Rosalind Hursthouse; IV*—A False Doctrine of the Mean, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 57–72, https://doi.org/10.

In On Virtue Ethics I offered a criterion for a character trait's being a virtue according to which a virtuous character trait must conduce to, or at least not be inimical to, four ends, one of which is the continuance of the human species. I argue here that this does not commit me to homosexuality's being a vice, since homosexuality is not a character trait and hence not up for assessment as a virtue or a vice. Vegetarianism is not up (...) for such assessment either, for the same reason, but, as a practice, may well be required by the virtue of compassion, and sacrificing one's life for an animal or alien may be required by courage. The clause about the continuance of the human species in my criterion does not specify a foundational value, because, following McDowell, I reject foundationalism. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, here presents a full exposition and defense of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions.

Rosalind Hursthouse took her undergraduate degree in New Zealand and her B. Phil. and D. Phil. at Oxford. She taught in Oxford for six years before joining the Open University in 1975. As part of her work for the O.U. she has published Beginning Lives (Blackwell, 1987) on the morality of abortion; this generated Virtue theory and abortion, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1991) which has already been reprinted five times. She has published numerous other articles on virtue ethics, the (...) most recent of which is virtue ethics and the emotions, in: Virtue Ethics, A Critical Reader, Daniel Statman (ed.) Edinburgh University Press, 1997. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

The doctrine of proportionality has received sustained attention from comparative constitutional scholars. Yet it is an area where courts, and scholars, have made limited use of empirical or inter-disciplinary approaches to constitutional comparison. The article calls for a change in this practice as part of a broader call for greater dialogue between scholars and practitioners of conceptual and more empirical forms of constitutional comparison.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 281-282 [Access article in PDF] Matthew B. Ostrow. Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 175. Paper, $20.00. This contribution to the new readings of the early Wittgenstein presents in detail how one might read the Tractatus as a sustained attack on Frege's and Russell's philosophical and logical conceptions while at the same time (...) presuming Wittgenstein to have always been in some sense a "late Wittgensteinian," that is, already embarked on the therapeutic task of setting down "the way of release" from philosophical confusion and "ensnarement of thought" (1). Taking seriously the passage in the Tractatus (6.54) in which Wittgenstein assesses his "elucidations" as "nonsensical," Ostrow places himself among those readers who infer that straightforward theory-making was not Wittgenstein's aim, but differs from them in his original and challenging account of how the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense.Wittgenstein, Ostrow contends, employed such (apparent) doctrines as the picture theory, the showing doctrine, the notion of tautology, and so forth dialectically, that is, as self-detonating attempts to expose philosophical nonsense in situ which were not themselves intended to be argued pro or con as philosophical assertions or theories. Wittgenstein's purpose in speaking in the Tractatus in avowedly though not patently nonsensical ways is, the author argues, to encourage us instead to see philosophical nonsensicality as "given in and through" the process of making such philosophical assertions, and in seeing how they "change their character, how they undermine their initial presentation as straightforward truth claims" (12). Thus the "central notions" and propositions in the Tractatus, according to Ostrow, "only have their life in relation to the philosophical temptations that the book aims to eradicate" (43).Such a reading involves the author (and his readers) in a task that is both detailed and delicate. Ostrow's work is detailed because he reads Wittgenstein as engaged in a systematic attempt to expose philosophical theories as nonsense case-by-particular-case, that is, by "working through philosophy from the inside, without making appeal to any kind of fixed criteria of sense and nonsense" (99). It is for this reason that Wittgenstein's articulation of the many structures in the Tractatus is necessary, and Ostrow's work, which he views as largely descriptive, must trace the same path.Ostrow's task is a delicate one because he must explore the themes in Wittgenstein's Tractatus (pictures, significant propositions, logical propositions, etc.) without appearing to contradict his position that the Tractatus offers no general doctrines meant to be taken as they stand. Thus, for instance, when Ostrow argues that for Wittgenstein pictorial form is constituted by a picture's application to reality and not an independent entity, he must remind the reader that he is not attributing to Wittgenstein a doctrine of "constitution of form" offered up as a philosophical alternative. Just as we are not to make pictorial form and its emergence in the Tractatus into a substantive theory in its own right but rather see it as having a role only in Wittgenstein's battle to expose such shibboleths (44), so too for all other parts of the Tractarian structure. Thus Wittgenstein's apparent explanation of the [End Page 281] possibility of depiction in terms of isomorphism is said to aim at showing that as an explanation, "talk of an isomorphism is empty" (39); Wittgenstein's show/say distinction is taken as a foil used to expose the logician's desire to get at essence (42), and so forth. Even the notion of tautology is, according to Ostrow, "as dialectical a move as any other," not one "put forth as a self-standing claim, an attempt to offer an overarching characterization of truth" (105).This book engages in its daunting task very ably and in fluid, confident prose. The author is clearly aware of the various challenges he is likely to meet and suggests ways of doing battle with them. To cite one case, Ostrow examines Wittgenstein's later comments on his... (shrink)

