2nd Ancient Phil Quiz

Aristotle’s project is to…

understand goodness

The good of an action is…

its end.

The end of an action is…

its goal or that for the sake of which the action is done.

goodness is the aim of rational actions and decisions. Without this ultimate goal

an action would be empty and done in vain

Not all ends are the same:

Sometimes an end is simply an activity; other times an end might be a product distinct from the activity that gave rise to it

When the end is some product distinct from the activity…

Aristotle tells us that the product is better (more good) than the activity.

Why is the product better?

Distinguish the means to some end/goal from the goal itself. Aristotle assumes that the value of the means depends on the value of the goal.

Knowledge of the good life is the….

central concern of the legislator

Aristotle rejects the inference from variability to convention. A better explanation of variability is…

political science and ethics are like medicine.

Generalizations will hold valid only for the most part, not universally. E.g., cure for an ailment may work usually but not universally

Young individuals are not suited to ethical inquiry/political science because…

1. They lack the experience needed to grasp the generalizations upon which ethical inquiry depends

   1. They have nothing to gain. The end of ethics is action: the knowledge is practical, not theoretical. But young people tend to be guided in action by feelings: “an immature person, like a weak-willed person, gets no benefit from his knowledge.”

Happiness is…

the highest good. The end of human action is happiness.

However, there is substantive disagreement about what happiness consists in.

Aristotle’s responses to describing what happiness is:

pleasure

wealth

honor

virtue

life of study

pleasure: not the human good

wealth: not intrinsically valuable (only instrumentally)

honor: not inherent

virtue: compatible with a life of inactivity

life of study: discussion postponed

Humans alone have the cognitive sophistication required to distinguish…

the apparent good (= the pleasant) from what is in fact good. A pleasure is genuinely good to the extent that it’s a consequence of good activity.

A happy life will include…

pleasure as a BYPRODUCT; pleasure is not the goal of a happy life

Aristotle’s central complaints about Plato are that he gets the metaphysics & epistemology of goodness wrong. What are his issues with them?

metaphysics of goodness. Plato is assuming there is some one thing common to/shared by all things good—much the way all water has something in common. Aristotle insists that goodness is more like being than water. There is no single answer to Socrates’s “What is it?” question that is true of all beings. A being might be a thing/substance, a quantity, a quality, a relation… Goodness works similarly.

epistemology of goodness. Aristotle clarifies the epistemological role of the Form of the Good is supposed to play:
“Perhaps, however, someone might think it is better to get to know the Idea with a view to the good that we can possess and achieve in action; for if we have this as a sort of pattern, we shall also know better about the good that are good for us, and if we know about them, we shall hit on them.”
Expertise in the sciences, technology, etc. does not work this way. Experts do not have knowledge of a singular science of the Good—there is in fact no such science and no one is seeking it! After all, how would knowledge of something so highly general, encompassing all goods, be of use to, e.g., doctors, who need to know what is good for a specific patient at a specific time?

The most celebrated part of the Nicomachean Ethics has two main parts…

1. He wants to show that there is a best good, namely, happiness. There are criteria that the best good must satisfy, and happiness alone satisfies them.

   1. He defends a view about what happiness is. In defense of his view about the nature of human happiness he offers his famous function argument.

The best good will be…

• a final end

• good by itself (not just a part of something better)

  • not subject to improvement

Aristotle formulates formal criteria for the best good. The best good and only the best good will satisfy all three of the following conditions.

• most complete: an end which is choice worthy for its own sake, not for anything further

• self-sufficient: choice worthy by itself and lacking nothing, an all-inclusive good

• most choice worthy: no addition could make it better

why think that the best good must satisfy these conditions?

• most complete: this criterion is a consequence of thinking of goods as ends. the end/purpose/goal of an activity is what makes the activity good (if it is).

  • self-sufficient/most chocieworthy (i.e., choiceworthy by itself and lacking nothing—an all-inclusive good such that no addition could make it better): Suppose some good A were lacking some good B. In that case, the combination of A and B would be better than A by itself. A would not qualify as the best good.

Happiness is the best good because

• most complete: we choose other things for the sake of happiness; we do not choose happiness for the sake of anything further

• self-sufficient (good by itself, all-inclusive): When we call a life happy, we mean that it includes the things that make a life worthwhile/choice worthy

• most choice worthy (can’t be improved): If you have happiness, then you have the best sort of life. The best life cannot be made better by the addition of further goods.

Is Aristotle saying we selfishly do everything for the sake of personal happiness?

No. The virtuous person also chooses virtuous acts for their own sake or for the sake of the fine, and a friend also helps a friends for the friend’s sake.

