Moral Character

The philosophy of animal rights is often characterized as an exclusively justice oriented approach to animal liberation that is unconcerned with, and moreover suspicious of, moral emotions, like sympathy, empathy, and compassion. I argue that the philosophy of animal rights can, and should, acknowledge that compassion plays an integral role in animal liberation discourse and theory. Because compassion motivates moral actors to relieve the serious injustices that other animals face, or, at the very least, compassion moves actors not to participate (...) in or cause these injustices, the philosophy of animal rights can and should recognize both a duty to cultivate compassionate and a duty to promote compassion. Contra to feminist critiques of Regan’s justice-approach to ethics, the philosophy of animal rights is not committed to eschewing the moral emotions. (shrink)

Advocates of moral enhancement through pharmacological, genetic, or other direct interventions sometimes explicitly argue, or assume without argument, that traditional moral education and development is insufficient to bring about moral enhancement. Traditional moral education grounded in a Kohlbergian theory of moral development is indeed unsuitable for that task; however, the psychology of moral development and education has come a long way since then. Recent studies support the view that moral cognition is a higher-order process, unified at a functional level, and (...) that a specific moral faculty does not exist. It is more likely that moral cognition involves a number of different mechanisms, each connected to other cognitive and affective processes. Taking this evidence into account, we propose a novel, empirically informed approach to moral development and education, in children and adults, which is based on a cognitive-affective approach to moral dispositions. This is an interpretative approach that derives from the cognitive-affective personality system (Mischel and Shoda, 1995). This conception individuates moral dispositions by reference to the cognitive and affective processes that realise them. Conceived of in this way, moral dispositions influence an agent's behaviour when they interact with situational factors, such as mood or social context. Understanding moral dispositions in this way lays the groundwork for proposing a range of indirect methods of moral enhancement, techniques that promise similar results as direct interventions whilst posing fewer risks. (shrink)

Why do war crimes occur? Are perpetrators of war crimes always blameworthy? In an original and challenging thesis, this book argues that war crimes are often explained by perpetrators' beliefs, goals, and values, and in these cases perpetrators may be blameworthy even if they sincerely believed that they were doing the right thing.

What, if anything, is fanaticism? Philosophers including Locke, Hume, Shaftesbury, and Kant offered an account of fanaticism, analyzing it as (1) unwavering commitment to an ideal, together with (2) unwillingness to subject the ideal (or its premises) to rational critique and (3) the presumption of a non-rational sanction for the ideal. In the first part of the paper, I explain this account and argue that it does not succeed: among other things, it entails that a paradigmatically peaceful and tolerant individual (...) can be a fanatic. The following sections argue that the fanatic is distinguished by four features: (4) the adoption of sacred values; (5) the need to treat these values as unconditional in order to preserve a particular form of psychic unity; (6) the sense that the status of these values is threatened by lack of widespread acceptance; and (7) the identification with a group, where the group is defined by shared commitment to the sacred values. If the account succeeds, it not only reveals the nature of fanaticism, but also uncovers a distinctive form of ethical critique: we can critique a way of understanding values not on the grounds that it is false, but on the grounds that it promotes a particular form of social pathology. (shrink)

Paul Barry | : Michael Stocker’s “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” attacks versions of consequentialism and deontological ethics on the grounds that they are self-effacing. While it is often thought that Stocker’s argument gives us a reason to favour virtue ethics over those other theories, Simon Keller has argued that this is a mistake. He claims that virtue ethics is also self-effacing, and is therefore afflicted with the self-effacement-related problems that Stocker identifies in consequentialism and deontology. This paper defends (...) virtue ethics against this claim. Although there is a kind of self-effacement involved in the exercise of virtue, this is quite different from the so-called schizophrenia that Stocker thinks is induced by modern ethical theory. Importantly, manifesting virtue does not require one to embrace mutually inconsistent moral commitments, as is at times encouraged by consequentialists and deontologists. This paper also considers a reading of the virtue-ethical criterion of right action that is encouraged by Bernard Williams’s distinction between a de re and a de dicto interpretation of the phrase “acting as the virtuous person would.” I argue that such a reading addresses concerns that a virtue-ethical criterion of right action inevitably generates a problematic form of self-effacement. | : « The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories » de Michael Stocker réfute les versions du conséquentialisme et de l’éthique déontologique sous prétexte qu’elles conduisent à l’auto-effacement de l’agent. Alors que l’on pense souvent que l’argument de Stocker nous donne raison de préférer l’éthique des vertus à ces autres théories, cela constitue une erreur selon Simon Keller. Ce dernier affirme que l’éthique des vertus conduit aussi à l’auto-effacement et qu’elle rencontre par conséquent les mêmes problèmes d’auto-effacement que Stocker identifie dans le conséquentialisme et la déontologie. Cet article défend l’éthique des vertus contre cette hypothèse. Bien qu’il y ait une forme d’auto-effacement dans la manifestation des vertus, celle-ci diffère assez de la « schizophrénie » que Stocker juge induite par la théorie moderne de l’éthique. Il est important de comprendre que la manifestation de vertus n’implique pas d’adhérer à des engagements mutuellement inconsistants, comme les conséquentialistes et déontologues l’invoquent parfois. Cet article envisage aussi une lecture du critère éthique de la vertu de l’action juste suggérée par la distinction que fait Bernard Williams entre l’interprétation de re et de dicto dans la locution « Agir comme le ferait une personne vertueuse ». Je soutiens qu’une telle lecture répond à la préoccupation considérant qu’un critère éthique de vertu crée inévitablement une forme problématique d’auto-effacement. (shrink)

