Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists

Maybe, but be very careful not to jump from

a pretty damning fact about the way this whole area of intellectual work is conducted in practice.

to

therefore there is no sense in individual people whose rationality is above-average attempting, in good faith and by way of experiment, to apply some subset of this intellectual work to their actual lives,

which I think is a conclusion that some people might inadvertently draw from your comment.

Vladimir_M wins the discussion.

It might be worth presenting Will with a dilemma that drives a wedge between a particular virtue and some consequence he cares about. E.g. suppose that the only way to fund saving the world is by becoming a gangster and inculcating the vices of revenge, mercilessness and the love of money in yourself.

This also fits my (non-LW) experience very well.

There's that catchy saying: "evolution is smarter than you are". I think it probably also extends somewhat to cultural evolution. Given that our behaviour is strongly influenced by these, I think we should expect to 'rediscover' much of our own biases and intuitions as useful heuristics for increasing instrumental rationality under some fairly familiar-looking utility function.

As one of the rationalist quote threads said,

"To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it."

Similarly, virtue ethics requires that you focus on making yourself into the kind of agent who would make the right choices in general, even if that means making a choice in the actual world that you know will make things worse.

I think this may be overstating it, specifically the "even if..." clause. If the 'choice' is being done at the level of consciousness, then you can probably sidestep the worst failures of virtue ethics. And if it's not, there's no reason to expect not having good habits of action to perform better.

This is the way I thought about it after reading the OP - virtue ethics as time-consistent consequentialism. But maybe I don't understand correctly what means to be a virtue ethicist. If it is "try to modify your source code¹ to consistently perform the best actions on average", it does oppose neither consequentialism nor deontology: "best" may be evaluated using whatever standard.

¹) I dislike the epression but couldn't find a better formulation

But: "You can be a virtue ethicist whose virtue is to do the consequentialist thing to do"

That's why I wouldn't suggest anyone to switch entirely over to virtue ethics, but to rather have a virtue ethical layer inside a generally consequentialist framework in such a way that your virtues are always grounded in consequentialism.

Instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this "make them a better person" or "is the right thing to do" - essentially throwing this all away.

Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone's life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there's more to life than practical consequences.

Here's my tentative answer to this question. It's just a dump of some half-baked ideas, but I'd nevertheless be curious to see some comments on them. This should not be read as a definite statement of my positions, but merely as my present direction of thinking on the subject.

Most interactions between humans are too complex to be described with any accuracy using deontological rules or consequentialist/utilitarian spherical-cow models. Neither of these approaches is capable of providing any practical guidelines for human action that wouldn't be trivial, absurd, or just sophistical propaganda for the attitudes that the author already holds for other reasons. (One possible exception are economic interactions in which spherical-cow models based on utility functions make reasonably accurate predictions, and sometimes even give correct non-trivial guidelines for action.)

However, we can observe that humans interact in practice using an elaborate network of tacit agreements. These can be seen as Schelling points, so that interactions between people run harmoniously as long as these points are recognized and followed, and conflict ensues when there is a failure to recognize and agree on such a point, or someone believes he can profit from an aggressive intrusion beyond some such point. Recognition of these points is a complex matter, determined by everything from genetics to culture to momentary fashion, and they can be more or less stable and of greater or lesser importance (i.e. overstepping some of them is seen as a trivial annoyance, while on the other extreme, overstepping certain others gives the other party a licence to kill). These points include all the more or less formally stated social and legal norms, property claims, and all the countless other more or less important expectations that we believe we reasonably hold against each other.

So, here is my basic idea: being a virtuous person means recognizing the existing Schelling points correctly, drawing and communicating those points whose exact location depends on you skillfully and prudently -- and once they've been drawn, committing yourself to defend them relentlessly (so that hopefully, nobody will even see overstepping them at your disadvantage as potentially profitable). An ideal virtuous man by this definition, capable of practical wisdom to make the best possible judgments and determined to respect the others's lines and defend his own ones, would therefore have the greatest practical likelihood of living his life in harmony and having all his business run smoothly, no matter what his station in life.

A society of such virtuous people would also make possible a higher level of voluntary benevolence in the form of friendship, charity, hospitality, mutual aid, etc., since one could count on others not to exploit maliciously a benevolent attempt at lowering one's guard on crucially important lines and trying to base human relationships on lines that are more relaxed and pleasant, but harder to defend if push comes to shove. For example, it makes sense to be hospitable if you're living among people whom you know to be determined not to take advantage of your hospitality, or to be merciful and forgiving if you can be reasonably sure that people's transgressions are unusual lapses of judgment unlikely to be repeated, rather than due to a persistent malevolent strategy. Thus, in a society populated by virtuous people, it makes sense to apply the label of virtuousness also to characteristics such as charity, friendliness, mercy, hospitality, etc. (but only to the point where one doesn't let oneself be exploited for them!).

