Virtue Ethics Approach Research Articles

The virtuous epidemiologist.

This article addresses the scholarly gap in the ethics of epidemiology by exploring what virtue ethics, one of the oldest ethical traditions in moral philosophy, has to say about 'the virtuous epidemiologist'. It expounds comparatively the content and merits of a virtue ethics approach against more popular contemporary schools of thought such as consequentialism and deontology. Without necessarily dismissing the value of principles and standards, it presents a vision that a virtuous epidemiologist should cultivate wisdom in making prudential judgments in conditions of uncertainty; fortitude in dealing with powerful politicians and administrators which does not sacrifice truth; temperance and self-restraint in keeping one's ideological views from compromising one's scientific credibility; and justice in giving due weight to individual rights and the public interest when doing research and giving advice on public health interventions.

Medical crowdfunding and the virtuous donor

Patients and families are increasingly turning to crowdfunding to help them cover the cost of medical care. The ethics of crowdfunding has garnered some attention in the bioethical literature. In this paper I examine an ethical aspect of medical crowdfunding (MCF) that has received limited attention: the role of donors. I defend a virtue ethical approach to analyzing the role of donors in MCF. Vicious donation, where donors do not exercise the relevant virtues, can compound some of the ethical risks associated with MCF, as seen in the several recent, high-profile cases. My primary contention in this paper is that encouraging donors to think about how donating to a particular campaign would measure against the virtues I outline could help to discourage acts of ethically problematic donation to MCF campaigns.

Mind the Gap: Virtue Ethics and the Financial Crisis

The financial crisis has led to calls for increased regulation of the financial sector. In many respects this is uncontroversial because increased regulation should promote the behaviours we want to see, while limiting the behaviours we do not. This article takes issue with the idea that regulation, and guidelines, promote ethical behaviour in the way that we want them to. Firstly, judgement is often required to implement guidelines and regulations, which allows room for unethical behaviour. Secondly, we want financial professionals to behave ethically even when there are significant incentives not to; so, verifying compliance with regulations and guidelines when such incentives are absent isn’t a good gauge of the ethical status of financial professionals. The example of the valuation of the assets (Net Asset Value) of hedge funds illustrates these issues well. There are many rules governing how NAVs should be calculated, and while we can verify that a fund is abiding by the rules, the ability to manipulate the NAV remains. Furthermore, the incentive to do so is often only present during a crisis (usually to understate losses). Therefore, verifying compliance during ‘normal’ times is of little help in judging whether a manager will behave ethically when we most need him to. I first argue that the gap between compliance with regulations and ethical behaviour is best filled by the adoption of a virtue ethics approach, as discussed by Spalding & Oddo (2011), and Graafland & van de Ven (2011). I then discuss the implications of adopting such an approach for the financial industry’s codes of conduct, such as the CFA Institute’s ‘Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct’ (www.cfainstitute.org). Adopting a virtue ethics perspective would require a significant change in the emphasis of such codes.

On Smith's Rejection of Laissez Faire ''And the Magical Working of Markets Guided by the Invisible Hand ': The 'Malign' Impact of Projectors, Prodigals and Imprudent Risk Takers on the Sober People in the Macro Economy