Aristotle thinks of goodness in terms of…

function

Proper functioning…

promotes happiness. A part like an eye does well—it is a good eye—when it fulfills its function. Human happiness consists in fulfilling one’s human function well.

Terminological preliminaries to the Function Argument:

• the Ergon of x: x’s distinctive function, task, or work

• a good x: an x that performs its ergonomics well

• the arete of x: the excellence or virtue which allows x to perform its ergon well

• activity in accord with arete: activity that exhibits excellent functioning

The Function Argument (i.e., the Ergon argument):

• human beings have a function

• a good human being is one that performs its function well

• a human being is doing well (is flourishing or happy as a human being) insofar as its activity is in accord with arete (virtue or excellence).

Here is the relevant passage in Book I, ch. 7: “Now we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and we take this life to be activity and actions of the soul that involve reason; hence, the function of the excellent human is to do this well and finely. Each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper <to that kind of thing>. And so the human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue.”

Aristotle needs to…

(1) establish the existence of a human function

(2) clarify what the human function is

(3) show that performing the human function well amounts to happiness

(1) why think there is a human function:

Aristotle takes for granted that parts of animals have functions. He moves from this assumption to the conclusion that whole organisms have functions.

At some point, each part comes to an end—otherwise the whole series and each of its components is pointless! According to to Aristotle, chains like this terminate in one thing: the whole-organism’s function, its specific way of life. For Aristotle, the whole-organism function will include life activities like reproduction, sense-perception, locomotion, etc.

Aristotle takes for granted that teleological explanation has an important role to play in biology.

How might this work? Why might we think there are ends/purposes in nature?

• theism (a function relative to God’s plan)

• evolution (a function relative to the end of reproductive success)

Aristotle attributes a view very close to Darwinian evolutionary theory to Empedocles:

“Why not suppose, then, that the same is true of the parts of natural organisms? On this view, it is of necessity that, for example, the front teeth grow sharp and well adapted for biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing; this useful result was coincidental, not what they were for. The same will be true of all other parts that seem to be for something. On this view, then, whenever all the parts came about coincidentally as though they were for something, these animals survived, since their constitution, though coming about by chance, made them suitable for survival.”

Aristotle thinks there are four types of causes or ways of explaining:

material cause: explanation that appeals to something’s material constitution

efficient cause: explanation that appeals to the producer or trigger of some product/change

final cause: explanation that appeals to ends/purposes

formal cause: explanation that appeals to something’s nature or essence

final causes presuppose formal. Functional explanations in biology have to end somewhere. Otherwise we would have a problematic regress or problematic circularity. Aristotle insists that functional explanation terminates in an organism’s form understood as the way of life that makes a species what it is (its nature).

Illustration:

• Why do rabbits have their eyes so far apart? To facilitate predator avoidance.

• But why avoid predators? Unexplained explainer: a rabbit’s distinctive way of life. The what-it-is-to-be a rabbit. The rabbit’s nature or essence (form): the distinctive activities of whole organisms of that type. Rabbits are what rabbits do: the distinctive rabbit work or function (ergon)

Formal and final cause are one and the same here. A rabbit’s ergon (work/function/purpose) and its essence are the same

For Aristotle these forms/natures have always existed, so there is no explanation in turn of why these natures exist.

(2) What is the human function?

Soul or breath is that in virtue of which living things differ from non-living things. It is the principle or source of life. Even plants have souls/

Think of the soul as the organization of material stuffs in virtue of which a living body is able to fulfill the functions distinctive of living things.

Reason > locomotion > perception/desire > nutrition/reproduction

Non-human animals have memories and perhaps even form concepts for deployment in perception, but Aristotle does not attribute to animals the capacity to form these kinds of generalizations. Animal action is explained by their perception of things that are in fact pleasant/painful or by their perception of things previously found to correlate with the pleasant/painful.

Practical reason. Aristotle treats human action as the conclusion of a syllogism. Action requires premises drawn from perception, and these premises will not be generalizations.

(3) Why think performing the human function well amounts to happiness?

We need to distinguish Aristotle’s view of eudaemonia (the good or happy life) from theories of happiness like

• hedonism: pleasure is the best

• life-satisfaction theory: a life’s going well consists in satisfaction of the subject’s desires for their life as a whole, and things go badly to the extent that these desires are frustrated and go unfulfilled

Aristotle’s view is regarded as a version of

• perfectionism: flourishing is a matter of making the most of the natural capabilities that make you the kind of creature you are

The good human life consists in thriving qua human being. This view generalizes to other organisms

For Solon, you must…

die before we can pronounce a life happy

Solon’s remarks raise two closely related questions

metaphysical issue: is there a fact of the matter about whether a life is happy before it is over?

epistemological issue: can we be justified in calling a life happy before it is over?

