Is Love a Virtue?

Virtue theories are the only strand of modern ethical thinking that makes much sense in light of cognitive science. Utilitarian calculus becomes a funhouse of infinite regress in a world where experience changes both who we are and what we value. It didn’t take cognitive science to cast doubt on Kant’s strange metaphysics of freedom and decision-making, but even the more modern Kantian assumption of a shared rational faculty that can provide a universal perspective seems fanciful. How could we, whose brains are shaped by evolution, divergent genetics, and fundamentally different experiences have such a shared capability? Where would it come from? How could it resist the remorseless learning that shapes almost aspect of our intelligence?

Virtue theories, on the other hand, have always assumed that ethics is a matter of dispositional training. Children are not born just, humble or courageous. They must learn to be these things, and they learn them, as we would expect from cognitive science, by doing them. Cognitive structures are built in our minds by experience and feedback. Our brains do not come laden with very much pre-built capability, but they do have a remarkable capacity for learning. When we learn, we change the structures in our brain and the vast majority of our learning in any field is by doing. In fact, it would be surprising if it were not possible to build dispositive structures in the brain…