Results for 'moral character traits'

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  1. Moral Character: An Empirical Theory.Christian B. Miller - 2013 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    The goal of this book is to develop a new framework for thinking about what moral character looks like today. My central claim will be that most people have moral character traits, but at the same time they do not have either the traditional  ...
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  2. In Defense of Ordinary Moral Character Judgment.Evan Westra - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (4):1461-1479.
    Moral character judgments pervade our everyday social interactions. But are these judgments epistemically reliable? In this paper, I discuss a challenge to the reliability of ordinary virtue and vice attribution that emerges from Christian Miller’s Mixed Traits theory of moral character, which entails that the majority of our ordinary moral character judgments are false. In response to this challenge, I argue that a key prediction of this theory is not borne out by the (...)
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  3.  65
    Mixed Traits and Dispositions: Critical Discussion of Christian Miller, ‘Moral Character: An Empirical Theory’ and ‘Character and Moral Psychology’.Tom Bates - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (2):421-424.
    Moral Character: An Empirical Theory” and “Character and Moral Psychology” represent part of the research output of the Templeton-funded Character Project, which was headed by Christian Miller. In ‘Moral Character’, Miller develops his “mixed trait” account of character. The first two parts consist in conceptual background and the empirical grounding for his account . In part three Miller develops and describes his account, before showing the extent of its application in part four (...)
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  4.  63
    Integrating character in management: virtues, character strengths, and competencies.Rafael Morales-Sánchez & Carmen Cabello-Medina - 2015 - Business Ethics: A European Review 24 (S2):156-174.
    In recent years, character traits in general and virtue-related concepts in particular have been of considerable interest to philosophers, psychological researchers, and practitioners in the business ethics field. Three approaches to character traits can be used to incorporate ethics into organizations: virtues, character strengths, and competencies. The aim of this article is to clarify the concept of character traits, or virtues, and provide a unified operational version of it for incorporation into management. To (...)
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  5. Moral Character versus Situations: an Aristotelian contribution to the debate.Anna Marmodoro - 2011 - Journal of Ancient Philosophy 5 (2).
    In everyday life we assume substantial behavioural reliability in others, and on the basis of it we talk of people as acting “in character” and “out of character”. This common assumption seems intuitively well founded. But recent experiments in social psychology have generated philosophical controversy around it. In the context of this debate, John Doris challenges Aristotle’s well known and influential view that people’s behavioural reliability with respect to acting virtuously is underpinned by character traits, understood (...)
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  6. A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of Psychology.Christian Miller - 2016 - In Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character. Oxford University Press. pp. 249-267.
    The goal of this paper is to summarize a novel empirical framework that I have developed for thinking about the moral character traits which I claim are widely possessed by many people today. Given limitations of space, though, I will not be able to motivate or defend the framework. Instead I will simply outline some of the main ideas. Also, to help make the discussion less abstract, I will focus on harming motivation and behavior, but the framework (...)
     
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  7. Can Character Traits Be Based on Brute Psychological Facts?Iskra Fileva - 2018 - Ratio 31 (2):233-251.
    Some of our largely unchosen first-order reactions, such as disgust, can underwrite morally-laden character traits. This observation is in tension with the plausible idea that virtues and vices are based on reasons. I propose a way to resolve the tension.
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  8.  1
    Forming Evaluations of Moral Character: How Are Multiple Pieces of Information Prioritized and Integrated?Justin F. Landy & Alexander D. Perry - 2024 - Cognitive Science 48 (4):e13443.
    Evaluating other people's moral character is a crucial social cognitive task. However, the cognitive processes by which people seek out, prioritize, and integrate multiple pieces of character‐relevant information have not been studied empirically. The first aim of this research was to examine which character traits are considered most important when forming an impression of a person's overall moral character. The second aim was to understand how differing levels of trait expression affect overall (...) judgments. Four preregistered studies and one supplemental study (total N = 720), using five different measures of importance and sampling undergraduates, online workers, and community members, found that our participants placed the most importance on the traits honest, helpful, compassionate, loyal, and responsible. Also, when integrating the information that they have learned, our participants seemed to engage in a simple averaging process in which all available, relevant information is combined in a linear fashion to form an overall evaluation of moral character. This research provides new insights into the cognitive processes by which evaluations of moral character are formed. (shrink)
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  9.  31
    Rational Responsibility for Preferences and Moral Responsibility for Character Traits.Donald W. Bruckner - 2007 - Journal of Philosophical Research 32:191-209.
