Situational Traits of Character: Dispositional Foundations and Implications for Moral Psychology and Friendship

SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

DISPOSITIONAL FOUNDATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND FRIENDSHIP CANDACE L. UPTON

SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

Situational Traits of Character DISPOSITIONAL FOUNDATIONS

AND

IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND FRIENDSHIP Candace L. Upton

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Upton, Candace L., 1968– Situational traits of character : dispositional foundations and implications for moral psychology and friendship / Candace L. Upton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-3284-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7391-3286-9 (electronic) 1. Character. 2. Situation ethics. I. Title. BJ1531.U68 2009 179'.9—dc22 2009017481 Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

To Lloyd

CONTENTS

AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S

ix

I N T RO D U C T I O N

xi

1

GLOBAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

2

TRAITS AS DISPOSITIONS

25

3

SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

47

4

SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

73

SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND THE FRIENDLY CONSEQUENTIALIST

89

5

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BIBLIOGR APHY

10 9

INDEX

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the University of Denver and the University of Denver Philosophy Department for providing me the time and support to complete this book. Thanks to Naomi Reshotko. I am grateful to the following for permission to reprint material previously published elsewhere: A section of chapter 1 and a section of chapter 3 are each reprinted with modifications from “Virtue Ethics, Character, and Normative Receptivity,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (2008): 51–66. Reprinted with permission from Koninklijk Brill N.V. A section of chapter 3 is reprinted with modifications with kind permission from Springer Science + Business Media: Philosophical Studies, “A Contextual Account of Character Traits,” vol. 122, 2005, 133–51, Candace L. Upton. A section of chapter 4 is reprinted with modifications with kind permission from Springer Science + Business Media: The Journal of Value Inquiry, Review of John Doris’s Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, vol. 39, 2005: 507–12, Candace L. Upton.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT S

Three sections of chapter 5 are reprinted with modifications from: Candace L. Upton, “Context, Character, and Consequentialist Friendships,” Utilitas, vol. 20, no. 3, 334–47, 2008 © Cambridge Journals, published by Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission.

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ne thesis that virtually all virtue ethicists converge upon holds that the virtues, or traits of character, benefit their possessor. An agent possessing the trait of compassion would, consistent with our pre-theoretic understanding of compassion, help others in need. Over the course of her lifetime, the compassionate agent might perform a few large-scale compassionate acts, or she might perform a bevy of small-scale compassionate acts. But her acts of compassion would not impinge on the overall quality of her life, ability to pursue her interests, ability to develop and maintain a range of social ties, and would embody several, if not all, of the other virtues. Further, the compassionate agent often experiences pleasure from her compassionate acts, insofar as they are compassionate, and her compassionate acts and outlook can produce or contribute to a sense of satisfaction, a psychologically and physically healthy psyche and body, and a morally meritorious life. These factors afford the virtuous agent the self-esteem, confidence, sensitivity, courage, social connections, and moral strength to pursue the goals she deems valuable, to live a life that harmonizes with her unique physical and psychological makeup, and to further refine her virtuous traits. In a manner such as this, the virtues benefit their possessor.

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A second thesis, which virtue ethicists embrace even more widely than the first, holds that the virtues are global. A moral agent possesses a global trait of character, GT, just in case (1) she possesses the mental features relevant to GT, (2) she would respond, both behaviorally and attitudinally, in a GT-appropriate way, such that her responses yield from those mental features that are relevant to GT, and (3) she would respond in a GT-appropriate way across a broad range of normal situations. The globally compassionate agent would care about others, believe that helping others is important, she would reason appropriately about specific cases in which she responds compassionately, and so on. And the mental features grounding the trait of compassion would issue in appropriately compassionate responses. What is distinctive to the global trait of compassion, however, insofar as it is global, is that the globally compassionate agent would respond compassionately across a broad range of normal situations. She might encounter a disabled stranger who has been deposed from her wheelchair, a friend whose spoiled child continually misbehaves, or a sibling whose marriage is in a state of decay. The virtuous agent would respond appropriately to each of these very different kinds of situation. In fact, her compassion guides her to respond appropriately across the full extent of morally transparent, morally dubious, or morally ambiguous situations she does or could encounter. The link between the two virtue ethical theses—that traits of character benefit their possessor and that traits of character should operate globally—manifests itself explicitly. In order maximally to benefit their possessor, the virtues must operate globally. For example, appropriate compassionate responses often require that an agent break free of, or at least struggle to cope with, her shyness around others and fear of embarrassment for the purpose of approaching strangers. If an agent responds compassionately only to others with whom she shares close emotional bonds, however, she effectively boycotts two central sources of personal benefit that proper operation of the virtues can beget. When she succumbs to the pressures of her shyness and fails to help a stranger, not only will she not experience the pleasure of helping another, but she might either exxii

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perience guilt for responding wrongly or rationalize her inappropriate response, thus further stultifying her virtue-related sensibilities. Further, the agent who responds compassionately only to her friends and family hobbles her own ability to develop the social ties which may play a significant role in her sense of connection, community, and well-being. Many significant benefits can flow into the life of the agent whose compassion targets only her close emotional correspondents, but a fuller, richer life, enhanced by a spectrum of emotional, intellectual, and physical activity, can bring the agent who develops global traits closer to a life of flourishing. However, while the virtues, conceived globally, are reasonably taken to benefit their possessor, traits of character ought not to be conceived of in exclusively global terms. Moral agents enter into the process of developing and maintaining global traits of character with a multiplicity of legitimate purposes, one of which might be to enhance and intensify the quality of the relationships, activities, and projects comprising their lives. At the same time, a variety of complementary purposes accompany the employment of virtue ethical concepts and terminology. Moral agents whose moral aspirations fall within the domain of virtue ethics need the concepts and terminology of traits of character in order to describe their own or others’ excellent, adequate, or blemished virtue-related behavioral or attitudinal tendencies, morally to assess their own or others’ virtue-related tendencies, to provide an informational foundation upon which they can base rational behaviors and responses to others’ virtuous or less-than-virtuous tendencies, and to induce others to behave in a morally appropriate way. However, I will argue that traditional global notions of character, despite all their subtleties and complexities, are not sufficiently subtle and complex to enable moral agents to deploy their conceptual and terminological attendants in pursuit of a life of flourishing. Instead, I will argue that moral agents who endeavor to live a life of flourishing should adopt a virtue ethical treatment of character that includes situational traits of character. A moral agent possesses a situational character trait ST just in case (1) she possesses the mental features that are appropriate to the global correlate of ST, and (2) her morally appropriate responses would not extend across xiii

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a broad range of normal situations. The situationally compassionate moral agent possesses all the mental features that she would need to possess to be globally compassionate. But the situationally compassionate agent would not always, although she may in many cases, respond the way she morally ought to. Still, however, she is compassionate with respect to those situations in which she would behave compassionately; if she would display proper compassion toward her coworkers but not toward strangers, she is coworkercompassionate but not stranger-compassionate. The moral agent who endorses character attributions such as temperate-around-friends-and-family and moderate-except-whendrinking-alcohol has available to her a robust source of trait-related conceptual material that enriches her ability to describe her own or others’ trait-based behavioral and attitudinal tendencies, morally to assess herself and others, to accrue trait-related information about herself and others, on which basis she can draw explicit inferences about how to respond in the specific situations she encounters, and to encourage others to respond in a morally appropriate manner. It would be hasty for the virtue ethicist to conclude, however, that situational traits of character ought to replace global traits of character. For global traits exhibit a number of valuable features that justify their retention within a virtue ethical framework: global traits enjoy a prominent history within Western ethical thinking, they lay the foundation for the metaphysical basis of an approach to ethical value and decision-making that is allegedly distinct from its more commonly accepted act-based and outcome-based approaches, and they can provide a virtuous ideal of attitude and behavior, albeit abstract, toward the development of which the moral agent can guide her moral decisions, choices, and actions. Given the shortcomings of global traits, though, situational traits are necessary to prevent global traits’ becoming largely expendable in the practical domain within which rational moral agents plan their courses of action and the courses of their lives, improve upon their own moral shortcomings, and respond to the perfect and imperfect aspects of the world around them. Chapter 1 of this book begins by displaying the full anatomy of global traits of character as they appear in Aristotle’s primary work xiv

INTRODUCTION

on virtue, along with a number of additional pronounced historical and contemporary virtue ethical figures. I focus on the three central features of traditional Aristotelian virtue: the mental features which virtuous agents ought to possess, the morally appropriate responses in which virtuous agents’ mental features should issue, and the broad range of normal situations across which virtuous agents should display morally appropriate responses. Chapter 2 launches the first argument in favor of situational traits by dissecting the historically entrenched classification of traits of character as a kind of disposition. In particular, I argue that the most plausible understanding of dispositions holds that they are contextual: a vase is fragile-in-certain-circumstances, a plastic ball buoyant-in-certain-circumstances. If global character traits are dispositions, then, if no relevant normative factors categorically distinguish character traits from dispositions, it follows that character traits should be construed situationally. Chapter 3 advances two normative arguments in support of situational traits of character. First, trait attributions are necessary for performing several important virtue-related functions, including functions involving appraisal, information-yielding, and prediction. Trait attributions satisfying these functions can enable the virtue ethicist to cultivate her own and others’ virtue, and these functions must be executed by employing trait attributions. Global traits display a structural complexity that is insufficient for the virtue ethicist who employs their attributions greatly to morally improve upon her own and others’ responses to the situations she encounters. Situational traits, however, display a fine-grained structural complexity that enables the virtue ethicist morally to improve in a significant way and, hence, the virtue ethicist should countenance situational traits. Second, I argue that unless the virtue ethicist endorses situational traits of character, she is forced to attribute the trait of justice in an intuitively unjust way. In chapter 4, I argue that my situational account of character traits is distinct from, and superior to, the only other well-developed extant account of non-global traits. An extensive collection of social psychological findings indicates that most people display behavior xv

INTRODUCTION

that we would not expect from moral agents who are globally virtuous; global traits do not appear accurately to describe most of the population. John Doris concludes that virtue ethicists should embrace non-global traits, which he calls “local traits.”1 For, he argues, a normative ethical theory whose trait attributions coincide with the empirical state of affairs can better enable moral agents to improve their moral reasoning, moral decisions, and moral behavior. But I argue that Doris’s local account of traits suffers from a series of vitiating objections. Two of the most central of these objections hold that Doris’s local traits are not theoretically linked to global traits; and, hence, do not merit classification as traits, and that Doris’s (empirical) justification for local traits dissolves if the empirical situation with respect to the character traits agents exemplify shifts. The primary purpose of chapter 5 is to establish that endorsing situational traits is no insignificant deed from which no important philosophical implications follow. In particular, I argue that situational traits of character bear fruit in an unexpected form. A firmly entrenched objection to consequentialist versions of normative ethical theory holds that a damaging psychological and conceptual tension precludes the consequentialist’s ever becoming a genuine friend: the consequentialist would abandon her suboptimal friendships, while the genuine friend would not. After tracing the development of this objection, I recommend a modified, trait-based, objection for the friend of genuine friendships. Even this more sophisticated trait-based objection, however, assumes a global understanding of character traits. Provided a more realistic account of friendship than its proponents have long assumed, application of the situational account of character traits demonstrates that genuine friendship and consequentialism are psychologically and conceptually harmonious with one another. If application of situational traits can resolve a debate over the compatibility of consequentialism and friendship, its application to yet further philosophical debates might yield similarly congenial results.

