Stardate 20040621.1355

(On Screen): Last week I received a letter from a young man named Daryl who lives in Singapore, and replied to it in this post. TMLutas had some comments of his own to Daryl's letter, and mailed them to me with the request that I forward them, which I did, including Lutas' email address. Daryl replied to Lutas (and CC'ed me) and Lutas responded (likewise copying me) and I ended up responding to what Lutas had said. I then requested that Lutas post his letter (which he did) so that I could post my response to it, which you are about to read (though I recommend that you read the Lutas post first).

The basic question was the nature of virtue, and whether government could or should try to promote it.

Lutas used marital infidelity as a way of explaining his view of the nature of virtue, but I found his explanation unsatisfying. He talked about two women, one of whom never considered cheating on her husband, while the other did cheat if she thought she could get away with it. I felt that didn't adequately explore the situation, and expanded it to three women.

I suppose that it is necessary to make clear that everything Lutas said, and everything I said, apply equally to husbands as to wives. Many people, and many cultures, have a double standard about marital fidelity, but I don't think that's ethically defensible. The only reason I talked about "wives" was because Lutas had done so, but if all the sexes of the people in my example are swapped, it would change nothing. Having made that disclaimer, here is a slightly abridged version of the letter I sent:

I'm an atheist, but I was raised Christian. In my mid 20's, I went through a process of examining all my attitudes and beliefs to see which were the result of my Christian upbringing.

But I'm no fool, and if I determined that I believed something was "right" because Christianity had told me so, that didn't mean I would instead decide it was "wrong".

Rather, it became a proposition instead of a conclusion, something I would have to think it through and determine to be "right" or "wrong" without reference to Christian dogma. It turned out that I still agree with quite a lot of the practical ethical guidelines I was taught, but my justification for them is not related to the Church's justification.

I say that because what follows will at first sound a lot like it was written by a Christian, and I am not one. In fact it also makes sense without reference to Christian teachings, but I'm not going to go into why. But it's also roughly consistent with Christian dogma. Lutas is a Christian IIRC, but I don't think he would deeply disagree with it.

Instead of Lutas's two women, let's consider three. Two are similar to his two, but there are subtle differences in my descriptions.

Alice loves her husband Allen and thinks it would be wrong to cheat on him, but has never met a man who made her consider cheating on Allen.

Betty loves her husband Bob, but she meets a lot of men who also attract her, and if she thinks she can do so without getting caught, she often cheats on Bob even though she knows it's wrong.

Cathy loves her husband Carl. She meets a lot of men who attract her, and she knows there have been cases where she could have slept with other men without getting caught, but she always decided not to. Cathy has never cheated on Carl.

Alice has never been tempted. Betty gives in to temptation. Cathy does not give in to temptation.

That's not exhaustive. All three believe that marital infidelity is wrong. We could describe three more women (Dorothy, Elizabeth, and some-name-starting-with-F, identical to these three except that none of them think cheating on their husband is wrong. For my purposes, those are irrelevant.

Let me offer my definition of "virtue": Virtue means acting right even if you know you could get away with acting wrong. (In other words, virtue means you reject the "11th Commandment".)

Virtue means that you try to act morally because you think you should, not because you're afraid someone might be watching.

(And since moral codes are internal, that's why Dorothy, Elizabeth, and some-name-starting-with-F don't matter. If they face a choice and if they don't think either alternative is wrong, then it isn't a moral decision even if someone else does think some choices are wrong.)

In terms of my definition, that means we can't tell whether Alice is virtuous. Virtue is as virtue does, but Alice has never faced temptation, and has never had to make a choice about it. So Alice has never had an opportunity demonstrate virtue.

Betty has been tempted, and Betty gave in. Betty is not virtuous.

Cathy is the only one of the three who has acted virtuously. She's been tempted, and she knows she could sometimes give in to temptation without suffering any practical consequences, but she nonetheless chose not to because she decided it would be wrong.

On the surface it can seem as if Alice and Cathy are the same, because neither of them has ever cheated on her husband. In Christian terms, one could argue that neither of them has sinned. But even for a Christian, there's more to virtue than lack-of-sin.

As an atheist, I d