Solon’s response: No and no! Happiness is a feature of a life as a whole, and happiness requires some level of prosperity or good fortune. Hence, at best we can say something like “so far, so good.:

Where Solon goes wrong

Solon overemphasizes the role of luck or good fortune in happiness

A certain amount of good fortune is a requirement for happiness, but so is having air to breath. Good fortune is more like a prerequisite for, rather than a defining feature of, happiness.

Aristotle’s conclusion is that attribution of happiness to the living is fine but requires qualification

“Then why not say that the happy person is the one whose activities accord with complete virtue, with an adequate supply of external goods, not for just any time but for a complete life? Or should we add that he will also go on living this way and will come to an appropriate end, since the future is not apparent to us, and we take happiness to be the end, and altogether complete in every way? Given these facts, we shall say that a living person who has, and will keep, the good mentioned is blessed, but blessed as a human being is.”

Human happiness is not impregnable: a person must maintain a certain level of good fortune for their life to count as happy. Aristotle agrees with Solon against the followers of Socrates: happiness is vulnerable.

Puzzle about posthumous events

Solon asks how we can attribute happiness during a life if happiness is a property of a life as a whole. But even when the life is over. Aristotle acknowledges that fortunes and misfortunes can befall the deceased. HOWEVER, it does not dictate if a life is happy. Virtuous activity controls happiness.

Epicurean invulnerability

Epicurus regards happiness as a stable, invulnerable good. Even mighty death cannot deprive you of life’s goods. Epicurus rejects Aristotle’s assumption that bad things can happen to the deceased.

Epicurus is a hedonist who thinks that the good and bad of life reside in conscious experience. Once we cease to exist as a conscious being, nothing can be good or bad for us. Furthermore, death cannot be bad for us before we die.

A worry: although the Epicureans and Stoics are not pessimists, one can reasonably worry that invulnerability is achieved only be endorsing a deflated view of the goods of life. The Epicureans are hedonists, but ht reform of pleasure most central to well being is freedom from pain/suffering. For example, Cicero reports about the Epicureans: “we hold that to be the greatest pleasure which is perceived once all pain has been removed.”

Stoics on Socrates

Like Socrates, the Stoics identify virtue with knowledge. It is an “expertise concerned with the whole of life.” Virtue is all about reasoning ell in life. And like Socrates, the Stoics suppose that virtue is all you need for happiness. It is choice worthy for its own sake.

Stoics are even more extreme than Socrates insofar as they deny

that so-called external goods are goods. Virtues alone, for the Stoics, are good. And vices alone are bad.

External goods for Aristotle

“Happiness evidently also needs external goods to be added, as we said, since we cannot, or cannot easily, do fine actions if we lack the resources. For, first of all, in many actions we use friends, wealth, and political power just as we use instruments. Further, deprivation of certain externals—for instance, good birth, good children, beauty—mars our blessedness.”

Externals are neither good or bad for the Stoics

Wealth and health are not necessarily external goods, because they can be used well or badly. Therefore, they are not inherently good.

ARISTO on preferred indifferents

If wealth, health, and the rest are not goods, why take them to be preferred? The Stoic ARISTO developed an unorthodox position, which rejects the division of indifferents into the categories fo preferred & dispreferred. Aristo insists that the same reasoning which shows external are not unconditionally good also establishes that external are not unconditionally preferred.

“Aristo of Chios denied that health and everything similar to it is a preferred indifferent. For, to call it a preferred indifferent is equivalent to judging it a good, and different practically in name alone… Neither those which are said to be preferred prove to be unconditionally preferred, nor are those said to be dispreferred of necessity dispreferred. For if healthy men had to serve a tyrant and be destroyed for this reason, while the sick had to be released from the service and, therewith also, from destruction, the wise man would rather choose sickness in this circumstance than health. Thus neither is health unconditionally preferred nor sickness dispreferred.”

One problem with Aristo’s position:

it seems to deprive us of any external target or goal in our activities.

What is virtuous activity aimed at if not things like health and prosperity?

Another problem is that Aristo seems to deny us any grounds for choice in life.

Why prefer a bed with clean sheets over one soiled with vomit and crawling with insects?

For these sorts of reasons, the orthodox Stoic position acknowledges that externals have a kind of value.

The orthodox Stoic position seems unstable, then.