This paper uses the debate about whether capital punishment deters homicide as a case study for examining the claim, made by many feminists and others, that the traditional ideal of objectivity in seeking knowledge is misguided. According to this ideal, knowledge seekers should strive to gather and assess evidence independently of any influences exerted by either their individual and societal circumstances or their moral values. This paper argues that, although the traditional ideal rests on some valid precepts, it is neverthelesss (...) untenable. the author goes on to propose an alternative epistemological ideal – one that retains these valid precepts but also recognizes an important and legitimate role for people's circumstances and moral values in their efforts to find knowledge. (shrink)

"Evidentialism" is the view that a person's epistemic justification for a doxastic attitude is determined entirely by his or her evidence for the content of that attitude. This paper has two goals. The first is to argue that values and circumstances properly influence epistemic justification, and that evidentialism is therefore untenable, even as an epistemic ideal. The second is to outline a nonevidentialist theory of epistemic justification that avoids the common objection that nonevidentialist theories fail to preserve important distinctions between (...) epistemic justification, on the one hand, and moral and prudential justification, on the other hand. (shrink)

This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of (...) young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)

The sort of ethical theory derived from Aristotle, variously described as virtue ethics, virtue-based ethics, or neo-Aristotelianism, is becoming better known, and is now quite widely recognized as at least a possible rival to deontological and utilitarian theories. With recognition has come criticism, of varying quality. In this article I shall discuss nine separate criticisms that I have frequently encountered, most of which seem to me to betray an inadequate grasp either of the structure of virtue theory or of what (...) would be involved in thinking about a real moral issue in its terms. In the first half I aim particularly to secure an understanding that will reveal that many of these criticisms are simply misplaced, and to articulate what I take to be the major criticism of virtue theory. I reject this criticism, but do not claim that it is necessarily misplaced. In the second half I aim to deepen that understanding and highlight the issues raised by the criticisms by illustrating what the theory looks like when it is applied to a particular issue, in this case, abortion. (shrink)

According to the standard account of actions and their explanations, intentional actions are actions done because the agent has a certain desire/belief pair that explains the action by rationalizing it. Any explanation of intentional action in terms of an appetite or occurrent emotion is hence assumed to be elliptical, implicitly appealing to some appropriate belief. In this paper, I challenge this assumption with respect to the " arational " actions of my title---a significant subset of the set of intentional actions (...) explained by occurrent emotion. These actions threaten the standard account, not only by forming a recalcitrant set of counterexamples to it, but also, as we shall see, by undercutting the false semantic theory that holds that account in place. (shrink)

This introductory textbook is ideally suited to newcomers to philosophy and ethical problems. Rosalind Hursthouse carefully introduces the three standard approaches in current ethical theory: utilitarianism, rights, and virtue ethics. She links each chapter to readings from key exponents such as Peter Singer and Mary Midgley and asks students to think critically about these readings for themselves. Key features include clear activities and activities, chapter summaries and guides to further reading.

In this paper, I begin by outlining some basic features of the version of virtue ethics I espouse, and then turn to exploring what light may be shed on our understanding and interpretation of Hume when he is viewed from that perspective.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being developed for use in medicine, including for diagnosis and in treatment decision making. The use of AI in medical treatment raises many ethical issues that are yet to be explored in depth by bioethicists. In this paper, I focus specifically on the relationship between the ethical ideal of shared decision making and AI systems that generate treatment recommendations, using the example of IBM’s Watson for Oncology. I argue that use of this type of system (...) creates both important risks and significant opportunities for promoting shared decision making. If value judgements are fixed and covert in AI systems, then we risk a shift back to more paternalistic medical care. However, if designed and used in an ethically informed way, AI could offer a potentially powerful way of supporting shared decision making. It could be used to incorporate explicit value reflection, promoting patient autonomy. In the context of medical treatment, we need value-flexible AI that can both respond to the values and treatment goals of individual patients and support clinicians to engage in shared decision making. (shrink)

