The Group discussed the intuited Principle of Control, by which we attribute moral responsibility or blame only in those situations where the person concerned was in control of his actions. Unfortunately it is easy to show that we seldom adhere to this principle. Often we proportion blame to the outcome of an action, for example if a child is killed, when in fact that serious outcome may have been the result more of bad luck than of wrongful behaviour. Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel in the late 1070's identified moral luck as an important problem in philosophy, because it seriously undermines the idea that the application of reason might be as successful when applied in the contexts of justice and human behaviour as it has been, spectacularly, in the context of understanding the physical world.

Next meeting: 17 May, 10.30 am, Tesco Community Space. Consciousness. Ian to rumage and circulate some relevant material.

Damaris led the Group in a discussion of Aristotle's moral theory, which is based not on concepts of duty, like Kant's deontology, or on outcomes, like consequentialism, but on the formation of good habits, or virtue. In Aristotle's view humans have a capacity for virtue that can and should be developed as part of an individual's progress to fulfilment (eudaimonia). Aristotle lists about a dozen virtues that require such development, and describes them in terms of a mean between deficiency and excess, the mean being good and the extremes bad. For example, the virtue courage is a mean lying between cowardice (not enough courage) and recklessness (too much courage). Virtues for Aristotle are more like skills than knowledge, in the sense that they are acquired through practice, not just acquaintance. He points out that humanity is a social species in which individuals achieve much more through cooperation with others than they could ever do by themselves alone. The acquisition of virtue is thus important for each individual because it helps him and others realise their full potential as contributing and receiving members of a successful society.

The Group considered Aristotle's argument that everything has a purpose or 'telos', including humans. So, the purpose of a flute is to produce music, and the best flute is the flute that, when played effectively, produces the best music. The purpose of a flute maker is to produce good flutes. More generally, in Aristotle's view, the purpose of a human is to flourish, to deliver a full flowering of his/her potentialities. Chief among these potentialities is virtue. A virtuous person is a good person. It follows for Aristotle that the purpose of the state or 'polis' is to produce 'good', i.e. virtuous, citizens. Which raises the question: what, for Aristotle or for us, constitutes virtue?.