One the one hand, they wish to avoid the extremes of Aristo’s position, so they allow that externals have value. But in allowing that externals have value, their disagreement with Aristotle seems verbal in character (they call externals preferred rather than good).

Stoics deny that externals are needed for happiness because they endorse both of the following claims:

• happiness requires confidence that one’s happiness is here to stay.

• We lack confidence in what depends on luck.

Stoic theory of goodness has two underlying principles:

• eudaemonism: things are good (bad) only insofar as they yield happiness (unhappiness)

• invulnerability: happiness requires peace of mind that happiness is here to stay

Contemporaries of the Stoics raised objections:

first objection. According to the Stoics, the end/goal in life (happiness) is selecting well or rationally (among available options). Selecting well seems to have a purpose only if it is directed toward/for the sake of attaining/achieving/getting. But the Stoics insist that selecting well is the aim, not the getting. The latter is subject to chance and fortune.

Contrast the stoic position with Socrates’s view in the Protagoras, according to which virtue (knowledge of good and evil) is instrumentally valuable toward the goal of pleasure.

second objection. The Stoics, as Socrates, think of virtue as like craft knowledge (a kind of know-how). In general, crafts are goal-directed, undertaken to achieve something other than their own exercise. So, once again attaining some end result seems to be the point of the activity.

For the Stoics

• The ultimate aim in action is to do the best one can—what is in one’s power.

A related point is that, in morally assessing actions, we do not look to the consequences of action (which can be outside our control).

How are we to think of preferred indifferents if they are not required for success in life? They are a target of virtuous action, no the real goal (perfection of human nature).

target of an action : the goal of an action

reference point : the end

objective : purpose

How are we to think of virtue if it’s not like medicine, which aims at a separate end/goal, namely, health?

“We do not regard wisdom as comparable to navigation or medicine, but rather to acting… and dancing, so that its end is within itself and not to be sought outside, i.e., the practice of the expertise.”

Third objection. Do we really have a way of assessing excellence in life choices aside from looking to the goods achieved? Consider the crafts once again: Won’t we have to assess the activity of shipbuilding by assessing the product?

The vicissitudes of life

Let’s distinguish three ways the world might seem to present an obstacle to the virtuous person’s thriving as a virtuous person

1. The world compromises the virtuous person’s ability to exercise her rational capacities altogether (e.g., through disease, injury, or death)

2. The world presents the virtuous person with options which are banal, not requiring excellence of deliberation (e.g., a series of decisions like that of Buridan’s ass or other coin-flip situation).

3. The world yields dispreferred outcomes, in spite of the virtuous person’s best efforts.

The Peripatetics & Stoics share the same broad theoretical approach to human happiness—human nature perfectionism.

Both parties agree that a good human life is all about excelling with respect to our rational nature.

• The Stoics: we excel by making the most of our rational abilities

• The Peripatetics: making the most of our rational abilities requires some luck.

The Peripatetics insist that the happy person is fortunate enough to:

1. Exercise their rational capacities

2. decide among choice worthy options

3. accomplish worthwhile deeds

(1) The importance of virtuous activity. Aristotle is worried that having virtue is compatible with a life of inactivity.

• The Peripatetic: Happiness requires a lifetime of activity in which you realize your human potential. Having virtue is compatible with inactivity, but that’s not a thriving human existence. Being able to exercise your virtue requires luck.

• The Stoic: Happiness is a kind of perfection of human nature that is seldom realized. But once the individual becomes virtuous, their life counts as happy—however short. It is a complete good.

(2) having worthwhile options. The Peripatetics can concede that the sage will always flourish relative to their circumstances. Their point is that some circumstances do not allow an individual to realize their potential as a rational being. The options available to the agent may not be choice worthy.

• The Peripatetic: In one sense, Socrates has reached his human potential: he has developed his rational capacities in an exemplary manner. Nonetheless, if he is stuck in prison, he cannot exercise those capacities in an exemplary manner. he cannot flourish as a human being.

• The Stoic: The sage’s task is to choose well, given the circumstances. Just as accomplishments don’t really matter, so too the opportunities for accomplishments do not really matter. If life gives the sage nothing but coin flips, so be it.

(3) the value of accomplishments. Suppose the sage has an improbable run of bad luck, and accomplishes nothing in spite of choosing wisely

• The Peripatetic: In Glaucon’s comparison of lives, it’s absurd to suggest the just person is happy.

• The Stoic: a rational agent excels by choosing wisely. That’s what perfecting our rational nature comes to, and perfecting our rational nature is all that’s required for happiness.

