The Milgram and other situationist experiments support the real-life evidence that most of us are highly akratic and heteronomous, and that Aristototelian virtue is not global. Indeed, like global theoretical knowledge, global virtue is psychologically impossible because it requires too much of finite human beings with finite powers in a finite life; virtue can only be domain-specific. But unlike local, situation-specific virtues, domain-specific virtues entail some general understanding of what matters in life, and are connected conceptually and causally to our (...) traits in other domains. The experiments also make us aware of how easily unobtrusive situational factors can tap our susceptibilities to obedience, conformity, irresponsibility, cruelty, or indifference to others’ welfare, thereby empowering us to change ourselves for the better. Thus, they advance the Socratic project of living the examined life. I note a remarkable parallel between the results of the baseline Milgram experiments and the results of the learned helplessness experiments by Martin Seligman et al. This provides fresh insight into the psychology and character of the obedient Milgram subjects, and I use this insight to argue that pusillanimity, as Aristotle conceives of it, is part of a complete explanation of the behavior of the obedient Milgram subjects. (shrink)

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 moral 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)

In a recent letter to Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, British columnist and climate change gadfly George Monbiot pleaded with Canada to clean up its greenhouse gas emissions act. The letter appeared just a week before the Copenhagen climate conference. In it, Monbiot alleged that Canada's newly acquired status as oil superpower threatens to ?brutalize? the country, as it has other oil-rich countries (Monbiot, G. 2009. Please, Canada, clean up your act, The Globe and Mail, November 30, A15). (...) In this paper, I want to expand on Monbiot's bleak assessment of the Canadian national psyche. It has been pointed out that climate change is forcing us to rethink philosophical ethics. Some, like Dale Jamieson, believe that virtue theory is best equipped to meet the challenge of understanding the moral dimensions of this phenomenon. I think this is basically right, but that climate change is also forcing us to reassess our capacity for moral progress. The two challenges are linked. In what follows, I will first (Section 1) motivate the appeal to virtue ethics as a new way of understanding the ethics of climate change. Next (Section 2), I offer a virtue ethical account of moral progress. With the latter in place, we can (Section 3) uncover the real nature of Canada's moral failing on climate change: it is an impediment to the moral progress of our species. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that the conception of a virtue in positive psychology is a mishmash of two competing accounts of what virtues are: a Common Sense View and an Aristotelian View. Distinguishing the strengths and weaknesses of these two frameworks leads also to a reconsideration of an old debate, namely, that concerning the Unity of the Virtues thesis. Such thesis is rejected by positive psychologist, as well as by some philosophers among the virtue-ethical field, on the basis, I (...) argue, of a lack of accuracy in defining the very meaning of the concept of what virtues are, before examining the issues at stake. In the first part of the paper, I show to what extent the conceptions of virtue employed by the different voices diverge and the consequences of this divergence for the UV problem. Then, I go on by arguing for one of the two competing accounts, namely, the Aristotelian View, over the other, that is, the Common Sense View. Finally, I show to which of CSV theses positive psychologists are committed, so to explain their rejection of the UV thesis, and to highlight their need for a clearer account of what a virtue is. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s book Epistemic Injustice calls attention to an important sort of moral and intellectual wrongdoing, that of failing to give others their intellectual due. When we fail to recognize others’ knowledge, or undervalue their beliefs and judgments, we fail in two important respects. First, we miss out on the opportunity to improve and refine our own sets of beliefs and judgments. Second—and more relevant to the term “injustice”—we can deny people the intellectual respect they deserve. Along with describing the (...) wrong of epistemic injustice, Fricker proposes that epistemic justice is a virtue we “can, and should, aim for in practice”. But I argue that there are two major problems. First, it is not clear that it is reasonable to imagine there is any such stable disposition—that is, any such virtue—as the sort of justice she imagines. Second, even if there could be such a virtue, her theory of epistemic justice does not provide good guidance for avoiding epistemic injustice. While it could.. (shrink)

Whilst there has been much talk about the supposed 'banality of evil', there has been comparatively little discussion of the putatively parallel notion of the 'banality of good'. This paper explores some of the resonances of the phrase and proposes that banally good acts have the leading feature that the agent's reasons for action do not include the thought that the effects intended are good . It is argued, against David Blumenthal, that the label 'banal' should not be applied to (...) acts of spontaneous or everyday goodness but instead to those characterized by a lack of genuine moral commitment, for example, acts done purely in obedience to authority, or from self-seeking motives or mere habit. Finally, it is proposed that the doing of good in a banal mode may reasonably be encouraged in circumstances where more estimable moral motives may be lacking or feeble. (shrink)