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NOTE 1. John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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1

GLOBAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

he list of ancient through contemporary moral philosophers falling within the Western analytic tradition who appeal to, and provide accounts of, traits of character is extensive. Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Murdoch, Anscombe, Foot, Rawls, Annas, Hursthouse, Swanton, and myriad others all employ traits of character, in one fashion or another, as a substantial element of their moral philosophical thinking.1 In this chapter, I provide a general conception of the nature and role of character traits within the Western analytic philosophical tradition. By way of introducing an account of character traits that is almost univocal within this tradition, I begin by presenting a broad range of philosophical disagreements surrounding the nature and proper role of character traits. Second, I lay out a tripartite account of character traits that captures those features of character that lie at the core of traditional Western analytic virtue ethical approaches to moral deliberation, reasoning, and decision-making. Finally, I reflect on the traditional, historically entrenched account of character traits and their role in the practical realm of their cultivation, and our justification for thinking that other moral agents possess character traits.

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DISPUTED FEATURES OF CHAR ACTER TR AITS

A wide berth of disagreement over the general theoretical, normative, and metaethical role of character traits, and the specific nature of character traits and their interrelations, permeates the Western succession of trait-related moral philosophical thought. Virtue ethicists typically hold that character traits play the central role within their theoretical or nontheoretical2 understanding of moral value, moral reasoning, and moral decision-making, such that an appeal to character traits should answer all the principal questions the astute moral enquirer should propose. Traits of character, according to such virtue ethicists, should somehow provide a ground for normativity that yields virtue ethics’ real obligations, they should stand firmly at the core of any account of the rightness of actions and goodness of persons, and they should guide the moral agent to choose morally appropriate actions and responses. Deontologists and teleologists who appeal to character traits, however, can allow traits of character appropriately to play only an instrumental role within their ethical theory. Mill, who is reasonably considered the paradigm teleologist, suggests that developing character traits might best enable the moral agent to act in accord with those rules which history has shown best to promote the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for the greatest number of people possible;3 appeal to the intrinsic value of pleasure and the intrinsic disvalue of pain, and the normative reasons they generate, ultimately provides answers to all substantive moral questions. And Kant, who is reasonably taken to be the paradigm deontologist, argues that the moral agent should always act only upon those maxims which she can will to be universal law, or always act so that she treats humanity always as an end and never merely as a means;4 appeal to the rational will provides the conceptual material from which correct responses to substantive moral questions issue. If character traits were to play any notable role within Kant’s deontological ethics, they would be resigned to an instrumental role, wherein possession of a trait of character enables us better to perform right actions.5 2

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Virtue ethicists and other theoretical (and nontheoretical) ethicists also fail to converge on an account of which mentally rooted behavioral dispositions actually qualify as traits of character. Aristotle includes bravery, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, “the virtue concerned with small honors,” mildness, friendliness, truthfulness, wit, and justice.6 In sharp contract, Nietzsche includes solitude, playfulness, depth, fatalism, taking risks, aestheticism, style, and exuberance as traits of character.7 A further source of disagreement among ethicists who endorse and employ traits of character concerns the interrelations among traits of character. Aristotle holds that the virtues, or traits of character, are unified; for a moral agent to possess one character trait, she must possess them all. Other moral philosophers diverge from Aristotle’s claim about the unity of the virtues, some arguing that it is possible for a moral agent to possess one, and only one, virtue, while others argue that possessing one virtue might preclude an agent’s possessing any other. Similarly dealing with the interrelations amongst the virtues, a long-standing Western philosophical and theological tradition that is rooted in Plato and directly attributable to Aquinas maintains that four of the virtues, courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom, are necessary for possessing any of the other virtues.8 Controversy among friends of character traits also persists at the practical level. Virtue ethics’ foes insist that, while any legitimate ethical approach to moral reasoning, decision-making, and choice should yield firm and precise direction, with respect to the question of which act an agent ought to perform, virtue ethics is unable appropriately to guide the action of moral agents, owing to its highly general and often vague prescriptions such as: Be honest. A multitude of additional disagreements over traits of character permeates the ethics literature. Importantly, however, within this accumulation of divergence, a solid core of convergence remains: three conceptual features of character traits unite virtually all proponents of the virtues. Aristotle discusses these three core features of character traits at length, in great detail, with insightful attention to specific cases, and with the incisive sensitivity that characterizes 3

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the astute observer of human beings, their psychological states, and their abundant variety of behavior. Since Aristotle’s writings on character traits manifest the most highly developed understanding of traits’ three core features, I take his view to typify what I call the “traditional account of character traits.” However, my goal in the remainder of this chapter is not to reconstruct Aristotle’s account of character traits down to the last detail; I am sanguine with the possibility that my presentation of traditional traits of character diverges from Aristotle’s in some of its complexities. Further, to the extent that his successors’ views on character traits presuppose and build upon the three core features of traits, I also take their views to exemplify the traditional account. Many, if not most, of Aristotle’s successors would take their views on character to be nontraditional, but I intend this classification to hold only with respect to whether the traits of character a moral philosopher endorses include the three core features.

THE MENTAL GROUND

Traditional accounts of character hold that three features are central to a character trait: traditional character traits are mentally grounded, dynamic, and global.9 First, to possess a character trait, S must possess a set of stable mental features that ground the trait. A brave person, for example, must possess a range of beliefs, desires, reasons, willpower, attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities.10 She must believe that certain things are valuable and worth protecting even at the cost of her quality or even quantity of life. She must desire to protect these valuable things and exact the willpower needed actually to do so. She must reason, deliberate, and emotionally and attitudinally respond in certain characteristic ways, and she must be sufficiently perceptually sensitive to identify situations that call for bravery. These stable mental features, which together comprise the virtuous person’s frame of mind, ground the trait by providing the central core from which virtuous action issues. 4

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The mental features grounding the virtuous person’s bravery are dispositional in nature, such that when she is neither present in a situation that calls for a brave response nor actually manifesting her bravery, she still carries with her the trait of bravery. The beliefs, desires, reasons, and other mental features constituting the ground of an agent’s trait of character enable the agent to respond appropriately in the different kinds of ethically tinted situations that she encounters. For example, a brave agent might be unknowingly approaching a fierce dog that is snarling at a terrified child. Not yet aware of the potentially dangerous situation, the agent is brave since she carries the mental features that ground bravery. Once she identifies the snarling dog as a threat to the child, her general belief that some things are worth protecting issues in the particular belief that the child in her presence is worth protecting; her general desire to protect things that are valuable issues in the desire to protect this child; her general willpower to respond appropriately in the face of her own fear issues in her occurrent exerted willpower, in this particular situation, to aid this particular child; and so on. While the virtuous agent’s general dispositional virtuous frame of mind issues in particular mental features that are relevant to a specific situation she encounters, there is no reason for thinking that this process occurs at the conscious level, with the general dispositional frame of mind issuing in occurrent mental features, no reason for thinking that this is an intellectual process, and no reason for thinking that this process involves reasoning from general principles. One feature of a trait’s grounding mental features that markedly increases the complexity of the concept of a trait, raises questions about the semantic content of a trait concept, and possibly precludes providing a detailed analysis of the notion of a trait is the following: Owing to their radically different emotional, experiential, and intellectual histories, the two sets of trait-grounding mental features necessary for any two agents to possess a particular trait of character might differ. Caring about others is putatively necessary for any agent’s being compassionate. But an emotionally traumatic family history might trigger intensely painful memories in one agent such that it is unreasonable to expect her to care intensely, or at all, 5

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about others who are in need of her help. The traumatized agent might be obligated to seek therapy in an effort to ameliorate her emotional responses but, still, shouldering this obligation does not obviously preclude her also being compassionate, provided she possesses the appropriate desires, beliefs, reasoning patterns, and so on, and provided that it is at least possible that she come to care about others. It is unclear how radically two virtuous agents could differ in their trait-grounding mental features. Consider the generally characterized list of mental features relevant to possessing a trait of character that I articulated at the outset of this section: A brave person, for example, must possess a range of beliefs, desires, reasons, willpower, attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities. It is highly implausible that one brave agent could possess only the beliefs, desires, reasons, and willpower relevant to bravery, while another brave agent possessed only the attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities relevant to bravery. However, some heretofore unspecified differential spread between the sets of mental features grounding two agents’ character traits might yield either a conception of character whose complexity precludes the possibility of articulating an analysis of that conception, or a conception of character whose application is never univocal. Two potential problems arise if the virtue ethicist is committed to a conception of character that regularly results in a non-univocal application: the semantic content of such a concept would shift upon each differing application, rendering the concept indeterminate in content, and the virtue ethicist hoping to establish virtue ethics as a distinct approach to ethics is precluded from executing this task by positing the virtues as carriers of intrinsic (or extrinsic) value, since the virtues would not share any one metaphysically unifying feature and, hence, would lack the metaphysical centrality necessary to carry normativity and yield any real moral obligations.11 Irrespective of these potentially serious concerns which, incidentally, affect both global and situational notions of character if they affect either, I hereafter refer to the characterological ground 6

