The Ethics of Character Virtues and Vices

1
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CD5590 LECTURE 5
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic Department of Computer
Science and EngineeringMälardalen
University2004
2
The Ethics of CharacterVirtues and Vices
Moral Reasoning and Gender
Based on Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D. Director, The
Values Institute University of San Diego
3
The Ethics of CharacterVirtues and Vices
4
Introduction

• Concern for character has flourished in the West
  since the time of Plato, whose early dialogues
  explored such virtues as courage and piety.

Plato (by Michaelangelo)
fromhet
5
Two Moral Questions

• The Question of Action
• How ought I to act?
• The Question of Character
• What kind of person ought I to be?
• Our concern here is with the question of character

6
An Analogy from the Criminal Justice System

• As a country, we place our trust for just
  decisions in the legal arena in two places
• Laws, which provide the necessary rules
• People, who (as judge and jury) apply rules
  judiciously
• Similarly, ethics places its trust in
• Theories, which provide rules for conduct
• Virtue, which provides the wisdom necessary for
  applying rules in particular instances

7
Virtue

• Strength of character (habit)
• Involving both feeling, knowing and action
• Seeks the mean between excess and deficiency
  relative to us
• Dynamic balance
• Secure desirable behavior

Aristotle (by Michaelangelo)
8
Virtues and Spheres of Existence (1)
9
Virtues and Spheres of Existence (2)
10
Two Conceptions of Morality

• In a simplified scheme, we can contrast two
  approaches to the morality.
• Restrictive conception
• Child vs. adult
• Comes from outside (usually parents).
• Dont touch that stove burner!
• Rules and habit formation are central.
• Affirmative conception
• Adult vs. adult
• Comes from within (self-directed).
• This is the kind of person I want to be
• Virtue-centered, often modeled on ideals.

11
The Purpose of Morality

• Both of these conceptions of morality are
  appropriate at different times in life.
• Teenage years are the time when people make the
  transition from the adolescent conception of
  morality to the adult conception.

12
Rightly-ordered Desires and the Goals of Moral
Education

• Moral education may initially seek to control
  unruly desires through rules, the formation of
  habits, etc.
• Ultimately, moral education aims at forming and
  cultivating virtuous conduct.

13
Virtue As the Golden Mean

• Strength of character (virtue), Aristotle
  suggests, involves finding the proper balance
  between two extremes.
• Excess having too much of something.
• Deficiency having too little of something.
• Not mediocrity, but harmony and balance.

14
Virtue and Habit

• For Aristotle, virtue is something that is
  practiced and thereby learnedit is habit
  (hexis).
• This has clear implications for moral education,
  for Aristotle obviously thinks that you can teach
  people to be virtuous.

15
Courage

• The strength of character necessary to continue
  in the face of our fears
• Deficiency
• Cowardice, the inability to do what is necessary
  to have those things in life which we need in
  order to flourish
• Too much fear
• Too little confidence
• Excess
• Too little fear
• Too much confidence
• Poor judgment about ends worth achieving

feghet, rädsla
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Nichomachean Ethics, 3.7

• What is terrible is not the same for all men but
  we say there are things terrible even beyond
  human strength. These, then, are terrible to
  every one- at least to every sensible man but
  the terrible things that are not beyond human
  strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so
  too do the things that inspire confidence. Now
  the brave man is as dauntless as man may be.

oförfärad
17
Nichomachean Ethics, 3.7

• Therefore, while he will fear even the things
  that are not beyond human strength, he will face
  them as he ought and as the rule directs, for
  honor's sake for this is the end of virtue. But
  it is possible to fear these more, or less, and
  again to fear things that are not terrible as if
  they were.

18
EN, 2

• Of the faults that are committed one consists in
  fearing what one should not, another in fearing
  as we should not, another in fearing when we
  should not, and so on and so too with respect to
  the things that inspire confidence.

