The contemporary discussion of modesty has focused on whether or not modest people are accurate about their own good qualities. This essay argues that this way of framing the debate is unhelpful and offers examples to show that neither ignorance nor accuracy about the good qualities related to oneself is necessary for modesty. It then offers an attention-based account, claiming that what is necessary for modesty is to direct one’s attention in certain ways. By analyzing modesty in this way, we can best explain the distinct features of modesty, keep much of what is intuitive in contemporary accounts, and better understand why modesty is a virtue at all.
I defend an account of when and why anger is morally virtuous or vicious. Anger often manifests what we care about; a sports fan gets angry when her favorite team loses because she cares about the team doing well. Anger, I argue, is made morally virtuous or vicious by the underlying care or concern. Anger is virtuous when it manifests moral concern and vicious when it manifests moral indifference or ill will. In defending this view, I reject two common views about anger and moral character. First, I respond to several arguments that attempt to show that all anger is vicious. Then I respond to the view that some anger is required to be a virtuous person. Anger, on my view, can be morally virtuous but is not a necessary condition for being a virtuous person. This best accommodates not only morally irrelevant failures to get angry but also allows for emotional variation among virtuous people.
What does it mean to be a morally good person? It can be tempting to think that it is simply a matter of performing certain actions and avoiding others. And yet there is much more to moral character than our outward actions. We expect a good person to not only behave in certain ways but also to experience the world in certain ways within.
In their paper, ''I Can't Believe I'm Stupid,'' Adam Elga and Andy Egan introduce a notion of anti-expertise and argue that it is never rational to believe oneself to be an anti-expert. I wish to deny the claim that it is never rational for agents like us to ascribe anti-expertise to ourselves by describing cases where selfascribed anti-expertise makes real life agents more rational.Keywords Epistemology Á Anti-expertise Á Irrationality Á Adam elga Á Andy egan 1 Rationality and anti-expertise Egan and Elga (2005) argue that the self-ascription of anti-expertise entails a rational failure, but before laying out their argument it will be helpful to clarify their use of the term 'anti-expertise.' Their use is quite technical; an anti-expert regarding some subject is one who has at least two beliefs about the subject, confidence in at least one, and at least half of the beliefs about this subject are false. 1 Anti-expertise, then, is not simply a lack of confidence in one's beliefs, but rather a confidence that one's beliefs have gone wrong. This use of the term 'expertise' is somewhat idiosyncratic. When compared with ordinary English usage, this is quite a restricted sense. We think of experts as not
All of us, aside from the most devout cynics and amoralists, have to figure out how to become better people. Even though I know a good person will be kind to others, actually being kind -kind to this person, right now -can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes even avoiding cruelty can be a tall order. If there is any progress to be made, how are we to understand the process of changing ourselves for the better? This is the central question of moral development.Though much of our moral development occurs in childhood and many classic works in the area have focused on moral development in this period, it is a lifelong challenge. 1 The task of becoming a better person does not end with puberty; it is one we grapple with day after day for our entire lives. Though moral development in childhood raises particular philosophical issues, my discussion here will apply to moral development at any age.First, I will challenge what is, at least in some circles, the conventional wisdom about how moral development works. Influenced by Aristotle, many philosophers have understood the task of moral development to be similar developing a skill. On this model, learning to be a good person is like learning to be a good harpist: Just as people get to be a better harpists by sitting down and playing the harp, you get to be a better person by actually doing the things a good person does.
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