I couldn't disagree more. Socrates didn't start with a virtue and derive an ethical philosophy from it. If he did he would not be remembered. He was more interested in the exact opposite.

Instead of praising the man who claimed to have the virtue of being a just man, he invoked the ring of gyges thought experiment to show that the just man was not a just man, but rather acting in his own self interest which happened to produce the beneficial side-effect of making him appear to be a just man. However when the situation changed, making his cost-benefit analysis come to a different conclusion, the just man and the unjust man were no different.

edit: both were doing the exact same thing. one had the side-effect of making the man a just man, while the other hide the side-effect of making the man an unjust man. this was the entire point of the thought experiment.

It's focus is not so much on answering questions pertaining to moral dilemmas.

As a violin-maker can hone his skills in violin-making, so too, can a human being hone their skills in living life. One of these skills is more often than not, ethical decision-making. The aim therefore, is not ethical decision-making but rather, it is a by-product of living life and experimenting with both being the guy who punches the stranger in the face, and being the guy who gets punched in the face. Learning through wisdom (experience), not through some rules made by some guy who's never actually lived.

This does not mean that one should experiment with murdering others for example, but one often need not experiment with extreme moral cases as such, in order to see that their life will not be well-lived if others are after them.

The focus of virtue ethics is on promoting a particular type of culture characterised by a shared value-set that cultivates excellence, in everything, from violin-making to living life. There is an absence of this in the modern condition, where many strive for fame and fortune, rather than personal excellence. Yet, it is often that fame and fortune accompanies or arises from personal excellence; not the other way around. In virtue ethics, it is not the end-goal, but also another by-product of pursuing personal excellence.

To answer your question more directly, virtue ethics would firstly apply the relevant virtue to this moral question; likely to be a virtue of social conduct - whereby friendliness (the desired virtue) lies in-between two opposing vices: obsequiousness on the excessive side and cantankerousness on the deficiency side. To punch someone randomly in the street is characteristic of cantankerousness, for it does not meet the requirements of friendliness or obsequiousness. On this basis, it would be advised against or considered less-than-ethical.

If it cant be used to answer even that simple moral dilemma then what the hell are people messing around with it for? And why is it being called an ethical theory when it is not. It seems that it would be better to call it "a nice way to think about things, but having nothing to do with ethics."

Of the five ethical theories listed in my paper, this is the only one that cannot be applied to any ethical question whatsoever (if it cannot even be applied to this most basic of ethical questions, the punching in the face).

Did you not read my last paragraph?

You answered the first part of my question, would you mind doing the rest? That is the more interesting part to me.

edit: my bad, I thought I asked something different. Let me edit this post.

So what if the guy doing the punching does not think friendliness is a virtue. If this were the case, would your conclusion, that " it would be advised against or considered less-than-ethical" then be incorrect?

I have explained how we come to the conclusion that his action is less-than-ethical.

If our society's ethical sphere had greater input from virtue ethics and the mainstream was somewhat aware of the virtues and their opposing vices, it wouldn't particularly matter whether he considers friendliness a virtue or not. Indeed, the entire point is to experiment with your life and to hone your own ethical decision-making; to develop excellence at it. The guy punching people randomly would by many be perceived as lacking experience and excellence in this one particular virtue.

Virtues are not universal if that is what you are asking, but some of them can certainly be applied with a decent level of consistency, across cultures and across differing cultural values.

I agree with the first sentence, but cant really comment on the rest.

Mind taking a stab at post #50 in this thread?

It is the mean between two opposing vices. One vice is having too much of that particular quality and the other vice is having too little of it.

For a simple example. Courage as a virtue, lies in-between recklessness on the 'too much' end and cowardice on the 'too little' end.
These are pop-culture virtues and many such virtues have nothing to do with proper virtue ethics and analysis thereof. Refer here for Aristotle's list - based on sphere of action or feeling. While this list is outdated, the same approach could certainly be modernised and applied in the contemporary context.
In virtue ethics, we first must contextualize where the virtues are: e.g., 'sphere of human experience' or 'action or feeling' or even something more narrow like 'job' or something broader like 'culture' as more modern virtue ethics is attempting to do. Based on this sphere within which the virtues are exercised, we next isolate the desired mean or virtue, and its opposing vices. The process for doing this can be similar to how we isolate desired moral rules or laws for example.

