ATS2875 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Virtue Ethics, Payphone, Dime (United States Coin)
31 Aug 2018
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Situationist experiments and the frailty of virtue: the principal foundation of situationist claims about the frailty of supposed virtues is found in experiments intended to identify factors that explain variations in human behaviour. It is claimed that such experiments have shown that situational factors that seem to have little moral significance have more explanatory power than the personal qualities we are likeliest to regard as virtues. And this is taken as evidence that those personal qualities are too weak to qualify as virtues. Helpfulness and imperfect obligation: we do not expect anyone to help on every occasion that presents itself. It is acceptable, and normal even in helpful people, that one sometimes does not help. Some will never do so, as a matter of policy: there are cases, of course, in which there is a strict and perfect obligation to help another pe(cid:396)so(cid:374).
