In The Righteous Mind, Haidt draws support for his views from research by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California, Riverside, and Joshua Rust of Stetson University. On a range of ethical issues, Schwitzgebel and Rust show, philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave no better than professors working in other areas of philosophy; nor are they more ethical than professors who don’t work in philosophy at all. If even professors working in ethics are no more ethical than their peers in other disciplines, doesn’t that support the belief that ethical reasoning is powerless to make people behave more ethically?This is a question that Socrates asked with some desperation, according to Plato; he seems to have died without answering it. Plato tried to answer it himself, but ended up with significant problems. In the Protagoras, for example, he has Socrates defending the weird proposition that ethics is a kind of knowledge but that it can't be taught (teachability being an ordinary characteristic of knowledge). He is debating Protagoras, who is defending the equally weird proposition that he can teach the virtues, but that they are not a kind of knowledge.
Perhaps. Yet, despite the evidence, I am not entirely convinced. I have had a lot of anecdotal evidence that my classes in practical ethics changed the lives of at least some students, and in quite fundamental ways. Some became vegetarian or vegan. Others began donating to help people in extreme poverty in low-income countries, and a few changed their career plans so that they could do more to make the world a better place.
Not to steal Tom's thunder, but Aristotle's ethics is the place where the question really gets answered. Aristotle bridges the gap by showing that virtue is taught by habituation. So it's not knowing what is right that constitutes 'teaching ethics,' but practicing doing what is right. In doing that, one develops a character that does right by habit, and thus crosses the gap that Socrates and Plato and Haidt and Singer are worrying about.
To practice what is right, it is helpful first to know what is right. Ethical theory has a place, even if it isn't the place Socrates and Plato hoped it would hold.
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Reading Singer, my first thought was "Yeah, no college kid ever does those things unless he has Peter Singer as a professor."
I agree that it is habit. We are in some ways quite malleable, falling in with whatever our culture tells us to do, but modifying that if we move to a different subculture. It usually does take surrounding yourself with people who want to act in the new way you are choosing. It's why it's a big deal in AA, and churches want to get people involved, not just listening. We can revert to an old pattern very quickly. I think of it as analogous to discs with programs on them. Once we have cut a disc - which can take time and effort - it is available to us. But it isn't necessarily going to play unless we make up our minds to take out the current one and put another in.
Well, this is confusing to me. Ethics, like football, is a body of knowledge tied to a practice. I can read all the books ever written about football and watch thousands of games, but if I never put on the pads and step on the field to train, practice, and play, I won't ever be good at football. Why would anyone think ethics is any different?
This makes me wonder what Socrates, Plato, and Protagoras were caught up on. They had wars, they knew a hoplite couldn't just read or listen to lectures about war to get good at it, but that war could still be taught and learned. What was their hangup here?
On a side note, the unethical ethics professors remind me of that old one-liner, "I love work! I can sit here and watch people do it all day."
I feel i have to translate interpret for plato and socrates s spirits.
Tl dr short.
Socrates: the ability to do what is right comes from a person s immortal muse and daemon, aka the higher self or god or host of heaven.
Plato: if there is a higher self then our civilization are mere shadows of the true reality, the spirit.
Aristotle: our reality is as we make it, thus even if people are lowly avatars and shadows, then can bring themselves closer to divine purpose with virtue and happiness. Happiness as used by the founding fathers meant... some kind of religious faith based reward.
This makes me wonder what Socrates, Plato, and Protagoras were caught up on. They had wars, they knew a hoplite couldn't just read or listen to lectures about war to get good at it, but that war could still be taught and learned. What was their hangup here?
The Laches is the key text there. Plato has Socrates involved in a discussion with other veterans about whether practicing martial arts -- it's often translated as 'fighting in armor,' but they're talking about the martial arts of the day -- actually builds the virtue of courage, in such a way as to be useful in war. We don't really think so; nobody studies Karate to become a good soldier. They are similarly skeptical.
Socrates asks them to first explain what exactly they are trying to teach. What is this virtue, courage? They try to define it -- men who have plainly expressed it in battle, including Socrates himself -- and fail every time. Socrates concludes that they don't really know the thing they possess, and thus that they cannot teach it. But he wants to conclude that it is a species of knowledge, and therefore teachable.
The idea that practicing improves you is just what they're questioning in the Laches. Well, you can't really practice war; martial arts isn't quite the same thing. And anyway, what exactly is it we are trying to teach here? If we could say, we could perhaps design a program; but if we can't say just what it is, exactly, how could we?
The biggest hangup Socrates has about it is that it seems like all the virtues overlap, as they all seem to be capacities to do the right thing. If so, then, they ought to be one thing -- a knowledge of the good. But we speak of them as if they were many things; and, inexplicably, many people possess one piece ('courage') but not another ('moderation'). That doesn't make any sense given the apparent unity.
They're interesting problems.
Interesting. Thanks for the background on that. I tend to agree with Aristotle's answer, but it's difficult to express. Much like the answer to "what is a happy life," I find.
The veil obscures knowledge from human grasp. If you know something that is not true but you can teach it, it is not knowledge you are teaching. If you cannot teach something but know something to be true, that is a different but related issue.
The veil also obscures certain other things through language, such as how the Greeks, Founding Fathers, and modern Americans use the word "happiness" to mean completely different things at times even mutually exclusive to each other.
Socrates and Plato came upon Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle before the advent of quantum physics. They were studying human spiritual matters, not necessarily logical materialistic science.
Aristotle thus represents the quantum wave front dissolution or collapse phenomenon. He believed this world is where the mutual incongruities and inconsistencies of spiritual knowledge and world like teaching could be reconciled. Although Aristotle is a little bit more opaque than me compared to Plato and Socrate's povs. Much of Aristotle's metaphysics is closer to what the Ancient Chinese were doing with 5 elements. It is not very Western even in the materialistic expressions.
Aristotle's teaching or guiding of Alexander the Great, being the greatest example of the work of his philosophy. Although not the best.
Much like the answer to "what is a happy life," I find.
Happiness is an activity. The particular activity is the exercise of your vital capacities in striving for excellence ( “ᾰ̓ρετή,” I.e., virtue). A happy life is the life organized around this pursuit.
The good society is the society that best enables and supports its members in pursuing this happy life. Ethics and politics align, such that the goodfor you and the good for your society can be sought together.
That’s it.
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