nor must we overlook the fact that arguments which proceed from fundamental principles are different from arguments that lead up to them ...2 Now, we must start with the known. But this term has two connotations: “what is known to us” and “what is known” pure and simple. Therefore, we should start perhaps with what is known to us. 3 For that reason, to be a competent student of what is right and just, and of politics generally, one must first have received a proper upbringing in moral conduct. 4 The acceptance of a fact as fact is the starting point, and if this is sufficiently clear, there will be no further need to ask why it is so. 5 A man with this kind of background has or can easily acquire the foundations from which he must start. 6 But if he neither has nor can acquire them, let him lend an ear to Hesiod’s words: That man is all-best who himself works out every problem... That man, too, is admirable who follows one who speaks well. He who cannot see the truth for himself, nor, hearing it from others, Store it away in his mind, that man is utterly useless. (1095a31-1095b12)12 Following Burnyeat (1980), I understand Aristotle here as engaged in a dialectical inquiry towards first principles 1. This inquiry towards first principles, Aristotle argues, must begin with what is known to us 2. Our starting points, I suggest, are the normative statuses of particular actions. As Burnyeat observes, “the ancient commentators are agreed that Aristotle has in mind knowledge about actions in accordance with the virtues; these actions are the things familiar to us from which we must start, and what we know about them is that they are noble or just” (1980:71- 72). In other words, we must start our moral theorizing from our judgments about particular actions.
5		-Thus, we must make ethical judgments based on our moral upbringing. Morally correct acts are correct because they are trained in us. The only way to resolve particularities and the paradoxical nature of rule following is by finding the average of two extremes. This is also how we tell if an action is virtous.
6		-Leibowitz 2
7		-PARTICULARISM IN ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS Uri D. Leibowitz (uri.leibowitz@nottingham.ac.uk) University of Nottingham (Forthcoming in The Journal of Moral Philosophy)
8		-But how could one identify particular actions as right if one doesn’t know why these acts are right? A native speaker of a language can often tell whether a sentence is grammatical even in cases in which she does not know why it is so. Naturally, only native speakers who have been “brought up well” with respect to language are able to do this correctly and reliably. Aristotle thinks that with a proper moral upbringing one can form habits that would enable one to distinguish right actions from wrong ones 5. This is one reason why in I.3 Aristotle insists that young men are not the target audience for his lectures: “for they are inexperienced in the actions that constitute life, and what is said will start from these and will be about these” (1095a3-4, Rowe trans.). Our discussion, Aristotle tells us, concerns the rightness of actions but it also starts with correct judgments about which particular actions are right. The ability to identify right acts as right is acquired by habituation and the habits we form depend on the kind of moral upbringing we get. Having correct starting points is vital to a successful dialectical inquiry; if our initial judgments about the normative status of actions are incorrect, then the first principles we discover by way of a dialectical inquiry from these judgments are likely to be false.13 In I.7 Aristotle reminds us that the appropriate degree of precision for each investigation depends on the nature of the subject matter being explored (1098a26-28). He then goes on to say this: 7 One should not demand to know the reason why, either, in the same way in all matters: in some cases, it will suffice if that something is so has been well shown, 8 as indeed is true of starting points; some are grasped by induction, some by perception, some by a sort of habituation, and others in other ways: 9 one must try to get hold of each sort in the appropriate way, and take care that they are well marked out, 10 since they have great importance in relation to what comes later. For the start of something seems to be more than half of the whole, and through it many of the things being looked for seem to become evident. (1098a33-1098b7, Rowe trans.)14 In this passage Aristotle tells us that inquiries can differ not only with respect to their appropriate degree of precision 7, but also in the way in which their starting points are obtained 8. Moreover, Aristotle insists that it is important to obtain the starting points for each inquiry in the appropriate way 9. Finally, Aristotle stresses again the importance of having the correct starting points 10. Aristotle’s goal, as I have mentioned above, is to help us understand why those acts that we identify as right—our starting points—are, in fact, right. But he warns us that the kind of explanation we ought to seek should be appropriate to the subject matter we are investigating 7. In geometry we can give demonstrative explanation. But we “should not demand to know the reason why in the same way in all matters.” Explanations of the rightness of actions will take a different form. “Pure science involves demonstration,” Aristotle tells us, “while things whose starting points or first causes can be other than they are do not admit of demonstrations” (VI.5:1140a34). After reminding us in II.2 that the subject matter of ethics lacks fixity and hence that our account will not be very precise, Aristotle goes on to say this: “But though our present account is of this nature we must give what help we can” (1104a10, Ross trans.). What immediately follows, are Aristotle’s observations about the harmful effects of excess and deficiency, and the positive effects of the proportionate amount, or the mean. These observations, Aristotle tells us, hold true for health and strength as well as for characteristics like temperance, courage, and other virtues. To act in accordance with the mean is not only the way to acquire virtuous characteristics, but is also the mark of virtuous actions.
9		-
10		-Ethics therefore lacks fixity, no two moral upbringings or situations will ever be the same. This means absent a way to resolve these particularities, any other ethical theory fails to account for differences between competing ethical claims and can never work.
11		-
12		-Thus the standard is consistency with contextual decision making
13		-
14		-Prefer additionally:
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16		-States must promote contextual virtuous decision-making. The alternative cannot guide action in all cases. SILVIA:
17		-“VIRTUE ETHICS AND COMMUNITARIANISM” by Rui Silva, University of the Azores DD