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of an agent’s trait as the frame of mind appropriate to the trait; this locution makes reference to the presumed fact that certain specifiable mental features befit her psychological and physiological history, that these features are necessary for her possessing a trait of character and, hence, that she should possess these mental features. Owing to moral epistemological reasons whose defense extends far beyond the scope of this book, I am no friend of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, whose possession allegedly enables a virtuous agent to know which act is right to perform and also, presumably, to know which mental features constitute the appropriate frame of mind for her character traits. Still, it is within the bounds of reasonableness that there is a fact about which particular mental features should function as our characterological ground, and that extensive experience, sensitivity, and reflection can steer us ever closer to knowing what our own appropriate virtuous frame of mind ought to be. A further disagreement among virtue ethicists concerns whether the virtuous person who is in a virtuous frame of mind is morally perfect, such that either she would never respond, either behaviorally or attitudinally, to a situation she encounters in a less than wholly virtuous way, or such that she would never possess mental features whose content is negatively tinged, such as disgust, fear, or nervousness. While I will briefly treat the question whether the virtuous can ever respond non-virtuously, my special concern deals with whether the virtuous can ever possess negatively tinged mental features that are external to their virtuous frame of mind, whose content seems to strain our intuitive sense that the agent does, indeed, possess the virtue in question, and whose presence requires the putatively virtuous agent to struggle to respond virtuously. Suppose S is in a just frame of mind but that she is also, in a particular case, disgusted by the individuals to whom virtue demands she behave justly; after a bout of struggle with her disgust, she overcomes her adverse emotion and behaves justly. But two strands of thought differ on whether her harboring disgust in conjunction with her just frame of mind precludes her being just. 7

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Aristotle is traditionally understood as claiming that the agent who must struggle against her negatively tinged emotional states in order to behave virtuously is only continent, not virtuous.12 But even if this reading of Aristotle is appropriate, Aristotle’s reason for separating the continent from the virtuous is unclear. He appears simply to assert that virtue precludes any struggle against right behavior: “. . . someone who does not enjoy fine actions is not good; for no one would call him just, e.g., if he did not enjoy doing just actions, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions, and similarly for the other virtues” (1099a18–20).13 But, while the continent person’s struggle to act virtuously might seem to indicate that she does not enjoy acting rightly, her struggle might indicate merely that she desires to produce right action but also houses competing desires to produce action that is not consistent with also producing right action. Further, the moral agent whom Aristotle deems continent might enjoy acting rightly despite, or perhaps even partly because of, her having to struggle with herself to produce right action. The second understanding of Aristotle’s view on the relation between virtue and imperfection holds that the virtuous person might house, in addition to the frame of mind that grounds her particular virtue, negatively tinged mental features whose nature and intensity cause the agent to struggle to respond virtuously in particular situations that she encounters. Aristotle details several cases in which virtuous people perform wrong actions. First, he claims that an agent who is generous can fail to spend what is right but, yet, still be generous. The generous man, says Aristotle, “is more grieved if he has failed to spend what it was right to spend than if he has spent what it was wrong to spend” (1121a5–7). Further, Aristotle claims that “acting unjustly does not necessarily imply being unjust” (1134a16–17). These passages allow us explicitly to conclude only that the generous agent need not always respond in a perfectly generous manner and that the just need not always respond in a perfectly just manner. But Aristotle provides no principled reason for thinking that response-related imperfection is possible only for generosity and justice. It is not unreasonable to conclude that, for any of the virtues, it is possible for an agent to possess a virtue but, yet, 8

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not always respond in a manner that is perfectly appropriate to that virtue. Further, it is not unreasonable to conclude from these passages that, for Aristotle, the virtuous person can perform wrong actions or respond inappropriately to a situation, yet still retain her virtue. For, according to Aristotle’s doctrine of the unity of the virtues, a moral agent possesses all the virtues just in case she possesses one virtue. Hence, the generous agent who does not always respond perfectly generously is also an honest, temperate, and just agent, and the just agent who does not always respond perfectly justly is also honest, temperate, and generous, and so on. It is not implausible to attribute to Aristotle the view that virtuous moral agents can sometimes manifest behavioral and attitudinal responses that are less than perfect. In addition to allowing response-related imperfection in the virtuous agent, Aristotle also seems to allow for virtuous agents who possess negatively tinged mental features whose presence requires the virtuous agent to struggle to respond virtuously. Aristotle offers a case in which a just agent carries with him a negatively tinged struggle-producing mental feature. He claims that “a man might even lie with a woman knowing who she was, but the origin of his act might not be deliberate choice but passion. He acts unjustly, then, but is not unjust; for example, a man is not a thief, yet he stole, nor an adulterer, yet he committed adultery; and similarly in all other cases” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1134a19–23). Owing to being in a state of passion, Aristotle’s just agent responds unjustly. But it is less morally contentious to hold that a just agent, owing to being in a state of passion, can respond unjustly than to hold that, owing to being in a state of passion, a moral agent must struggle to respond justly. Hence, while Aristotle does not explicitly advance a case in which a virtuous agent must struggle to respond virtuously, it is plausible to claim that traditional Aristotelian notions of character allow for such cases. In Aristotle’s examples of virtuous people who either act wrongly or carry negatively tinged mental features lies an articulation of a view about the nature of virtue that competes with the traditional view that virtue requires moral perfection. Of course, this view about 9

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the nature of virtue, which allows for two kinds of imperfection, is not beyond contention, and it is not clearly attributable to Aristotle since he also explicitly claims that “the decent person will never willingly do base actions” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1128b28–29). Christine Swanton provides comments that suggest she is amenable to the view that virtuous agents might possess struggleproducing negatively tinged mental features. Consistent with the second Aristotelian understanding about the nature of virtue, according to which virtue is compatible with imperfection, she claims that struggle is consistent with virtue, that “the mark of the virtuous is the propensity to violate a ‘virtue rule’ such as ‘Be benevolent’ only with reluctance, anguish, and distress.”14 Oftentimes, people struggle with reluctance, anguish, and distress, and even fear, passion, and disgust, but do not violate a “virtue rule.” And, so, Swanton endorses the claim that at least some moral agents who display negatively tinged mental features that seemingly oppose the content of their virtuous frame of mind, and require them to struggle to respond virtuously, can still be virtuous. The account of virtue, according to which virtue does not require perfection, is preferable because it more closely coheres with commonsense accounts of virtue. By the commonsense understanding, courage involves overcoming fear in the face of personal danger;15 justice involves equitable distribution even when the just agent would be disappointed by or disgusted at the outcome; honesty sometimes involves appropriate truth telling even when the agent faces intense nervousness that others might react adversely to the truth. For this reason, I include in my explication of the traditional understanding of character traits the clause that struggle is consistent with virtue, even though this claim might be rejected by some Aristotelians. Of course, the content of some struggle-producing features seems consistent with their owner’s virtue, while others suggest that their owner is less than virtuous, if she is virtuous at all. Suppose that an adult has just fallen off her bicycle, and that S struggles to get herself to aid the cyclist because she is shy and uncomfortable approaching individuals who are unfamiliar to her. The reason for S’s 10

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struggle is intuitively consistent with her being virtuous. But if the reason for S’s struggle is that S does not wish to arrive late to a movie she wishes to see, S is intuitively less than virtuous, or not virtuous at all. The content of our struggle-producing mental features varies radically, but, still, many of these features are clearly consistent with virtue.16

THE DYNAMIC TR AIT

The second feature that is central to traditionally understood character traits is their dynamism; a dynamic character trait yields appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses. Character traits are typically thought to enable their possessors to flourish, to live valuable, happy lives in which they pursue their interests and projects, and perform right action, and character traits can support an agent’s flourishing only if she is connected to the world via behavior. Whether an agent’s character trait is dynamic is a function of two factors: the intensity of the trait’s frame of mind and the intensity of any negatively tinged struggle-producing mental features. If S possessed all the mental features appropriate to bravery but her willpower was not sufficiently intense, she would not behave bravely; if her willpower were more robust, however, she would behave bravely. Similarly, if S possessed all the mental features appropriate to bravery but was sufficiently disgusted by the potential recipients of her would-be bravery, she would not behave bravely in every relevant situation; if her willpower were stronger, however, or if she found a way to overcome the source of her disgust, she would behave bravely. A trait’s dynamism is, hence, rooted firmly in the agent’s entire mental state, which includes both her traits’ appropriate frame of mind and any negatively tinged struggle-producing features. One point of dispute over character traits’ dynamic quality concerns whether traits’ proper operation should guarantee, or only probabilify, appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses.17 If traits of character share all the relevant features of the kinds of 11

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dispositions studied by metaphysicians and philosophers of science,18 then some character traits probabilistically issue in appropriate responses of their own nature. However, as I suggest in the previous section, it is reasonable to accept the claim that virtuous people need not always respond in ways that are morally beyond reproach. Hence, consistent with the claim about behavioral and attitudinal moral perfection, and virtue, an agent who possesses a traditionally conceived trait of character should, insofar as that trait is dynamic, display appropriate moral responses with a reasonably high degree of probability.

THE GLOBAL TR AIT

The third feature traditional accounts hold as being central to character traits is that they are global—character traits must dispose the agent to produce trait-relevant behavior across a broad range of normal kinds of situation.19 A situation is a state of affairs having features to which an agent is potentially morally sensitive, such that encountering a situation might impact the agent’s behavioral or attitudinal responses. A situation might be external to the agent, as when an agent’s friend is present, and the friend’s presence either consciously or nonconsciously affects the agent’s moral behavior or attitudes. Similarly, a situation might be internal to an agent, as when an agent’s chronic depression affects her moral behavior or attitudes. Situations are best individuated on the basis of factors issuing both from an agent’s own point of view and outsiders’ point of view.20 An outsider, upon observing S’s behavior, might notice that S always behaves in a friendly manner when she is in coffee shops and conclude that coffee shops present situations to which S is morally sensitive. However, the information that S always and only meets her close friends in coffee shops in unavailable to the outside observer, and it is actually the presence of her close friends to which S is morally sensitive. At the same time, a moral agent might note that she consistently behaves in a friendly manner when she is in coffee shops and conclude that she is morally sensitive to coffee 12

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shop-like situations. But an outsider might notice that the agent frequents only coffee shops where she encounters individuals whose socioeconomic status is lower than hers, concluding that an individual’s socioeconomic status presents the real aspect of the situation to which the agent is morally sensitive. And, of course, a moral agent might actually be morally sensitive to certain situations in which she ought not to be morally sensitive. A traditionally brave agent must be disposed to behave bravely across a broad range of normal kinds of situation. Suppose that S is in a brave frame of mind, and that the mental features grounding her bravery are sufficiently intense to produce morally appropriate behavior. To possess the traditional trait of bravery, S must behave bravely in different physical locations, when different kinds of values are at stake, when she is in benevolent and irritable moods, and toward family, acquaintances, and strangers, and in a variety of other kinds of situations. Due to the astounding array of psychological differences in human beings, the requirements of virtue might demand that two agents behave bravely in different sets of situations. While it is implausible that we can appropriately link a moral agent’s virtue to some specific number of kinds of situation in which she ought to behave virtuously, it is useful to suppose, for the sake of establishing an important theoretical point, that this linking is possible. It is consistent with the traditional concept of bravery that, to be brave, S must behave bravely in eight kinds of situation, while T must behave bravely in only six. Provided an agent behaves bravely in the situations where virtue demands bravery, she is brave; if she would behave bravely in fewer situations than virtue demands, she is not brave. The broad range of situations across which a virtuous agent must behave virtuously should be normal; virtue does not demand that an agent behave bravely if the situation is not normal. A descriptive account of normal situations might hold that normal situations are those that are statistically commonplace. And in a particular individual’s case, severe, chronic depression might be statistically commonplace. If we accept this descriptive account of normal situations, then if someone fails to behave compassionately because of a 13

