Ben Bradley reviews Robert Merrihew Adams's A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (OUP, 2006), in the most recent Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. (LINK)
For the curious, here's a final paragraph from Ben (who, being a fellow Up-state New Yorker, I've had the pleasure of fine dinner conversation on a few occasions: he is a very nice guy and a good conversationalist).
I should mention, for the curious, that this book is unlike Finite and Infinite Goods in that Adams's theory, and his arguments, are wholly detachable from his theological views ('God' makes an appearance, but primarily in parentheses).
Note that--keeping use and mention in their proper place--it is the *word* God that makes an an occasional parenthetical appearance. I think Adams would hope that in some sense there'd be a genuine theophany of the *person* of God! :-)~
Hmm. Now if Russellian propositions occur parenthetically in that discussion, then maybe God occurs parenthetically too. God might be a constituent in some of those! I think that's consistent with only sentences/statements occurring in parentheses.
Anyway, Ben doesn't seem to make a use/mention mistake there. Maybe I missed something.
Not sure how you got the impression I was alleging Ben made a mistake. I was merely calling the distinction to the readers mind to say something potentially humorous. I guess the potentiality wasn't actualized in your case.
Yes, well, God in the Russellian proposition was also a joke. You know, sort of.
Yeah, I got it. :-)~
Those guys really think God *is* in there though, just like water is in a bucket (some of them anyway, I think Kit Fine actually says propositions are mereological sums of their constituents).
That makes some think of the Russellian theory as a joke. Sort of.
Can anyone explain this remark of Bradley's to me? He writes:
"I think Hurka's view has one major advantage over Adams's. Adams is content to say that excellence is a messy business. He offers no general principles that determine whether one way of being for the good is more excellent than another. Perhaps he is right to think that no such principle will be plausible, and that it must be decided on a case-by-case basis whether a given trait is an excellence. But in that case, what we have is not so much a theory of excellence as a list of excellences."
But Adams is surely not content to say excellence is a messy business; he has a theory of excellence as Godlikeness (to put it roughly). Perhaps that gives no particularly helpful epistemic criterion, but it does give an explanation that unifies various forms of excellence, and that's what what Bradley says is missing if you go with the messy view. Bradley must know the Finite and Infinite Goods view, so it is not likely that he is just speaking from ignorance here.
So am I misunderstanding something?
Good point, I don't know. Maybe I'll ask him.
Hey, I just heard you guys were talking about me. That's an interesting question about the connection between the views of the two books. In the new book he doesn't indicate that he wants godlikeness to do any work in his theory of virtue, as far as I can tell. Certainly if he gives an explanation of excellence in terms of godlikeness, his account of virtue becomes less plausible to nonbelievers. So there's at least that reason for him to favor the messy view over the godlikeness view in the new book. I will have to look at F&IG again.
Hey Ben! I was hoping we'd drag you into commenting!