Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Roderick T. Long. Well, what Tessman explicitly refers to is the goodness of the agent’s life, neither the agent’s virtue nor her flourishing. But I take virtue to be more relevant to self-assessment than flourishing, since it&#…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. The consensus of virtue theorists is that most people are approximately virtuous, but I was taking Tessman to be arguing that most people are vicious. If the consensus of virtue theorists is that most people are approximat…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. First, Davenport is assuming that when the corporations he has in mind donate to anti-abortion candidates, they do so because the candidates oppose abortion. This is very unlikely. I’m fairly certain that corporations g…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I meant “maximalist” mainly in a strategic sense. Point taken on the analogy to overturning Roe turning out to be doable (though perhaps the more strictly analogous right-wing project would be codifying a pretty s…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. A bit more. You say: “Her basic point is that virtue ethicists regard the average member of their own society as either virtuous or at least morally decent” I’m skeptical as to whether this is a correct …

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I’m still at sea. I was talking about self-assessments of the agent’s flourishing; here you refer to “self-assessments of the agent’s virtue.” Of course those things are closely related for virtue theorist…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I think she can more charitably be read as saying that contemporary virtue ethicists wrongly take far too many self-assessments of the agent’s virtue at face value. I don’t think she needs to be read as saying,…

In reply to boydstun. Totally agree. As I say above, we need at least a three-pronged strategy: boycotts, voting, and constitutional reform. No one of those will suffice. LikeLike

In reply to Roderick T. Long. To put it another way: even virtue theorists who don’t think the vices of domination are as serious or as widespread as Tessman does are still very unlikely to take self-assessment of the good life as dispositive, n…