“Situationists” such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris have accused virtue ethicists as having an “empirically inadequate” theory, arguing that much of social science research suggests that people do not have robust character traits as traditionally thought. By far, the most common response to this challenge has been what I refer to as “the rarity response” or the “rarity thesis”. Rarity responders deny that situationism poses any sort of threat to virtue ethics since there is no reason to suppose that (...) the moral virtues are typical or widespread. But, far from being its saving grace, I will argue, the rarity thesis forces virtue ethicists into positions that are incompatible with their theoretical foundations or render their theory normatively irrelevant. The more the virtue ethicists modify their thesis to fit the empirical evidence and to be normatively relevant, the less they retain a virtue ethical theory. This is also the case for virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

While there is now considerable anxiety about whether the psychological theory presupposed by virtue ethics is empirically sustainable, analogous issues have received little attention in the virtue epistemology literature. This paper argues that virtue epistemology encounters challenges reminiscent of those recently encountered by virtue ethics: just as seemingly trivial variation in context provokes unsettling variation in patterns of moral behavior, trivial variation in context elicits unsettling variation in patterns of cognitive functioning. Insofar as reliability is a condition on epistemic virtue, (...) we have reason to doubt that human beings possess the cognitive materials required for epistemic virtue, and thereby reason to think that virtue epistemology is threatened by skepticism. We conclude that while virtue epistemology has resources for addressing this challenge, exploiting these resources forces tradeoffs between empirical and normative adequacy. (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.

A certain conception of the relevance of virtue epistemology to the philosophy of education is set out. On this conception, while the epistemic goal of education might initially be promoting the pupil's cognitive success, it should ultimately move on to the development of the pupil's cognitive agency. A continuum of cognitive agency is described, on which it is ultimately cognitive achievement, and thus understanding, which is the epistemic goal of education. This is contrasted with a view on which knowledge is (...) the epistemic goal. (shrink)

For the past decade and a half, Aristotelians have tried to counter the following criticism articulated by John Doris: if we look at personality and social psychology research, we must conclude that we generally neither have, nor have the capacity to develop, character traits of the kind envisioned by Aristotle and his followers. Some defenses of Aristotelian virtue ethics proceed by trying to insulate it from this challenge, while others have tried to dissipate the force of Doris's critique by showing (...) how virtue ethics and recent findings in personality psychology share surprisingly extensive common ground. For example, in their 2009 books, Daniel Russell and Nancy Snow both argue that the empirical research regarding character complements - not undermines - virtue ethics. Specifically, each argues that the situationally sensitive Cognitive-Affective Personality System developed by Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda can be integrated into a virtue ethical moral philosophy and theory of character. In this paper, I raise several objections to their attempts to use the CAPS model to rehabilitate Aristotelian virtue ethics and argue that, as a result, this model has not been shown to have the promise Snow and Russell allege it has. (shrink)

Bu araştırma Jennifer Chandra Swaim tarafından geliştirilen Aksiyonda Değerler Ölçeği'nin Türkçeye uyarlanması işlem basamaklarını kapsamaktadır. Bu bakımdan bu çalışmanın amacı J. C. Swaim'in geliştirmiş olduğu Davranış Ölçeğinde Değişen Değerler "Modified Values in Action Questionnaire " adlı ölçeğinin Türkçe formunun dilsel eşdeğerliliğini sağlamaktır.Araştırma; 122 kadın, 134 erkek olmak üzere toplam 256 üniversite öğrencisi üzerinde yürütülmüştür. Ayrıca dilsel eşdeğerlik analizi için 30 kişiden oluşan yabancı dil üniversite hazırlık sınıfı öğrencisine bir hafta arayla İngilizce ve Türkçe form uygulanmış, uygulama sonuçları ilişkili grup t (...) testi ile analiz edilmiştir. Ölçeğin yapı geçerliliğini saptamak amacıyla faktör analizi yapılarak dört faktörlü 70 soru maddesi elde edilmiş, faktör yüklerinin.60 ile.87 arasında değiştiği görülmüştür. Ölçeğin Cronbach Alpha iç tutarlık katsayısı.92 olarak bulunmuştur. Kriter geçerliği analizi için tesadüfî olarak seçilen 33 kişilik üniversite üçüncü sınıf öğrencisine hem "Davranış Ölçeğinde Değişen Değerler" ölçeği hem de "Schwartz Değerler Ölçeği" uygulanmıştır. Her iki ölçme aracından elde edilen toplam puanlar arasında anlamlı korelatif ilişki saptanmıştır. Tüm sonuçlar, "Davranış Ölçeğinde Değişen Değerler" ölçeğinin dilsel eşdeğerlik ile yüksek düzeyde geçerli ve güvenilir olduğunu göstermiştir. (shrink)