Indian thought is often said to be concerned with ethics (dharma) that leads to freedom (mokṣa). Either this means that we should treat freedom as the end that justifies the ethical life (Consequentialism), or that the ethical life is the procedure that causes freedom (Proceduralism). The history of Vedānta philosophy—philosophy of the latter part of the Vedas—largely endorses the latter option via the “moral transition argument” (MTA): a dialectic that takes us from teleology to proceduralism. It is motivated by a (...) desire to remove luck from moral theory. But this leaves open the Paradox of Development (Brahman), which posits our moral freedom as a condition of protecting it. I explore the MTA, and Śaṅkara’s, Madhva’s, and Rāmānuja’s response to the Paradox of Development. (shrink)

Virtue Argumentation and Bias PAPER Virtue theories of argumentation are a burgeoning programme [2]. Bias is a familiar impediment to good argument, which has drawn renewed attention as a result of psychological research demonstrating the prevalence of cognitive biases and implicit associations. Despite some attempts to utilise the resources of VTA to address bias, there has been little acknowledgement of the obstacle that bias presents to VTA. Specifically, VTA seems vulnerable to a situationist challenge, analogous to similar challenges in virtue (...) ethics and epistemology, that behavioural dispositions are too sensitive to specific situations for virtues to be psychologically plausible [1]. This paper proposes a two-pronged response that VTA may make to this challenge, and to the problem of bias in argument in general: a defence of the virtue of humility [3] and a demonstration of the role of attitude strength, as exhibited by deep-seated virtues [4]. [1] Mark Alfano. Expanding the situationist challenge to reliabilism about inference. In: Virtue Epistemology Naturalized, Springer, 2014. [2] Daniel Cohen. Virtue, in context. Informal Logic 33. [3] Ian James Kidd. Intellectual humility, confidence, and argumentation. Topoi. [4] Jonathan Webber. Instilling virtue. In: From Personality to Virtue, Oxford University Press, forthcoming. (shrink)

How is it possible that biases are cognitive vices, objectivity is an exemplary intellectual virtue, and yet objectivity is itself a bias? In this paper, we argue that objectivity is indeed a kind of bias but is still an argumentative virtue. In common with many biases – and many virtues – its effects are neither uniformly negative nor uniformly positive. Consequences alone are not enough to determine which character traits are argumentative virtues. Context matters. The opening section addresses the problem (...) of identifying argumentative virtues and provides a preliminary response to recent questions from Goddu and Godden regarding the foundations of virtue-based argumentation theories. The middle section analyzes courtroom argumentation as a case study. The assigned roles in legal settings provide high-definition examples of how the roles that all arguers routinely inhabit in ordinary argumentation factor into the evaluation of virtues. The contextually variable values of objectivity and biases are on clear display. The final section employs the conclusions from the middle section to answer the questions from the first section and to complete the argument that objectivity can be an occasionally “vicious virtue”. (shrink)

Alfano, a relatively new contributor to the increasingly busy intersection of ethics and epistemology, works to unpack the empirical work in psychology and articulate the full weight of its challenges to virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. The thread that runs throughout is the novel conception of "factitious virtue." Drawing on the chimerically real placebo effect and self-fulfilling prophecies, factitious virtue integrates these epistemically counterintuitive effects into norms for behavior. In short, when plausible, one should publicly attribute moral and intellectual virtues (...) to others as a means to produce something like virtuous individuals. The book will be valuable for serious students of philosophy looking for a better-than-average integration of empirical work with philosophical reflection. The reference list is also a valuable resource for any serious student of epistemic or moral virtue and the challenges to these paradigms. Nonetheless, the book has a few shortcomings: most notably, Alfano casts reliabilism as a kind of virtue epistemology, an unusual choice that is not explained; at times he takes readers' fluency in a number of wide-ranging philosophical debates as given. (shrink)