Adam Smith introduced the dangers of the projectors initially on pages 114-115 of the Wealth of Nations. Smith then offered a detailed analysis on pp. 279-341 of the dangers created by prodigals and imprudent risk takers, as well as projectors. The financial capabilities and influence of these categories of upper income class citizens, especially if they are bankers or financiers themselves, completely vitiates the claims made about Adam Smith believing in an Invisible Hand, Laissez Faire, or the magical workings of markets. With the single exception of G. Kennedy (2008), I can find little or no discussion among economists who write on Adam Smith about what can transpire if such individuals get access to bank credit of if the bankers themselves are Projectors, Prodigals and Imprudent Risk Takers. The apparent reason for this omission, except for Kennedy, appears to be an overwhelming acceptance by economists of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian critique of Smith’s criticism of the prodigals, projectors, and imprudent risk takers. Supposedly, Smith was incorrect and misguided in his singling out of these categories of individuals, who Bentham claimed were just inventors and business innovators bringing new products into existence. Economists writing on Smith have also universally (except G. Kennedy) mixed up Bentham with Smith on the issue of ethics. Virtue ethics and utilitarian ethics are completely, opposite systems of ethics and moral philosophy. Not only do they not mix, but they are in direct conflict with each other. It is impossible for a proponent of Virtue ethics to accept utilitarianism. Similarly, economists writing on Smith have mixed up Bentham and Smith on the issue of the application of the calculus of probability to conduct. Bentham believed in the application of the mathematical laws of the probability calculus to ethics and economics. Smith’s view was generally that it was not possible to apply the mathematical laws of the probability calculus to ethics and economics. Smith viewed the virtues as being absolute. Either you were honest, which is a combination of the major virtues of courage and justice ,or you were not honest. Period. There was no such thing for Smith as being 75 % honest and 25 % dishonest. You are a man or woman of your word or you are not a man or woman of your word. Trust is analyzed exactly in the same manner by Smith. People who are prudent and honest can be trusted. There are no such probabilities as being 87% trustworthy and 13 % untrustworthy. Bentham’s utilitarian ethics approach is completely different from Smith’s virtue ethics approach. Bentham’s approach would involve carefully calculating what one thinks the probabilities(odds) of success or failure for one’s self are of being honest or forthright in an particular case or not. For Bentham, being honest is not an absolute. It is strictly relative to whether or not the telling of the truth in a particular instance is beneficial (detrimental) or not. Similarly, lying can be beneficial (detrimental) or not, in terms of the future financial success that could be gained (lost) for each individual faced with a choice of lying or telling the truth. Evensky, Hanley, Paganelli, and Fleischacker want to believe that there is a role for the Invisible hand of the Market to play in the WN (1776) and TTMS (1759). Kennedy has shown that there can be no such role at all. The existence of projectors, prodigals or imprudent risk takers, who can create international financial crises, such as they created in 1772-1773 that resulted in a four year depression in Scotland, directly contradicts the belief that there is an invisible hand that transforms the malign, micro behavior of the projectors, prodigals or imprudent risk takers into benign social benefits for all.

Moral Imaginative Resistance to Heaven: Why the Problem of Evil is so Intractable

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. However, like some of the imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world.

On the Relevance of the Concept of Intrinsic Evil: Francisco Suárez and Contemporary Catholic Virtue Ethics Approaches

The article explores the relevancy of the concept of intrinsic evil/intrinsically evil acts in contemporary Catholic theological ethics as a particular way of giving an account of (moral) evil. The argument proceeds in two steps. In the first step the author turns to Francisco Suárez as one of the first theologians who tried to deal with the concept of intrinsic evil in an extensive and systematic way. The point of this historical exploration is to determine the meanings of this concept as it started to appear more frequently in the ethical discourse. In the next step the author presents two contemporary positions within Catholic theological ethics, those of Joseph Selling and Dana Dillon. Although both authors are proponents of virtue ethics, they disagree fundamentally on the role of the concept of intrinsic evil within this approach. While Joseph Selling argues in favour of eliminating this concept from theological ethics, Dana Dillon posits that theological ethics cannot function without it. In the rest of the article, the author explores this disagreement through various ways in which the concept can be used, while taking into account the aforementioned meanings of the concept. In the end, the author sides with Joseph Selling, since the concept of intrinsic evil does not seem to be able to fulfil the role it was assigned within Catholic theological ethics.

Childhood \u2018Innocence\u2019 is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child\u2013Adult Sex

Malón (Arch Sexual Behav 44(4):1071–1083, 2015) concluded that the usual arguments against sexual relationships between adults and prepubertal children are inadequate to rule out the moral permissibility of such behaviour in all circumstances. Malón (Sex Cult 21(1):247–269, 2017) applied virtue ethics in an attempt to remedy the postulated deficiency. The present paper challenges the virtue ethics approach taken in the second of Malón’s articles by: (1) contesting the view that sex is an exceptional aspect of morality, to which a virtue approach needs to be applied; (2) contesting the view that virtue ethics succeed, where other arguments fail, against the moral admissibility of child–adult sexual relations; (3) proposing that such relations can be seen as virtuous in the context of an alternative view of what constitutes virtue.

Towards a virtue ethical approach to relationships and sex education

The influential liberal philosophical approach to sex education fails to appreciate the moral complexities of young people’s sexuality and relationships. The resultant pedagogies are limited to the morality of tolerance and acquisition of legal sexual consent, unaware that these very notions are supervened on by much wider and more complex interrelated moral principles. A virtue ethical approach to sex education troubles the liberal boundary between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ sexual values and makes ethical sex and relationships its primary goal. Grounding sex education in this way justifies a pedagogical approach that centres moral reasoning and the development of practical wisdom concerning intimate and emotional sexual and romantic-relational matters. Virtue ethical pedagogical strategies utilizing narrative vignettes represent one innovative alternative to the dominant liberal approach to sex education.