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prevailing depression, she is simply not a compassionate person. Intuitively, however, this account gets things wrong. Provided the victim of depression possesses the dispositional mental features appropriate to compassion, her occurrent depression mitigates her non-compassionate behavior. Suppose that S possesses the frame of mind that is relevant to bravery but that she would not behave bravely because her occurrent chronic depression overwhelms the virtuous behavior she would otherwise display. S’s depression is a non-normal situation that morally mitigates her failure to behave bravely, since she is not responsible for bringing the depression upon herself, and no agent experiencing chronic depression could reasonably be expected to satisfy virtue’s demands. Which specific situations count as non-normal and, hence, morally mitigating is open to debate. Still, however, when the situation an agent inhabits is normal, that is, when her failure to act bravely is not morally mitigated, an agent must behave bravely in order to merit the traditional attribution of brave. Whether a trait expresses itself globally depends upon the content and nature of the psychological intricacies of the agent’s overall mental state. Suppose that S possesses the mental features appropriate to bravery and that she should behave bravely across seven kinds of situation, but that she would behave bravely across only six. Her failure to satisfy the behavioral demands of virtue is rooted in the presence of a negatively tinged struggle-producing mental feature. Further, as I have already claimed, whether a trait actually operates dynamically depends upon the agent’s overall mental state. The centrality of one’s overall mental framework, which includes both one’s virtuous frame of mind and any negatively tinged struggle-producing features, to the virtues’ core defining features explains why virtue ethics is often referred to as the “ethics of being,” as opposed to the “ethics of doing.” Combining the three core features of traditionally conceived character traits enables us to construct a coherent account of traits and their possession. S possesses a global character trait GT just in case (1) S is in a frame of mind appropriate to GT; (2) S’s frame of mind would issue in GT-appropriate behavioral and attitudinal re14

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sponses; and (3) S’s GT-relevant responses would extend across a broad range of normal situations. This account of character traits and their possession captures the central features of character traits as they have been understood by an extensive and esteemed sequence of moral philosophers, dating back to Aristotle. One additional feature, often agreed to hold for traits of character, is that they can be instantiated in different degrees.21 For any two agents, both of whom are brave, one might be braver than the other. Proponents of degrees of virtue have neglected to characterize the mechanism by which degrees of virtue arise, but a variety of different factors can afford the possibility that virtues can come in degrees. If, as I have argued, any particular virtue concept allows for possession of the virtue in the absence of behavioral and attitudinal responses that are always perfectly virtuous, then virtue can come in degrees. The braver agent might always respond utterly bravely, while the less brave agent might exhibit an occasional lapse in her bravery-related responses; both are still brave, though. A distinct route by which degrees of virtue might be instantiated appeals to the differently constituted sets of virtue-related frames of mind two agents might possess. It is implausible that the virtue ethicist could actually specify which, and how many, mental features a moral agent should possess to be in a just frame of mind. Still, however, to make clear an important philosophical point, assume that it is possible to execute such a task. If one agent should possess only seven mental features to be just, while another should possess ten, it is not unreasonable to hold that, while both agents are just, the second is more so. Alternatively, if the first agent morally exerts herself such that she exceeds her virtue expectations by developing eight, rather than just seven, justice-related mental features, while the second agent does not exceed her virtue-related expectations, it is reasonable to hold that the first agent is more just than the second. Yet a further route to attaining degrees of virtue appeals to the differently constituted sets of normal situations across which two virtuous agents should respond appropriately. One agent who should and does respond appropriately in six kinds of normal situations might be less virtuous than another who should and does 15

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behave appropriately in nine kinds of situations. And the agent who exceeds her virtue expectations by responding virtuously in a greater number of normal situation kinds than she ought might be more virtuous than the agent who does not similarly exceed her situation-related virtue expectations. What should be clear from this brief discussion on degrees of virtue is that, since such a wide range of features of moral agents can explain why one agent is more or less virtuous than another, endorsing degrees of virtue greatly complicates the traditionalist’s already complicated concept of virtue.

GLOBAL TR AITS IN THE PR ACTICAL REALM

Cultivating, or sincerely endeavoring to cultivate, global traits of character is, for most agents, likely to be a time-consuming, workladen, emotionally painful exploit.22 To develop the traditional global trait of compassion, for example, the aspiring moral agent would seek to develop a frame of mind that is appropriate to compassion in a way that befits her own distinctive physiological and psychological makeup. Further, the moral agent who aspires to compassion would seek always to respond and behave in a manner appropriate to compassion, but that, once again, suits her physiological and psychological features that delimit the actions and emotions that can reasonably be expected of her. To envision the difficulty and frustration that can attend the pursuit of developing a global trait of character, consider Ellen, a sensitive, intelligent, and earnest moral agent who, after a series of subtle but incisive comments from her parents, realizes that she has slowly developed into a selfish person. Wishing to fulfill a higher vision she has for the value and purpose of her own life, she endeavors to mature into a compassionate person. Reflecting back on her selfishness, she realizes that consistently favoring herself over others never made her happy, and even produced a feeling of guilt, whose emotional sting she hardened herself not to experience. To develop her compassion, Ellen decides that she must first force herself to help somebody in need. The first person she tries to help is a 16

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store clerk who has just accidentally knocked over a stack of chairs. Reluctantly, Ellen walks over to help the clerk, who calls Ellen “weird” and claims that it’s her, the clerk’s, job to pick up the chairs. Ellen feels embarrassed, but is determined to become a better person and, thus, to try again. The second person she tries to help is a young man who trips and falls on the cement. Ellen tries to aid and comfort the young man, who rudely rebuffs Ellen, insisting that he does not need her help. Ellen retreats, but eventually recognizes that he was probably embarrassed. Ultimately, through reflection on her different attempts, successes and failures at helping others, Ellen gains a sense of which individuals it is appropriate for her to help and how, exactly, she should provide this help, and she learns that trying to become virtuous can involve a long, painful journey of personal self-discovery. This brief portrait of Ellen provides only a hint of the struggle that aiming to become virtuous can involve. The agent who tries to develop justice might discover about herself that she deeply resents people who were born with more material wealth than she; the agent who tries to develop compassion might discover that she is profoundly shy, and dreads approaching other people even when they need help; the agent who tries to develop her honesty might discover that it is best for her to live with the crushing guilt of having been an unfaithful long-term partner rather than to disclose her shameful and harm-producing secret. In addition to the arduous and laborious nature of the struggle to become virtuous, determining whether an agent possesses a global trait of character is a prodigious philosophical and empirical feat. In order empirically to establish that any real moral agents could or do possess the set of mental states appropriate to any particular globally conceived character trait, at least one psychological issue requires resolution. Ethicists require from psychologists a settled view about the veracity of introspection, since the content of an agent’s mental states is accessed primarily via introspection. It is fairly well-established by psychologists that introspection often leads to false beliefs about the content of our beliefs, desires, motivations, and other mental 17

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states.23 And if the introspective process often yields false information about the content or nature of an agent’s mental states, then even an agent’s most rigorous and respected self-reports are unreliable.24 Still, however, some of our introspective reports about individual mental states might be reliable; neither philosophers nor psychologists have established that introspection always fails to yield veracious reports. But until, and unless, psychologists deliver a settled view about which particular mental states of which particular moral agents are reliably introspectible, and which processes reliably yield veracious reports, we cannot trust even the sincere and self-reflective self-reports of moral agents about the content of their mental states. The empirical researcher investigating the putative virtue of another moral agent would first require the ethicist’s fixed view about which mental states a particular agent should develop, and the situations and modes in which she should respond or behave. Second, the empirical researcher would have to employ a variety of interactive and observational techniques over the course of several years to determine whether someone is in a virtuous state of mind, and would have to observe her behavior across a wide range of situation kinds that are relevant to the virtue in question. While systematic application of the techniques designed to provide access to an agent’s real mental states might be available only to professional psychologists, non-psychologists can gather a wide range of relevant information through intense and sustained interaction with and observation of intimate friends and family members. The commonsense evidence compiled by sensitive, reflective, intelligent agents suggests that we, as moral agents, regularly succeed, albeit with sporadic failures, at discovering the mental states of ourselves and others. Our partnerships, friendships, marriages, and other relationships with people bring us into regular contact (and conflict) with their beliefs, desires, motivations, and expectations. And this kind of evidence strongly suggests the existence of agents who genuinely care about honesty, understand the nature of its value, reason about honesty in virtuous ways and, yet, struggle to manifest their inner virtue behaviorally. Hence, while non18

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psychologists (and even psychologists) might never fully determine whether someone possesses a global trait of character, they can make significant progress toward the accurate description of any traditionally virtuous agents they might know. Of course, in the attempt to determine which psychological features ourselves, friends, partners, and other relations embody, it is important to pay careful attention to the findings of professional psychologists. Note, for example, the importance of racist attitudes and their potential bearing on an agent’s possession and manifestation of virtue. Racist attitudes might preclude an agent’s being just, friendly, or compassionate, and they almost certainly yield behavior that is unjust, unfriendly, and non-compassionate. And, not surprisingly, many Caucasian Americans self-report that they do not harbor any racial biases. But a raft of psychological experiments on racial bias suggests that many Caucasian American agents who are not explicitly racially biased are, nonetheless, implicitly racially biased. One particular experiment set Caucasian New York University undergraduates to the tedious, timeconsuming task of classifying sets of colored circles at a computer terminal.25 After subjects had invested a great deal of time in their task, their computers suffered a staged crash. Prior to the staged crash, though, subjects were subliminally primed by the face of either a Caucasian male or an African American male briefly flashing on their computer screen. Subjects were frustrated at having their work interrupted, but subjects who were primed with the African American male face responded with more hostility than subjects who were primed with the Caucasian male face. While further psychological experiments are needed to determine whether such implicit racist biases tend to issue in racist attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, the sincere, conscientious moral agent who studies and reflects on the findings of social psychologists might discover about herself that she harbors implicit racial biases. And this discovery affords her the opportunity to experiment with techniques for rooting out her bias, behaving virtuously in racially tinged situations, and, thus, further developing her own virtue. 19