    A theory of rationality evaluates actions and actors as rational or irrational. Assessing preferences themselves as rational or irrational is contrary to the orthodox view of rational choice. The orthodox view takes preferences as given, holding them beyond reproach, and assesses actions as rational or irrational depending on whether the actions tend to serve as effective means to the satisfaction of the given preferences. Against this view, this paper argues that preferences themselvesare indeed proper objects of rational evaluation. This evaluation (...)
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  10.  92
    A Contextual Account of Character Traits.Candace L. Upton - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 122 (2):133-151.
    Character traits have several vital functions. They should enable us to assess others morally, inform us of others’ behavioral tendencies, and accurately explain and predict others’ behavior. But traits of character, as they have traditionally been understood, cannot adequately serve these purposes. For character traits are traditionally thought to be context-insensitive. The Contextual Account of Character Traits, which I here develop and defend, posits traits that are context-sensitive. Context-sensitive character (...) are more receptive to the complexity of human psychology and behavior and, hence, they not only adequately, but excellently, satisfy their theoretic and pragmatic functions. (shrink)
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  11.  38
    Some Complexities of Categorizing Character Traits.Christian B. Miller - 2019 - In Elisa Grimi, John Haldane, Maria Margarita Mauri Alvarez, Michael Wladika, Marco Damonte, Michael Slote, Randall Curren, Christian B. Miller, Liezl Zyl, Christopher D. Owens, Scott J. Roniger, Michele Mangini, Nancy Snow & Christopher Toner (eds.), Virtue Ethics: Retrospect and Prospect. Springer. pp. 81-98.
    With the explosion of interest in virtue and virtue ethics, one set of issues that has been comparatively neglected is how to categorize moral character traits. This paper distinguishes three approaches—what I call the Stoic, personality psychology, and Aristotelian—and critically assesses each of them. The Stoic approaches denies that virtues come in degrees. There is perfect virtue or nothing at all. The personality psychology approach denies that virtues have thresholds. So everyone has all the virtues to some (...)
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  12.  9
    Rational Responsibility for Preferences and Moral Responsibility for Character Traits.Donald W. Bruckner - 2007 - Journal of Philosophical Research 32:191-209.
    A theory of rationality evaluates actions and actors as rational or irrational. Assessing preferences themselves as rational or irrational is contrary to the orthodox view of rational choice. The orthodox view takes preferences as given, holding them beyond reproach, and assesses actions as rational or irrational depending on whether the actions tend to serve as effective means to the satisfaction of the given preferences. Against this view, this paper argues that preferences themselvesare indeed proper objects of rational evaluation. This evaluation (...)
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  13. The Mixed Trait Model of Character Traits and the Moral Domains of Resource Distribution and Stealing.Christian Miller - 2015 - In Character: New Perspectives in Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology. Oxford University Press. pp. 164-191.
    In this paper my goal is to extend my earlier discussion, at least in a preliminary way, to two additional areas – fairness and stealing. In doing so, I will consider whether the existing research is compatible with my Mixed Trait model, or whether instead it gives me reason to be concerned with how broadly applicable the model really is. My conclusion will be that the results are, so to speak, a mixed bag. With respect to fairness research, some careful (...)
     
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  14.  9
    An Analysis on Traits and Relationship of Moral Motivation and Moral Character. 전종희 & 홍성훈 - 2014 - Journal of Ethics: The Korean Association of Ethics 1 (94):327-362.
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  15.  38
    Virtues, vices, and situations: What warrants the ascription of character traits.Xiaomei Yang - 2016 - Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 36 (3):142-157.
