Should Intro Ethics Make You a Better Person?

Abstract

There is a common demand that moral theory be 'practical', voiced both in-and outside of philosophy. Neo-Humeans, Kantian constitutivists and Aristotelian naturalists have all advocated the idea that my knowledge that I ought to do something must lead me to actually do it-an idea sometimes called the "practicality requirement" for moral theory. Some university administrators apply this idea in practice, when they force students who violate the code of conduct to complete classes in moral theory, hoping that the knowledge obtained there would lead the student not to reoffend. I argue that the practicality requirement rests on a false understanding of the relation both between knowledge and motivation, focusing my critique on recent Aristotelian proposals.