
I recently wrote a 1000-word-philosophy article about virtue ethics. In preparing this, I was somewhat surprised to find that people are still very bothered by the issue of explanatory power. Questions of explanatory power crop up everywhere, from intro textbooks to journal articles, from tweets to conversations with random people on the street.
I suppose with a name as cool as explanatory power, popularity is to be expected. I’m imagining a bunch of X-Men (or should it be X-People?) sitting around discussing their powers. “I have laser eyes”, “I have mind control”.
Consequentialism is in there with the cool kids saying, “well, I have X-planatory power. Now listen, you guys could do a lot more good by working as mercenaries and donating your earnings to the world’s most efficient charities.”
Virtue ethics is sadly standing outside in the snow, looking in through the window, their little wool hat decaying in the radiation of the post-apocalyptic world, saying to themselves “I wish I had X-planatory power.”
Don’t worry, virtue ethics! You can come in from the snow. Don’t let that guy with the razor claws bully you about not having X-planatory power. You can actually X-plain a lot. As we are going to see now.
Continue reading “Practical Whysdom: Virtue Ethics and Explanation”