Philosophy Now Forum

Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from reading Hursthouse the an unclearity remains about the following piece:

Please correct me if you think I'm wrong or add if you think something is missing.

For virtue is said to involve knowledge,
and part of this knowledge consists in having the right attitude to things.
"Right" here does not just mean "morally right" or "proper" or "nice" in
the modern sense; it means "accurate, true."

Second half page 235, Virtue Theory and Abortion, Hursthouse

What she means here is having actual accurate/correct factual knowledge to base you attitude on right?
This only comes in when applying her virtue theory on the case of abortion, it hasn't been mentioned in the general outlay of her theory and I am wondering what part it plays in her virtue theory?

If I haven't been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.

Have not read her, but does she apply the same criteria to similar existence issues involving termination? ie. Euthanasia, suicide, etc? It doesn't sound like she does, and would make me question "why not?" Is that what you are getting are getting at? If you are, good thinking. Also question her facts.

Here is a possible way of understanding Hurtshouse, of whose writings I have some, but limited, acquaintance. It is probably a mistake to read her as unreservedly endorsing a strict distinction between the factual and the normative. Factual knowledge as an ingredient in making decisions about how to live your life is knowledge that has a normative component to it. It is a matter of knowing the fittingness relationships that are tied up with the particular facts. Maybe too crude an example: to know about a knife is to know its sharpness, strength, length, but also what it is used for and, in particular, something about how a virtuous person would and would not use it. Lacking the latter, one does not have accurate knowledge of the knife.