Reddit Reddit reviews After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

We found 15 Reddit comments about After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition
University of Notre Dame Press
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15 Reddit comments about After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition:

u/LegitCatholic · 24 pointsr/Catholicism

Some responses and questions for your thoughts here (thanks for being thorough, by the way):

You say:

> 1) The polarization of society shows that… moral standards are being strengthened rather than lowered.

> a) To say that [moral standards] are lower because they are not Catholic is to [claim that the] Church [is] right because it says it is right, not because it is [demonstrable.]

I say:

First, “polarization of society” does not equal a “strengthening” of Catholic moral standards. Just because two groups hold competing and increasingly hostile views does not mean that either of those groups hold to the fullness of any particular moral standard, let alone Catholic ones.

As an aside, I’d also be interested in what you mean by “polarization of society.” Which society? What kind of moral structure do these two polarities adhere to? Are there really only two dominant competing moral theories that exist?

Second, how would you suggest we demonstrate the superiority of a particular moral position in a way that is intelligible to those who lack the moral language or conceptual framework to grasp it? Alasdair MacIntyre writes about this problem in the important work After Virtue—one cannot simply “demonstrate” the superiority of a moral position because we do not have a common lexicon in which to understand these positions.

I mention this because saying something is “not Catholic, and therefore not right” seems to me a very valid way of expressing one’s moral perspective. It doesn’t “prove” anything, but it encapsulates a moral position succinctly and objectively, something more than most modes of modern moral theory can muster. (I had to keep my m’s going there.)

You say:

> 2) In the 50’s and 60’s Kinsey found that 50% of married men had cheated on their spouses. In 1990 Lauman discovered the number to be 25%, and another report by Treas in 200 showed the number of people who had cheated to be 11%, which shows a decline in infidelity over that period.

I say:

These statistics do not account for the rise of internet pornography, ease of access to said pornography, and certainly doesn’t reflect the actual state of affairs (excuse the pun) between men and women today versus 60 years ago.

As for the first point regarding pornography: “Infidelity” is an amorphous moral term, because it always references how we conceptualize “fidelity”. Does a man remain faithful to his wife if he doesn’t sleep with another woman, but masturbates to pornography in the confines of marriage? As the taboo against porn has waned, so has the increase of its consumption (an easily searchable statistic.) It has become easier and “safer” to satisfy extramarital sexual desire through the use of the internet, so it follows that the more “risky investment” of an affair would fall.

Finally, the statistics you mentioned, especially Kinsey, cannot account for the actual occurrence of infidelity. Most are already aware of Kinsey’s methodological problems, and of course the very nature of infidelity is one that is shrouded in deceit.

Therefore, it isn’t helpful to use statistics surrounding infidelity and illegitimacy when discussing morals unless: 1) there is an agreed upon understanding of what constitutes infidelity and 2) there are a number of more reports regarding infidelity with varying methodologies that might be compared.

You say:

> 3) …even though they are not married, [couples with children are] still performing the same roles as if they were married

I say

This isn’t relevant to the thesis that “love, marriage, sex and procreation are all things that belong together” for the simple reason that, even if marital “roles” are established, the sacrament of marriage, which is an essential component of a “right” moral structure (as it relates to the identity of the human person, which relates to the identity of God, which relates to the ultimate happiness of the human person) is deemed unnecessary. This deeming rejects a sacramental word-view, which in turns rejects the foundation of Catholic moral theory (again, as it pertains to human flourishing in relation to the Sacred/Divine).

You say

> 4) “…with the expansion of women’s rights we are… objectifying women less than when Humanae Vitae was written.”

I say

As you mentioned, this is your opinion, and one I can appreciate—but disagree with. I agree with you that this is a “touchy” subject primarily because we haven’t done a good job defining what it means to “objectify” the human person. I think it’s clear this kind of objectification has always been present in human history, but I also think it’s clear that it has grown worse in the 20th century moving forward. Simply look at the “adult entertainment” industry for proof of this: There is literally a multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around turning the bodies of men and women into consumable objects. Not to mention the sex-trafficking industry is operating at an all-time high and demand is ever-growing. These kinds of industries have always existed, to be sure, but never before on such a massive scale and with so much tacit support from the general population.

You say

> 5) “Government coercion in reproductive matters [seem] hardly tied to expansion [of] birth control…children are expensive and as society becomes more consumeristic… people would rather spend their money on more things rather than more children.”

