HS 104_2_Virtue theory in context_ Conditions of responsibility

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]so as usual if you have questions or remarks you can post it in the comments or you can directly ask us you know very few are around okay again i'm not going full screen for some reason and yeah so one of your friends i'm not very sure whether he's here or not but he asked a question which i did not reply in the email because um it required some articulation and discussion but to many of you who have emailed me about clarifications questions and you know other things i have replied in the email okay so uh i am doing that and i hope my i'm not doing it from the uh from the webex platform because it eventually leads to some sort of technical failures so um i'm doing it with my own you know screen recording app so uh this is where we stopped if uh if uh i am recalling it correctly and the the basic point there was that you know at the end of the day when we have the three frameworks that is consequentialism or utilitarianism deontology and virtue theory in most decision making scenario such as you know these examples are showing other than deontology the two traditions uh those are utilitarianism and virtual theory they are inconclusive okay now the reason why utilitarianism can become inconclusive in a context is due to lack of information okay we don't have enough information to really process what could be a public good and happiness okay but the reason why we are unable to decide about virtue theory as to what can happen and what is the right decision is because of the conflict of virtues and not prioritizing correct virtues so so it's pretty straightforward in most of the cases in khan but we will see later on that even in kant and deontology we have we may run into some inclusivity at the end okay when we discuss examples okay maybe after the mid-semester examination okay so uh so the valid question to ask here is why is it that in the context of virtue theory why is it that certain virtues are in conflict with certain other virtues and if you have studied management uh you know you might have come across this hierarchy of needs and you know people doing certain things based on this hierarchy and people going after certain uh you know entities in life okay it could be mental entities as well as physical entities but maslow when when he came up with this everybody believed in it outrightly that you know we start with psychological needs and the motive is basically behind an action to sorry we go for physiological needs and psychological needs come at the end we go for the most basic you know physical requirements and then you know there is a hierarchy about safety and so on and at the end we reach self-actualization where we express ourselves freely with whatever potential we have okay so the hierarchy of needs is a is a model that we have about why human beings behave in a certain way so so the basic question is why is it that an individual say a wants to do something okay individuals do certain things every day okay it need not be always moral actions that they execute but actions that are mundane to you know professional and so on and so forth economical etc okay so uh the motives the intention could be very different okay and when we decide in the case of virtue theory as to in a particular context what sort of words you should get priority these motives come into some sort of conflict and i'm going to probably i said this but i'm i don't really remember whether i elaborated on this that there is a there is an evolutionary reason as to why we care about our image and you know uh our dignity etc okay uh so evolutionarily we are hardwired to care about the image that others have about us as to what we are okay i'm not getting into the theory the biological theory about that because you know that will die that will you know make me digress into something else but the basic idea is that when we were hunters and gatherers and foragers in the jungle say ten thousand years back or even before that we were a close-knit community okay human beings as a species we lived as a close-knit community and most of the time we are born in a community and we die in that community with the life spanning uh something say for example between 10 to 70 years or so or even more so the meaning of life was essentially linked to the uh the image and the respect and the dignity that the community gives us okay so that is valued over other things okay so people used to uh safeguard respect and dignity against physical needs okay so you know people may not steal even if you know um they are hungry okay so you can clearly see that the maslow's muslobian model is in a certain sense not addressing the conflict of virtues okay and uh within the question that uh that many of you have as to why is it that worst ethics doesn't really work is uh i'm coming coming to that but this is what i said throughout the clips and the other discussion that we had in the last you know live so first of all if we want to apply over to ethics we need to identify the context or the moral dialogue context of the moral dilemma okay so there is a decision making context which is moral in nature or ethical in nature and then we need to really figure out why is it that this context pertains to profession or personal situations and so on and so forth okay now once we contextualize as to here is here is the dilemma that's uh available in our professional context etc then we need to identify the words use that are prioritized in the context okay so and this varies like the virtues that are prioritized in engineering may not be the ones that are prioritized for a firefighter or a uh or a soldier okay so this this keeps on changing and uh yeah so identify the context identify the virtues that are to be prioritized for the profession then you go for counterfactual thinking what would have such a virtuous individual done what would such a virtuous individual do in a particular context in profession okay now junaid's point was that if i recall that this is a roundabout way of saying that you know we do the right thing at the right time the answer is it is okay but it is the case with all the