Aristotle's Ethics

(Teleological Ethics)
The Content of Ethics
You should understand: Aristotle's function argument for the claim that the ultimate human good is rational activity in accordance with virtue
- the status of the Doctrine of the Mean, i.e. a decision procedure or metaethical claim about what virtue is?
- Objections

The Normativity of Ethics
You should understand:
- Aristotle's teleological assumptions
- how this relates to the question of whether we have reasons to be moral (virtuous)

Aristotle's philosophical ethics as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics is a counterpart to those of other historical figures such as Mill and Kant.

Aristotle's ethics has as its basic foundation an appeal to the telos or end:
1. this explains how things in nature tend to behave.
2. this provides a standard for evaluating these things.

As, for Aristotle, everything has a telos, the world is naturally infused with normativity. There is no strict division between 'is' and 'ought' such as for Kant.
This contrasts to a more modern view in which nature is in fact bereft of normativity.

There are three options:
i) Divine Command: supernatural being imposes laws.
ii) Kant: as practically rational agents, we impose reasons for action upon ourselves.
iii) Intuitionists: Intrinsically normative, non-natural properties (Ross, Moore, Prichard).

Nature is full of inbuilt purposes which provide guidance on how to act and which (can) set standards for how beings should act.
Does this then mean that Aristotle's normativity of ethics provides (good) reason to be moral?

All objectivity, normativity and content of ethics for Aristotle appeal to the human telos and function.

Content
Function is our (humans) characteristic activity.
A being's function and it's Telos are ultimately related (the notion of function is implicit in the notion of telos).
The good or doing well resides in the function.

e.g. a knife
A knife's telos would be that it is a 'good knife', to be easily manipulable, to be sharp and various other knife-like features.
By appeal to the telos, we can evaluate whether a knife is good or bad.
The same could be done for an acorn or any other such thing.

Doing well as a human (attaining your own goal) will involve the excellent performance of the human function.
For Aristotle, excellence meant virtue.

Function Argument
P1. Characteristic function of humans is the rational activity of the soul.
P2. Being a good specimen of humanity will involve the excellent perfomance of the function - rational activity in accordance with virtue.

Problem 1
P1 is false.
If function requires distinctiveness, then rational activity is not the human function as this is not our distinctive function.
What of non-human rational beings, or non-rational humans? These are valid counterexamples thus, this cannot be our distinctive function.

Problem 2
P1 is false as it is not just that rational activity is not our distinctive function but that there are other things besides rational activity that are distinctive of human beings.
Thus if we do not have one/a distinct function, then the argument fails.

Problem 3
P3 is false; even if we assume Aristotle's Teleological view of the world, we might wonder whether being a good specimen of X necessarily leads to it attaining its good...

Response 3
We would have to either claim that this really is good for the horse or claim that the function of the horse is not to engage in human military adventures.

General Problem
It may seem that a general problem is that the whole argument presupposes a teleological view of the world that we no longer share; we do not still think that humans have a telos/purpose.
Is it thus possible to develop a non-teleological view of the function argument?

Upon this, to say that X has a function is just to say it has a way of doing what it does; it has a (particular) way of functioning.
Our way of functioning is through engaging in rational activity, such as deliberation, considering reasons for belief/action.

Aside from these problems, we need to consider what the human virtues are in order to get a full account of our ultimate goal.
Aristotle does not, remember, provide a list of principles. He does this for two reasons...

Virtue, for example, is something that is acquired by habituation. It is done through the mimicking of the virtuous until one gains the relevant dispositions; we learn virtuous behaviour. (observation and experience).
Virtue/Practical Wisdom is seen as a sort of perceptual capacity/ability. It is being able to see what is appropriate in a given situation.

Virtues are the things which equip humans to flourish: acting in accordance with the virtues is thus (a) flourishing.
Virtue is a disposition to act or feel in a certain sort of way which involves choice. As it involves choice, it involves acting for a reason...

Virtue lies in a mean (relative to us). It is a disposition which aims at a sort of 'intermediate' which lies between two vices.
This leads us to one of Aristotle's main doctrines upon Ethics...

Take the example of courage:
Virtue: courage
Sphere of action/feeling: feeling fear/confidence in response to danger.
Vices: feeling too much fear, lacking in confidence (cowardice); feeling too little fear and having too much confidence (rashness)
Feeling the appropriate fear or the appropriate confidence would be courage. To feel this would be hitting the mean.

What is the Doctrine of the Mean supposed to be; is it an action guiding principle?
If it supposed to be, then its content is very thin and is almost platitudinous (trite); avoids too much and too little

Is it however a simple metaethical (nature of ethics) thesis about what virtue is?
Virtue involves some sort of balance (mean) and vice involves a deviation. Virtues and vices tend to come in triads.

Do we really think that it is a vice if someone does not enjoy bodily pleasures enough? Although such people are few and far between, there seems that there would be something deficient in them.
As embodied beings who can experience pleasure and pains, we are not flourishing unless we experience these to an appropriate degree (presumably this would be more than nothing at all).

It is hard to see how exactly this would be a vice. Possibly injustice however this seems an uncomfortable fit.
Justice does not seem to fit properly at all and thus we could take it to be a counterexample.

Why does Aristotle believe his virtues are virtues?
Their rational action in accordance with these is constitutive of attaining the human goal.
Yet does he still just assume what would be a virtue upon this?

Note:
to fail, to be concerned with what you get, is a failing on the part of the individual given our telos.
However this will not impress us if we have rejected the appeal to telos.

Practical Wisdom
This is an intellectual virtue which is supposed to underwrite our capacity to choose what character virtue requires in each scenario. To see what is noble, Aristotle does not think that flourishing/virtue is determined by what the Practically Wise do and feel; they are just able to see what it dictates.

But in any case, we are just subject to these evaluative standards by dint of being a human; it is in virtue of our telos.
However, if you have been brought up badly, then there is not much to be said. You are a bad human worthy of contempt; those who are viscious are simply bad and nothing can be done.
But maybe 'should' and 'ought' are out of place in this context; they may have just missed hitting the mean.

Response
This is uncharitable to Aristotle; after all we are supposed to be attracted to flourishing by dint of being human; it seems then that this is our ideal.
We could think of the Nicomachean Ethics as a way of painting the ideal to those who might ask:
I have been brought up such that I am attracted to virtue and I value certain sorts of actions, but should I be glad that I have been?
Aristotle is attempting to answer this by displaying how wonderful the Ideal is; a sort of reflective endorsement of noble life.