Aristotelean virtue and the interpersonal aspect of ethical character

Journal of Moral Philosophy

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 23-49

  Merritt, Maria W ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH   (United States)

Author keywords

Aristotle; Character; Moral psychology; Situationism; Virtue; Virtue ethics

Indexed keywords

EID: 74249108438     PISSN: 17404681     EISSN: 17455243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/174552409X365919     Document Type: Review

References (99)

1. 1105a30-1105b1. All quotations from the text of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter, NE for short) will be in David Ross's translation
2. as revised by J.L. Ackrill and J.O. Urmson, Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925)
3. A central instance is Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 136 and pp. 113-19
4. On the centrality of practical reasoning - choosing the right actions for the right reasons - to the classical Western conception of virtuous character, see Julia Annas, 'Virtue Ethics', in D. Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 513-36
5. Jonathan Webber, 'Virtue, Character, and Situation', Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (2006), pp. 193-213
6. John M. Doris and Stephen P. Stich, 'As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics', in F. Jackson and M. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 114-52
7. John M. Doris, 'Precís' and 'Replies: Evidence and Sensibility', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2005), pp. 632-35, 656-77, with commentaries by Julia Annas (pp. 636-42), Nomy Arpaly (pp. 643-47) and Robert C. Solomon (pp. 648-55)
8. John Sabini and Maury Silver, 'Lack of Character? Situationism Critiqued', Ethics 115 (2005), pp. 535-62
9. Peter B. M. Vranas, 'The Indeterminacy Paradox: Character Evaluations and Human Psychology', Nous 39 (2005), pp. 1-42
10. Rachana Kamtekar, 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character', Ethics 114 (2004), pp. 458-91
11. Peter Railton, 'Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World', in Brian Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 265-84
12. Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
13. Christian Miller, 'Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics', Journal of Ethics 7 (2004), pp. 365-92
14. John M. Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
15. Gopal Sreenivasan, 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution', Mind 111 (2002), pp. 47-68
16. Maria Merritt, 'Virtue Ethics and Situationist Personality Psychology', Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 3 (2000), pp. 365-83
17. Gilbert Harman, 'Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error', in G. Harman, Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 165-78
18. Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991)
19. Thanks to Geoff Sayre-McCord for conversation on this point. For a similar point based on common philosophical acceptance of the principle that moral judgments supervene on nonmoral facts, see Railton, 'Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World', pp. 270-71): '...if we act rightly or wrongly, for the good or the bad, we do so within the natural world we inhabit as empirical beings...any account of the domain of moral thought and practice must be compatible with what we know of the domain of human psychology, biology, and circumstance upon which it supervenes'
20. Kamtekar, 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character', pp. 482-85
21. Doris, Lack of Character, pp. 110-12
22. Eric L. Hutton, 'Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought', Philosophical Studies 127 (2006), pp. 37-58, at p. 49
23. A kind of informal, non-institutional moral education may occur through young people's attempts to imitate morally exceptional community members whom they admire. But the uncritical acceptance of personal acquaintances as exemplars becomes problematic to the extent that moral maturity demands independent thought. (See section III.B below.)
24. Hutton, 'Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought', p. 50. Hutton emphasizes that he presents this solution as an exegesis of the early Confucian thinkers, not as a positive practical proposal
25. Or third, as Hutton ('Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought', p. 57, n. 41) suggests in passing, 'insofar as a society is democratic, and it is the ordinary people who direct the government and thereby their own lives, it may seem equally imperative to make their behavior as little situationally-dependent as possible'. But to take this third option is to back off from the assumption that virtue is rare, thus incurring greater exposure of moral norms to empirical generalizations about what most people are like
26. In principle, my point about interpersonal processes should stand on its own, whatever one's view of the situationist problem
27. Cf. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 8-11
28. NE 1106b36