So do you think we got lucky in that all the virtues are beneficial? Do you see what point I am trying to make when I say why not just cut out the middle man? Does my argument make sense? i.e. are you the least bit convinced that virtue theory might be adding unnecessary frills to a more basic ethical discussion?

The virtues of nonviolence and freedom are virtues to cultivate to avoid punching people in the face on the block. Think about the virtue of sharing those virtues aligns with the self interest to have peace and liberty.

Unexceptional as a walk down the street where no one is punched in the face.

The virtues are beneficial.....how? for what?

For your presupposed utilitarianism ends?

Their utility is mainly directed at the life well-lived. Not at happiness per-se or at ethical matters per-se. It just so happens that ethical decision-making contributes to or leads to a life well-lived. It is not the sole aim of cultivating your virtues, so that you may one day become a moral-rule-following robot.

Okay, so by Socrates I assume you mean some combination of Plato and Socrates (the "Socrates" of the Republic is generally thought to be more Plato than Socrates). And Plato is widely considered a foundational virtue theorist. For instance:
Huh? The ring of Gyges is an argument presented by Glaucon against Socrates (and presumably Plato's) virtue-based theory of the good in the Republic. You are literally taking the view Plato argues against as his own.

Also, the Ring of Gyges story is supposed to show that everyone actually thinks that happiness is not found in acting virtuously towards others because, so the argument goes, if they could act with impunity (ie if they had the ring) they would in fact do so. Socrates argues that this is wrong--indeed his rebuttal to that argument is what provokes him to lay out the theory of justice, both of the city-state and as an individual virtue that is at the core of the Republic.

Really? You're reaching here.

edit:
If you need an answer: for society. it is beneficial for an individual to be dishonest and not be loyal (if he can get away with it) but detrimental to those around him.
I'm not sure if this is a presupposed utilitarian end or not.

Well, I still stand by what I said about the ring of gyges but I think were pretty far off and at an impasse here.

edit: I just always assumed glaucon was a fictional character socretes used to propose certain things for the sake of story telling. I've never really looked up whether or not he was a real person.

Not my intent.

Is it a coincidence that a life well-lived generally requires one to make good ethical decisions; to treat others similarly to how they'd like to be treated?

I don't think so.

So did we get lucky in choosing the virtues?

Sure. Let's take Aristotle as an example. He defines the good as happiness or contentment, which he understands as something like complete actualization of your potential (Aristotle himself had a lot of inaccurate science around teleology in nature as well, but leave that aside for now). So the right action in any given context is the one that will most contribute to achieving your potential. So, will punching someone in the face help contribute to your own actualization? Probably not. After all, if you do this, you'll likely end up going to jail, or suffer bodily injury, or pay a fine, etc. These punishments will tend to inhibit your ability to live a fully actualized life because they can severely limit your options later in life. People might also be unwilling to form close relationships with you because they might regard you as hostile or untrustworthy - meaning that you'd miss out on a core element of what it means to be human.

So, don't punch random people in the face. What does this have to do with the virtues? Aristotle would say that we reach this conclusion by using "practical reasoning." In this case, predicting the likely outcomes (injury and/or civil punishment and social ostracism) and evaluating their impact on your own long-term happiness (sharply negative). This is basically a matter of using our own and other people's experience to make judgements as to the correct actions to take in various situations.

But of course we don't go through a separate calculation like this for every situation. Instead, we develop heuristics and rules for how to behave in different situations. Having a good character, or being virtuous, means that the heuristics that guide your behavior are largely effective in causing you to behave in ways that lead to your full actualization as a human. When we break it into specific virtues, eg patience, all we are really doing is looking at a subcategory of heuristics that govern situations where you feel impatient, or have to wait for something you want, or have to weigh short and long-term ends. If you have good heuristics in this area, that is, in the situations when you use these heuristics they generally lead you to do the action that that results in achieving your goals, then you have the virtue of patience.

Of course not. We defined the virtues to be those things which we want people to strive for. I don't want you to murder me, so I create a word called virtue which myself and others will then praise you for having upheld. One of the virtues myself and others came up with was "not murdering me."

The reason we came up with this "not murdering me" virtue was not b/c of some other virtue, it was because we decided we didn't much care for being murdered.

The "good ethical decisions" is the same thing. I don't much care for being murdered so I say that it is unethical and give you the reverse of praise when you do it.