18		-“The second distinctive trait of virtue ethics is closely connected with the first one: virtue ethics is suspicious of the guiding role of principles and rules. The point was already made by Aristotle, namely in his discussion of the legal virtue of equity. Equity is required because laws and rules are too generic to accommodate all possible cases that judges can face. No legal system can avoid the occurrence of the so-called hard cases: The reason for this is that law is always a general statement, yet there are cases which it is not possible to cover in a general statement. ... The material of conduct is essentially irregular. ... This is the essential nature of the equitable: it is a rectification of law where law is defective because of its generality. (Nichomachean Ethics 1137b) There are, indeed, two basic problems when we try to act solely on principles. Firstly, there is a gap between general principles and the unpredictable diversity of situations that demand moral decisions; as a result it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to determine how to apply a principle to certain, atypical situations. In other words, it is possible to arrive at different conclusions departing from the same principles. Secondly, there can be clashes between equally valuable principles, depriving thereby the agent of action guidance. We may add that virtue ethics, far from endorsing moral universalism, is sensitive to the role of context in ethics. In the words of Julia Annas (2004: 741), virtue ethics is opposed to “one-size-fits-all” accounts of ethics. Virtue ethics invites us to and adopts moral contextualism, but it should be noted that contextualism must not be confused with relativism. After this brief presentation of virtue ethics, I will try to clarify and legitimize the idea of moral reliability, which is crucial for virtue ethics. For that purpose, the humanist idea of Bildung will be integrated in the project of virtue ethics. In a third section, I will analyse the most significant affinities between virtue ethics and communitarianism. Finally, I will claim that we can develop, with the help of the idea of Bildung, a form of virtue ethics that is not committed to strong forms of communitarianism. 2. Because it does not conceive of moral judgements on the basis of deductions from principles or decision procedures, virtue ethics is often considered as vague; instead of focusing on consequences or rules, virtue ethics it is based on the reliability of the moral agent, and this view may sound puzzling for modern moral philosophers. Standard formulations of virtue ethics are, indeed, somewhat vague. Let us consider, for example, the following presentation of the “fundamental premise” of virtue ethics:” (3-4)
19		-
20		-Impact Calc:
21		-Analytic
22		-
23		-Contention:
24		-Analytic
25		-
26		-Even if the AC specifies a specific factors of the ban, its still a universal application of the ban, since there are still instances that fall outsides of the rule. Dancy
27		-“Ethics Without Principles” by Jonathan Dancy 2004 DD
28		-“But there are forms of holism that do not go so far as particularism. That is, we can accept the context-sensitivity, the variability, of reasons, but still suppose that there are the sorts of general truths about how reasons behave that might be expressed by moral principles. So even if we do reject Ross's position, there remains some distance to go before we get to particularism. Consider the following series of conditionals offered by Robert Brandom (2000: 88): 1. If I strike this dry, well-made match, then it will light. (this is p→q) 2. If p and the match is in a very strong electromagnetic field, then it will not light. ((p and r)→−q) 3. If p and r and the match is in a Faraday cage, then it will light. ((1 additions to the premises cannot make a good or cogent inference less good or cogent. Deductive reasoning is like this; an inference, once logically valid, remains so no matter what one adds as a premise (even if it be the negation of one of the original premises). Brandom's in the example is non- monotonic, since the cogent inference in (1) is reversed by the addition of the further consideration that the match is in a strong electromagnetic field. If one allows that this sort of thing can happen, is one therefore a holist in my sense? One would be a holist if the fact that I am striking a dry, well-made match is functioning as a reason for believing that it will light in the first case, but not in the second or the fourth. But Brandom is not trying to allude to that sort of possibility by his example. His point is rather the sort of phenomenon we find in chemistry: a feature may have a certain effect when alone, even though its combination with another feature will have the opposite effect. One could call this a ‘holistic’ point perfectly sensibly, but it is not holistic in my sense of that term. Holism in my sense is the claim that a feature which has a certain effect when alone can have the opposite effect in a combination. It is one thing to say, as Brandom does, that though a alone speaks in favour of action, a+b speaks as a whole against it; it is another to say that though a speaks in favour of action when alone, it speaks against action when in combination. The difference lies in what is doing the speaking against in cases where features are combined. In the former case (Brandom's) it is the combination; in the latter case (mine) it is the feature that originally spoke in favour. For an example of the difference between Brandom and me, consider the relation between the following three ‘principles’: 1. If you are causing someone pain, you are doing something wrong. (p→q) 2. If p and the pain is a statutory punishment for a recognized offence, you are not doing something wrong. ((p and r)→−q) 3. If p and r and the punishee was unjustly convicted, you are doing something wrong. ((p and r and s)→q) If we say these things, are we therefore holists? That depends on whether we think that, in the second case, the fact that we are causing someone pain ceases to be a reason not to do what we are doing. Holists in my sense would be open to such a suggestion, even if they decided that it is not how things in fact work in this case. But Brandom's approach doesn't really ask about the role of any particular part of the combination.” (7-9)

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-11 00:11:23.0

Judge

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1		-Chris Vincent, Travis Fife, Rodrigo Paramo

Opponent

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1		-Law Magnet MG

ParentRound

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1		-3

Round

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1		-Octas

Team

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1		-Strake Jesuit Chen Neg

Title

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1		-SO - Particularism NC

Tournament

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1		-Grapevine