Adam Smith's Prudence (Self Interest-Self Love) Was the Bedrock Foundation and Necessary Condition for the Attainment of All Other Virtues in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations

There can’t be too much self-interest or self love, Prudence, for Adam Smith (or Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Buddha, etc.). Without prudent conduct and behavior at the individual level, nothing else is possible. Prudence is the bedrock foundation upon which all other virtues are build. There can be no successful display of courage, temperance, self command, justice, beneficence, benevolence, charity, concern for others or the interests of others, without prudence having been practiced successfully first. Economists, especially, have very great difficulty with Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations because economists have been raised and trained as Benthamite Utilitarians in their earlier years as undergraduate and graduate students. They thus end up reading Smith only after they have already been exposed to and digested Bentham’s contrary view of self interest, which directly conflicts with Smith’s Virtue ethics approach. Bentham was an acknowledged practitioner and enthusiastic advocate of egoist behavior. There are no other interests except self(ish) interests for the egoist. Bentham sought to destroy Virtue ethics. Utilitarianism as a school of ethics is in direct conflict with Virtue ethics because it claims that only the future monetary consequences of actions matter. Understanding Adam Smith requires rejecting Utilitarianism completely. Maximizing one’s Utility, where money is used as a proxy by Bentham for one’s utility, means exactly what it states-accumulating the most amount of money for oneself and no one else. Smith never incorporated any form of utilitarianism into his ethical approach. Economists generally fail to grasp that, while only consequences matter for utilitarians, Virtue ethicists include consequences as one aspect of many that must be analyzed and considered.

Adam Smithhs Approach to Virtue Ethics Had Nothing Whatsoever to Do With the Invisible Hand of the Market

Adam Smith’s version of Virtue Ethics can be traced directly back to Plato (Socrates) and Aristotle. Smith basically skipped Aquinas and Augustine because they were also Catholic theologians, as well as philosophers. Referencing them would not have been looked upon kindly by the Scottish Presbyterian Church, of which Smith was a nominal member. Virtue Ethics, as a system of ethics, is completely independent of the issue of whether or not there is a personal God or of any religion. However, Virtue ethics is a system of ethics which is completely consistent and compatible with the writings of the ancient Israelite leaders, like David and Solomon, and Confucius, Buddha, Plato (Socrates), Jesus, Mohammed, Ramakrishna, and Gandhi, among others, who had applied some type of Virtue ethics approach. For Smith, the cement or glue that held any and all societies together was a commitment to implementing the virtue of Justice. At the personal level, the most important virtue for any individual was prudence. However, the virtue of prudence has absolutely nothing to do with self(ish) interest as exemplified in terms like “Laissez Faire”, “Invisible Hand”, or “Maximizing your Utility”. These terms are consistent with a form of ethics called utilitarianism, which Bentham and others put forth as a rival of, and replacement for, virtue ethics. There is no, and there can never be, any overlap between the two different systems.

Risk-Aversion or Ethical Responsibility?

Ethics seems to be of increasing concern for researchers in Higher Education Institutes and funding bodies demand ever more transparent and robust ethics procedures. While we agree that an ethical approach to fieldwork in religion is critical, we take issue with the approach that ethics committees and reviews adopt in assessing the ethicality of proposed research projects. We identify that the approach to research ethics is informed by consequentialism – the consequences of actions, and Kantianism – the idea of duty. These two ethical paradigms are amenable to the prevailing audit culture of HE. We argue that these ethical paradigms, while might be apposite for bio-medical research, are not appropriate for fieldwork in religion. However, because ethics should be a crucial consideration for all research, it is necessary to identify a different approach to ethical issues arising in ethnographic research. We suggest that a virtue ethics approach – concerned with character – is much more consistent with the situated, relational and ongoing nature of ethnographic research.