other all the the other two theories as well okay now and he has probably identified why is it that we need to migrate to codes of ethics okay rather than frameworks because frameworks won't be helping us to take real time decisions in ethical context so uh so each context has got certain priorities or virtues and the right action would be the action done by a virtuous person fit for that context okay so it's like um you know suppose a car has got a sensor that detects rain and it switches on wiper and then you know we can say that so there is this attribute of the sensor and because that attribute is there in the car it sort of switches on the viper so virtues are and this is regarding his secondary question in the in the email that what are virtues okay so uh plato digital define virtues as complex skills okay which are social rational and psychological and sometimes emotional as well okay for example temperance courage honesty etc okay these are sometimes rational skills but also it can be emotional skills like you know the ones that we identify in eq so uh similar to the way a wiper blade function immediately after rain hits when there is an there is a need for showing courage a courageous individual because he or she has the uh virtue courage in you know in that person in that entity they just exhibit it okay it's like a cause and effect mechanism so a right action would be the one that encourages individual do very round about way of addressing the whole issue but the point that aristotle is making is that before we think before we think about what should be the right action in a context or in say the kind of examples that i gave you about car accident and should i rush to the hospital etc we should think about a society where virtues are foster and virtues are available in the individuals cultivated in the individuals okay so it's not like you know we wait for virtues to appear when an event you know unfolds right in front of us okay now think about a scenario i mean this can happen to any person's life you know just assume that you're traveling and there is an accident there is a road accident okay this is an analogy now moral action etc those are suspended here if you have gorda training for giving first aid for example then uh you know people who who are trained in the first aid program they can immediately jump into action because they have the training and others who are unable to do they may not be able to attend to the people who are injured okay and in the same way people who are virtuous when they are trapped in the dilemma they come out of it because certain virtues are scaled according to priority for that particular context and i think once we get into codes for engineers this would be pretty clear okay so i agree that inconclusivity is there but inconclusivity is there for the other two you know frameworks as well so uh it's not about what should be the right action so the right question is if i frame it differently what we should do in a particular situation this question is suspended and we ask what sort of virtues we should have to address this context okay and that's not a single days uh you know afford it's not a single day's effort that will give you this this group of virtues for a profession or a you know context personal or professional whatever it is okay so uh so the the need for codes in professions in different context came precisely because of the inconclusive nature of the three ethical frameworks okay and you know you might have seen this already with the quiz and other examples that we had that in most situations it could be that if we argue in a roundabout way that there can be two correct answers but the best and some of those the best one could be uh clarified easily but because of lack of information we can still you know give the benefit over the benefit of the doubt to the others okay so the general inconclusive nature of the three ethical frameworks along with the fact that we need to take a decision real time okay it's a real time decision that engineers take maybe in some moral context you may get time to think and then you you might want to apply different frameworks but most of the times what happens is that in the nick of time you need to take a decision that has moral character okay and there uh none of these frameworks may help you but codes will help you these are like heuristics you have a set of codes in front of you and you just go through it and then decide according to the code okay okay so inconclusive nature of the framework and real time decision making these are the two things that will lead us to the course okay now again again to go back to virtue theory okay and maybe take an example as to why is it that is difficult but at the same time context will require certain [Music] virtues in an individual these two [Music] uh are one interesting but at the same time it's not that easy to analyze and i agree with your friend here but the first example is about you might remember this but i'm not very sure whether this a this is in your you know uh this is easily available to you in your memory so this is the costa concordia mishap okay in the mediterranean if i am not wrong and so the the vessel sank bottom line is vessel sank but um there were a series of decisions that led to the crisis okay and we are not getting into the series of decisions but we are getting into the trial that followed the mishap of costa concordia and what happened was that the captain of of the vessel was scrutinized and his actions were scrutinized francesco scattini if i'm correct about his name and the trial court of course we are thinking about legal issues here but at the same time the trial court claimed that the captain should have stayed in the vessel till the last man is out or till the last crew member or you know the person is out so the captain captain should be according to maritime courts of ethics okay should be the last person to go out or the vessel of the sinking vessel okay you might have seen this in movies and so on and so forth but so that's that's uh kind of virtue that as a professional maritime sailor or you know someone in that industry leading uh a crew of a vessel upholds okay that in the