Doris, in his 2002 book Lack of Character and 2005 paper ‘Replies: evidence and sensibility’, famously argues that we lack the kinds of global character traits posited by theories of virtue, because the situationist experiments demonstrate that people do not display trait-relevant behaviour in trait-relevant situations above chance. This paper argues that some notable situationist experiments are not trait-relevant situations. By analysing which factors improve or reduce participants’ chances of success (e.g. stress, lack of familiarity, ambiguity), and observing that these (...) factors decrease agents’ capacity to recognize and respond to a variety of reasons in a variety of settings, the best explanation of many subjects’ failure to do the right thing is that they are affected by factors that are capacity-compromising. This matters, because settings in which agents have a reduced capacity to avoid wrongdoing are typically not apt tests of an agent’s character traits. (shrink)

Virtue ethics prescribes cultivating global and behaviorally efficacious character traits, but John Doris and others argue that situationist social psychology shows this to be infeasible. Here, I show how certain versions of virtue ethics that ‘go mental’ can withstand this challenge as well as Doris’ further objections. The defense turns on an account of which psychological materials constitute character traits and which the situationist research shows to be problematically variable. Many situationist results may be driven by impulsive akrasia produced by (...) low-level , emotionally induced ignorance about one’s situation, and some may be driven by a further subtype: modal akrasia. Many subjects in the infamous Milgram experiments, e.g., seem to have recognized what the virtuous thing to do was and that they should do it, and only failed to do it because their emotions prevented them from seeing that they could. If the primary constituents of character traits are higher-level mental dispositions involved in deliberation, though, then the results don’t show that these psychological materials are problematically variable. (shrink)

Social psychologists have performed many well-known experiments demonstrating that experimental subjects will perform in ways that are normatively inconsistent even across very similar situations. Situationist social psychologists and philosophers have often interpreted these findings to imply that most people lack general moral dispositions. These situationists have argued that our moral dispositions are at best narrowly local traits; they often describe our moral characters as fragmented. In this paper, I offer an alternative hypothesis for the same experimental results. I argue that (...) these normative inconsistencies in behavior might well be produced by habit interference: experimental subjects err by over-generalizing dispositions formed in prior situations. I ground this alternative hypothesis in the long tradition of transfer of learning studies, which demonstrated that cognitive inconsistency was often the result of habit interference and, hence, overly generalized dispositions. I shall thus explore the analogy between moral and cognitive inconsistency to show why social psychology might well benefit from adopting the experimental design of the classic transfer of learning studies. (shrink)

Recent work in various branches of philosophy has reinvigorated debate over the psychology behind moral judgment. Using Marc Hauser's categorization of theories as “Kantian,” “Humean,” or “Rawlsian” to frame the discussion, I argue that the existing evidence weighs against the Kantian model and partly in favor of both the Humean and the Rawlsian models. Emotions do play a causal role in the formation of our moral judgments, as the Humean model claims, but there are also unconscious principles shaping our moral (...) judgments, as the Rawlsian model predicts. Thus, Hauser's tripartite division of possible models of moral psychology is inadequate. Drawing on research in cognitive neuroscience, clinical and behavioral psychology, and psychopathology, I sketch a new, developmental sentimentalist model of moral psychology. I call it a “Mencian” model, after the Confucian philosopher Mencius. On this model, moral judgments are caused by emotions, but because of the way emotions are mapped onto particular actions, moral judgments unconsciously reflect certain principled distinctions. (shrink)

Psychological situationism is the view that our behavior is ordered by external features of situations as opposed to robust character traits. Philosophical situationists have taken this claim to be conservatively revisionary for ethics; on their view, situationism problematizes only character, not any essential features of our ethical deliberation. Little has been said, however, about how these revisions motivate situationists’ claim that we ought to redirect our attention from cultivating virtues to managing situational influences on behavior. Virtue theorists have typically responded (...) to situationists by arguing that skill-based practical wisdom—the exercise of which underwrites all other virtues—can be appropriately sensitive to situational influences. Following this response, discussions about the prescriptive consequences of situationism have largely resulted in a stalemate. In this paper, I argue that situationism faces a dilemma: it is either too conservative to be ethically revisionary or too radical to inform our ethical deliberation. I argue that both horns of this dilemma are unacceptable. Thus, we should reject situationist revisions to our ethical deliberation, and conclude that situationism is not conservatively revisionary for ethics. (shrink)

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that technological advances of the twenty-first century will usher in a significant shift in how humans make important life decisions. Instead of turning to the Bible or the Quran, to the heart or to our therapists, parents, and mentors, people will turn to Big Data recommendation algorithms to make these choices for them. Much as we rely on Spotify to recommend music to us, we will soon rely on algorithms to decide our careers, (...) spouses, and commitments. Harari also predicts that next, the state will take away individuals’ rights to make their own choices about their lives. If Google knows where your children would flourish best in school, why should the state allow a fallible human parent to decide? Liberalism—which, as Harari uses this term, refers to a state of society in which human freedom to choose is respected and championed—will collapse. In this paper, I argue that Harari’s conception of the future implications of recommendation algorithms is deeply flawed, for two reasons. First, users will not rely on algorithms to make decisions for them because they have no reason to trust algorithms, which are developed by companies with their own incentives, such as profit. Second, for most of our life decisions, algorithms will not be able to be developed, because the factors relevant to the decisions we face are unique to our situation. I present an alternative depiction of the future: instead of relying on algorithms to make decisions for us, humans will use algorithms to enhance our decision-making by helping us consider the most relevant choices first and notice information we might not otherwise. Finally, I will also argue that even if computers could make many of our decisions for us, liberalism as a political system would emerge unscathed. (shrink)

