What Does Virtue Add to Value? Comments on Pettigrove

ABSTRACT

In this commentary, I delve into areas in which I agree as well as disagree with Glen Pettigrove’s interesting ideas. I am very much in agreement with his views about the limited use of the proportionality principle in attempting to explain what virtue adds to value. The main portion of his essay, however, lies in his treatment of three approaches purporting to explain how virtue adds to value: Hurka’s recursive theory; what Pettigrove calls the ‘response-dependent’ view; and his own account, which he calls the ‘modus operandi’ view. Though I agree with his criticisms of the recursive theory, I express concerns about his treatment of the response-dependent view, as well as about Pettigrove’s own modus operandi account.

KEYWORDS:

• proportionality
• recursive
• response-dependent
• modus operandi

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 He also invokes Tappolet’s perceptual theory of emotion.

2 Comments on Slote and Zagzebski in this and the following paragraph are taken from Snow [2020].