I mean you can do ethics with this virtue thing--it should work for most situations. But I think you need to realize what you are doing. You are starting with what you do or dont "much care for" and then creating virtues from it. Then later you work backwards from the virtues to decide if the action should or should not be done. This can work, but you lose the nuances and details and gain nothing but simplicity in return.

I am not well versed on virtue theory so I just want to double check, is this response in line with "standard" virtue theory, or are you using Aristotle's ethical theory which is different from "standard" virtue theory. Is Aristotle the accepted guide for doing virtue ethics?

Is it your contention that when a bird of prey is hiding in ambush and restraining itself from attacking too early that it is literally using cost/benefit analysis reasoning to decide when to attack? It is literally sitting/flying there and mentally weighing up the relative benefits and harms of attacking now versus attacking later? I don't know much about birds, but I would be surprised if they were capable of that sophisticated level of cognition. I suspect that what is going on in their brain is much simpler and relies on much more basic visual or auditory cues, rather than an evaluation of the relative harms and benefits of particular actions. The logic of natural selection can brute force a certain kind of cost benefit analysis on animal behavior, but not necessarily through the animals themselves literally going through this calculation.

Just as a matter of intellectual history, in western philosophy virtue ethics came before utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis.
See, you are just confused. Looking at what is beneficial in life and then giving those thing names and praising them as virtues is exactly what virtue ethics is supposed to do. It is hard to know what things are actually beneficial. Figuring this out is virtue ethics. For instance, Aristotle regarded pride as an important virtue. Later Christian thinkers claimed that it was a vice. This disagreement about whether it was a virtue was a disagreement about whether it was beneficial to your life.

Think of a virtue as more of a habit. A habit which you improve on. Not something that you either have or do not have, but rather something more gradual. As a type of personal excellence that sits on a gradient. Sometimes you may be honest and other times you may be dishonest, but as you grow older and more experienced with honesty, you gradually learn the true importance of honesty - in both your personal and impersonal relationships. As you learn this importance, you practice it more and you become better at the virtue.

The way you're conceptualizing virtue here is not like this at all. 'Not murdering others' is not a virtue. You cannot improve on 'not murdering people'. You either do, or you do not murder people.

Moreover, you're free to dislike courage for example. You're also free to lead a dull life. You're free to dislike friendliness or liberality. You're also free to live a lonely life. You're free to dislike whatever virtue you want to. In a society where personal excellence and fulfillment are second-hand to moment-to-moment happiness and a sort of moral sheepishness, people cant even entertain the idea that one can be successful at the most fundamental thing there is: their life.

I think you should read the SEP article on virtue ethics I linked to before. To answer your questions, I don't know what "standard virtue theory" refers to. Aristotle is probably the most influential version of virtue ethics, but there are other versions as well, which would evaluate the situation differently. I gave a rough modernized version of the kind of reasoning something in the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics might use to answer your question. Moral philosophy doesn't really have "accepted guides," so I don't really know how to answer your question.

I'm not sure what goes on in their head ... maybe the analysis is done subconsciously. I do think, however, it's safe to say that some cost-benefit analysis is done. That cost-benefit analysis can be seen in action if, for instance, you punish a dog every time he does some action that he enjoys doing. Sometimes you can see that the dog wants to do the action but then remembers he will be punished for it and begins to whine while looking nervous and, at least to me, appears to be going back and forth and trying to decided which is the correct decision: if the punishment he knows he will get will be worth doing the action he wants to do.

I'm saying that you cant define a virtue until you know what you want. The way you know what you want is by looking around and experiencing life, and remembering what made you happy and what made you the reverse of happy.

Later, when virtues were first created (which was long after the first conscious cost-benefit analysis inside a brain) they were created with the intent of promoting those things that promoted happiness or enjoyment or "the good." The reason the first virtue wasn't 'murdering people' is because we were able to do a cost-benefit analysis before we were able to come up with the concept of virtues.

Well then perhaps I dont even know wtf virtue theory or virtue ethics is. I'm just going off of what I heard in lecture.

edit: In lecture, it was the exact opposite of what you are saying. Even my book said that virtue ethics was starting with virtues and deriving what is an ethical or unethical action from that. Now i am getting suspicious of you after having remembered that...

This seems more along the lines of a life philosophy or world view. It does not seem like it should fit in the realm of ethics.

It fits beautifully in there, while providing the kind of meaning that utilitarianism and deontology could only dream of.