This paper provides advice for the supervision of PhD students during the research ethics approval process written from the perspective of a PhD student. This advice is for supervisors – to be aware of the level of experience their student has regarding applying for ethical approval and conducting research with human participants; to ensure clarity as to whether the student or the supervisor has responsibility for the ethical storage of research materials after the end of the PhD; and finally, and (...) most important, to advise the student on the issues to cover in their ethics approval form, go through their completed form thoroughly, and meet them to discuss feedback. (shrink)

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way ‘conversation’ in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each (...) one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. (shrink)

From accounts of migration and stories of personal alienation, through the fragmented memories of former incarnations, to fable-like tales of half-breeds and species metamorphosis, Ying Chen's fiction evolves as it revolves around questions of difference, otherness and identity, which is never fixed or singular. While presenting the narrators' inner preoccupations and, in some cases, unreliable nature, the increasingly complex texts of this francophone-Chinese writer (1961-) also reveal larger concerns about dominant discourses, the limitations of social realities, survival, and the relationship (...) between beings, all framed within an aesthetics of non-belonging. Intriguingly, the author achieves this by consciously distancing her works, from 1998 onwards, from any categorisation by ethnicity. This engaging study considers Chen's writing from the contemporary perspective of the breakdown of traditional spatiotemporal experiences, the homogenization of places, the erasure of cultural differences, and the resulting tendency towards universalism. Rosalind Silvester is Senior Lecturer in French Studies and Director of Education in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast. (shrink)

Using “big data” from sensors worn continuously outside the lab, researchers have observed patterns of objective physiology that challenge some of the long-standing theoretical concepts of emotion and its measurement. One challenge is that emotional arousal, when measured as sympathetic nervous system activation through electrodermal activity, can sometimes differ significantly across the two halves of the upper body. We show that traditional measures on only one side may lead to misjudgment of arousal. This article presents daily life and controlled study (...) data, as well as existing evidence from neuroscience, supporting the influence of multiple emotional substrates in the brain causing innervation on different sides of the body. We describe how a theory of multiple arousals explains the asymmetric EDA findings. (shrink)

The prevailing accounts of Aristotle's view of practical wisdom pay little attention to all the intellectual capacities discussed in Nicomachean Ethics Book 6. They also contrast the phronimos with the wicked, the continent or the incontinent, rather than with those who have 'natural virtue' (innate or habituated), and thereby they neglect the importance of experience, through which those capacities are acquired. When we consider them, we can see what sort of experience is needed and hence what sort aspirants to full (...) virtue should be trying to acquire. It turns out that much of the knowledge such experience yields is just plain worldly knowledge. But it is not to be despised on that account. The phronimos must meet a threshold of knowledge that he will, indeed, share with some of the wicked, but will have a superior version that goes beyond theirs. (shrink)

This paper argues for a new understanding of Strawson’s distinction between personal, impersonal, and self-reactive attitudes. Many Strawsonians take these basic reactive attitude types to be distinguished by two factors. Is it the self or another who is treated with good- or ill-will? And is it the self or another who displays good- or ill-will? On this picture, when someone else wrongs me, my reactive attitude is personal; when someone else wrongs someone else, my reactive attitude is impersonal; and when (...) I wrong someone else, my attitude is self-reactive. Against this account, I argue that the basic reactive attitude types are better distinguished according to whether they express partial or impartial concern. This fits Strawson’s discussion in “Freedom and Resentment”, and it allows us to see an important point that the alternative approach obscures. Namely, while attitudes like resentment, gratitude, shame, and pride can arise as responses to our own treatment and behavior, they can also arise as third-party responses to the treatment and behavior of our family members, romantic partners, and close friends. Similarly, attitudes like moral indignation and disapprobation also have a wider scope than is often acknowledged; they can arise as responses to others’ treatment, but they can also arise as responses to our own treatment when we react impartially to circumstances involving ourselves. (shrink)

This paper reviews the ethical literature on conflicts between health professionals and parents about medical decision-making for children. We present the results of a systematic review which addressed the question ‘when health professionals and parents disagree about the appropriate course of medical treatment for a child, under what circumstances is the health professional ethically justified in overriding the parents’ wishes?’ We identified nine different ethical frameworks that were put forward by their authors as applicable across various ages and clinical scenarios. (...) Each of these frameworks centred on a different key moral concept including harm, constrained parental autonomy, best interests, medically reasonable alternatives, responsible thinking and rationality. (shrink)

Philippa Foot is one of the most original and widely respected philosophers of our time; her work has exerted a lasting influence on the development of moral philosophy. In tribute to her, twelve leading philosophers from both sides of the Atlantic have contributed essays exploring the various topics in moral philosophy to which she has made a distinctive contribution--virtue ethics, naturalism, non-cognitivism, relativism, categorical requirements, and the role of rationality in morality.