A Virtue Ethics Approach to Practicality of Christian Worldview

A Virtue Ethics Approach to Practicality of Christian Worldview

Keynes's Application of Virtue Ethics in the General Theory in Chapter 9

Keynes carefully and methodically devoted chapter nine of the General Theory to a detailed discussion of Virtue Ethics which is related to Adam Smith’s discussion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Both Virtues and Vices were considered by Keynes. The four main virtues in the Greek version of virtue ethics, as enunciated by Plato(Socrates) and Aristotle, were Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Courage or Fortitude. Temperance and Courage can be combined, as done by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments into the virtue of self command. Adam Smith’s and Keynes’s explicit use of an Aristotelian, Virtue ethics approach contrasts with the economic profession’s explicit reliance on utilitarian ethics only. It is not possible to create a synthesis between the two different approaches to ethics. Keynes and Smith agree with Aristotle that the primary, major problem at the macro level for an economy is the existence of a major sub group of upper income class individuals that Smith appropriately identified as projectors, imprudent risk takers and prodigals. These individuals violate the primary virtue of prudence by activities that can cause negative effects that impact the entire society. Smith proposes that this behavior be neutralized or mitigated by imposing restrictions on their ability to obtain bank credit and loans. Smith also believed that at the macro level the number of sober people (frugal, parsimonious, circumspect, careful) will significantly outnumber the projectors, imprudent risk takers and prodigals, so that their impact on the macro economy would be limited. This, of course, is similar to Keynes’s point that “Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise.” However, this all changes if enterprise and speculation switch places, so that “…the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” This is precisely the problem that has arisen in the American and world economies since the late 1970’s. Thus, speculation can be regarded as a vice and enterprise can be regarded as virtue. The point can be made even more directly. A world dominated by George Romney type investors leads to growth and prosperity, while a world dominated by Mitt Romney types, Bain Capital private equity firms, hedge funds, financial speculators and stock market manipulators leads to economic downturn and stagnation.

Virtue, Vice, and "Voracious" Science: How should we approach the ethics of primate research?.

Philosophical approaches to animal research have typically asked whether nonhuman animals have rights that would prohibit such research or whether the benefit of such research on the whole balances out the harms to animals. The professional ethics approach instead promotes compliance with regulatory norms that aim to support science progress. In Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey (2016), John Gluck struggles with issues that relate to each of these ethical frameworks, but the notion of an ethical "journey" also raises questions of character that are underdeveloped in animal research ethics. This essay considers how virtue ethics may allow us to revisit the ethical significance of the research of one of Gluck's mentors, Harry F. Harlow. Harlow's torturous, but highly influential, experiments with infant macaques made him one of the most controversial figures in animal research in the second half of the 20th century. A virtue ethical approach to his case poses a unique set of questions, including: Was Harlow compassionate or cruel? Why are human-animal bonds important in ethical primate research? And what is a good life for a research monkey?

The Good Samaritan: A Superb Smithian Economist, But a Poor Benthamite Utilitarian Economist

Economists for over two and one half centuries have completely and totally confused and mixed up the Virtue ethics approach of Adam Smith with the Utilitarian ethics approach of Jeremy Bentham. The major snafu concerns the directly conflicting definitions of self interest of Smith and Bentham. Smith’s definition of self interest is very simple and straight forward in both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Self interest is prudent behavior. Prudent behavior is the First Virtue in the four Virtues discussed by Aristotle (Prudence,Temperance,Courage,Justice). T. Aquinas added Faith, Hope, and Charity (Benevolence). Prudence is conduct that is circumspect, involves hard work, and requires dedication, motivation, frugality, parsimony, carefulness, caution, and discipline. The goal of the prudent individual is, in order to make their small business a success over time so as to care for themselves, their families and relatives, financial success. Of course, Prudence is the necessary condition that must be satisfied first before any of the other virtues can be attempted, practiced, or implemented. Maximizing the profits from their small business operations represents prudent behavior because they can satisfy the basic needs of their families, relatives, as well as for themselves. Self interest for Bentham has nothing to do with the virtue of prudence. Self interest is behavior that creates or leads to the amassing of wealth only for the sake of accumulating wealth. This is why Bentham stated that money was a good proxy to stand in for utility in his rule to Maximize Utility. Thus, Maximize Utility means to accumulate wealth.

Ethics and Virtues for United Nations Peacekeeping Missions

United Nations peacekeeping missions bring to light a host of issues that conventional armed forces struggle with when it comes to ethics in theory and moral practice in military missions. Although ethics for UN peacekeepers calls for an approach to ethics and practice based on the premise of UN conflict neutrality, these practices need to be capable of addressing “new” military missions that challenge the UN’s neutral nature. In this article I illustrate that a virtue ethics approach helps us turn to a practical ethics approach for peacekeeping. This requires a change in theory and practice of communicating ethics to peacekeepers. The article points out references and guidelines for a virtue-focused approach of ethics while focusing on the military profession as practice. To illustrate this argument, the remainder of the paper looks at the example of Austrian peacekeepers. Their unstructured approach of teaching theoretical ethics illustrates one angle in which virtue ethics can enter ethical training and education. The article concludes that bringing in a virtue ethics focus complements traditional and established theoretical inputs and helps peacekeepers, the soldiers’ society at home and in the country of deployment to adjust better to the moral choices and practical ethical dilemmas ahead.