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While it is manifestly plausible that, with time and great effort, we can, with reasonable accuracy, discover which traits, if any, others possess, it is important to underscore the practical dangers that can accompany over- or under-attributing traits of character. After hastily or carelessly deeming someone trustworthy who is not, a moral agent might infer that it is safe to entrust confidential personal information to the putatively trustworthy person. Anyone whose secrets have ever been betrayed knows that having actually trustworthy confidantes is vitally important to her psychological well-being. On the other hand, after hastily or carelessly deeming someone who really is trustworthy not to be so, an agent might treat the putatively non-trustworthy agent with unnecessary suspicion and distance and forestall her (the hasty trait-attributor) including in her life a source of trust, understanding, and well-being.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have provided a general introduction to character traits and their nature, focusing on the traditional Western virtue ethical understanding of traits. In particular, however, I hope to have executed two tasks that are pivotal to the success of several of this book’s novel arguments. First, I have put forth an account of global character traits that captures the central mental, behavioral/attitudinal, and dispositional features of character traits. This account of global traits of character is important for understanding the metaphysically rooted argument for situational traits of character in chapter 2, the normatively rooted arguments for situational traits in chapter 3, and my objections to other extant arguments in support of non-global traits that I put forth in chapter 4. Second, I have argued for the thesis that a moral agent may plausibly be said to possess a trait of character just in case she is in a frame of mind appropriate to the virtue in question, her trait is global, and her trait is dynamic, even if she also possesses a mental state whose content is putatively in tension with the content of her virtuous frame of mind and forces the agent to struggle to respond virtuously. 20

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Prior to putting forth my normatively rooted arguments in support of situational traits of character, though, I proceed with my defense of situational traits in chapter 2 by arguing for situational traits of character from a solely metaphysical standpoint.

NOTES 1. Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology,” A Priori 2 (January 2003). www.apriori.canterbury.ac.nz/volume02.htm. Accessed 9 December 2008; G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Virtue Ethics, eds. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985); Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., ed. George Sher (Hackett Publishing Company, 2002); Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2001); Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), and On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971); Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2. Theoretical virtue ethicists hold, roughly, that the central conceptions of virtue ethics can be captured by providing a list of necessary and sufficient conditions; nontheoretical virtue ethicists deny that necessary and sufficient conditions can adequately capture the central notions of virtue ethics. For more on this distinction, see Julia Driver, “The Virtues and Human Nature,” in How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 111–29. 3. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., ed. George Sher (Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 18 (note 2). 4. I. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

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5. Kant, however, would surely object to the virtues’ playing any such instrumental role in the agent’s moral deliberation and execution of right action, given his insistence that right action must issue only from rationality, rather than from emotion. Kant, Foundations. Kant also employs an anomalous notion of virtue, identifying virtue with strength of will in doing one’s duty. See Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 156. 6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985). 7. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). 8. Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve. (Indinapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Brothers, 1948; reprinted by Christian Classics, 1981). 9. See, for example, Annas, “Virtue Ethics,” 24; Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 40–42; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a16–24, 1100b35–1101a7; NE 1115a26–27; Foot, Virtues and Vices, 16; Hume, Enquiry, 169, 231; Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 10–11, 20; Joel Kupperman, Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 9; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1985), 179, 185; John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” Monist 62 (1979), 331, 332; Plato, Republic, 412e–414a, 503a; Peter Railton, “Made in the Shade: Moral Compatibilism and the Aims of Moral Theory,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supp. vol. 21 (1995), 93; Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 19, 21. 10. Aristotle holds that those who need willpower to do the right thing are not yet virtuous. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1145b10–11. It is irrelevant to the success of the situational account of traits that I defend in this book whether willpower is or is not one of the specific mental features required to ground a moral agent’s particular trait of character. 11. For a distinct argument that the virtues do not share one metaphysically unifying feature and, hence, cannot yield any real moral obligations, see Jesse Prinz, “The Normativity Challenge: Why the Empirical Reality of Traits Will Not Save Virtue Ethics,” in C. Upton, ed., Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology: The Situationism Debate (The Journal of Ethics, forthcoming). 12. Julia Annas, D. S. Hutchinson, and T. H. Irwin join Aristotle in arguing that the virtuous person is morally perfect. See Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Hutchinson, The Virtues of Aristotle (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Irwin, “Disunity 22

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in the Aristotelian Virtues,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supp. vol. (1988), 61–78. 13. Throughout this book, I use Terence Irwin’s translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985). 14. Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 31. 15. If courage involves overcoming fear, then fear might be one of the mental features that grounds courage. I ignore the question whether negatively tinged struggle-producing mental features are part of a virtue’s mental grounding, that is, whether they are necessary for possessing certain virtues, since my account of character traits is consistent with either option. 16. For a useful discussion on the content of struggle-producing mental features and their impact on the possession of virtue, see Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 91–99. 17. See, for example, John Doris’s discussion on whether traits should guarantee or only probabilify appropriate responses. Doris, Lack of Character. 18. See chapter 2 for a structural comparison between character traits and dispositions. 19. John Doris offers that globalism includes three theses: (1) “Consistency. Character . . . traits are reliably manifested in trait-relevant behavior across a diversity of trait-relevant [situations],” (2) “Stability. Character . . . traits are reliably manifested in trait-relevant behaviors over iterated trials of similar trait-relevant eliciting [situations],” and (3) “Evaluative integration. In a given character . . . the occurrence of a trait . . . is probabilistically related to the occurrence of other traits with similar evaluative valences.” My understanding of, and challenge to, globalism focuses only on Doris’s first thesis. See Doris, Lack of Character, 22. 20. See John Doris on situation individuation. Doris, Lack of Character, 77–84. 21. See, for example, Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 149. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (1117b10); Neera Badhwar, “The Limited Unity of Virtue,” Nous 30 (1996), 316; Richard Brandt, “Traits of Character: A Conceptual Analysis,” reprinted in Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 285–287; Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Vice and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 58–91; Christian Miller, “Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics,” The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003), 379; James Wallace, Virtues and Vices (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), 143; and Gary Watson, “Virtues in Excess,” Philosophical Studies 46 (1984), 58. 23

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22. Of course, developing traits of character is easier for those individuals whose natural dispositions more closely fit the trait in question. 23. See, for example, Timothy Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). 24. Hursthouse argues, in a corresponding spirit, that moral motivation is not introspectible. See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, chapter 7. Similarly, Kant claims that “We are pleased to flatter ourselves with the false claim to a nobler motive, but in fact we can never, even by the most strenuous of self-examination, get to the bottom of our secret impulsions; for when moral value is in question, we are concerned, not with the actions which we see, but with their inner principles, which we cannot see.” See Kant, Foundations, 75. 25. J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, and L. Burrows, “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(1996), 230–44.

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TRAITS AS DISPOSITIONS

quick scan of the character trait literature reveals that a number of prominent ethical theorists treat the virtues, or traits of character, as dispositions. Aristotle, Frankena, Gewirth, Kupperman, Mill, Rawls, Sidgwick, and Swanton, among others, hold that the virtues are dispositions of a sort.1 In this chapter, I argue that if character traits are, indeed, a species of disposition, then virtue ethicists cannot consistently think of character traits exclusively in global terms; if character traits are dispositions, then character traits must include situational traits. In support of this thesis, I begin by arguing that character traits, if not actually a species of metaphysical disposition, are sufficiently structurally akin to metaphysical dispositions to justify their treatment as such. Second, I set the stage for considering four accounts of dispositions that are extant in the analytic metaphysics literature by laying out a particular concern dealing with a disposition’s background conditions that a satisfactory account of dispositions must adequately contend with. I argue that only one of the four accounts of dispositions, the contextual account of dispositions, sufficiently treats the concern with background conditions. It follows that since character traits are reasonably treated as if they are metaphysical dispositions, character traits ought to be

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conceived of at least partly in situational terms, not in exclusively global terms.

CHAR ACTER TR AITS AND DISPOSITIONS

The appropriateness of treating character traits as dispositions depends upon whether this treatment illuminates useful solutions, enlightening strategies, or novel direction for issues or problems relevant to traits of character. Most important, however, for the appropriateness of traits as dispositions, is one’s account of dispositions and the attendant structural similarities between character traits and dispositions. One primitive and popular understanding of dispositions holds that dispositions are merely input/output functions that mediate between pairs of stimulus and response events, such that anything mediating a specific stimulus/response pair possesses the relevant disposition. For example, a dispositional theorist might hold that an object is fragile provided it shatters when struck. On this primitive account, it follows that any object that shatters when struck is fragile, wholly irrespective of its internal molecular structure. Given the pronounced importance of a moral agent’s internal features, namely, her frame of mind, to any character trait she might possess, which chapter 1 seeks to establish, the delusory nature any putatively relevant features of primitive dispositions to character traits need hardly be stated. Instead, the more sophisticated understanding of dispositions, which is grounded in the contemporary analytic metaphysics literature, along with the illuminating, useful, and novel output it yields, justifies its application to character traits. Of course, utterly having neglected to discuss the nature of dispositions, historical proponents of traits as dispositions make no claims about the kind of dispositions as to which traits are best classified. However, the following structural comparison between character traits and metaphysical dispositions justifies traits’ treatment as a species of metaphysical disposition.