Unlike Socrates, Aristotle allows

that weakness of will is possible and his theory of virtue is shaped accordingly. Reflection on weakness leads Aristotle to acknowledge two parts distinctive of rational animals (humans):

• a part in virtue of which the human has the capacity to reason

• a non-rational part which can be trained to conform to reason

Human virtue is a matter of excelling with respect to these distinctively human capabilities of reasoning. it is a perfecting of these abilities/skills. There are different virtues corresponding to these different aspects of our rational nature.

Aristotle defines virtue of character as

(a) a state that decides, (b) consisting in a mean, © the mean relative to us, (d) which is defined by reference to reason, (e) i.e., to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it.

(a) a state that decides

When we look to the non rational part, we find:

1. The capacity for feeling

2. manifestations of this capacity (i.e. feelings)

3. states of this capacity (in virtue of which one is disposed to feel one way rather than another in various circumstances of life)

Virtue concerns (3) states of the capacity for feeling. In calling people virtuous we are praising the way they are disposed to respond emotionally to the circumstances they find themselves in. This is the genus of moral virtue.

Note that the state in question is one that decides. Moral virtue is a state with respect to feeling and action, a state that results in a decision to act in accord with (correct) feeling.

Aristotle thinks that these requirements on virtuous action raise trouble for the Socratic view of virtue as a kind of craft knowledge. In exhibiting excellence in craft, it is usually sufficient that the product or outcome is good. We do not also require anything like pursuit of the goal for its own sake.

The idea that virtuous actions are chosen ‘for themselves’ is just the idea that they are done because they are virtuous, i.e. done “for the sake of the fine”: “Actions in accord with virtue are fine, and aim at the fine.” The fine is one of three objects of choice: “For there are three objects of choice—fine, expedient, and pleasant—and three objects of avoidance—their contraries, shameful, harmful, and painful.” Are fine actions fine because they perfect our nature, thereby making us happy? Or do they perfect our nature (and make us happy) because they are independently fine?

In the Euthyphro Plato has Socrates ask: Do the gods love certain actions because the actions are pious? Or are the actions pious because the gods love them? Plato insists that the gods love the actions because they ar epious. Aristotle would presumably say the same: the virtuous person favors fine actions because they are fine.

(b) consisting in a mean

the virtuous person is disposed to feel things in a. middling way, thus avoiding the extremes of feeling.

( c ) the mean relative to us

relative to the circumstances

Some interpret Aristotle as a proponent of moral particularism…

the view that the virtuous agent is guided by context-sensitive perceptions of value, not by the application of general moral principles. On the other hand, Aristotle allows that doctors rely on generalization which hold ‘for the most part’. Also, in his definition of virtue he tells us that the mean is determined by reason, not by perception.

Is Aristotle saying that one should never be extremely angry or mildly agree, instead middlingly angry?

No.

It is misleading to say, for Aristotle, that we should have…

all things in moderation. Aristotle will deny that feelings like spite or envy are ever appropriate.

The mean relative to us defined (d) by reference to reason, that is, (e) to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it.

Prudence is…

excellence of deliberation, a virtue of thought. Deliberation is reasoning about means, not ends: “We deliberate not about ends, but about what promotes ends.” Hence, the prudent person is the person who reasons effectively about the means to happiness.

Summing up for Aristotle:

virtue is all about being disposed to feel and decide in accord with feeling, a disposition that lies between extremes of vice. Which feelings are appropriate and to what extent is determined by the prudent person, the one who is excellent at deliberating about the means to happiness.

Is Aristotle’s strategy circular?

1. Aristotle defines happiness in terms of virtuous activity

2. He defines virtuous activity as activity according with the decisions of the prudent person

3. He define s the prudent as one who deliberates successfully towards the end of happiness

Trivial? Is the doctrine “Nothing in excess”?

Aristotle’s two accounts of happiness

inclusive account. Aristotle tells us that happiness is self-sufficient, i.e. lacking nothing. The idea is that happiness includes everything that makes life worthy living, all of the intrinsic goods like friendship, honor, virtue, and pleasure.

exclusive account. happiness excludes everything except the very best excellence, excellence of understanding (and whatever is minimally required for study).

Will the sage get angry?

Aristotle: denies the virtuous person will have spite, malice, or malevolence. At the same time, he insists they’ll have emotions like anger and fear. The Stoics disagree with the Peripatetics on this point.

excuse means an action was involuntary or unintended

force: a force external to & independent of your motivational set causes the behavior

ignorance: the agent might lack knowledge

• Aristotle has in mind lack of knowledge-that (information)

• but we must also knowledge lack of knowledge-how (skill)