The Pedigree Dog Breeding Debate in Ethics and Practice: Beyond Welfare Arguments

Pedigree dog breeding has been the subject of public debate due to health problems caused by breeding for extreme looks and the narrow genepool of many breeds. Our research aims to provide insights in order to further the animal-ethical, political and society-wide discussion regarding the future of pedigree dog breeding in the Netherlands. Guided by the question ‘How far are we allowed to interfere in the genetic make-up of dogs, through breeding and genetic modification?’, we carried out a multi-method case-driven research, reviewing literature as well as identifying the perceptions of pedigree dog breeding of a variety of parties in the Netherlands. We examined what moral arguments and concepts different stakeholders, including breeders, veterinarians and animal protection societies, put forward when considering this question. While welfare arguments were often used as a final justification, we also frequently encountered arguments beyond welfare in practice, in particular the arguments that certain adaptations were unnatural, that they instrumentalised animals, or that they amounted to playing God. We argue that the way these arguments are employed points to a virtue ethical approach, foregrounding the virtue of temperance, as a balance between extreme positions was sought by our respondents in a variety of ways. Moreover, we argue against a rejection of unnaturalness arguments based on the naturalistic fallacy, as philosophers tend to do. We point out that unnaturalness arguments are related to people’s worldviews, including views on the proper human–animal relationship. We argue that such arguments, which we label ‘life-ethical’, should be the subject of more public discussion and should not be relegated to the private sphere.

患者からみた「よい看護師」 : その探求と意義(第17回日本生命倫理学会年次大会報告)

患者からみた「よい看護師」 : その探求と意義(第17回日本生命倫理学会年次大会報告)

Environmentally Virtuous Agriculture: How and When External Goods and Humility Ethically Constrain (or Favour) Technology Use

This paper concerns virtue-based ethical principles that bear upon agricultural uses of technologies, such as GM crops and CRISPR crops. It does three things. First, it argues for a new type of virtue ethics approach to such cases. Typical virtue ethics principles are vague and unspecific. These are sometimes useful, but we show how to supplement them with more specific virtue ethics principles that are useful to people working in specific applied domains, where morally relevant domain-specific conditions recur. We do this while still fulfilling the need for principles and associated practical reasoning to flexibly respect variation between cases. Second, with our more detailed approach we criticize and improve upon a commonly discussed principle about ecosystemic external goods that are crucial for human flourishing. We show this principle is far more conservative than appreciated, as it would prohibit many technology uses that are uncontroversially acceptable. We then replace this principle with two more specific ones. One identifies specific conditions in which ecosystem considerations are against a technology use, the other identifies favorable conditions. Third, we uncover a humility-based principle that operates within an influential “hubris argument” against uses of several biotechnologies in agriculture. These arguments lack a substantive theory of the nature of humility. We clarify such a theory, and then use it to replace the uncovered humility-based principle with our own more specific one that shifts focus from past moral failings, to current epistemic limits when deciding whether to support new technologies.

The Virtues and Vices of Innovators

Innovation processes are extremely complex and opaque, which makes it tough or even impossible to govern them. Innovators lack control of large parts of these developments and lack of foreknowledge about the possible consequences of emerging technologies. Because of these features some scholars have argued that innovation processes should be structurally reformed and the agent-centered model of responsibility for innovation should be dismissed altogether. In the present article it will be argued that such a structural idea of responsible research and innovation presumes rational agents who can be motivated by reasons. Instead of dismissing the agent-centered approach to responsibility for innovation processes a virtue ethical approach will be developed. Virtues should be considered as the intellectual and moral dispositions presumed for good decision making. It will be shown that creativity and eagerness are creditable character traits that have a distinct positive value for managing the opaqueness of innovation processes. Such traits are mandatory for change and betterment. Furthermore, it will be argued that the notion of responsibility of innovators should not be understood merely as means for constraining them but also as a tool to perpetuate their integrity and happiness. Through discussing the captivating examples of Steve Jobs and the protagonist of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein it will be shown how to apply this virtue ethical framework for innovators in practice.