Personality Psychology: Current Status and Prospects For the Future I want to consider the current status and future of the field of personality psychology, often basing my observations on my own research and theoretical interests. Let me begin by summarizing what I have to say in terms of three points of emphasis: First, the field of personality can be viewed in terms of three disciplines—trait, social cognitive, and psychodynamic—each associated with its own empirical procedures and observations. That is, each is (...) associated with its own form of personality data but all represent relevant data. Second, there is a need in the field for a dynamic systems perspective, one that emphasizes the interplay among the parts of the personality system in the course of the person's ongoing transactions with the physical and interpersonal environment. Third, in the future personality psychologists increasingly will have to integrate findings from biopsychology and neuroscience into their theories and research questions. This raises the question of how they can create bridges across levels of analysis and avoid the problem of reductionism. In other words, there is the issue of how personality psychologists will address the mind-body problem. (shrink)

While Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics does not provide a guide for action in the form of rules for a decision process as deontological or consequentialistethical theories purport to do, he does present a description of the virtuous agent and the virtues that this agent exercises in his choices of action. In this paper Iargue that Aristotle’s mature virtuous agent characteristically exercises the virtue of wisdom as well as the practical virtues of character and intelligence in his choices of action (...) and that students of virtue can derive certain action-guiding rules from a description of these three virtues and how they are exercised by the mature virtuous agent in any given choice of action. (shrink)

Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition (...) to clarifying the relationship between anger and the virtues, my analysis has theoretical implications for virtue individuation more generally, and practical implications for character cultivation. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is on the move both in Anglo-American philosophy and in the rest of the world. This volume uniquely emphasizes non-Western varieties of virtue ethics at the same time that it includes work in the many different fields or areas of philosophy where virtue ethics has recently spread its wings. Just as significantly, several chapters make comparisons between virtue ethics and other ways of approaching ethics or political philosophy or show how virtue ethics can be applied to "real world" (...) problems. (shrink)

In two earlier papers, I began to explore how “ordinary people” acquire virtue. By “ordinary people,” I mean people, not specifically or directly concerned with becoming virtuous, who have goals or aims the pursuit of which requires them to develop virtue. E.g., parents acquire patience and generosity in the course of pursuing their goal to be good parents; those concerned with being peacemakers acquire tact and diplomacy in the pursuit of that goal, and so on. These virtues can be viewed (...) by those who seek them to be of instrumental and not intrinsic value, that is, needed for goal attainment but not necessarily valuable in their own right. Moreover, the virtues so acquired need not be substantially informed by reflective deliberation. Are there pathways by means of which possessors of ordinary virtue can develop Aristotelian virtue, by coming to view the virtues they possess as having intrinsic value; and developing their phronetic capacities such that their virtues become informed by practical wisdom? In this essay, I continue the exploration of ordinary virtue with an eye to revealing possible pathways by which ordinary virtue can indeed take on the characteristics of full Aristotelian virtue. In the spirit of empirical collaboration, I suggest these pathways of virtue development as testable hypotheses. (shrink)

This is an unpublished conference paper for the 3rd Annual Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues conference at Oriel College, Oxford University, Thursday 8th – Saturday 10th January 2015. These papers are works in progress and should not be cited without author’s prior permission.

The provocative title of this conference is, “Can Virtue Be Measured?” My answer to this question is, “Yes, it can,” and I hasten to add, “It should be.” I began thinking about whether and how to measure virtue when Jennifer Cole Wright, a psychologist from the College of Charleston, and I were approached to write a popular book on measuring virtue. Alas, that project didn’t get anywhere, but I hope that our thinking about this issue might yet bear fruit. Central (...) to our thought is a notion suggested to us by one of our prospective editors. That is the idea of virtue intelligence.1 In part I, I sketch arguments for the importance of measuring virtue and sketch how the concept of virtue intelligence might help us to approach this venture. In II, I articulate in more detail what virtue intelligence is, and, in III, situate it within philosophical theories of virtue. In IV, I draw upon the thinking that Jen and I have done to briefly discuss what we believe to be some of the most innovative and exciting methodologies for measuring virtue now being explored. Finally, in V, I go out on a limb and suggest something rather different, inspired by my recent reading on the topic of “big data.”. (shrink)

This is a conference papers for the ‘Can Virtue Be Measured?, held by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values at Oriel College, Thursday 9th – Saturday 11th January 2014. These papers are works in progress and should not be cited without author’s prior permission.

