Silencing and the Virtuous Dimensions of Reasons

Action from virtue has more value than merely virtuous action. The most common account of why this is so relies on the Silencing View of reasons: virtue focuses the agent's attention singularly and accurately on the very thing that matters morally, rather than allowing attention to be diffuse, divided between phantom reasons. This paper challenges the Silencing View and shows that virtue ethicists can make use of a different, multidimensional model of reasons to explain why virtuous actions performed from virtue are better than those performed without it. I suggest that virtuous reasons—the reasons the virtuous respond to— register on various dimensions of normative strength. This model accounts for an evaluative difference between actions done from sensitivity and responsiveness to just the right reasons and actions done without that fitting sensitivity. While sometimes virtue will silence all but one consideration, in other cases, virtue trains our attention on multiple considerations which together contribute to what is done and the manner in which it is done.