Plato, Aristotle, Virtue, & Baseball

It occurs to me that the section of Annas’ Intelligent Virtue that I last commented on can be interpreted to strengthen both Aristotelian and Platonic frameworks. 

Consider this passage from Annas, Chapter 5. 

From the Aristotelian point of view, this raises the familiar distinction between the good citizen and the good man.  The good citizen is good relative to the regime.  Someone who is a good citizen in a democracy may not be a citizen at all in an aristocratic or oligarchic regime, since Aristotle defines citizenship in terms of eligibility for some level of public office.  A good citizen in the latter will necessarily defend aristocratic standards which would be bad form in a democracy.  However, a good man is the same in every regime. 

Aristotle points to reality as it is observed in any time and place and tends to regard the invisible and the intangible as abstractions.  Plato, by contrast, tends to regard the invisible and intangible as more real than the concrete observables.  I hold that thinking of evolution in terms of “design-space”, as Daniel Dennett famously does in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, is Platonic rather than Aristotelian. 

Design space indicates all the possible arrangements that a given system allows.  Consider a simple, sequential toss of two coins.  The design space of this system allows for four possibilities: heads, heads; tails, tails; heads, tails; and tails, heads.  Only one of these positions in the system’s design space can be realized in a single action, but all are equally possible. 

While these possibilities can be conceived of as mere abstractions from the coins actually in hand, this seems metaphysically stingy.  The four possibilities are as real as the four routes stretching away from a crossroads.  They are extensions of the time/design space that open up from the ontological character of the coins and the practice of coin-tossing.  They are intangible and invisible to be sure, but so is the potential energy of the coins held above the ground; yet the potential energy is real and so are the positions in design space.

Annas’ skill analogy suggests something much more complex but equally real about a wide range of human activities.  Consider baseball for an example.  There are, perhaps, alternative ways that the rules of the game might be designed.  That does not mean that the rules are arbitrary or that the arrangement of the game is merely conventional.  The time it takes for a ball to be delivered from the pitcher to the catcher and again from the catcher to the second baseman is very nearly the same as the time it takes to run from first to second base.  From that the rules governing base stealing emerge.  There might be other arrangements of the diamond that would preserve the play; however, there are very many arrangements that would ruin it.  Baseball design space is rather narrow in what it allows if the game is to be realized.  I happen to think that is a case of perfection that resulted from a close attention to Platonic forms. 

Likewise with the development of virtue, a rather narrow design space opens up out of human ends (flourishing) and human capacities.  Virtue is no more selected for in evolutionary history than baseball; however, both are the result of evolved capacities and inclinations.  Only so many games are possible and only one virtue is possible, regardless of the wide diversity of human cultures.  Here Plato seems to me to be more informative than Aristotle. 

I would add a larger reflection.  Evolutionary cladograms in the sense that they can be rearranged depending on what traits one is focusing on.  Yet the claim that these cladograms reflect the actual history of organisms means that something very invisible and intangible is nonetheless very real.  That every organism is the offspring of successful breeders is an ontological fact about every organism, regardless of the fact that the ancestors are mostly all gone.  The fact that design space contains certain possibilities for future evolution but not others (we probably aren’t getting wings) is equally real.  This looks to me like a case of Platonic forms. 

Intelligent Virtue 2

In chapter 2 of Intelligent Virtue, Julia Annas explains two things.  One is that virtue is a reliable disposition of a person to perform virtuous actions.  This disposition must be cultivated.  A person is encouraged toward virtuous actions by her parents and her friends and associates.  She may consciously cultivate virtue in herself.  It is by doing virtuous things that one develops a virtuous character.  To acquire a virtue is to become a certain kind of person, which is to say, a person who tends to do virtuous things. 

Virtue does not arise abstractly, as if we decide in advance which actions are virtuous and then attempt to motivate people to do such actions.  Rather, virtue is developed by working on and with existing motivations, encouraging and shaping the ones that tend toward virtue and discouraging those that do not. 

She confronts a certain chicken and egg problem here.  If virtuous actions and virtues seem to produce one another, is one nonetheless primary over the other?  You might suspect that we value a virtuous character only for the sake of virtuous actions, and so the latter are primary.  Annas objects.  To employ a famous analogy which she does not employ, it like the saying that if you give someone a fish he eats for a day but if you teach him to fish he eats for life.  Just as knowing how to fish is more valuable than any single fish, a virtuous person is more valuable than any single virtuous action. 

I would add a couple of reflections at this point.  One concerns the classical view of beauty.  The beautiful makes it possible to appreciate virtue apart from the outcome of virtuous actions.  If we value virtue only for the sake of virtuous actions, and virtuous actions for the sake of the good things that they make possible, then we would value virtue only when it is successful.  Yet it is quite possible, perhaps unavoidable, to admire virtue when it cannot succeed.  We admire the three hundred Spartans even though they perished and their bravery had no significant strategic value.  That is because it was beautiful. 

A second reflection concerns the biological roots of virtue.  Annas acknowledges the existence or at least the possible existence of natural virtues.  We may be born with at least some tendency toward virtue.  Though he doesn’t use the same terms, Michael Tomasello’s excellent book Why We Cooperate? is addressed precisely to this question.  Here is a quote from a post at my old blog South Dakota Politics:

Chimpanzees are capable of cooperating but they lack any understanding of cooperation.  Two chimps can each learn to pull a bar in sequence, so that food is delivered.  But all each chimp knows is that if I pull the bar, I get the food.  Neither chimp understands that the other has to do his part, nor does either expect, let alone demand, that the other cooperates.  

Human children, from an early age, have a sense of “we-ness”.  Helping behavior, unlearned and not signaled, develops spontaneously.  When a child (about 3 years old) sees an adult in need of assistance (say, opening a cabinet door), the child is moved to provide it.  In one fascinating experiment, an adult plays a simple game with a child.  The child puts a block in one of two inclined tubes.  It slides down the tube and the adult catches it in a tin can.  It makes a pleasant ring and the adult shouts in satisfaction.  The game is obviously fun, so when the adult walks away the child will try to bring him back to the game.  The child understands that the adult is a partner whom he needs to keep playing, that the game is something that “we” are doing.  This is something that chimpanzees cannot grasp.  

I submit that this is evidence for natural virtue.  Young children spontaneously develop a sense of mutual obligations.  That is what we work on when we attempt to cultivate virtue in our children and in ourselves.  

The second thing that Annas explains in this chapter is virtue is not about routines.  A routine is something we develop so we can perform some task without devoting much thought to it.  Annas uses the example of driving every day to a certain location.  It becomes a routine when we always use the same route and do it so unreflectively that we often are barely aware of getting there.  

Virtuous action may indeed be quicker than thought.  Annas uses the analogy of the master piano player, who can translate his understanding of a piece of music into the work of his fingers very fast.  Unlike a routine, however, this work is essentially intelligent.  He has a conception of the work, what it means and how it ought to be played.  He is intensely aware of what he is doing.  He can do it well because he has cultivated his genius over a long period of time.  Like the ace tennis player, he responds creatively to every moment.  

Annas employs an important point made by Aristotle.  Courage is most evident in those who respond to unexpected situations.  Those who rely on routines are at a loss when a sudden alarm or something else unforeseen calls for a creative response.  Someone with the virtue of courage can respond more effectively to such surprises precisely because her virtue was developed in a long series of creative responses (dare I say, adapting) to circumstances as they arise.