Moral virtue development is grounded in social relationships that foster the socioemotional intelligence underlying moral virtue. Recent research shows a decrease in socioemotional intelligence with implications for moral virtue development. This project is a feasibility study of a theatrical intervention with parent-child dyads to increase socioemotional intelligence and proto-virtuous character by improving parent-child mutual responsiveness. Our theatrical approach combines direct development of mutual responsiveness and practice of moral virtue scripts, providing a powerful and seamless integration of philosophy, theatre art and (...) social science. (shrink)

Chapter from the book "Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology." Ed. Nancy E. Snow. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

To what extent do differences in who we are predict differences in courage? We propose to de-velop a measure of the virtue-relevant self, which is composed of self-conception, social roles, virtue-relevant values, and personality traits. We will then conduct three studies using this meas-ure to determine the extent to which these various components of the virtue-relevant self pre-dict the types of acts people consider courageous as well as the willingness of people to engage in courageous acts themselves. We believe that (...) individual differences in each of these compo-nents – that is, the content of the virtue-relevant self – will correlate with differences in first, how people rate actions that they themselves have undertaken in the past; second, how people rate actions that other people have taken; and third, the willingness of people to take certain kinds of courageous action. If found, these relations will have broader implications for the self and virtues by indicating that traits of the self beyond character traits affect both the conception of virtuous behavior and virtuous behavior itself. (shrink)

This presentation was delivered at the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project's 2015 Interdisciplinary Moral Forum, held at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This presentation was delivered at the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project's 2015 Interdisciplinary Moral Forum, held at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The claim that virtue requires self-knowledge may seem banal, but it has been challenged by recent claims that certain virtues, such as modesty, require ignorance of self and that self-deceived persons are both happier and nicer. My argument is grounded in a broadly Aristotelian conception of virtue, where full moral virtue includes both the virtues of character, such as temperance, generosity, and courage, and the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom. I argue that self-knowledge is necessary for practical wisdom and practical (...) wisdom is necessary for virtue; hence, self-knowledge is necessary for virtue. However, self-knowledge is not sufficient for virtue, as a person could lack other capacities or insights that would enable her to act virtuously. She may, for example, fully understand her own character, yet be too weak to do the right thing, or she could know that she is a con artist and feel proud of this fact. (shrink)

On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram’s linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel’s debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human oppression. The article (...) also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram’s view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram’s appeals to the “speech” of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman. (shrink)

It has become customary in the virtue epistemological literature to distinguish between responsibilist and reliabilist virtue theories. More recently, certain problems affecting the former have prompted epistemologists to suggest that this distinction in virtue theory maps on to a distinction in virtue, specifically between character and faculty virtue. I argue that we lack good reason to bifurcate virtue in this manner, and that this moreover counts in favor of the virtue reliabilist.

In this book Frank Dumont presents personality psychology with a fresh description of its current status as well as its prospects. Play, sex, cuisine, creativity, altruism, pets, grieving rituals, and other oft-neglected topics broaden the scope of this fascinating study. This tract is imbued with historical perspectives that reveal the continuity in the evolving science and research of this discipline over the past century. The author places classic schemas and constructs, as well as current principles, in the context of their (...) socio-political catalysts. He further relates this study of the person to life-span developmental issues and to cultural, gender-specific, trait-based, genetic/epigenetic, and evolutionary research findings. Personality psychology has recently reconciled itself to more modest paradigms for describing, explaining, and predicting human behaviour than it generated in the 19th and 20th centuries. This book documents that transformation, providing valuable information for health-service professionals as well as to teachers, researchers, and scientists. (shrink)

In the contemporary context of business and management, the leadership studies are considered as one of essential genre to allow sight of the holistic picture of the organizational performance. The general theory of leadership studies has given us a scope of elements involving the nature of leadership, and a body of research work contributed to elicit and deal with the factors significant to determine the effect of leadership, e.g, LMX (Leader and manager exchange).The participatory leadership and diversity or democracy in (...) the workplace has been a key concept for the organizational theorists and practitioners. There are a scope of case studies about the leadership and organizational change, yet being relatively small in number, however, concerning the higher educational institutions, and least in the context of Korean universities. We see that Korea would no longer be a developing country. Its national education is fine and of quality setting aside the national context of particularities. One would be the election system of University chancellors, and the other would be a recent pressure from the government. It triggers a rationalization of poor quality of colleges and universities. In this mainstream, the local universities and their leadership can be generally located to interact with the local compassion and requirements. The paper, in this context, aims to describe the leadership from a former CU Chancellor H. J. Cheon,organization change s well as the evaluation of his leadership. I hopefully expect that the narratives can increase an awareness of leadership elements, its play within the educational nstitutions, and particularly about the local universities of Korea in distinct flavor. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the virtue of proportionality in relation to reasoning in what I call ‘hype contexts’. I conclude that a virtuous arguer is one that neither accepts nor rejects a claim based on its ubiquity alone, but who evaluates its importance with reference to the social context in which it is made.

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach which emphasizes duties or rules or that which emphasizes the consequences of actions. Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so (...) the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. Three of virtue ethics' central concepts, virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia are often misunderstood. Once they are distinguished from related but distinct concepts peculiar to modern philosophy, various objections to virtue ethics can be better assessed. (shrink)