29. While choosing the right actions may often be effortless for the virtuous agent, it is not mindless. As opposed to doing the same thing always and inattentively in the same circumstances, like brushing your teeth every night before bed, virtuous choice 'involves doing the appropriately different thing attentively in varying circumstances'. W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotle's Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 104
30. NE 1114b27-29
31. NE 1140b29-30
32. NE 1104b30-1105a1. For Aristotle, the noble is associated with the idea of a given action as the done thing, or more precisely, what the man of practical wisdom would do
33. Ibid
34. NE 1098b33-1099a5
35. see also NE 1114a7-10
36. NE 1116a20-26
37. NE 1095b26-29
38. See also NE 1159a21-24
39. For a discussion of the general point see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
40. NE 1172a11-14
41. NE 1104b30-1105a1
42. Agnieszka Jaworska, 'Respecting the Margins of Agency: Alzheimer's Patients and the Capacity to Value', Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1999), pp. 105-138, at p. 115
43. NE 1106b36-1107a2
44. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, p. 28
45. C.S. Carver, 'Self-Regulation', in A. Tesser and N. Schwarz (eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intraindividual Processes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 307-328
46. See also C.S. Carver and M.F. Scheier, On the Self-Regulation of Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
47. E.T. Higgins, 'Self-discrepancy Theory: A Theory Relating Self and Affect', Psychological Review 94 (1987), pp. 319-40
48. E.T. Higgins and O. Tykocinski, 'Self-discrepancies and Biographical Memory: Personality and Cognition at the Level of Psychological Situation', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18 (1992), pp. 527-35
49. For reviews of the literature, see S. Chen, H.C. Boucher and M.P. Tapias, 'The Relational Self Revealed: Integrative Conceptualization and Implications for Interpersonal Life', Psychological Bulletin 132 (2006), pp. 151-79
50. M.R. Banaji and D.A. Prentice, 'The Self in Social Contexts', Annual Review of Psychology 45 (1994), pp. 297-332
51. H. Markus and S. Cross, 'The Interpersonal Self ', in L.A. Pervin (ed.), Handbook of Personality (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), pp. 576-608
52. M.R. Leary, 'The Self We Know and the Self We Show: Self-esteem, Self-presentation, and the Maintenance of Interpersonal Relationships', in G.J.O. Fletcher and M.S. Clark (eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 457-77
53. In the routines of everyday activity and interaction, there is 'simply too much information about oneself to do anything but provide an edited, packaged version that is relevant to the goals at hand'. B.R. Schlenker and M.F. Weigold, 'Self-consciousness and Self-presentation: Being Autonomous versus Appearing Autonomous', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59 (1990), pp. 820-28
54. See also B.R. Schlenker and M.F. Weigold, 'Interpersonal Processes Involving Impression Regulation and Management', Annual Review of Psychology 43 (1992), pp. 133-68
55. M.R. Leary, Self-presentation: Impression Management and Interpersonal Behavior (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996)
56. Leary, 'The Self We Know and the Self We Show', pp. 462-63
57. To be sure, even when there is some incentive to satisfy such expectations, there might also be other incentives to opt out. The advisability of opting out will depend in part on the cost of severing the relationships in play
58. S.M. Drigotas, S.W. Whitton, C.E. Rusbult and J. Wieselquist, 'Close Partner as Sculptor of the Ideal Self: Behavioral Affirmation and the Michelangelo Phenomenon', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999), pp. 293-323
59. James B. Stewart, 'The Kona Files', The New Yorker, 19 February 2007, pp. 152-67
60. Stewart, 'The Kona Files', p. 159
61. A judge later dropped all charges against Dunn. But by then the episode had imposed a heavy cost in organizational turmoil, as well as an enormous personal toll upon Dunn herself. Benjamin Pimentel, 'Court Dismisses Charges against Former HP Chair', The San Francisco Chronicle, 15 March 2007, p. C1
62. H.M. Bazerman and M.R. Banaji, 'The Social Psychology of Ordinary Ethical Failures', Social Justice Research 17 (2004), pp. 111-15
63. M.R. Banaji, 'Ordinary Prejudice', Psychological Science Agenda 14 (2001), pp. 8-11
64. D.A. Moore and G. Loewenstein, 'Self-Interest, Automaticity, and the Psychology of Conflict of Interest', Social Justice Research 17 (2004), pp. 189-202
65. N. Dasgupta, 'Implicit Ingroup Favoritism, Outgroup Favoritism, and their Behavioral Manifestations', Social Justice Research 17 (2004), pp. 143-69
66. L.A. Rudman, 'Social Justice in Our Minds, Homes, and Society: The Nature, Causes, and Consequences of Implicit Bias', Social Justice Research 17 (2004), pp. 129-42
67. Jason Dana and George Loewenstein, 'A Social Science Perspective on Gifts to Physicians from Industry', Journal of the American Medical Association 290 (2003), pp. 252-55
68. Bazerman and Banaji, 'The Social Psychology of Ordinary Ethical Failures'