I say

Two things: First, I agree that people would rather spend their money on things than children. This fact supports the thesis that birth control has a corrupting and constricting effect on the morality of a nation, not a liberating one. Orienting people’s desires towards products rather than people is a commonly mentioned moral transgression, in and outside of a Christian ethical schema.

Second, it’s hard to prove “government coercion” when it comes to the expansion of birth control. In fact, countries like Japan are now having to encourage that their citizens not use birth control because of the devastating effect of population decline on the economy. But when the aforementioned consumeristic ideology has taken root even in the minds of those who control government, it’s clear to see why dispensing contraceptives becomes a priority, even to the point of elevating them to the status of a “woman’s health product.”

Finally:

I think that your conclusion that “the prophecies of Humanae Vitae did not come true” is unsubstantiated and, perhaps more unfortunately, a misunderstanding of a component of the document’s argument. The idea that “increased birth control is an effect and not a cause of the shift in moral standards” glosses over the reality that moral standards are tied to material changes. The advent and widespread dissemination of artificial birth control was a catalyst, not an effect for the growth for the already-present disordered sexual ethos found natively in virtually every culture.

u/CatoFromFark · 7 pointsr/Catholicism

Ignorant? That was the published opinion of Alisdair MacIntyre, the greatest (and most respected) moral philosopher of the last 100 years in what is generally considered the most important book on moral philosophy in that time period, After Virtue.

Ignorance is not even knowing the basics of the conversation, its terms, its players, and what is or is not actually up for debate. Go spend time on /r/badphilosophy and see how often your own view point comes up.

u/ignatian · 5 pointsr/Catholicism

Have you read Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue? It is a great book. In the opening chapter he points out that the classic moral/ethical debates (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, pacifism, animal rights, etc.) are all marked by the inability to step out of one pre-determined system of argumentation. People simply argue past one another. Your comment here about 'human goods' vs. 'penis in vagina' is getting at Alasdair's point. When we have these (optimistically named) conversations, we simply entrench ourselves within the system we affectively choose to be in. "If only these would see that (insert assumed premise), then they would understand." This whole thread is a great example of this dilemma. The premises we assume are usually not even assumed consciously and they end up destroying our ability to have a conversation. Natural law or virtue ethics? 'Penis in vagina' or fidelity?

u/digifork · 4 pointsr/Catholicism

Reddit doesn't like Amazon links with a bunch of options because it assumes they are associate links (links where the referrer get a cut of the sale). So when linking Amazon books on Reddit it best to use bare links such as:

u/Wegmarken · 4 pointsr/askphilosophy

>Socrates isn’t really that convincing for me. Especially because of outside information. Modern biology, psychology and physics, has just completely dismissed my belief in life after death, at least when referring to the soul (Intelligence, conscience, etc.) Now of course this is a cheap shot, since Plato was writing this 2400 years ago.

More than a cheap shot, really. I'd argue that you're missing a lot of the value of Plato (and will miss out on the value of a lot of philosophy) if you're addressing it like this. I'd highly recommend Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life, which offers a different, and perhaps more productive way of reading Greek writers than what you're doing. If you're looking for his arguments to hold up to neuroscientific accounts of existence, of course Plato isn't going to hold up, but Hadot (and others) would argue that the Plato was more aimed at human flourishing. Alasdair MacIntyre also digs into Aristotle with this in his After Virtue.

u/Congar · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

If ethics is more interesting to you than doctrine, you should read Alasdair MacIntyre's 1983 After Virtue. It's a serious work of moral philosophy, written before MacIntyre converted to Catholicism, arguing that contemporary moral disagreement is unresolvable and therefore useless, and thus we ought to return to an Aristotelian framework. Eventually it requires a deist God at the least to be logical, but he argues for that along the way, and you don't need to begin with such a belief. It is excellent, but you do need a little philosophical background to not feel swamped.

u/Prishmael · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

Well, obviously you should give Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a thorough read.

A modern philosopher well known for his attempts at reviving virtue ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre - his seminal book on the subject is After Virtue.

Also, another philosopher, with virtue ethics in the baggage, who's more politically oriented would be Martha Nussbaum. She's noted for going on about her 'capabilities approach' for many years, and some people regard this as an equally viable political option to utilitarian/liberal minimal states or Rawlsian social democracies. The literature on the approach is rather massive, so I'd go give the SEF page on the subject a go for starters, as she also makes very compelling arguments strengthened by interdisciplinary research with experts from other fields.