19
EN, 3

• Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in
  fearlessness has no name (we have said previously
  that many states of character have no names), but
  he would be a sort of madman or insensible person
  if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the
  waves, as they say the Celts do not..

20
EN, 3

• while the man who exceeds in confidence about
  what really is terrible is rash. The rash man,
  however, is also thought to be boastful and
  only a pretender to courage.
• At all events, as the brave man is with regard to
  what is terrible, so the rash man wishes to
  appear and so he imitates him in situations
  where he can.

överilad, obetänksam, förhastad , överdådig,
dumdristig
skrytsam
21
EN, 5

• The brave man, on the other hand, has the
  opposite disposition for confidence is the mark
  of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash
  man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with
  the same objects but are differently disposed
  towards them for the first two exceed and fall
  short,

överilad, förhastad
22
EN, 5

• while the third holds the middle, which is the
  right, position and rash men are precipitate,
  and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back
  when they are in them, while brave men are keen
  in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.

överilad, förhastad
23
Hercules (Heracles) A Role Model

• Heracles in Greek mythology, was a hero known for
  his strength and courage
• The son of the god Zeus and a human mother
  Alcmene
• Hera, Zeus jealous wife, was determined to kill
  Hercules, and after Hercules was born, she sent
  two great serpents to kill him. Hercules, while
  he was still a baby, strangled the snakes.

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Hercules (Heracles) A Role Model

• Hercules conquered a tribe that had been
  demanding money from Thebes. As a reward, he was
  given the hand in marriage of the Theben princess
  Megara and they had three children.
• Hera, still filled hatred of Hercules, sent him
  into madness, which made him kill his wife and
  children.

25
Hercules (Heracles) A Role Model

• In horror and remorse at what he did, Hercules
  was about to kill himself. But he was told by the
  oracle at Delphi that he should purge himself by
  becoming the servant of his cousin Eurystheus,
  king of Mycenae.
• Eurystheus, urged by Hera, planned as a
  punishment the 12 impossible tasks, the Labors
  of Hercules.

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Hercules (Heracles) A Role Model

• The first task was to kill the lion of Nemea, a
  lion that could not be hurt by any weapon.
• Hercules knocked out the lion with his club
  first, then he strangled it to death. He wore the
  skin of the lion as a cloak and the head of the
  lion as a helmet, a trophy of his adventure.
• The second task was to kill the Hydra that lived
  in a swamp in Lerna. The Hydra had nine heads.
  One head was immortal and when one of the others
  was chopped off, two grew back in its place. ..

27
Hercules (Heracles) What can we learn?

• The impossible deeds were defined by gods.
• Gods define the rules of the game
• Gods show both virtues and vices. Hera is jealous
  in a typical human way.
• Gods do not hesitate to use intrigue to fight
  humans

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Hercules (Heracles) What can we learn?

• Great hero Heracles could go mad at times
• He was however forgiven for his good deeds sake
  (justice of compensation)
• Heroic deeds were both to help other people or to
  overcome ones own fear and weakness
• Courage was a typical male virtue

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Courage as a contemporary virtue

• Both children and adults need courage.
• Without courage, we are unable to take the risks
  necessary to achieve some of the things we most
  value in life.
• Risk to ask someone out on a date.
• Risk to show genuine vulnerability.
• Risk to try an academically challenging program.

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Courage and the Unity of the Virtues

• To have any single strength of character in full
  measure, a person must have the other ones as
  well.
• Courage without good judgment is blind, risking
  without knowing what is worth the risk.
• Courage without perseverance is short-lived,
  etc.
• Courage without a clear sense of your own
  abilities is foolhardy.

ihärdighet, uthållighet, ståndaktighet
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Courage
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Issues of Courage

• Fears, dangers, and rightly-ordered fears
• Seeking out danger mountain climbing
• Courage and nonviolence Gandhi
• Courage and gender
• Womens courage is often undervalued
• Mens courage is tied to their gender identity

33
Compassion and Pity

• Pity looks down on the other.
• Consequently, no one wants to be the object of
  pity.
• Compassion sees the suffering of the other as
  something that could have happened to us.
• Consequently, we welcome the compassion of others
  when we are suffering.