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DISPOSITIONS

Three features of an object possessing a disposition and its attendant environment typically highlight the object as falling within the category of the dispositional: (1) the dispositional ground, (2) mediation between input and output events, and (3) relevant background conditions. Consider a fragile vase. Its distinctive molecular structure, which includes the molecules’ constitutive atoms and their stronger and weaker bonds, provides the ground of the vase’s fragility, though other fragile objects might display a different molecular structure. Second, the fragile vase, partly by virtue of its molecular structure, whose weaker bonds set the stage for a distinctive fracture pattern, would shatter when dropped. An object that possesses a disposition might be multitrack, insofar as its molecular structure mediates multiple input/output events: a fragile vase would shatter when dropped, but it might also fragment when struck, or crack when knocked. The final feature that is relevant to specifying an object’s dispositional status is external to the putatively dispositional object, namely, the background conditions. A fragile vase would not shatter when struck irrespective of the nature of the external, physical environment in which it resides. Instead, a number of fairly specific conditions must hold for the fragile vase actually to shatter: The vase must be dropped onto a relatively hard surface; Earth-like gravitational conditions must hold, such that the object falls sufficiently quickly toward the hard surface; and the hard surface must not be coated with a thick, rubbery mat that would blunt the impact of the vase’s fall. Different sets of background conditions might actually, typically, or ideally hold, but relevant to background conditions, the metaphysical issue raised is this: Which set of background conditions are fixed within the concept of a disposition, such that if an object were present in those conditions and an appropriate input event occurred, it would display the relevant output behavior and, hence, qualify as dispositional? A tripartite comparison between metaphysical dispositions and ethical character traits reveals a number of salient structural similarities. First, the object possessing a disposition and the agent possessing a character trait must each possess certain internal states or features that ground the disposition or trait. The dispositional object

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possesses a physically characterizable molecular structure, while the agent possesses a normatively characterizable set of mental states. The object’s molecular structure and the agent’s mental states ground the disposition and trait, respectively, by being causally and explanatorily responsible for producing behavior that is characteristic of the object or agent. Finally, objects and agents displaying different internal structure or mental states might still possess the same disposition or trait. Two vases constituted by differing molecular structures might both be fragile, while two honest agents might display different sets of mental features that ground their honesty. Second, an object’s dispositional ground and an agent’s virtuous frame of mind each mediate between different sets of events that are appropriately characterized as input/output events. The dispositional ground for fragility mediates between dropping and shattering, striking and fragmenting, and knocking and cracking. In a similar fashion, the virtuous agent’s virtuous frame of mind mediates between normatively tinted situations and normatively appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses. The honest agent whose friend asks the agent’s opinion about her unhealthy romantic relationship identifies the situation as calling for tactful, gently delivered honesty, and she responds appropriately; the honest agent who encounters the opportunity to increase her chances of being hired for a desired job by lying on her résumé identifies the complexities of a situation as calling for underreporting, not embellishing, her résumé, and she responds appropriately. Clearly, however, the nature of the moral agent’s event mediation differs radically from that of the object’s event mediation. The object’s event mediation occurs solely at the physical level of causation and, while it is surely appropriate within some frameworks to describe the agent’s mental states and processes at the physical level, the agent’s event mediation always involves at least some conscious processes of reasoning, reflection, emotion, willpower, desire, and other normatively salient mental features. To claim that an object mediates between input and output events seemingly implies that the mediation process is automatic, mechanical, nonconscious, and insensitive to different complexities of the environment the object occupies. However, in the sense of “mediation” wherein the mediator 28

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occupies a middle position, be it conceptually, causally, or explanatorily, both dispositional objects and virtuous agents are plausibly construed as event mediators. Third, the appropriate attribution of a disposition or virtue to an object or agent is indexed to a set of circumstances that are external to the ground of the disposition or virtue. Typically, the dispositional object’s ground is coextensive with the entire object; the fragile vase is typically constituted of no parts that are not also parts of the ground of the vase’s fragility. And the background conditions that are relevant to the vase’s fragility are typically external to the vase. With agents and virtue, however, the ground of virtue makes up only a part of the agent as a whole. The mental features appropriate to a character trait reside within the agent,2 along with a great number of other features, both mental and nonmental. The virtuous agent might, in addition to possessing the ground for virtue, also be mildly shy, fearful, or paranoid, and she undoubtedly possesses numerous other neurologically rooted mental features that provide the ground for her intellect, memories, talents, hopes, and so on. The similarities between the fundamental structural features of metaphysical dispositions and traits of character justify both classifying and treating traits as dispositions. Unfortunately, however, ethicists have historically failed to examine both metaphysical dispositions and the treatment of traits as dispositions. This gap in the development of accounts of character and their treatment to specific moral issues is unfortunate since, as I argue below, the appropriate treatment of metaphysical dispositions entails that the traditional, global understanding of character traits is false. Historical figures who endorse both traits as dispositions and a traditional and global understanding of character traits implicitly endorse contradictory views.

THE PROBLEM WITH BACKGROUND CONDITIONS

Fragile objects are plausibly identified as fragile at least partly on the basis of their ability to mediate between different pairs of causal 29

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inputs and outputs.3 A woodblock may be identified as fragile if it can causally mediate between dropping and shattering. But background conditions can be friendly or unfriendly to an object’s ability to participate in certain causal sequences. A woodblock which was dropped onto a hard surface on Earth would not shatter, though if it were dropped on fictional Planet Gravon, where gravity’s pull exceeds Earth’s a thousandfold, it would shatter. Since background conditions can help or hinder an object’s causal activity, an account of dispositions which simply identifies an object as fragile if it could mediate between dropping and shattering is incomplete. Instead, the best account must specify across which range of background conditions an object would shatter if it is appropriately deemed fragile. Several options are available. First, A. D. Smith’s obtaining account, as I call it, restricts the range of relevant background conditions to those that obtain.4 According to this account, an object is fragile just in case it would shatter when struck, provided the object’s currently obtaining background conditions. Second, Stephen Mumford restricts the range of relevant background conditions to those which are “ideal.”5 According to the ideal account, as I call it, an object is fragile just in case the obtaining background conditions are ideal insofar as they legitimize our expecting the object to shatter when struck. Next, Wolfgang Malzkorn restricts the relevant background conditions to those that are “normal.” This account, which I call the normal account, holds that an object is fragile just in case it would shatter when struck in normal actual world conditions.6 Finally, Elizabeth Prior treats the range of background conditions relevant to attributing a disposition contextually.7 So construed, an object is context-fragile just in case it would shatter when dropped in some specific set of background conditions, some context. For example, a vase is not either fragile or non-fragile depending on its relation to some specified set of ideal, normal, or obtaining background conditions; it is always context-fragile, where the context picks out any background conditions under which the vase would shatter.

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At first glance, the contextual account appears circularly and, thus, trivially to hold that an object is, say, C-fragile just in case it would shatter if struck in conditions C. But not only is the contextual account resistant to this common objection, it also provides a plausible response to C. B. Martin’s electro-fink case, which allegedly cuts against all conditional analyses of dispositions, wherein the concept of a disposition is analyzed solely in terms of the subjunctive conditionals depicting the behavior a dispositional object would display.8 Further, since both the ideal and normal accounts rely upon the pragmatic force of disposition ascriptions, the restriction each places on the background conditions that are relevant to disposition ascriptions is, ultimately, unsupported and, thus, arbitrary. Similarly, the obtaining account pivots wholly upon an unsupported distinction between background conditions and initiation events, the causal inputs that stimulate a disposition’s manifestation. Thus, my employment of background conditions as the primary adjudicator between competing accounts of dispositions favors the contextual account as providing the most plausible analysis of dispositions, a contextual conditional analysis. And, since the normal situations that are relevant to an agent’s possessing a trait of character are a subset of the background conditions relevant to an object’s dispositional status, metaphysical dispositions should be treated contextually, while character traits should be treated situationally.

THE OBTAINING ACCOUNT

According to Smith’s obtaining account, an object must be able causally to mediate between initiation and manifestation event pairs in the background conditions in which it resides; that is, for an object to be fragile, background conditions that are friendly to its shattering when dropped must obtain. If dropped on Earth, a woodblock is not fragile since the environment, which includes the gravitational pull, precludes the woodblock’s shattering. When located in this environment, the woodblock is not fragile. However, when

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located on Planet Gravon, it is fragile. For Gravon’s environment, which includes its more intense gravitational pull, is friendly to the woodblock’s shattering. Thus, depending on which background conditions obtain, a woodblock can be fragile or non-fragile, and as it moves from one environment to the other, it either gains or loses its fragility depending on the direction of travel. It follows that the absence of shattering-friendly background conditions precludes something’s being fragile. But the absence of shattering-friendly initiation events does not preclude something’s being fragile, as there are unstruck fragile vases. Thus, the obtaining account assumes some relevant metaphysical difference between background conditions and initiation events such that the former can determine whether an object possesses a disposition, while the latter cannot. Of course, there may be a conceptual difference between background conditions and initiation events, as an initiation event is part of a disposition’s identity in a way that background conditions are not. A fragile object, for example, is typically identified as such by its breaking upon being dropped. But if no metaphysical reason exists for including a disposition’s attendant input/output events in the concept of the disposition, while excluding the background conditions from the concept, the popular concept of a disposition is simply irrelevant to the metaphysical issue at hand, which is how the absence of input events or background conditions bears on whether an object possesses a disposition. The prima facie evidence suggests there is no relevant metaphysical difference between background conditions and initiation events. In the causal sequence from a disposition’s stimulation to its behavioral manifestation, the background conditions and the initiation event play a similar role: both are jointly causally sufficient for the manifestation and also necessary for the manifestation. Given this similarity, it is unclear why the absence of the initiation event should entail the absence of the manifestation, but, yet, the absence of friendly background conditions should entail the further absence of the disposition. There are three possible views one might endorse with respect to background conditions’ and initiation events’ bearing on the 32

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presence of a disposition and its manifestation: First, due to their similar causal roles, the absence of either friendly background conditions or initiation event entails only the absence of a disposition’s manifestation. An object can possess a disposition in the absence of friendly background conditions and in the absence of an initiation event; the disposition simply would not manifest its characteristic behavior in either case. The contextual account endorses this option, as it holds that an object is, say, C-fragile despite its actual location, so this option is not available to the proponent of the obtaining account. The second option is to hold that, in light of their similar causal roles, the absence of either entails the absence of a disposition. Consistent with the obtaining account, this option holds that an object does not possess a disposition in the absence of friendly background conditions. But it is highly implausible to hold that an object does not possess a disposition in the absence of an initiation event, for this view entails that a vase gains its fragility only at the onset of an initiation event, say, when somebody begins to strike it with a hammer. Deeply entrenched and intuitively congenial views about dispositions hold that dispositional items carry around their dispositional tendencies from location to location. According to the third option, there is some relevant metaphysical difference between background conditions and initiation events such that the former can determine whether an object possesses a disposition, while the latter cannot. While this is the only live option available to the obtaining account, I maintain that it is not feasible. In a standard causal sequence from stimulus to manifestation, there are several differences between initiation events and background conditions. First, when a disposition does not manifest due to background conditions, it is typically because certain background conditions obtain; and when a disposition does not manifest due to initiation events, it is typically because a certain initiation event fails to obtain. If a vase fails to shatter because it remains undropped, its manifestation is absent because a manifestation-friendly initiation event is absent. And if a vase fails to shatter because it is dropped in an ultra low-gravity environment, its manifestation is absent 33

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because manifestation-unfriendly background conditions are present. But unless some metaphysical fact about the nature of absences and presences prevents our characterizing the vase’s background condition-related failure to shatter as due to the absence of normal gravitational conditions, then there is no well-supported distinction for the obtaining account’s proponent to rely upon. Second, background conditions are typically stationary features of an environment, while initiation events tend to involve change. A shattering-friendly or -unfriendly gravitational pull putatively involves no change, while a dropping or striking clearly does. But a supernatural agent, functioning as part of a dropped vase’s background conditions, could wave his hand and zap a vase, thereby allowing a vase to shatter in otherwise unfriendly conditions. So, again, no principled, well-supported distinction between action and passion divides initiation events from background conditions. Finally, background conditions and initiation events intuitively operate at different levels of causal efficacy. Initiation events seem directly involved in the causal sequence from initiation event to manifestation, while background conditions seem only indirectly involved; intuitively, the background conditions simply supply the framework within which the real causal activity takes place. But there seems no reason to accept that a background condition can prevent something possessing a disposition just because it is only indirectly involved in the causal sequence from initiation event to manifestation. Absent any such defense, it is reasonable to conclude that background conditions cannot preclude something’s possessing a disposition. The obtaining account is, hence, precluded from the list of viable candidates for the plausible account of dispositions we seek.