Also, I highly recommend [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414771070&sr=1- 1&keywords=contemporary+political+philosophy), as it has great chapters on communitarianism and citizenship theory, which draws heavily on the Aristotelian legacy - the citizenship theory chapter being especially great, since Kymlicka there points out how difficult it turns out to be trying to cultivate civil virtues in modern societies.

EDIT: grammar.

u/soowonlee · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

Rawls is obviously important. It's also probably good to read something from the communitarian school of thought. Influential books include After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice by Michael Sandel, Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor, and Spheres of Justice by Michael Walzer.

u/Socrathustra · 3 pointsr/Christianity

I'm not, though I will have to look at this. The inspiration for this post primarily came from The Invention of Art and After Virtue.

u/h1ppophagist · 2 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

This is a very general question, but let me try to point you to what you might be looking for.

If you're looking for people's attitudes on Harper, you can check out this thread from a little while back.

If you're looking for people's ideas on any particular policy, you can either do a search of this subreddit, or ask that question yourself!

If you're looking for people's philosophies, as dmcg12 said, those will be evident if you keep an eye on frequent posters; the more you see them write, the more coherent your picture of their ideas will be. If you're looking at philosophies rather than policies, though, there are philosophers who have produced better arguments than any of us here are likely to be able to articulate in support of their own stances (or at least, they've articulated them in greater detail than I think any of us have done). Some of the best books I've ever read are this (by a Canadian liberal egalitarian/social democrat), this (by a libertarian), and this (by an ex-Marxist Catholic conservative-in-a-way-that's-different-from-most-people-who-call-themselves-conservative). Of those three, I'd start with the Kymlicka, and read at least the chapters on Utilitarianism, Liberal Egalitarianism, and Libertarianism before deciding whether to put down the book. If, however, you take a look at Kymlicka or either of those other books and are intimidated, this does a fabulous job of explaining in accessible language what sort of things people might disagree on, without very strongly coming down on one side or another of such disagreements; it also has outstanding suggestions for further reading. All these books should be in any university library.

u/eaturbrainz · 1 pointr/HPMOR

>I don't plan to continue this thread much further - this isn't a terribly good time or place to summarise a first year moral philosophy textbook for you, nor would doing so benefit you in the same way that reading that textbook and thinking about it would.

Weird you should drop into Condescending Philosophy Major Mode, because we're actually agreeing vehemently on everything of substance.

>There is no "moral reality" in the way that there are atoms or energy levels or other physical things.

Not quite. We haven't found one when we've investigated. It's worth remembering that even at the time of the Enlightenment, the field of moral philosophy started with a mixture of divine command and natural-law as its "informed priors" (the frame for its questions). Darwinian evolution dealt a major blow to natural-law/natural-teleology theories, as well.

The finding that we cannot locate an "atom of morality" or a universal optimization target (at least, one that fits our moral intuitions better than the Second Law of Thermodynamics) is a posteriori. Unfortunately, some people drop into Condescending Philosophy Major Mode and insist that their moral intuitions have so much epistemic value that naturalism must be completely wrong.

And these people have tenure!

>Yet almost everyone lives by some kind of moral code,

Well yes, of course.

>and almost everyone thinks something rather nice has happened over the last few hundred years as we drove back ignorance, racism, sexism, slavery, oppression and so forth.

With emphasis on the almost. There are still serious moral philosophers who may like modernity, but take positions that are technically opposed to it.

>Arguably civilisation couldn't work at all unless most people most of the time followed moral rules, or if it could work there would be massive overheads in policing everyone.

It also requires massive policing overheads when you try to run it very, shall we say, wickedly. It shouldn't be too unsupported to assert that nice rulers require more police than mean rulers.

>So how do we justify moral beliefs in a universe that hasn't been so kind as to give us an atom of evil or a wavelength of sin or anything similar? Well, if you want the long version then study moral philosophy. The very short version is we just make something up, or we do something reasonably sophisticated with game theory to get to a very similar place assuming self-interested agents capable of big picture thinking.

Yes, this is exactly what I said. We can take an anti-realist stance ("make something up"), or we can take a very sophisticated, reforming sort of realist stance that involves precise naturalistic grounding (game theory and psychology are aspects of nature too, you know).

But in either case, the Is/Ought Gap, or Moore's Open Question Argument in its other form, are simply not Hard Problems in the sense of demonstrating that the gap is impossible to bridge. In the a-posteriori absence of mystical moral particles, morality is left amenable to natural, empirical investigation via very precise theories of which empirical facts count as moral facts (or via outright anti-realism, which denies that there exists any gap between normative ethics and moral psychology, and thus denies the normativity of ethics in general). The problem is that some trained, professional academic philosophers remain actually committed to the position that the strength of their realist intuitions constitutes evidence against naturalism, or attempt to rationalize ways in which naturalism self-undermines.

u/plentyofrabbits · 1 pointr/changemyview

>I have not yet encountered this problem.

