Agent-based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance
Abstract Agent-based accounts of virtue ethics, such as the one provided by Michael Slote, base the rightness of action in the motive from which it proceeds. A frequent objection to agent-basing is that it does not allow us to draw the commonsense distinction between doing the right thing and doing...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
2009
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In: |
Journal of moral philosophy
Year: 2009, Volume: 6, Issue: 1, Pages: 50-69 |
Further subjects: | B
AGENT-BASED VIRTUE ETHICS
B RIGHT ACTION B HYPOTHETICAL AGENT-BASED VIRTUE ETHICS B VIRTUOUS MOTIVE B ACTION GUIDANCE |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | Abstract Agent-based accounts of virtue ethics, such as the one provided by Michael Slote, base the rightness of action in the motive from which it proceeds. A frequent objection to agent-basing is that it does not allow us to draw the commonsense distinction between doing the right thing and doing it for the right reasons, that is, between act-evaluation and agent-appraisal. I defend agent-basing against this objection, but argue that a more fundamental problem for this account is its apparent failure to provide adequate argue action guidance. I then show that this problem can be solved by supplementing an agent-based criterion of right action with a hypothetical-agent criterion of action guidance. |
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ISSN: | 1745-5243 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of moral philosophy
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/174552409X365928 |