event of uh of of some sort of mishap or accident i'll be the last person to leave and i will see to it that everyone else goes out of the vessel evacuates and then i will go now in in this case that did not happen okay in this case uh scattini left you know i think he was one of the first few to leave the vessel so the trial court felt that he didn't have enough virtue moral fiber to be a captain of a vessel okay so so they they finally gave this decision that it was some moral uh sort of act a context was moral that he should have stayed okay but he did not and therefore the moral was upheld as a legal one okay legally justified one and then he was probably given i'm not very sure 16 years or 12 years of sentence for this okay now imagine in place of scattini someone else is there okay with virtue what he or she would have done would have you know would have changed the the nature of casualty in this whole episode okay so um you know in in this context 32 people or 35 people i'm i think around around 30 people lost their lives including an indian a5 if i remember it correctly okay now think about the the the hudson river landing okay this this again i'm not very sure whether you recall this incident i saw it probably in news channels and then there was a movie i guess i think i think this right hand bottom photograph is from the movie so [Music] so here again a series of this series of decisions that and series of causes that led to the mishap the incident that we are not discussing but there was a there was a moral context that evolved afterwards okay after the flight landed and that was about evacuation and how he or she should carry out evacuation including the crew members and you know in in here contrasting this with the the captain of the vessel if you you know just recall the previous incident so he had the moral fiber or the the property to stay there till the end he would have left immediately after the flight landed on the river but he did not okay so imagine scotty in this i'm not i'm not again uh you know targeting some individual by this lecture but uh the fact is that if you think about moral context and course of ethics uh it brings us into this confusion as to which moral virtue is apt for a context okay now in the uh hudson bay hudson river landing no one was hurt if again my memory serves and at the end the captain was vindicated etc so that there is a long story that followed afterwards but uh imagine in place of schedule what this per person this captain would have done okay and that is counter factual thinking and that's what aristotle wants uh us to do okay so you place the right person here in this case um captain sullenberger if i'm again correct what he would have done okay and and in these kinds of moral context post hope post the event the um the state also uh equalizes so there is an equivalency that the state also gives to [Music] gives between morality and legality so what is moral is then deemed to be legal as well in these types of context okay here is a couple of examples that you might want to think about when thinking about contacts in professions okay the costa concordia incident and the uh hudson landing you know episode okay one ended up in tragedy whereas the other one was a tragedy but then it was salvaged because of virtues as as you know analyzed okay now uh how and why should we progress to course or why do we do that this is something that i already told and to pick up certain codes for certain professions okay in certain context uh we will require all the three frameworks that we discussed so far so we we will require deontology utilitarianism and virtue theory to derive these codes for different context okay and we will see how it is done and why is it done because you know real it's a real time decision and we can't wait for our brain to kick start and think about what is the right action according to khan or in in in a moral dilemma because these are real-time decisions and for real-time decisions we need manuals okay manuals or you know heuristics codes etc rules basically okay and also because of the general inconclusive nature of the three ethical frameworks that we studied okay given given that this is where we stand right now in the course so we started with deontology moved on to jupiter in some virtual theory and if you ask me which part of the course is the most important one i would say that this part about conditions for responsibility is the most important one okay and i'm probably going to take another five or six minutes and then i'll wind up so uh what are the conditions for you know taking responsibility of an action and for to sort of understand this you need to figure out the binary between morality and immorality okay so someone is moral if he or she understands okay based on any framework okay it could be any sort of framework that we studied [Music] as to the belief in the uh moral framework okay i said it could be any moral framework so so the person who is immoral is also believing that there is a framework to decide what is morally justified or not okay so an immoral action is done by someone who believes in the framework in the same way moral action is also done by someone who believes in the framework but beyond the binary lies a very interesting case of our morality okay now uh you know a moral very similar to what we have in other concepts like a political etc and morality means someone for whom morality and immorality doesn't make any sense okay okay someone who has transcended the belief in moral rules okay justification of moral acts etc okay what sort of person that would be and here is an interesting example from uh frederick nietzsche the existential philosopher he says that what is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil i think in his case it was probably romantic love that he implied but um you know typically people say that oh you know we are in love but it's beyond good and bad okay so and his book itself is called beyond good and evil by which he means beyond good and bad okay so someone who has transcended the very possibility of becoming moral or immoral okay imagine a small child a small child is a moral okay suppose a small child is breaking