You mentioned computers before so I'll use them here as an example:

My computer, in front of me now, is meaningful in that it is meaningful to me. It's meaningful to you, too, in an abstract way because I'm using it to transmit this message. It allows me to access stores of information I could never have dreamed of.

Now, imagine a nuclear apocalypse. 95% of the world's human population dies. Most knowledge of the post-industrial and indeed industrial world is lost to history.

I live near DC so odds are my area will be pretty radioactive; it'll be hundreds of years, if not more, before the area is habitable and longer still before it is excavated.

Imagine, then, that the descendants of the survivors of this apocalypse, generations later, find my poor laptop. It will have no meaning for them, because they have no use for it. Similarly, were I to go back in time to, say, 1500, my computer would have no meaning for the people of that time, because they have no use for it.

My computer has meaning in that it has meaning to its user. Purely extrinsic value, there. Humans, however, we possess something innate. No one knows really what to call it - some say it's a soul, some would say it's consciousness, some would call it free will - whatever it is, we don't understand it at all. But we pretty much all agree that a human has innate value, period.

So, to say that I am to God like my computer is to me is demeaning to that innate whatever-it-is, don't you think?

NOTE: the above is a restructuring of a thought experiment presented in the introduction to Alaisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue which, if you haven't already, is a dense but phenomenal work and totally worth the effort.

>I see no problem with that.

Me either :)

>Can you come up with something that would?

I didn't today - ain't life fun like that? I don't think you need one meaning, all the time, forever. Meaning can change as we do. I'm not the same as I was before I met you, or before I turned 25, or before I turned 16, etc. You're not the same, either. Why should your "meaning" be so permanent when "you" are not?

>Why must it? Without God it seems that we are just chemical bonds.

I agree with you, it seems like we're chemical bonds. But I'm not a monist - there's something else there. We don't understand consciousness, not even a little bit. We don't know where it comes from, what it is, whether my dog is conscious in the same way I am and if not, then whether she is conscious at all. We just don't know.

On a personal level I still haven't decided whether the field of Noetics is doing really, really interesting scientific work or really, really interesting voodoo, but suffice to say it's really, really interesting (to me, at least). Check it out if you get a sec!

But what I said was, given that human life does have meaning and given that there is no God, then the meaning of human life cannot come from God, and must come from human life.

u/asthepenguinflies · 1 pointr/atheism

>You espouse nothing but poor reasoning

You can't espouse poor reasoning. You can however espouse an idea supported by poor reasoning. Assuming this is what you meant, I still haven't done it. You have no examples for how my arguments rely on poor reasoning, you just keep insisting that they do. This is due to your own reliance on specious reasoning.

>You're an apologist. You've chosen that position and it's an ugly one.

Sigh.... You know what an apologist is right? Lets use the term in a sentence... "The christian apologists tried to defend their beliefs using reason, thinking that belief in god could be found through logic." Hmm... Maybe a definition would still be useful.

Ya... I'm not an apologist. I'm not arguing in defense of a belief. I'm arguing against a belief in moral realism. You, my friend, function as the apologist in this debate. Please stop using words without knowing how to use them.

>My morals are quite measured and I do not follow them blindly, with faith. I quoted this because this is all you do. You make stupid and baseless attacks because you have no defense.

Watch this: "My belief in God is quite measured and I do not follow him blindly, with faith." Just because you use reason to justify things after the fact does not make the original assumption true, or any less "faithful."

You seem to have a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to moral theory and what is possible through moral theory. Sam Harris, while an interesting individual, and right about many things, is fundamentally wrong when it comes to what science can do with regard to morals. Not in the sense that his moral system is untenable, but rather in the sense that you can't get his moral system strictly through scientific study—which he claims we can. Assumptions must be made before you can even begin the study of well-being and suffering, and even more must be made in order to say that you should promote one and avoid the other.

A person's insistence on the existence of universal objective morals is best termed as a FAITH. There is no evidence of universal objective morals, and they are fundamentally unscientific entities in the same sense God is—even if we wanted to, we could never find evidence of them. At best they are commonly assumed entities—like God is for most people.

And I repeat, because you seem to think I am some sort of moral heathen, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT MORALS ARE USELESS OR THAT WE SHOULD LET PEOPLE DO WHATEVER THEY WANT BECAUSE THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE MORALS. Your feelings about me being somehow deficient are the same feelings a religious fundamentalist would have toward both of us due to our lack of belief.

