Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from reading Hursthouse the an unclearity remains about the following piece:
Please correct me if you think I’m wrong or add if you think something is missing.
For virtue is said to involve knowledge,
and part of this knowledge consists in having the right attitude to things.
“Right” here does not just mean “morally right” or “proper” or “nice” in
the modern sense; it means “accurate, true.”
Second half page 235, Virtue Theory and Abortion, Hursthouse
What she means here is having actual accurate/correct factual knowledge to base you attitude on right?
This only comes in when applying her virtue theory on the case of abortion, it hasn’t been mentioned in the general outlay of her theory and I am wondering what part it plays in her virtue theory?
If I haven’t been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.
Did Hursthouse have her own version of virtue ethics theory? It seems to me that she was merely saying that one must have accurate knowledge when applying virtuous behavior. It doesn’t do much good to be virtuous if one is ignorant of the situation. In that one piece, she is discussing what she believes to be the accurate information concerning abortion and how a virtuous person would handle it.
I’m not sure what an accurate attitude would entail. I don’t think it’s “accurate” to have a negative attitude to theft or true to condemn murder. Accurate and true refer to how statements relate to the world, not how we relate to situations.
Any willed action requires one to be aware of the actual facts of the case in order to judge the virtue/morality/goodness of the choice. However, virtue ethics requires one to act from desire, not rational calculation - you should be honest because honesty is a virtue, because you want to flourish in an honest society, and not because you calculate that the negative repercussions outweigh the benefits of dishonesty. However, I think that “right” in “having the right attitude” is an ethical right, and not a correct/accurate right.
Where it is accurate and true that hurt and damage has occurred, that’s not a relative position. The questions concerning how we deal with that, however are relative.
Facts:
As the e.g. A murderer is not responsible for their creation, for environments and instinctive responses. There is no guilt, just an issue that could have been changed by altering the environment and situational conditions, by addressing the facts.
Funny, i was just watching ice road truckers, and a guy was getting reprimanded by his employer because the repair bill was too high. Facts; the driver could have been replaced with another driver, and the same injury/breakages occurred, therefore the employer has no basis in fact to reprimand the driver.
ergo, the first thing to do to ascertain the facts is to take the individual out of the equation.