    Abstract In recent years, Situationism in psychology has caught the attention of philosophers. Some have defended it. Some have argued against it. The Situationist has challenged the traditional view shared by personality psychology and virtue ethics that people differ in terms of character or character traits and that we can explain and predict people’s behavior by character traits people have. Previous responses to Situationism try to show that experiments from social psychology do not undermine the (...)
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  16.  73
    NDPR: Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (by Christian Miller). [REVIEW]Bradford Cokelet - 2014 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2014 (2.7).
    Review of Christian Miller's "Moral Character: An Empirical Theory." I question Miller's criteria for overall judgements about the vice and vice of people's character traits, and sketch an alternative framework.
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  17.  35
    Situational Traits of Character: Dispositional Foundations and Implications for Moral Psychology and Friendship.Candace L. Upton - 2009 - Lexington Books.
    Introduction -- Global traits of character -- Traits as dispositions -- Situational traits of character -- Situational traits and social psychology -- Situational traits and the friendly consequentialist.
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  18.  46
    Machiavelli and Moral Character: Principality, Republic and the Psychology of Virtu.C. J. Nederman - 2000 - History of Political Thought 21 (3):349-364.
    Little attempt has been made to explore Machiavelli's attitude towards the psychological dimension of virtue. Yet such an exploration bears surprising fruit. Machiavelli proves to rely very heavily upon the psychological premises of his predecessors. In particular, he upholds the view that human action arises out of a set of personal characteristics which are firmly rooted and relatively insusceptible to variation or erasure. Thus, Machiavelli believes that how one behaves reflects the sort of psychological attributes with which one is endowed. (...)
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  19.  29
    Christian B. Miller, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. Reviewed by.Daniel Putman - 2015 - Philosophy in Review 35 (4):217-219.
    Christian Miller's book makes extensive use of the data on human behavior and motivation from psychological studies in the last 50-60 years and applies that information to the analysis of character. The book begins with helping behavior and the analysis is then generalized to other character traits. Miller argues that an analysis of human character as having Mixed Character Traits is superior to the analysis of character using the traditional virtues. The review highlights (...)
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  20. “They're Not True Humans:” Beliefs about Moral Character Drive Denials of Humanity.Ben Phillips - 2022 - Cognitive Science 46 (2):e13089.
    A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts (...)
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  21.  15
    Plato on Recognition of Political Leaders: the Importance of Mirrored Character Traits.Leo Catana - 2020 - Polis 37 (2):265-289.
    This article argues for two inter-related theses keyed to Plato’s Gorgias. Callicles does not represent a constitutional form, but political participation itself, characterised by ambition, competition among political candidates, and the psychological and ethical mechanisms entailed in the process of gaining political recognition. According to Socrates’s understanding, the political leader’s mirroring and internalisation of dominant character traits, held amongst those individuals transferring power, is decisive to the approval bestowed upon the political leader in question. This reading supplements that (...)
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  22. Character as Moral Fiction.Mark Alfano - 2013 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become (...)
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  23. Character and Moral Psychology.Christian B. Miller - 2014 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    This book first reviews Miller's theory of Mixed Traits, as developed in his 2013 book Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. It then engages extensively with situations, the CAPS model in social psychology, and the Big Five Model in personality psychology. It ends by taking up implications for his view in meta-ethics (a modified error theory) and normative ethics (a challenge for virtue ethics).
  24. Against the Character Solution to the Problem of Moral Luck.Robert J. Hartman - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (1):105-118.
    One way to frame the problem of moral luck is as a contradiction in our ordinary ideas about moral responsibility. In the case of two identical reckless drivers where one kills a pedestrian and the other does not, we tend to intuit that they are and are not equally blameworthy. The Character Response sorts these intuitions in part by providing an account of moral responsibility: the drivers must be equally blameworthy, because they have identical character (...)
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  25.  18
    From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle.Mariska Leunissen - 2017 - New York, NY: Oup Usa.
    This book discusses Aristotle's biological views about 'natural character traits' and their importance for moral development. It provides a new, comprehensive account of the physiological underpinnings of moral development and shows that the biological account of natural character provides the conceptual and ideological foundation for Aristotle's ethical views about habituation.