That you think a bit of pop-science is somehow "important" for me to read is laughable. If what you know of morals comes from that book, I feel sorry for you. I understand that many atheists will praise anything that comes from the "canon" writers on atheism like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, however, being a fan of someone does not make all of their work good, or even relevant. At best, Sam Harris is simply endorsing the naturalistic fallacy. At worst, he's willfully ignorant of what the naturalistic fallacy is, and simply wishes to push his view as a "counterpoint" to religious morality.

Since you so kindly left me a link to a book, allow me to do the same, by linking you to the most important books in moral theory for you to read, some of which argue directly against me, but at this point the idea is to get you educated, not to get you to agree with me:

Alisdair MacIntyre — After Virtue

Nietzsche — Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche — The Genealogy of Morals

Kant — Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics

G.E. Moore — Principia Ethica

I've done my best to find the best editions of these books available (I myself usually default to the Cambridge editions of works in the history of philosophy). You may also want to check out some Peter Singer, along with Bentham and Mill, if only to know what it means to be a utilitarian. After that, read John Rawls, because he'll tell you one reason why utilitarianism is so controversial in ethical theory.

I hope to hear back from you about the results of your studies. I figure you can easily find pdfs of these books (though perhaps not the same editions I linked) somewhere online. Given about a month or two to read them all (I'm not sure how much free time you have... maybe more like three months) you should be up to speed. Hopefully I'll hear back from you after the new year. At that point, I don't expect you to agree with my view on ethics, but I at least expect you will understand it, and be able to argue your own position somewhat more effectively than you are at the moment. If nothing else, think of this as a way to learn how to "stick it" to people like me.

Maybe by then you'll have gotten beyond the whole "I'm taking my ball and going home" disposition you seem to have when confronted with someone who's better than you at debating ethics. I can only hope.

If you take ethics seriously at all, do this for yourself: study the shit out of ethical theory.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/Christianity

>I don't see why we need context-independent anything to construct a good and useful moral code.

Because it's not true if it's context dependent. Any moral code that changes dependent on the circumstances is not objective, it's only intersubjective, and this makes morality relative. At which point (and this has been morality since the enlightenment project) you're simply telling others that your first principles are better than theirs.

>Then again, I do subscribe to a view that objective judgments on morality can only be made after subjectively determining a basis of morality.

If everyone can do that then morality is whatever we want it to be. Personally I'd see no reason to continue to follow Christian slave morality were morality not Platonic.

I'd recommend After Virtue:

https://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/0268035040

Written by an ex-atheist turned Thomist after studying The Angelic Doctor.

u/amdgph · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

>Their conversion just proves that despite the gift of intelligence, one is nevertheless susceptible to irrational beliefs.

How is it irrational when these people gave rational reasons for their belief in the truth of the Christian religion? Check out any of their books/writings. Are Edward Feser's The Last Supersition and 5 Proofs irrational? What about Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy? What about Alaisdair Macintyre's After Virtue?

>You said he wasn't a Christian yet. Did he accept Jesus as his savior? That is the requirement for salvation from what I know.

Looks like your only idea of Christianity is Protestant Christianity (in fairness to Protestant denominations though, many of them are nuanced in their views on this issue and would disagree with the assertion that only Christians are saved). The Catholic Church which was founded by Christ himself disagrees, and so do the other apostolic orthodox churches (Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox).

>What other ways would this be?

I quoted official teaching, didn't you read it?

>You know this how?

Because they themselves shared their reasons for converting/believing in the truth of Christianity (for non-converts) in their talks, books and writings? How else dude?

>What's this evidence that others converted over?

A lot -- philosophical, scientific and historical evidence.

Philosophical: The traditional cosmological arguments (given by the great thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition -- Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas, Leibiniz, etc) for the God of classical theism, the argument from consciousness, the moral argument and others.

Science: The Kalam Cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the argument from biological teleology, and the argument from the laws of nature.

History: the argument from Jesus' miracles, the historical case for the Resurrection, Catholic miracles, and the religious experiences and mystical gifts of countless Christian saints. I lay this out these arguments briefly in this post.

>Because of this outright lie and string of labels thrown at me:

Nah, my assessment is self evident from what you wrote. A silly absolute statement like "no Christian ever believed in his faith on the basis of reason and evidence" is extremely telling...especially given that you doubled down on your erroneous views after being given abundantly clear evidence.