[Vision2020] Installment 16: Integrity

[Joe Campbell]

Thanks, Jeff! I agree with this agreement! And I agree with this point
especially, which would support your definition:

"Ordinary intuitions about integrity tend to allow both that integrity
is a formal relation to the self and that it has something to do with
acting morally." <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/integrity/>

But not then it lists 5 different ways of cashing this out. Take just
one: (v) integrity as a virtue.

To note just one complex issue, there is the debate between virtue
theories and deontological theories. Some versions of the ten
commandments theory of ethics are paradigms of deontology. We is
restricted by the prohibitions and obligations noted on the list;
everything else is permissible (though not necessarily praiseworthy).
Another version of deontological theory says all that matters is
belief in God, that once you've satisfied that requirement you can do
what you wish and you'll still be moral. I'm not saying these are good
or bad theories or that anyone necessarily holds them, just that they
are deontological theories.

Virtue theories are very different. What is right in a particular
situation is the act that the virtuous agent would perform. Since
situations change, it is difficult to put all of this into a
prohibitive list.

The big dilemma, in this debate then, is this:

Is the right thing to do morally right thing right because it's on (or
off) a list of dos (and don'ts)?

Or:

Is doing the right thing a matter of having the right character and
doing what, say, the virtuous woman would do?

This is just one debate that comes up. Best, Joe

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Jeff Harkins <jeffh at moscow.com> wrote:
> I rather favor this perspective about integrity (from the Stanford
> Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aug 1, 2008):
>
> "Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtue terms. It is
> also perhaps the most puzzling. For example, while it is sometimes used
> virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ we also at times distinguish acting
> morally from acting with integrity. Persons of integrity may in fact act
> immorally—though they would usually not know they are acting immorally. Thus
> one may acknowledge a person to have integrity even though that person may
> hold importantly mistaken moral views.
>
> When used as a virtue term, ‘integrity’ refers to a quality of a person's
> character; however, there are other uses of the term. One may speak of the
> integrity of a wilderness region or an ecosystem, a computerized database, a
> defense system, a work of art, and so on. When it is applied to objects,
> integrity refers to the wholeness, intactness or purity of a thing—meanings
> that are sometimes carried over when it is applied to people. A wilderness
> region has integrity when it has not been corrupted by development or by the
> side-effects of development, when it remains intact as wilderness. A
> database maintains its integrity as long as it remains uncorrupted by error;
> a defense system as long as it is not breached. A musical work might be said
> to have integrity when its musical structure has a certain completeness that
> is not intruded upon by uncoordinated, unrelated musical ideas; that is,
> when it possesses a kind of musical wholeness, intactness and purity.
>
> Integrity is also attributed to various parts or aspects of a person's life.
> We speak of attributes such as professional, intellectual and artistic
> integrity. However, the most philosophically important sense of the term
> ‘integrity’ relates to general character. Philosophers have been
> particularly concerned to understand what it is for a person to exhibit
> integrity throughout life. Acting with integrity on some particularly
> important occasion will, philosophically speaking, always be explained in
> terms of broader features of a person's character and life. What is it to be
> a person of integrity? Ordinary discourse about integrity involves two
> fundamental intuitions: first, that integrity is primarily a formal relation
> one has to oneself, or between parts or aspects of one's self; and second,
> that integrity is connected in an important way to acting morally, in other
> words, there are some substantive or normative constraints on what it is to
> act with integrity.
>
> Ordinary intuitions about integrity tend to allow both that integrity is a
> formal relation to the self and that it has something to do with acting
> morally. How these two intuitions can be incorporated into a consistent
> theory of integrity is not obvious, and most accounts of integrity tend to
> focus on one of these intuitions to the detriment of the other. A number of
> accounts have been advanced, the most important of them being: (i) integrity
> as the integration of self; (ii) integrity as maintenance of identity; (iii)
> integrity as standing for something; (iv) integrity as moral purpose; and
> (v) integrity as a virtue."
>
> (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/integrity/)
>
> On 12/31/2010 7:48 AM, Tom Hansen wrote:
>
> "Integrity: is to act according to what is right and wrong."
>
> Two questions, Mr. Harkins:
>
> 1)  What is "right"?
>
> 2)  What is "wrong"?
>
> What is "right" for some people may be "wrong" for others . . . and
> vice-versa.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> “Integrity is what we do, what we say, and what we say we do”
>
> - Don Galer
>
>
>
>
>
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