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A Response to Martin Calkins’s “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Ronald Sandler
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Abstract:

Martin Calkins proposes the “combined use of casuistry and virtue ethics as a way for both sides to move ahead on [the] pressing issue [of agricultural biotechnology].” However, his defense of this methodology relies on a set of mistaken, albeit familiar, claims regarding the normative resources of virtue ethics: (1) virtue ethics is egoistic; (2) virtue ethics cannot defend any particular account of the virtues as the objectively correct ones and is therefore inextricably relativistic; (3) virtue ethics cannot supply a procedure for providing practical or policy guidance in concrete situations; and (4) virtue ethics cannot adequately account for the possibility of conflicting or partial virtues. After a brief overview of the basic structure of virtue ethics, I take up each of these misconceptions in turn. I conclude with some comments on the implications of these considerations for Calkins’s proposed methodology for addressing the issue of agricultural biotechnology.

Type
Response Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 319 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2005

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References

Notes

I would like to thank John Danley, two anonymous reviewers, and the editor of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

1. Martin Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” Business Ethics Quarterly 12(3) (2002): 305–30.

2. Ibid.: 305.

3. Ibid.: 312.

4. “Introduction,” in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (Oxford University Press, 1997), 2–3.

5. Hursthouse develops her account in On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991), reprinted in Virtue Ethics, ed. Crisp and Slote, 217–38. Other influential contemporary accounts include Christine Swanton’s in Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Michael Slote’s in From Morality to Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

6. Hursthouse, “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” 219.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. This is not to suggest that there is not great diversity in virtue ethics. Variety in virtue ethics arises from, among other things, competing conceptions of human flourishing, different methodologies for developing substantive accounts of the virtues and flourishing, different accounts of the relationship between virtue and flourishing, differences in particular substantive accounts of virtue and flourishing, and different conceptions of the relationship between the virtues and right action.

11. Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 312. Calkins draws upon the work of Gilbert Meilaender in The Theory and Practice of Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), when articulating this concern. According to Meilaender, “concentration upon the virtues may tempt us to self-indulgence by leading to what Williams calls a reflexive concern. That is, not only do I act with gratitude, but I act from a conception of myself as one who acts gratefully” (14).

12. For elaboration on these points see Julia Annas, “The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others,” in The Good Life and the Human Good, ed. Ellen Paul, Fred Miller, and Jeffrey Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 133–48.

13. Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 312. This concern is also discussed by David Solomon in “Internal Objections to Virtue Ethics,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, ed. Peter French, Theodore Uehling, Jr., and Howard Wettstein (Notre Dame, 1988): 428–441. A prominent proponent of the relativistic nature of virtue (and morality more generally) is Alasdair Macintyre in After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

14. For simplicity’s sake I am assuming here that there are no special considerations—for example, the individual is not guilty of committing some atrocity—that might justify inflicting pain upon him.

15. This is a much compressed version of the case for objectivism in virtue ethics. For more complete discussions see Martha Nussbaum’s “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” in Moral Philosophy, ed. George Sher (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt Brace: 1996), 492–516; Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics; and my “Culture and the Specification of Environmental Virtue,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 10(2) (2003). In each case some degree of objectivism is achieved by defending a method of virtue specification other than a simple empirical one that merely records obtaining cultural and societal conceptions. Even Aristotle’s famously empirical methodology, with its commitment to preserving common beliefs (doxa), is not that naively empirical. He employs guiding discriminative and deliberative principles, and thereby obtains some degree of independence from cultural mores.

16. “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 312. Formulations of this concern can be found in Solomon’s “Internal Objections to Virtue Ethics” and James Donahue’s “The Use of Virtue and Character in Applied Ethics,” Horizons 17(2) (1990): 228–43; both, however, go on to reject the criticism. A proponent of the criticism is Sarah Conly in “Flourishing and the Ethics of Virtue,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, ed. Peter French et al. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 83–96. William Frankena also develops a version of this concern in Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1973).

17. For example, books 3–6 and 8–9 in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985).

18. Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 312.

19. An extended discussion of moral dilemmas in virtue ethics can be found in Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics.

20. Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 314–15. Calkins believes that “to formulate and use an ordered set of settled truth-bearing cases in tandem with a virtue ethic emphasizing good moral character is a win-win for GMO proponents and opponents alike and a possible way to break the current moral impasse” (316). The methodology would be a win for opponents of genetically modified organisms because it would result in a “strengthening of corporate ethics” (316) among the corporations producing and marketing agricultural biotechnologies. It would also increase their credibility since it would require them to acknowledge the promise of the technology for alleviating hunger and suffering. The methodology would be a win for proponents of genetically modified organisms because appealing to “persuasive character based narratives” (314) would advance their moral standing and thereby increase public acceptance of their products.

21. It is worth emphasizing that this methodology requires evaluating technologies individually. For example, while promoting some agricultural biotechnology might be unjust (i.e., those who would bear the burden of risk associated with the technology would not accrue any of the benefits from it or would not be allowed to participate in deliberations regarding whether to adopt the technology), promoting some other technology might not be (i.e., it would appropriately distribute burdens and benefits and would allow for appropriate participation in decision-making). The details are thus going to be crucial when evaluating each case of agricultural biotechnology, and a position of either global opposition or global endorsement is not likely to be favored by the methodology.

22. For a more detailed discussion of this strictly virtue ethics approach for evaluating particular agricultural biotechnologies, see my “A Virtue Ethics Perspective on Genetically Modified Crops,” in Environmental Virtue Ethics, ed. Philip Cafaro and Ronald Sandler (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

23. Calkins, “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural Biotechnology,” 309–10.

24. Ibid., 310.