THE IDEAL AND NORMAL ACCOUNTS

To begin, assume that all possibilities are nomological. It is within the range of nomologically possible background conditions that each account circumscribes the background conditions relevant to disposition ascriptions. Now, according to Mumford’s ideal account, 34

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ideal background conditions provide the backdrop against which an object must be able causally to mediate between initiation and manifestation event pairs. Since we attribute dispositions primarily on the basis of their usefulness, ideal background conditions are those in which the ascriber could expect a manifestation provided an initiation event. Mumford is wholly unclear about what, exactly, his account amounts to. He makes the following claims about the ideal account: (1) “what count as ideal conditions are determined by the context of the disposition ascription;” (2) “The ascription in the actual world is relative to actual world conditions;” (3) “[This ascription] is also relative to actual world conditions that can be vaguely understood as ‘normal;’” (4) “The ideal conditions . . . are thus expected to be ones which are not realized only in exceptional circumstances;” (5) “In making an appropriate and useful disposition ascription I am saying that, in ordinary conditions for the present context, if a particular antecedent is realized, a particular manifestation usually follows;” (6) “This is not to deny the possibility of making a disposition ascription that will hold only in unusual conditions. This is the reason why I do not speak merely of ‘ordinary conditions’ instead of ideal ones.” The tie suggested by Mumford that seemingly unites these disparate threads is that an appropriate disposition ascription licenses one to expect a manifestation when an initiation event is realized: “making an appropriate and useful disposition ascription . . . licenses someone to expect the manifestation when the antecedent is realized.”9 In typical cases, ideal conditions are occurrent, normal, or attainable conditions that are amenable to an object’s manifesting a disposition, thus legitimizing our expectation even though it may be disappointed due to an unforeseen element of the background conditions that prevents the manifestation. So, a woodblock present on Earth is not fragile since we could not expect it to shatter when dropped on Earth due to the unfriendly background conditions. In atypical cases, ideal background conditions are nonoccurrent, unusual, or even near-unattainable. It may be useful to a scientist, for example, to know how a piece of metal is disposed to behave in near 35

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absolute-zero conditions. If he could expect it to shatter if dropped in such conditions, it is not fragile simpliciter. Instead, Mumford claims that “these . . . unusual background conditions will have to be flagged for the disposition ascriptions to have a point.”10 He does not state explicitly how the unusual background conditions are to be flagged, but he does say that “a scientist may state that under suchand-such extreme conditions, a sample may be expected to exhibit such-and-such behavior.”11 This suggests that unusual background conditions are to be flagged by relativizing the disposition predicate. So, a piece of metal that would shatter if dropped in near absolutezero conditions is not fragile simpliciter; instead, it is near absolutezero fragile. But Mumford arbitrarily restricts the relevant range of background conditions and, thus, the range of disposition ascriptions that can be useful, despite his subscribing to the usefulness of disposition ascriptions. The usefulness of attributing dispositions drives the ideal account. But if disposition attributions can be useful relative to both typical and atypical contexts, it is unclear why disposition attributions could not be, in principle, useful to someone relative virtually to any context. Mumford fails to elaborate on usefulness but, presumably, it is a user-relative notion. It is reasonable to think that a disposition attribution is useful just in case it is actually being employed as an instrument of further gain by some individual or group, it will at some future time be so employed, it can though never will actually be so employed, or perhaps even if it has only in the past been so employed. If this is right, then it is unclear what context-relative disposition ascribed to an item could not be useful, given the wide array of projects, goals, and information bases constructed and pursued by individuals and groups. Mumford provides no principled way to distinguish between useful and nonuseful disposition attributions.12 And if nothing in his theory restricts the background conditions under which it could be useful to attribute a disposition, then we can attribute a disposition to every object that would causally mediate between initiation and manifestation event pairs, no matter which background conditions that mediation is relative to. 36

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In typical cases where the occurrent, normal, or attainable background conditions license our expecting a manifestation, we ascribe a nonrelativized disposition predicate. But these background conditions are implicit in the ascription, so an equivalent ascription simply makes explicit in the disposition predicate the background conditions. And in atypical cases where only unusual, nonoccurrent, or near-unattainable conditions would license our expecting a manifestation, we attribute a relativized disposition predicate. Either way, typical or atypical, the appropriate ascription relativizes the disposition predicate to the background conditions under which we could expect an item to manifest its disposition-relevant behavior given an initiation event. Notwithstanding one minor difference, this is just how the contextual account ultimately treats disposition attributions and the background conditions that are relevant to them. The minor difference is that, according to the contextual account, it is appropriate to ascribe an item a disposition relative only to those background conditions under which the item would manifest behavior provided an initiation event. But Mumford claims that for any finite set of background conditions which we specify as relevant to disposition ascriptions, “there remains the possibility of some further condition that interferes . . . and prevents the manifestation.”13 Thus, according to the ideal account, it may be appropriate to ascribe an item a (context-relative) disposition even though it would not manifest the relevant behavior provided an initiation event.14 But the contextual account rules out the possibility of interfering background conditions. For the disposition predicate ascribed an item simply picks out the specific set of background conditions in which it would, say, shatter if struck. Further, it is unclear wherein lies the usefulness of a disposition ascription whose attendant expectation is thwarted. My decisions to behave, my warnings to others, or my scientific theory may hinge on whether a disposition would manifest under certain background conditions; and attributing a disposition and expecting it to manifest under background conditions where it would not lead me grossly astray in these endeavors. Clearly, it is more useful to ascribe a 37

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disposition to an item only if it picks out background conditions under which an item would actually manifest its disposition-related behavior. The ideal account thus faces a dilemma. Mumford subscribes to the usefulness of disposition ascriptions but, yet, places a seemingly arbitrary restriction on which ascriptions can be useful. But if he endorses the general account of usefulness that I gesture toward, then his account conflates into the contextual account. This conflation is unidirectional; it cannot be understood as the ideal account’s entailing or permitting the contextual account, since the ideal account’s conflation occurs only if its crucial distinguishing feature, its arbitrary restriction, is abandoned. Hence, the most plausible construal of Mumford’s position lacks any substantive features that distinguish it from the contextual account which is, by Mumford’s own lights, indefensible. The third account, Malzkorn’s normal account, restricts the range of background conditions relevant to disposition ascriptions to those that are normal within the actual world. One of Malzkorn’s primary objections to Mumford’s ideal account is that the specific conditions counting as ideal can change from one disposition ascription to the next; that is, Mumford understands “ideal conditions” attributively. But if “ideal conditions” is understood attributively, disposition predicates like “fragile” are rendered trivial since they cannot be used to distinguish one object from another and, further, they have different meanings in different contexts. Malzkorn explains neither objection, but, presumably, he intends the problems to be understood as follows: First, a woodblock and a vase would both shatter under wholly different sets of background conditions. For “ideal conditions” to refer to both sets of background conditions, its extension clearly must change. But if its extension changes, then the predicate “fragile” applies to both the woodblock and the vase, and we are unable to distinguish the two on the basis of the predicate’s application since both are fragile. “Fragile” is, thus, rendered trivial. Second, if the extension of “ideal conditions” changes, then “fragile” has a different meaning in each of its different applications, as background conditions are embedded in the meaning of dispositional 38

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terms. And any predicate whose meaning changes from application to application is trivial. (I do not endorse the philosophical plausibility of this argument. I only offer it as the most plausible available explanantion of Malzkorn’s objection.) Thus, Malzkorn holds that “normal conditions” is best understood referentially such that the term’s extension does not change. According to Malzkorn, “normal conditions” picks out normal actual world conditions, so an object must be able causally to mediate between dropping and shattering in normal conditions within the actual world for it to be fragile. Malzkorn neglects further to characterize normal conditions, shifting the burden onto empirical scientists to determine which conditions count as normal, as their specification is dependent upon scientists’ tasks. Nonetheless, once normal conditions are specified, they become the measuring stick by which disposition ascriptions are made. Any object that would shatter if dropped in normal conditions is fragile, regardless of its actual location. And any object that would not shatter if dropped in normal conditions is non-fragile, even if it would shatter if dropped in non-normal conditions. But two elements of Malzkorn’s account are at odds with each other: If he insists on maintaining a referential understanding of “normal conditions,” then the account can be of only limited use to scientists, and if he opts for a more useful account, “normal conditions” must be understood attributively. But since the more useful, attributive account is better, Malzkorn’s normal account succumbs to the arbitrariness that plagues Mumford’s account. Malzkorn explicitly claims that disposition ascriptions should be useful: “I maintain that normal conditions define a wide range for the application of our ordinary and useful concept of fragility.”15 But for his understanding of “normal conditions” to be referential, its extension has to be so fine-grained that it precludes empirical scientists’ usefully employing disposition predicates. Malzkorn suggests only that normal conditions are those that are normal within the actual world, but “normal” can clearly be understood as either “statistically commonplace” or “naturally occurring,” while yet further understandings may be available.16 But while many disposition ascriptions may be useful relative to statistically common39

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place conditions, others may be useful relative to naturally occurring conditions. To allow for the usefulness of disposition ascriptions of both and to avoid arbitrarily selecting one set of background conditions as normal, Malzkorn must forfeit the requirement that normal conditions be read referentially. And even if Malzkorn’s empirical scientists arbitrarily choose “statistically commonplace conditions” as being normal, the problem is no closer to resolution. For while background conditions a may be statistically commonplace in one region, background conditions b may be statistically commonplace in another. And, clearly, disposition ascriptions could be useful relative to both. Meeting the usefulness condition thus requires circumscription of normal conditions that is more wide-grained than a referential reading allows. Malzkorn even claims that “outside [the range of normal conditions] it is up to science (and depends upon its tasks) to define other useful [dispositional] concepts.”17 And, thus, Malzkorn cannot maintain both the usefulness of disposition concepts to empirical scientists and a referential reading of normal conditions. But while the appeal to usefulness within actual world conditions pushes Malzkorn’s normal conditions beyond a referential reading, a similar appeal pushes normal conditions far beyond actual world conditions. For if disposition ascriptions could be useful to someone relative virtually to any context, as I have suggested, then no disposition ascription relative to any set of background conditions can, in principle, be ruled out. Of course, Malzkorn provides not even a hint of approval of relativized disposition predicates. But since virtually anything would shatter when dropped under some conditions, “fragile” becomes trivial if we attribute it to everything. To avoid this result, of which Malzkorn disapproves, the disposition predicate must be contextualized.