This also seems to clarify the trolley problem-like situations, when we observe that actions that involve your own Schelling boundaries are more important to you than others. You may feel sorry for the folks who will die, perhaps to the point where you'd sacrifice yourself to save them (but perhaps not if this leaves your own kids as poor orphans, since your existing network of tacit agreements involves caring for them). However, pushing the fat man means overstepping the most important and terrible of all Schelling boundaries -- that which defines unprovoked deadly aggression against one's person, and whose violation gives the attacked party the licence to kill you in self-defense. Violating this boundary is such an extreme step that it may be seen as far more drastic than passively witnessing multiple deaths of people in a manner than doesn't violate any tacit agreements and expectations. (Note though that this perspective is distinct from pure egoism: the tacit agreements in question include a certain limited level of altruism, like e.g. helping a stranger in an emergency, at least by calling 911.)

You may view all this virtue talk as consequentialism with respect to the immensely complex network of Schelling points between humans, which takes into account higher-level game-theoretical consequences of actions, which are more important than the factors covered by the usual utilitarian spherical-cow models. Yet this system is far too complex to allow for any simple model based on utility functions or anything similar. At most, we can formulate advice aimed at individuals on how to make judgments based on the relations that concern them personally in some way and are within their own sphere of accurate comprehension -- and the best practical advice that can be formulated basically boils down to some form of virtue ethics.

So, basically, that would be my half-baked summary. I'm curious if anyone thinks that this might make some sense.

Production of paperclips.

In short, it is a disposition to choose actions that are neither excessive nor deficient, but somewhere in between.

What Jayson Virissimo said. The simple definition is, "A virtue is a trait of character that is good for the person who has it." - I feel like that must be a direct quote from somewhere, as I fire off those same words whenever asked that question, but I'm not sure where it might be from (though I'm guessing Richard Volkman).

Many theorists believe that virtues are consistent habits, in the sense that they persist. Weakly, this means that exhibiting a virtue in one circumstance should be usable as evidence that the same agent will exhibit the same virtue in other circumstances. In a stronger version, someone who is (for example) courageous will act as an courageous person would in all circumstances.

Many theorists also believe that virtues represent a mean between extremes, with respect to some value (some would even define them that way, but then the virtues arguably lose some empirical content). So for example, fighting despite being afraid is valuable. The proper disposition towards this is 'courage'. The relevant vice of deficiency is 'cowardice', and the vice of excess is 'brashness'.

Most of the above was advocated by Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics.

There is definitely room on LW for a top-level post on Vipassana.

I've practiced vipassana and can relate to the pain asymbolia thing, and do believe that more advanced vipassana practitioners develop a very high level of it.

Suffering seems to be the consequence of a conflict between two systems: one is trying to protect the map ("Oh!, no!, I don't want to have a worldview that includes a burn in my hand, I don't like that, please go away!") and the other, the territory (the body showing you that there's something wrong and you should pay attention). Consequence: suffering.

Possible solution: just observe the pain for what it is, without trying to conceptualize it. Having got your attention of it, the sensation stays, but there's no suffering.

Of course, you get better at this after the thousandth time you hear Goenka say: "It can be a tickling sensation. It can be a chicken flying sensation. It can be an 'I think I'm dying sensation'—just observe, just observe...". ;)

Hm, from the little knowledge I have it seems developing the asymbolia is plausible. Please write a post on your experiences? I come from a Buddhist humanist background and I think there are some instrumental rationality techniques in that tradition that would be great for people here.

I've felt pain asymbolia was just one aspect of a more extensive change in the nature of mental reactions to mental phenomena.

I would love to hear more about this. I'm extremely skeptical that meditation or prayer can influence the mind to that extent, but I'm very curious.

Indeed. It's common amongst virtue ethicists to discourage finger-wagging, and emphasize that ethics is about "what I should do".

I don't think this post is going to get promoted, so there wouldn't be much apparent overlap to most Less Wrong readers, and I would very much like to see your take. (Aren't you a philosophy grad? I'm just a high school dropout with next to no knowledge of philosophy. Our approaches are very different.)

While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex

I've been thinking along these lines lately myself, and I think the classic 'push a fat man in front of the train' thought experiment is a good example of it. In thought-experiment-land, it's stipulated that pushing the fat man would stop the train and save lives... but in the real world you don't know that with any certainty. So if you make the consequentialist decision to push him, but it doesn't stop the train, you ended up killing one more person than otherwise would have been... not because your moral philosophy was wrong, but because your mental calculations of the physics of stopping a train were wrong.

If, on the other hand, you make your moral decision on the basis of virtue, then so long as your virtues are well calibrated heuristics for real world consequences, then you end up making, on average, correct decisions (meaning decisions leading to good consequences) without needing to get the physics (or whatever) right in individual instances. In this case, the heuristic/virtue in question would be "It's wrong to kill innocent people", leading you to NOT push the fat man, which I believe would be the correct decision in real life.

So your definition of value is essentially 'good consequence heuristic'?

I agree with the sentiment by the way.

The focus on character is about building the capacity to follow through on the proper actions. Someone might be too scared, too weak-willed, or too apathetic to do the right thing, even if they know what to do. Becoming virtuous is an investment in moral capital, making the person more capable of taking the right action in the future.

