美德伦理学和正确的行动

最近一些著名的美德伦理学家试图对正确的行动提出种种美德伦理学所独有的解释。文章打算证明这些解释并不成功。如果它们能够回答岛民诘难 (根据这一诘难 ,评价行动要求注意行动者之外的外部世界的效果 ,然而美德伦理学只关心评价行动者的内在状态 ) ,它们依赖的是某些普遍接受的美德伦理学的理由 ,而这些理由本身又取决于没有任何解释的关于正确性的判断。因此这样的解释导致了循环论证的诘难。简言之 ,美德伦理学的这些避免岛民诘难的解释只是以请进循环论证的诘难为代价的。它们直觉上的合理性大致上只达到这样的程度 :它们失去了有别于其他理论的美德伦理学的特征

Virtue Ethics and Right Action

In this paper I evaluate some recent virtue-ethical accounts of right action. I argue that all are vulnerable to what I call the insularity objection: evaluating action requires attention to worldly consequences external to the agent, whereas virtue ethics is primarily concerned with evaluating an agent's inner states. I argue that insofar as these accounts are successful in meeting the insularity objection they invite the circularity objection: they end up relying upon putatively virtue-ethical considerations that themselves depend on unexplained judgments of rightness. Such accounts thus face a dilemma that is characteristic of virtue-ethical accounts of right action. They avoid the insularity objection only at the cost of inviting the circularity objection: they become intuitively plausible roughly to the extent that they lose their distinctively virtue-ethical character.