ömkan medlidande
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Compassion

• Etymology to feel or suffer with
• Both cognitive and emotional
• Leads to action
• Contrast with pity

35
Compassion

• Emotion is often necessary
• to recognize the suffering of others
• emotional attunement
• part of the response to that suffering
• others often need to feel that you care
• Compassion and gender
• Mens compassion is often suppressed
• Womens compassion is tied to their gender
  identity

36
Cleverness and Wisdom

• The clever person knows the best means to any
  possible end.
• The wise person knows which ends are worth
  striving for.
• Wisdom and gender
• Equally distributed
• Often expected from old men and women

37
Self-LovePrincipal Characteristics

• Characteristics of self-love
• Valuing yourself from feelings of self-love
• Knowing yourself a long, often arduous, and
  never completed task
• Acting in ways that promote your genuine
  flourishing
• Having feelings of care, appreciation, and
  respect for others

38
Self-LoveDeficiency

• Deficiency
• Too little feeling self-loathing
• Too little self-valuing self-deprecating
• Too little self-knowledge unwilling or unable to
  look at ones own motivations, feelings, etc.
• Too little acting not taking steps to insure
  ones own well-being

39
Self-LoveExcess

• Excesses of self-love take many forms arrogance,
  conceit, egoism, vanity, and narcissism are but a
  few of the ways in which we can err in this
  direction.
• Too much caring self-centeredness
• Too much self-valuing arrogance, conceit
• Too much self-knowledge narcissistic
• Too much acting for self selfishness

40
Forgiveness

• This, too, is a virtue indispensable for human
  flourishing
• In any long-term relationship (friendship,
  marriage, etc.), each party will do things that
  must be forgiven by the other.
• Long term relationships are necessary to human
  flourishing.
• If we cannot forgive, we cannot have continuing
  long term relationships

41
ForgivenessExcess and Deficiency

• Excess the person who forgives too easily and
  too quickly
• may undervalue self
• may underestimate offense
• Deficiency the person who can never forgive
• may overestimate his or her own importance
• usually lives a life of bitterness and anger

42
Concluding Evaluation

• Virtues are those strengths of character that
  enable us to act according to ideals of good and
  right
• The virtuous person has practical wisdom, the
  ability to know when and how best to apply these
  various moral perspectives.

43
Footnotes to Plato (and Aristotle)

• "The safest general characterization of the
  European philosophical tradition is that it
  consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Alfred North Whitehead, the great 20th-century
British philosopher
44
Moral Reasoning and Gender

• The Kohlberg-Gilligan Debate and Beyond

45
An IntroductionVirtue Ethics Freud on Femininity

• Thus, we attribute a larger amount of narcissism
  to femininity, which also affects women's choice
  of object, so that to be loved is a stronger
  motive for them than to love. The effect of
  penis-envy has a share, further, in the physical
  vanity of women, since they are bound to value
  their charms more highly as a late compensation
  for their original sexual inferiority.

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Virtue Ethics Freud on Femininity

• It seems that women have made few contributions
  to the discoveries and inventions in the history
  of civilization there is, however, one technique
  which they may have invented that of plaiting
  and weaving.
• Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on
  psychoanalysis. Lecture 33 Femininity. Standard
  Edition, v. 22. pp. 136-157.

fläta
47
Le Deuxième Sexe - The Second SexSimone de
Beauvoir 1949

• Woman as Other
• For a long time I have hesitated to write a book
  on woman. The subject is irritating, especially
  to women and it is not new. Enough ink has been
  spilled in quarrelling

Simone de Beauvoir
http//www.philosophypages.com/ph/beav.htm
48
Lawrence Kohlberg