I take it that you are talking about "training the elephant"*? If you took that to be one of the main points in virtue ethics as argued by The Happiness Hypothesis, then I agree. One of the biggest effects in my shift towards virtue effect has been that I've began constantly evaluating all my actions (and thoughts!) in light of virtue and self-improvement, instead of only having ethics come into place in relatively rare situations. I think this may have been a bit more clear in the original post that Will linked to.

(*: For those who haven't read The Happiness Hypothesis:

One of the points the book makes that we're divided beings: to use the book's metaphor, there is an elephant and there is the rider. The rider is the conscious self, while the elephant consists of all the low-level, unconscious processes. Unconscious processes actually carry out most of what we do and the rider trains them and tells them what they should be doing. Think of e.g. walking or typing on the computer, where you don't explicitly think about every footstep or every press of the button, but instead just decide to walk somewhere or type in something. Readers familiar with PJ Eby will recognize this to be the same as his Multiple Self philosophy.)

From my original post:

So far, I'm not sure of the permanence of this effect. I've previously had feelings of major personal change that sooner or later ended up fading (several of them which are chronicled in this LJ). The rider may get what feels like a major revelation, but the elephant is still running the show, and it needs to be trained over an extended period for there to be any lasting change. So since yesterday, I've been doing my best to keep watch over my thoughts and practice detachment from world-states.

I have the questionable luck of having an easy way of practicing this: I have rashes that frequently make my skin itch. On a couple of occasions, I've tried meditation and the practice of simply passively observing any thoughts and feelings that come to mind until they go away on their own. I began applying that technique to the feeling of itchy skin, and it felt like I was able to ignore the feeling for longer. During the night, I woke up to the feeling of an itch, and on previous nights when that happened I'd been forced to either scratch my skin half to death or get up and apply several layers of moisturizer on it. This time around, even though I did end up scratching it a bit, I was eventually able to fall back to sleep without doing either of those. Also, I believe I was able to some degree detach myself from the feeling of discomfort that I got while I was jogging this morning and getting physically tired. (Not completely, mind you, but to some degree.)

On the less physical front, I've been trying to keep an eye on my thoughts and modify them whenever they didn't really suit the new scheme I'm trying to run. For instance, I noticed that one of my motivations for writing this post was to win the approval of other people who might be interested in this kind of thing or who might admire my skill in introspection or detachment. When I noticed that thought pattern, I attempted to modify it to become more rooted in personal virtue: I am writing this post in order to gain better insight into my transformation, to provide useful or interesting data for others, and so forth. Both introspective insight and voluntarily contributing to humanity's shared reserves of information are virtuous by themselves. I do not need to involve into it the "people's evaluation of me" part, which belongs to my model of the external world and to my model of myself.

The thought experiment was designed to exhibit the different implications of a deontological theory that says murder is always wrong and utilitarianism. It is set up to make it really hard for a consequentialist to not push the guy and really easy for a deontologist not to push the guy. It wasn't invented to aid our thinking about virtue ethics and doesn't try to demand a particular answer from virtue ethics. Aristotle's virtues don't map to the situation well and one could invent a virtue that would recommend either course of action.

The relevant thought experiment for the virtue ethicist is something like the mad bodhisattva- If you could exhibit every vice and thus make yourself miserable but your misery would guide hundreds onto the virtuous path (thereby maximizing utility) would that be the right thing to do?

The virtue ethicist endeavors to be the sort of person who doesn't go around pushing fat men from bridges, and so recognizes it as a terrible, tragic situation.

It's important when thinking about that thought experiment to picture yourself running up to the stranger, shoulder-checking him, wrapping your arms around him, feeling the fabric of his shirt press against your face and smelling his sweat. And then listen to him scream and feel his blood and brains get splattered all over your clothing.

The virtue ethicist, like most people, probably freezes and watches the whole thing unfold, or panics, or futilely tries to get the folks off the tracks before the trolley hits them. Do you expect an actual consequentialist human to do better?

As for the right thing to do, it's probably to have better procedures for stopping people from being in the way of trolleys.

Virtues don't add much to discussion about what you should or shouldn't do. Instead, I think they are useful in talking about what kind of person you should be, i.e. someone courageous enough to push the man iff that's the right action to take.

Virtues don't add much to discussion about what you should or shouldn't do. Instead, I think they are useful in talking about what kind of person you should be, i.e. someone courageous enough to push the man iff that's the action to take.

Hyperbolic discounting is insane because it's dynamically inconsistent (the way humans do it; you could have a dynamically consistent hyperbolic discount rate from a non-indexically-defined zero time, but that's not what's usually meant), not because it's discounting.

I think he's saying a cached set of ethical judgements is a virtue ethics. This could apply equally well with 'deontological' substituted everywhere for 'virtue'.

The whole purpose of this post seems to be that the consequences are surprisingly undisastrous; if you have a real reply to the core point (Like LauraABJ does above) I would be very interested to hear more disagreements.

I'm a little disappointed because I usually agree with your posts more than the LW community at large, but you don't seem to be saying anything at all here.

Virtue ethics is basing morality on fundamental attribution error.

I don't think that's the case, and this deserves a justification. But even so...

Consequences of that are unsurprisingly disastrous.

Are they? What actual consequences are you talking about?

Please elaborate.