Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly – Part I: Skills vs Virtues

Byerly, T. Ryan. Introducing logic and critical thinking: the skills of reasoning and the virtues of inquiry. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017.

 

Part I: Skills vs Virtues 

 

"There are various ways to distinguish between skills on the one hand and virtues on the other. But perhaps the most important difference between the two is the following: a person is not deficient as a person for lacking any particular skills, but a person is deficient as a person for lacking virtues, including intellectual ones." (1)

 

Because I reject free will, I reject the notion of someone being deficient as a person. Byerly goes on to give the example: Lacking in basketball skills makes you deficient as a basketball player, but not as a person. But I think this kind of specification must be carried through in all contexts. Being deficient "as a person" is too vague and doesn't make any sense to me. Being deficient as a reasoner or as a decision-maker or as a flourishing-maximizer or as an empathizer – that is more specific and makes more sense to me.

 

A person's ability to reason or to make decisions or to maximize flourishing is largely dependent on their intelligence, which is something beyond their control. And so one's reasoning abilities, decision-making abilities, empathy, and abilities with respect to maximizing flourishing are likewise beyond one's control, and so they do not reflect in any meaningful way the quality of the person, but rather the quality of what the person happens to have. In the same way that basketball skills are something a person has, but is not identical to, so too are virtues something a person has but is not identical to.

 

The idea of a "bad person", as in an evil person, is a simplified shorthand for a person who lacks empathy, lacks understanding of the badness of the pain of others, lacks the understanding needed to maximize flourishing and minimize suffering, and who disregards the well-being of others (this being still an oversimplification of what it means to be an evil person).

 

Many skills don't speak to a person's empathy or understanding of the goodness of the flourishing of others, while virtues do*, so in that sense there is a moral distinction between skill and virtue, but I see no reason to make a moral distinction between skill and virtue in the sense of what either says about the quality of the person per se rather than the quality of what the person has. 

 

*Some skills, like being a skilled parent or doctor, do indicate high empathy (I'm including empathy-based skills like bedside manner, care, and genuine listening), while a person's "virtues" of self-control and discipline with respect to diet and exercise might reflect their desire to take advantage of the halo effect and manipulate others. So what appears to be a mere skill may indicate serious virtue, and what may appear to be a virtue may ironically indicate vice, or a mix of virtue and vice.

 

If skills reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, and if virtues also reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, then skills and virtues are very similar. Except skills are generally value-neutral in that they can be used in virtuous or vicious ways.

 

I imagine I will return to the topic of skills vs virtues when I read Zagzebski's book on virtue. I also imagine that the conversation of skill vs virtue will be similar to the conversation of capacity (ability) vs virtue. E.g. Intelligence is usually not taken to be a skill or virtue, but a capacity / ability.