• American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (Harvard)
  studied under Swiss psychologist and philosopher
  Jean Piaget (1965), who had developmental
  approach to learning. Kohlberg extended the
  approach to stages of moral reasoning.
• Using surveys, Kohlberg presented his subjects
  with moral dilemmas and asked them to evaluate
  the moral conflict. He was able to prove that
  youth at various ages, as youth proceed to
  adulthood, they are able to progress up the moral
  development stages presented,

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927 - 1987)
49
Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development
50
Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development

• Kohlberg believed that individuals could only
  progress through these stages one stage at a
  time. That is, they could not "jump" stages.
  Kohlberg's ideas of moral development are based
  on the premise that at birth, all humans are void
  of morals, ethics, and honesty.
• He identified the family as the first source of
  values and moral development for an individual.
• He believed that as one's intelligence and
  ability to interact with others matures, so does
  one's patterns of moral behavior.

51
Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development
Preconventional Morality

• Stage 1 Punishment-Obedience Orientation
• Avoid (physical) punishment
• High school example One middle school teacher
  has latecomers do pushups (50 of them) in front
  of the class.

52
Kohlbergs StagesPreconventional Morality

• Stage 2 Personal Reward Orientation
• You scratch my back, Ill scratch yours
• High school example A group of high school
  students involved in a cooperative learning
  activity get upset because one of their group
  members is repeatedly absent and did not do any
  work.

53
Kohlbergs StagesConventional Morality

• Stage 3 The good boy/nice girl Orientation
• "I am going to work harder in school so I won't
  let you down because if you think I can make it
  then I can make it"
• Stage 4 A Law and Order Orientation
• "Move carefully in the halls". This rule
  reinforces the fundamental purpose of government
  to protect the health and welfare of its citizens

54
Kohlbergs StagesPost-conventional Morality

• Stage 5 Social Contract Orientation
• "Please remember that this is your room and your
  class. The behavior and participation of each
  person will shape the type of learning that will
  occur. Since one person's behavior affects
  everyone else, I request that everyone in the
  class be responsible for classroom management. To
  ensure that our rights are protected and upheld,
  the following laws have been established for this
  classroom..."

55
Kohlbergs StagesPost-conventional Morality

• Stage 6 Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
• An orientation toward universal ethical
  principles of justice, reciprocity, equality, and
  respect
• Examples Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther
  King, Jr.
• "I will not tolerate any racial, ethnic, or
  sexual slurs in this classroom. In this room,
  everyone is entitled to equal dignity as a human
  being.

nedsättande anmärkning
56
Kohlbergs Method

• Initially, Kohlberg administered his test to
  people all over the world, being careful to
  include all races, to include rural as well as
  urban dwellers, etc.
• a Malaysian aboriginal village,
• villages in Turkey and the Yucatan, and
• urban populations in Mexico and the United States
• There was only one thing he forgot
• He only administered his dilemmas to males!

57
Gender and Kohlbergs scale

• When Kohlbergs instrument was administered on a
  large scale, it was discovered that females often
  scored a full stage below their male counterparts.

58
Gender and Kohlbergs scale

• Women are more likely to base their explanations
  for moral dilemmas on concepts such as caring and
  personal relationships. These concepts are likely
  to be scored at the stage three level. Men, on
  the other hand, are more likely to base their
  decisions for moral dilemmas on social contract
  or justice and equity. Those concepts are likely
  to be scored at stage five or six.

59
Carol Gilligan

• University Professor of Gender Studies, Harvard
  University (1997-present)
• In a Different Voice Psychological Theory and
  Women's Development, book 1982.

Carol Gilligan, 1936 - present
60
Gilligans Initial Research

• Gilligan began with an interest in moral
  development as a teaching assistant for Erik
  Erikson.
• She was particularly interested in the issue
  Kohlberg raised why do some individuals
  recognize a higher moral law, while others simply
  are content to obey the rules without question?