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  26. The Out of Character Objection to the Character Condition on Moral Responsibility.Robert J. Hartman & Benjamin Matheson - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (1):24-31.
    According to the character condition, a person is morally responsible for an action A only if a character trait of hers non-accidentally motivates her performing A. But that condition is untenable according to the out of character objection because people can be morally responsible for acting out of character. We reassess this common objection. Of the seven accounts of acting out of character that we outline, only one is even a prima facie counterexample to the (...)
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  27. Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.John M. Doris - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this (...)
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  28.  35
    Virtue, Character and Situation.Jonathan Webber - 2006 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (2):193-213.
    Philosophers have recently argued that traditional discussions of virtue and character presuppose an account of behaviour that experimental psychology has shown to be false. Behaviour does not issue from global traits such as prudence, temperance, courage or fairness, they claim, but from local traits such as sailing-in-rough-weather-with-friends-courage and office-party-temperance. The data employed provides evidence for this view only if we understand it in the light of a behaviourist construal of traits in terms of stimulus and response, (...)
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  29.  64
    Character: Moral Treatment and the Personality Disorders.Louis Charland - 2004 - In Jennifer Radden (ed.), The Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 64-77.
    This chapter argues that the conditions under the umbrella “personality disorders” actually constitute two very different kinds of theoretical entities. In particular, several core personality disorders are actually moral, and not medical, conditions. Thus, the categories that are held to represent them are really moral, and not medical, theoretical kinds. The chapter works back from the possibility of treatment to the nature of the kinds that are allegedly treated, revisiting 18th-century ideas of moral treatment along the way. (...)
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  30. Virtue as a Trait.Christian Miller - 2018 - In Nancy E. Snow (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtue. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 9-34.
    One of the most common assumptions about the moral virtues is that they are traits, or more specifically, traits of character. But what are character traits, and what character traits do we actually possess today? This chapter will take up each of these questions in turn. First it will consider the metaphysics of character traits, and distinguish between three competing views. Then it will turn to the empirical issue of whether (...)
     
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  31. Character and Environment: The Status of Virtues in Organizations.Miguel Alzola - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 78 (3):343-357.
    Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate (...)
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  32. Exploring the association between character strengths and moral functioning.Hyemin Han, Kelsie J. Dawson, David I. Walker, Nghi Nguyen & Youn-Jeng Choi - 2023 - Ethics and Behavior 33 (4):286-303.
    We explored the relationship between 24 character strengths measured by the Global Assessment of Character Strengths (GACS), which was revised from the original VIA instrument, and moral functioning comprising postconventional moral reasoning, empathic traits and moral identity. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was employed to explore the best models, which were more parsimonious than full regression models estimated through frequentist regression, predicting moral functioning indicators with the 24 candidate character strength predictors. Our exploration (...)
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  33.  34
    Fitting Moral Admiration: Achievements and Character.Kyle Fruh - 2023 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (5):864-883.
    I develop three arguments in support of my contention that we should favor achievements over agents as objects of fitting moral admiration. The first argument impugns the epistemic standing with which characterological admiration is standardly issued. The second argument alleges that there is likely to be a difference between widely held folk concepts of character and traits, on the one hand, and an empirically supported view of the reality of those things, on the other. The final argument (...)
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  34. Malleable character: organizational behavior meets virtue ethics and situationism.Santiago Mejia & Joshua August Skorburg - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (12):3535-3563.
    This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing character-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape the character traits of their members. This scholarship also describes some of the mechanisms through (...)
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  35. Character and Outlook in the Development of Moral Agency.Richard Kyte - 1994 - Dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University
    Most theories of moral agency, whether philosophical or psychological in emphasis, tend to conceive of either character or outlook as fundamental. That is, they take moral agency to consist either in the possession of certain traits of character or virtues or else in the ability to comprehend and act according to certain types of rules or standards. This dissertation is an attempt to reconcile the two conceptions of moral agency by giving a developmental account (...)
     
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  36. No Character or Personality.Gilbert Harman - 2003 - Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (1):87-94.
    Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley and Batson experiments have (...)