69. Daniel Kahneman, 'A Perspective on Judgment and Choice: Mapping Bounded Rationality', American Psychologist 58 (2003), pp. 697-720
70. Kahneman, 'A Perspective on Judgment and Choice', p. 699
71. Alongside Kahneman's research program, another school of thought prominent in the empirical literature on intuition, judgment, and decision-making is led by Gerd Gigerenzer. See, e.g., Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
72. Gigerenzer has identified a form of intuitive decision-making, 'one-reason decision-making', which is ubiquitous in everyday reasoning and may often be useful, but which might occasionally lead to moral misapprehension. When there are too many relevant considerations to take into account in a limited amount of time, we recruit a single type of consideration to stand in for the harder-to-determine, all-things-considered best choice. See also Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 'Moral Intuitions as Heuristics', unpublished manuscript
73. John Darley, 'The Cognitive and Social Psychology of Contagious Organizational Corruption', Brooklyn Law Review 70 (2005), pp. 1177-94
74. Elliot Aronson, The Social Animal (New York: Worth Publishers, 9th edn, 2003), pp. 143-99
75. R.M. Jones, 'Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board: Promoting Accountability in Corporate Governance', Iowa Law Review 92 (2006), pp. 105-158
76. G. Weary, 'Self-presentation and the Moderation of Self-serving Attributional Biases', Social Cognition 1 (1982), pp. 140-59
77. Aronson, The Social Animal, p. 140
78. Jones, 'Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board'
79. A.G. Greenwald and S.J. Breckler, 'To Whom is the Self Presented?', in B.R. Schlenker (ed.), The Self and Social Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), pp. 126-45
80. See also Moore and Loewenstein, 'Self-Interest, Automaticity, and the Psychology of Conflict of Interest'
81. It is important, however, not to over-generalize about the type of cognitive processing typically associated with moral judgment. Even as many aspects of moral judgment draw on slow, deliberative cognitive processing, evidence suggests that other aspects are sub-served by fast, automatic cognitive processing. See, e.g., Joshua D. Greene, et al., 'The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment', Neuron 44 (2004), pp. 389-400
82. Darley, 'The Cognitive and Social Psychology of Contagious Organizational Corruption', p. 1185
83. J.S. Lerner and P.E. Tetlock, 'Accounting for the Effects of Accountability', Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999), pp. 255-75, at p. 255
84. Lerner and Tetlock, in 'Accounting for the Effects of Accountability', provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the extensive body of research on accountability and its impact on judgment and decision-making
85. J. Pennington and B.R. Schlenker, 'Accountability for Consequential Decisions: Justifying Ethical Judgments to Audiences', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25 (1999), pp. 1067-1081
86. Lerner and Tetlock, 'Accounting for the Effects of Accountability'; see especially Table 1, p. 260
87. S. Chen, D. Schechter and S. Chaiken, 'Getting at the Truth or Getting Along: Accuracy-Versus Impression-Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71 (1996), pp. 262-75
88. A. Quinn and B.R. Schlenker, 'Can Accountability Produce Independence? Goals as Determinants of the Impact of Accountability on Conformity', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002), pp. 472-83
89. See also Jones, 'Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board'
90. Quinn and Schlenker, 'Can Accountability Produce Independence?'
91. Chen, Schechter and Chaiken, 'Getting at the Truth or Getting Along'
92. Schlenker and Weigold, 'Self-consciousness and Self-presentation', pp. 820-28
93. However, for some domains, the empirical literature arguably suggests that self-interested biases operate so far below the radar of conscious, deliberate cognition that it may be more effective simply to remove the distorting influences altogether. For instance, if the evidence shows that neither the disclosure of physicians' involvement with pharmaceutical companies nor limits on the size of promotional gifts to physicians will work to correct bias in prescribing practices, a policy of outright prohibition might be preferable. Dana and Loewenstein, 'A Social Science Perspective on Gifts to Physicians from Industry', p. 254
94. Henry K. Beecher, 'Ethics and Clinical Research', New England Journal of Medicine 274 (1966), pp. 1354-360
95. Allan M. Brandt, 'Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study', Hastings Center Report 8 (1978), pp. 21-29
96. National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 'The Belmont Report', U.S. Government Printing Office, 18 April 1979; U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Title 45, part 46, Protection of Human Subjects; Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002)
97. Contrast the contemporary ideal of social diversity in educational environments
98. Cf. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics
99. Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)