61
Gilligans Initial Research

• Here initial research project was directed toward
  draft resisters during the Vietnam war.
• Nixon cancelled the draft just as her project was
  getting started.
• She switched to study women who had made
  difficult moral choices about abortion.
• Not originally concerned about gender issue.

62
Gilligans CritiqueIntroduction

• In light of the differences between the scores of
  males and females on the Kohlberg scale, one
  could draw either of two conclusions
• females are less morally developed than males, or
• Kohlbergs framework is biased against women.

63
Gilligans CritiqueIntroduction

• Gilligan began to look more closely at the
  responses she was receiving in her work, and
  began to suspect that Kohlbergs framework did
  not illuminate the responses she was
  encountering. It was like trying to put round
  pegs into square holes.

pinne sprint, tapp, plugg
64
Gilligans Concept of Voice

• The metaphor of voice in her book In a
  Different Voice
• Concrete and specific
• Allows harmony without imposing sameness
• Not competitive or combative but collaborative
• Combines both emotion and content
• Voices may be described in a wide vocabulary that
  has nothing to do with right or wrong, true or
  false
• Voices may be different without excluding one
  another.

65
Differences between Mens Moral Voices and
Womens Moral Voices
66
Differences between Mens and Womens View of the
Self
67
Differences between Mens and Womens View of
Moral Safety
68
Stages of Womens Moral Development

• Concern for individual survival
• Transition from selfishness to responsibility
• Goodness equated with self-sacrifice
• Transition from self-sacrifice to giving
  themselves permission to take care of themselves

69
Stages of Womens Moral Development

• Goodness seen as caring for both self and others
• Inclusive, nonviolent
• Condemns exploitation and hurt

70
How do we understand Gilligans claims?

• First of all there are historical differences in
  the roles of females and males.
• Females give birth to children
• Females traditionally take care of family
• Females traditionally dominate the private sphere
  with close (short-range) relationships
• Females have developed perseverance and patience

71
How do we understand Gilligans claims?

• Traditionally
• Males take care of the foreign affairs
• Males protect family from the outside threat
• Protective function is realized through groups of
  males military and other societal organizations
• Males dominate official (public) sphere
• Males as a group have developed strength

72
How do we understand Gilligans claims? Plato
Meno

• SOCRATES () By the gods, Meno, be generous, and
  tell me what you say that virtue is ()
• MENO () Let us take first the virtue of a
  man--he should know how to administer the state,
  and in the administration of it to benefit his
  friends and harm his enemies and he must also be
  careful not to suffer harm himself. A woman's
  virtue, if you wish to know about that, may also
  be easily described her duty is to order her
  house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her
  husband. Every age, every condition of life,
  young or old, male or female, bond or free, has a
  different virtue ()

73
How do we understand Gilligans claims?

• With the advent of industrial revolution, and
  welfare state where all children are given
  education, and physical strength has no dominant
  role, women have entered the public sphere
  traditionally dominated by males.
• Female professionals have encountered a culture
  that was historically male territory. It caused
  cultural shock.

74
How do we interpret Gilligans claims?

• Four possible positions about female vs. male
  moral voices
• Separate but equal
• Superiority thesis
• Integrationist thesis
• Diversity thesis

75
The Separate but Equal Thesis

• Separate but equal Men and women have different
  but equally valuable moral voices
• Criticisms
• Reinforces traditional stereotypes
• Hard to retain the ...but equal part
• Suggests that men and women have nothing to learn
  from one another, since each has its own
  exclusive moral voice
• Devalues men with a female voice and women with
  a male voice

76
The Superiority Thesis

• Superiority thesis
• Womens moral voices are superior
• Criticisms
• Equal rights for men and women?
• Inversion of traditional claims of male
  superiority
• Exclusionary
• Demands that one side of the comparison be the
  loser