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  37.  75
    Questions of Character.Iskra Fileva (ed.) - 2016 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    This collection features 26 new essays on character from first-rate scholars in philosophy, psychology, economics, and law. The essays are elegantly written and combine forceful argumentation with original ideas on a wide range of questions, such as: "Is Aristotle's theory of character a moral theory?," "Are character traits in tension with personal autonomy," "How do traits differ from mental disorders?," "What is the role of gossip in character attribution?," and "Can businessmen be virtuous?" (...)
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  38.  35
    Character: New Perspectives in Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology.Christian B. Miller, R. Michael Furr, Angela Knobel & William Fleeson (eds.) - 2015 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    This book contains new work on character from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and psychology. From a virtual reality simulation of the Milgram shock experiments, to understanding the virtue of modesty in Muslim societies, to defending soldiers’ moral responsibility for committing war crimes, these chapters break new ground and significantly advance our understanding of character. The main topics covered fall under the heading of our beliefs about character, the existence and nature of character traits, (...)
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  39. The Morality of Moral Neuroenhancement.Thomas Douglas - forthcoming - In Clausen Jens & Levy Neil (eds.), Handbook of Neuroethics. Springer.
    This chapter reviews recent philosophical and neuroethical literature on the morality of moral neuroenhancements. It first briefly outlines the main moral arguments that have been made concerning moral status neuroenhancements. These are neurointerventions that would augment the moral status of human persons. It then surveys recent debate regarding moral desirability neuroenhancements: neurointerventions that augment that the moral desirability of human character traits, motives or conduct. This debate has contested, among other claims (i) (...)
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  40.  34
    A Moral Foundations Framing Approach: Retail Investors’ Investment Intention in Ethical Mutual Funds.Jared L. Peifer & Jing Liu - 2022 - Business and Society 61 (7):1804-1837.
    Existing research suggests people with stronger moral character traits are more inclined to ethical investing. We take a moral foundations framing approach that synthesizes framing theory and moral foundations theory to investigate whether a moral state of mind created by moral foundations frames can also increase retail investors’ ethical investment intention. We also hypothesize how this moral foundations framing effect is moderated by the perceived return performance of the ethical fund. We test (...)
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    Emotions, Character, and Associationist Psychology.Robert C. Roberts & Adam C. Pelser - 2017 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (6):623-645.
    Emotions are pivotal in the manifestation and functioning of character traits. Traits such as virtues and vices involve emotions in diverse but connected ways. Some virtues are exemplified, in important part, by feeling emotions. Others are exemplified in managing, bypassing, or even eliminating emotions. And one virtue at least is exemplified in not-feeling a certain range of emotions. Emotions are a kind of perceptual state, namely construal, involving concern or caring about something, in which the elements of (...)
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  42.  37
    Emotions, Character, and Associationist Psychology.Robert C. Roberts & Adam C. Pelser - 2017 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (6):623-645.
    _ Source: _Page Count 23 Emotions are pivotal in the manifestation and functioning of character traits. Traits such as virtues and vices involve emotions in diverse but connected ways. Some virtues are exemplified, in important part, by feeling emotions. Others are exemplified in managing, bypassing, or even eliminating emotions. And one virtue at least is exemplified in _not_-feeling a certain range of emotions. Emotions are a kind of perceptual state, namely _construal_, involving concern or caring about something, (...)
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  43. Being Proud and Feeling Proud: Character, Emotion, and the Moral Psychology of Personal Ideals.Jeremy Fischer - 2012 - Journal of Value Inquiry 46 (2):209-222.
    Much of the philosophical attention directed to pride focuses on the normative puzzle of determining how pride can be both a central vice and a central virtue. But there is another puzzle, a descriptive puzzle, of determining how the emotion of pride and the character trait of pride relate to each other. A solution is offered to the descriptive puzzle that builds upon the accounts of Hume and Gabriele Taylor, but avoids the pitfalls of those accounts. In particular, the (...)
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  44. Character and Situationism: New Directions.Christian B. Miller - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3):459-471.