Situationists such as John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt suppose that appeal to reliable behavioral dispositions can be dispensed with without radical revision to morality as we know it. This paper challenges this supposition, arguing that abandoning hope in reliable dispositions rules out genuine trust and forces us to suspend core reactive attitudes of gratitude and resentment, esteem and indignation. By examining situationism through the lens of trust we learn something about situationism (in particular, the radically revisionary moral implications (...) of its adoption) as well as something about trust (in particular, that the conditions necessary for genuine trust include a belief in a capacity for robust dispositions). (shrink)

While openmindedness is often cited as a paradigmatic example of an intellectual virtue, the connection between openmindedness and truth is tenuous. Several strategies for reconciling this tension are considered, and each is shown to fail; it is thus claimed that openmindedness, when intellectually virtuous, bears no interesting essential connection to truth. In the final section, the implication of this result is assessed in the wider context of debates about epistemic value.

Abstract: In this article, the logic and functions of character-trait ascriptions in ethics and epistemology is compared, and two major problems, the "generality problem" for virtue epistemologies and the "global trait problem" for virtue ethics, are shown to be far more similar in structure than is commonly acknowledged. I suggest a way to put the generality problem to work by making full and explicit use of a sliding scale--a "narrow-broad spectrum of trait ascription"-- and by accounting for the various uses (...) of it in an inquiry-pragmatist account. In virtue theories informed by inquiry pragmatism, the agential habits and abilities deemed salient in explanations/evaluations of agents in particular cases, and the determination of what relevant domains and conditions an agent's habit or ability is reliably efficacious in, is determined by pragmatic concerns related to our evaluative epistemic practices. (shrink)

Moral psychology investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on both the empirical resources of the human sciences and the conceptual resources of philosophical ethics. The present article discusses several topics that illustrate this type of inquiry: thought experiments, responsibility, character, egoism v . altruism, and moral disagreement.

The field of experimental philosophy has received considerable attention, essentially for producing results that seem highly counter-intuitive and at the same time question some of the fundamental methods used in philosophy. A substantial part of this attention has focused on the role of intuitions in philosophical methodology. One of the major contributions of experimental philosophy on this topic has been concrete evidence in support of intuitional diversity; the idea that intuitions vary systematically depending on variables such as ethnicity, socioeconomic background, (...) or gender. Because of the important implications, these findings have been the subject of extensive debate. Despite the seeming significance of the findings and despite all the debates that the experimental philosophy movement has prompted, what has not been examined systematically is the reproducibility of the results. Instead, the reported findings have been simply accepted as established facts. We set out to replicate a wide range of experiments and surprisingly failed to reproduce many of the reported findings, some of which are from the most cited and attention grabbing papers of the field. We draw two conclusions from our findings. The first is that the instability of intuitions has been exaggerated by experimental philosophers. Intuitions appear to be more uniform across different demographic groups. The argument that intuitions need to be discarded because they depend on arbitrary factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic background, or gender does not seem tenable anymore. The second conclusion is that experimental philosophy needs a better system to ensure the reproducibility of published findings. The current research-publication system of various empirical fields, especially those employing statistical methods, leads to an overproduction of false-positive findings in the published literature. Unless changes are made to the current research-publication system, this overproduction is likely to continue, in experimental philosophy as well as other disciplines. (shrink)

This paper challenges the appeal to theory virtues in theory choice as well as the appeal to the intellectual and moral virtues of an agent as determining unique choices between empirically equivalent theories. After arguing that theoretical virtues do not determine the choice of one theory at the expense of another theory, I argue that nor does the appeal to intellectual and moral virtues single out one agent, who defends a particular theory, and exclude another agent defending an alternative theory. (...) I analyse Duhem’s concept of good sense and its recent interpretation in terms of virtue epistemology. I argue that the virtue epistemological interpretation does not show how good sense leads to conclusive choices and scientific progress. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of moral responsibility are standardly framed by two platitudes. According to them, blame requires the presence of a moral defect in the agent and the absence of excuses. In this chapter, this kind of approach is challenged. It is argued that (a) people sometimes violate moral norms due to performance mistakes, (b) it often appears reasonable to hold them responsible for it, and (c) their mistakes cannot be traced to their moral qualities or to the presence of excuses. (...) In the end, the implications for discussions of moral responsibility are discussed. (shrink)