77
The Integrationist Thesis

• Integrationist thesis
• Only one moral voice, same for both men and women
• Morality is androgynous
• Criticisms
• Loses richness of diversity
• Tends to assimilation in practice, reducing other
  voices to the voice of the powerful majority

78
The Diversity Thesis

• Suggests that there are different moral voices
• Sees this as a source of richness and growth in
  the moral life
• External diversity
• Different individuals have different, sex-based
  moral voices
• Males with female voices and females with male
  voices are admitted
• Internal diversity
• Each of us have both masculine and feminine moral
  voices within us
• Minimizes gender stereotyping

79
Exclusive Models of Internal Gender Diversity

• Traditionally, we have thought of gender in
  exclusionary terms
• The more masculine a person is, the less feminine
  that person is
• The more feminine a person is, the less masculine
  that person is

80
Exclusive Models of Internal Gender Diversity

• In this model, which is the most common
  traditional model, an increase in masculinity is
  bought at the price of a decrease in femininity,
  and vice versa.

81
Sandra Bem Scale
82
Sandra Bem Scale

• Thinking about gender in Sandra Bems framework
  allows us to to appreciate both the feminine and
  the masculine moral voices within each of us and
  to avoid traditional stereotypes.

83
Conclusion The Show must go on (Freddy
Mercury)

• Kohlberg Gilligan controversy is but a
  beginning of a long process of re-thinking
  position of women in a post-modern society.
• The end of industrialist era and the emergency of
  new information technology results in conditions
  that even more favor female professionals.

84
Conclusion The Show must go on (Freddy
Mercury)

• Two processes go on concurrently
• Females being a part of the public world for
  almost a century gradually win strong positions
  and take part in defining of the rules of the
  game. That improves the conditions for new
  generations of women professionals to come.
• Female as a part of scientific establishment
  contribute with new insights in classical
  scholarship that will in the long term radically
  change our ideas (a critical mass of women is far
  from achieved yet)

85
Conclusion Contemporary Research

• http//www.hope.edu/academic/psychology/335/webrep
  /moraldev.html Moral Development's Development
  Recent Research
• http//www.duke.edu/jscope/paplutz.htm Rival
  Traditions of Character Development Classical
  Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Empirical
  Science

86
Concluding Comments
87
World seen in different light
What if we could see in any wavelength of the
electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma-rays to
radio waves? How would the world appear to us?
88
Images of the sun
RADIO
ULTRAVIOLET
VISIBLE
INFRARED
X-RAY
89
Images of the moon
RADIO
ULTRAVIOLET
VISIBLE
X-RAY
INFRARED
90
Images of galaxy M81
RADIO
ULTRAVIOLET
VISIBLE
X-RAY
INFRARED
http//hea-www.harvard.edu/CHAMP/EDUCATION/PUBLIC/
multiwavelengthphotos_pics.html
91
World as seen in the light of different models

• An example one country has started war on the
  other. What are the possible optics we can use
  to analyze the problem from the ethical point of
  view?
• Virtue Ethics
• The leader of one country was very bad character.
  Leader of the other was very good. Which one is
  which depends usually on the side in the war.

92
World as seen in the light of different models

• Utilitarian Ethics
• The country have to be helped, pacified,
  civilized.
• The total benefit from the point of view of the
  one who sets the rules and counts benefits is
  obvious.
• Rights
• As a rule in a war human rights are violated. If
  you focus on that aspect of the problem you may
  get the different picture.

93
World as seen in the light of different models

• Duty
• In a war, defending your country/fighting for
  your country is seen as a highest duty.
• Egoism
• In egoist perspective war can be used to gain
  huge benefits.
• Feminist ethics
• Feminist claim wars are male business

94
World as seen in the light of different models

• Justice
• The distribution of wealth/natural resources can
  be a central issue in a war and so also in
  ethical analysis of it.
• Divine Command
• Very often a war can be seen as a clash between
  different religions. Each side fights with the
  divine support. (So it was even in ancient Greece)