    The early work by Gilbert Harman and John Doris on character and situationism has fostered a vast literature over the past 15 years. Yet despite all this work, there are many important issues which remain largely unexplored. The goal of this paper is to briefly outline eight promising research directions: neglected moral virtues, neglected non-moral virtues, virtue assessment and measurement, replication, non-Aristotelian virtue ethics, positive accounts of character trait possession, prescriptive situationism, and virtue cultivation.
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  45. Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.Gilbert Harman - 1999 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999):315-331.
    Ordinary moral thought often commits what social psychologists call 'the fundamental attribution error '. This is the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent's distinctive character traits. In fact, there is no evidence that people have character traits in the relevant sense. Since attribution of character traits leads to much evil, we should try to educate ourselves and others to stop (...)
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  46. Moral Lessons from Psychology: Contemporary Themes in Psychological Research and their relevance for Ethical Theory.Henrik Ahlenius - 2020 - Stockholm: Stockholm University.
    The thesis investigates the implications for moral philosophy of research in psychology. In addition to an introduction and concluding remarks, the thesis consists of four chapters, each exploring various more specific challenges or inputs to moral philosophy from cognitive, social, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 explores and clarifies the issue of whether or not morality is innate. The chapter’s general conclusion is that evolution has equipped us with a basic suite of emotions that shape our (...) judgments in important ways. Chapter 2 presents and investigates the challenge presented to deontological ethics by Joshua Greene’s so-called dual process theory. The chapter partly agrees with his conclusion that the dual process view neutralizes some common criticisms against utilitarianism founded on deontological intuitions, but also points to avenues left to explore for deontologists. Chapter 3 focuses on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s suggestion that utilitarianism is less vulnerable to so-called evolutionary debunking than other moral theories. The chapter is by and large critical of their attempt. In the final chapter 4, attention is directed at the issue of whether or not social psychology has shown that people lack stable character traits, and hence that the virtue ethical view is premised on false or tenuous assumptions. Though this so-called situationist challenge at one time seemed like a serious threat to virtue ethics, the chapter argues for a moderate position, pointing to the fragility of much of the empirical research invoked to substantiate this challenge while also suggesting revisions to the virtue-ethical view as such. (shrink)
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  47. Categorizing Character: Moving Beyond the Aristotelian Framework.Christian Miller - 2016 - In David Carr (ed.), Varieties of Virtue Ethics. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 143-162.
    Philosophers have inherited a familiar taxonomy of character types from Aristotle. We are all acquainted with the labels of the virtuous, vicious, continent, and incontinent person. The goal of this paper is to argue that we should jettison this framework. The main reason is that psychological research in the past fifty years has suggested a much more complex picture of moral character than what can be usefully captured by these four categories. In its place, I will suggest (...)
     
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  48. Situationism, Moral Responsibility and Blame.Michelle Ciurria - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (1):179-193.
    In Moral philosophy meets social psychology, Gilbert Harman argues that social psychology can educate folk morality to prevent us from committing the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ i.e. ‘the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent’s distinctive character traits’ (Harman, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99, 315–331, 1999). An overview of the literature shows that while situationists unanimously agree with Harman on this point, they disagree on (...)
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  49. Moral Saints, Moral Monsters, and the Mirror Thesis.Peter Brian Barry - 2009 - American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (2):163 - 176.
    A number of philosophers have been impressed with the thought that moral saints and moral monsters—or, evil people, to put it less sensationally—“mirror” one another, in a sense to be explained. Call this the mirror thesis. The project of this paper is to cash out the metaphorical suggestion that moral saints and evil persons mirror one other and to articulate the most plausible literal version of the mirror thesis. To anticipate, the most plausible version of the mirror (...)
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  50. Moral Enhancement and Those Left Behind.Alfred Archer - 2016 - Bioethics 30 (7):500-510.
    Opponents to genetic or biomedical human enhancement often claim that the availability of these technologies would have negative consequences for those who either choose not to utilize these resources or lack access to them. However, Thomas Douglas has argued that this objection has no force against the use of technologies that aim to bring about morally desirable character traits, as the unenhanced would benefit from being surrounded by such people. I will argue that things are not as straightforward (...)
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