a glass okay not intentionally okay but even if suppose it intentionally breaks and most of the times it doesn't happen intentionally but suppose if it intentionally breaks it just wander to hear the sound of glass breaking on the floor uh the child who is very young okay for him or her morality or immorality doesn't mean anything okay so if a child puts on a fan okay and then laughs on top of that and you know we we don't really hold the child accountable for that action okay and in the same way there are contacts like animals kids and a lot of other people in society who are amoral they don't want to be placed in the binary between morality and immorality okay because they don't believe in any of the frameworks so unless the child understands that it's wrong to break the glass or it's not a good thing to do this etc we can't punish the child or it cannot be held accountable okay but we go the other way most of the times okay for small reasons where we for all sorts of small reasons we punish our moral people and it's of no use because for our moral people they won't be able to decide why is it that this person is punishing okay so uh here is another example and this is nietzsche's madman a portrayal of mad people eccentric i mean i shouldn't say eccentric because eccentric people sometimes are aware of morality and immorality but people who have transcended beyond recognition okay beyond their recognition of morally correct or wrong actions okay so nietzsche claims about a madman who comes and talks about certain things but uh people are not really interested in that person because he's a madman right and in the same way as in the case of child if a madman does something we don't normally hold him uh responsible for his action because he or she is amoral and not moral or immoral but if somebody believes somebody knows that okay this is a wrong action and i'm still doing it then it it's called an immoral action okay so in the ancient ancient traditions eastern traditions we have uh you know saints and you know people who are who have sort of transcended society and they go to the mountains etc they are normally termed as a moral people for them moral principles don't really make any sense okay so uh first point is that person who is amoral cannot be held responsible for actions okay and the second point and this is more important in the engineering context the second point is that a person shouldn't be doing an action out of coercion out of force or pressure okay if a person doesn't have choice to pick one or the other then the person cannot be held responsible for an action and in professional situation you know if suppose someone's boss is coercing a person to do something then it cannot be uh or the responsibility cannot be uh the employees okay it should be that the responsibility then uh migrates to the boss not to the uh to the employee under him worker okay in personal situations again if somebody is asking you to do something out of pressure out of force okay then there is no choice and therefore you are not responsible for that action okay so uh morality number one number two uh act of coercion okay in these two cases responsibility doesn't arise okay and the act of coercion also is understood as a lack of freedom or freedom in the sense that but if you have freedom to choose then you know you are responsible but if you don't have if you are forced to do something then you are not responsible then the person who is forcing may be responsible okay and this leads to another issue but right now we are not going to talk about it [Music] the third uh point for responsibility is ignorance okay so if you are doing something out of ignorance um there can be two possibilities one is that you are or someone is uh intentionally staying ignorant okay then that in the professional context would be termed as negligence but if you're really not aware of if you don't have enough information and then you do something about a a critical in a critical situation then you won't be termed responsible for that action okay so i was not aware this is the typical answer that people give i was not aware of the larger you know things and i was not informed i didn't know what will happen etc etc okay so uh in the personal situation again ignorance might just play a role okay i was not aware of several things you know just pulling a lever and it caused say power cut to the whole town okay and normally in legal scenario if you're aware of the the background okay if you had enough information then you wouldn't have done that but if you're done that um out of ignorance then you are let your you are not uh tried in the court of law okay so a moral um freedom to choose an ignorance okay then the last one is similar to the third one but uh with a slight difference the awareness that actions or omissions uh causes an outcome okay or the uh the awareness that your act of say pulling a liver or something of that can cause an outcome okay maybe in a professional situation suppose you just ignore certain things okay uh or that that's called omissions right intentionally or um you do certain action like you know or turn a switch in a certain direction knowing that this will cause a particular effect okay and and it should be an immediate effect okay then uh then you're responsible but otherwise not okay so a cause and effect understanding is required and awareness that your action can lead to something potentially dangerous okay so uh so these are the four conditions that are required to hold someone as responsible now people can evade by saying that i was not aware of the outcomes i was ignorant um i was a moral i am a madman or i i am beyond good and bad or so that that doesn't really go well with the with the public okay about our morality but um the other three about coercion i was forced to do certain things these are the typical sort of ways in which people invade responsibility okay so you know in the positive side it's like this that you had a choice and you had enough information and you know that this will lead to something else then you are responsible otherwise at least even if one of these conditions are not obtained then the person cannot be held responsible okay so