THE CONTEXTUAL ACCOUNT

The fourth and final account, the contextual account, places no restriction on the range of background conditions within which an object could causally mediate between initiation and manifestation 40

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event pairs for it appropriately to be attributed a disposition. Instead, an object possesses a disposition relative to those background conditions that are amenable to its manifestation regardless of which background conditions are characterized as ideal, normal, or occurrent. So, a woodblock that would not shatter if dropped on Earth but would shatter on Gravon possesses at least one disposition regardless of its actual location. If it is located on Earth, the woodblock is Gravon-fragile but is not Earth-fragile, and if located on Gravon it is, again, Gravon-fragile but not Earth-fragile. The resulting account has the resources to resist the common charge that it is trivial, even though it is circular. Further, it neither relies upon an arbitrary restriction of which disposition ascriptions can be useful nor an undefended distinction between background conditions and initiation events. Using his case of the electro-fink, Martin argues that conditional analyses of dispositions are false and that the best attempt to render them true trades falsehood for triviality. On traditional conditional analyses, a wire is live just in case if it were touched by a conductor, then a current would flow from the wire to the conductor. But when the wire is connected to the electro-fink, a machine that renders the wire dead the instant it is touched by a conductor, the wire is live though no current would flow through it if touched by a conductor. Conversely, when operating on its reverse cycle, the electro-fink ensures that a dead wire would allow a flow of current the instant it is touched by a conductor. Traditional conditional analyses of dispositions are, thus, false. Attempting to save the conditional analysis, Martin’s opponent may add a ceteris paribus clause to the analysis such that a wire is live just in case, other things being equal, if it were touched by a conductor, a current would flow from the wire to the conductor. When the electro-fink is hooked up to a wire, other things are not equal, so the wire is live even though it would not conduct a current. But Martin rightly responds that this amendment renders the analysis trivial, as the ceteris paribus clause rules out the presence of anything that would prevent the disposition’s manifestation. The ceteris paribus-modified analysis ultimately holds that a wire is live just in 41

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case if it were touched by a conductor, a current would flow from the wire to the conductor, unless a current would not flow from the wire to the conductor. But the contextual account does not employ a ceteris paribus clause. Instead, it relativizes the disposition predicate to those specific background conditions under which a wire would manifest its liveness. A wire is C-live just in case if it were touched by a conductor in conditions C, a current would flow from the wire to the conductor. “C” is not a generic placeholder for “conditions under which a current would flow from the wire to the conductor.” It is a placeholder for the list specifying the finite set of background conditions under which the wire would manifest its liveness. To ensure that these are all the possible background conditions that hold, “C” includes a higher-order fact of totality.18 A higher-order fact of totality is a fact about all existing lower-order facts, which are facts about the state or condition of the world and/or its constituents. The higherorder fact of totality indicates that all the lower-order facts can, in principle, be itemized in toto. The higher-order fact rules out Mumford’s objection that since some interfering background condition is always possible, if a list of background conditions relevant to a disposition’s ascription can be specified, it can be defeated (thus, falsify the analysis).19 The contextual account’s analysis of a wire’s liveness is circular; it is explicitly circular. But it does not follow that it is trivial. A trivial analysis would yield no information about when a wire would conduct a current. A trivial analysis would only allow us to ascribe dispositions that are vacuously true of everything. It would ascribe dispositional predicates that had different meanings in different contexts. It would not enable us to distinguish different objects from one another. It would not be useful. But the contextual account commits no such philosophical crimes. First, a particular wire is C-live just in case it would conduct a current if touched by a conductor in conditions C. “C” stands for specific conditions “a, b, c,” and so on, and so, the analysis provides very specific information about the conditions under which a wire would conduct a current. Second, since the contextual account relativizes 42

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the disposition predicate, it is not trivially true of everything. Everything would shatter if dropped under some conditions, but it does not follow that everything is fragile. Everything is C-fragile, where “C” can pick out a specific, yet different, set of background conditions for different kinds of object. Third, the contextual account’s relativizing the disposition predicate prevents the predicate from having a different meaning in different contexts. Instead, the disposition predicate has a highly specific meaning, tailored to each different set of background conditions under which an object would exhibit disposition-related behavior. Fourth, the contextual account enables us to distinguish different objects from one another. Objects are not fragile simpliciter; they are C-fragile. While one object’s Cfragility may consist in its manifesting under conditions a, b, and c, another object’s C-fragility consists in its manifesting under conditions d, e, and f. The differing conditions under which objects would manifest their dispositions enable us to distinguish them. Finally, the contextual account is useful in yielding the information that both a rose and a vase would shatter if struck in near absolute-zero conditions but that only a vase would shatter if struck at room temperature conditions. We are, of course, unable to specify every background condition on the finite list. But the more empirical knowledge we gain, the closer we can come to completing the list. And, of course, the more complete the list becomes, the more cumbersome the disposition predicate becomes. But we can always attribute a shortened version of the real disposition predicate that picks out only the epistemically salient background conditions.

THE VIRTUE ETHICAL CONCLUSION

If character traits should be treated as a species of metaphysical disposition, then it follows that, since metaphysical dispositions should be conceived contextually, character traits, too, should be conceived contextually. And, since the normal situations that are relevant to an agent’s possessing a trait of character are a subset of the background conditions relevant to an object’s dispositional status, metaphysical 43

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dispositions should be treated contextually, while character traits should be treated situationally. Proponents of the virtues should view the concept of a character trait as relativized to the situations in which the trait would produce morally appropriate attitudes or behavior. It follows, prima facie, that all other species of disposition, whether they be epistemic, aesthetic, or otherwise, should be treated contextually, though normative considerations might ultimately demand a global treatment of dispositions that are not character traits, or even allow for a global treatment of character traits that is compatible with their treatment as situational. Of course, the central differences between metaphysical dispositions and traits of character are normative. The mental ground of a virtue is normatively tinted, the input-output event pairs relevant to a character trait are normatively tinted, and the background conditions, or normal situations, relevant to a global trait are normative. However, the ground of a metaphysical disposition, the input/output event pairs relevant to a metaphysical disposition, and the background conditions relevant to a metaphysical disposition are not normative. But the fact that character traits’ central features are normative, while metaphysical dispositions’ central features are nonnormative, does not preclude traits’ sufficiently closely paralleling dispositions in their defining structural features, such that treating character traits as metaphysical dispositions is fully justified.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I hope successfully to have defended a metaphysically rooted argument in favor of situational traits of character. I have proceeded through this argument by defending the claim that character traits should be treated as if they are a species of metaphysical disposition (if they are not actually a species of metaphysical disposition), and by arguing that the most plausible account of metaphysical disposition posits dispositions that are contextual. However, the argument for situational traits 44

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of character does not end with this chapter’s metaphysically rooted argument. Instead, as I argue in chapter 3, a close look at the normative considerations that are relevant to character traits and their proper attribution and proper normative role further supports the conclusion that traits of character are situational.

NOTES 1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a5–7; William Frankena, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 49; Allan Gewirth, “Rights and Virtues,” Review of Metaphysics 38 (1985), 743, and Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 332; Joel Kupperman, Character, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 102; John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 18n; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 192; Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981), 220–22; Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 5, 19. 2. Of course, however, the features determining the content of an agent’s mental states might be external to the agent. 3. I assume that the input/output pairs relevant to each disposition can be appropriately specified. If deviant processes (wherein, say, a piece of quartz is disposed to shatter on Earth because beta rays are aimed at it whenever dropped) are problematic, then all four accounts of dispositions I consider here are on equal footing in this regard. 4. A. Smith, “Dispositional Properties,” Mind 86 (1977), 439–45. 5. S. Mumford, Dispositions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 6. W. Malzkorn, “Realism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions,” The Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2000), 152–69. 7. E. Prior, Dispositions (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985). 8. C. Martin, “Dispositions and Conditionals,” The Philosophical Quarterly 44 (1994), 1–8. 9. All quotations from Mumford, Dispositions, 89. 10. Mumford, Dispositions, 90. 11. Mumford, Dispositions, 90. 12. While Mumford provides no account of usefulness, he does provide several examples of useful disposition ascriptions. In his Dispositions, he says that a scientist may be theorizing about how objects might be expected to behave when entering a black hole, how objects will behave at extremely low

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temperatures, or the behavior of elements which can be instantiated only in an artificial environment. In his “Realism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions,” The Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2001), 375–78, he talks of oil’s disposition to yield petrol, but only during a carefully controlled manufacturing process; petrol’s disposition to power an engine, which is a controlled environment; diseases’ disposition to produce immunity when administered in accurately measured doses at an appropriate age; metals’ disposition to become molten and reshaped; elements’ dispositions which exist only under artificial conditions; and subatomic particles’ dispositions which exist only when the particles are isolated and tested in the unique environment created at CERN. 13. Mumford, “Realism.” 14. Mumford holds that, for this reason, a conditional analysis of dispositions fails. He does claim, however, that appropriate disposition attributions are associated with conditionals. 15. Malzkorn, “Realism and the Conditional Analysis,” 459. 16. Mumford also suggests these two ways of understanding “normal.” See Mumford, “Realism,” 376–77. 17. Malzkorn, “Realism and the Conditional Analysis,” 459. 18. See David Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), ch. 13. 19. Mumford, “Realism,” 376.

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SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

hapter 1 of this book lays out the traditional global understanding of traits of character and chapter 2 argues that, based on a range of metaphysical considerations, traits of character should be construed as situational. In this chapter, I provide two normatively rooted arguments in favor of situational character traits. I begin by defending the claim that virtue ethicists should employ character traits, and only character traits, to appraise moral agents, and then I argue that situational traits of character are sufficiently fine-grained to account for problems of appraisal that the virtue ethicist might encounter, while global traits of character are not. Next, I argue that the concept of justice loses its normative integrity if we do not posit situational traits of character. Finally, I respond to a variety of objections to the situational account of character traits, thereby drawing out the account’s finer details and further substantiating its plausibility.

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VIRTUE-BASED TR AIT ATTRIBUTION

The primary issue upon which the legitimacy of virtue ethics hinges deals with the theoretical distinctness of virtue-based approaches to

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ethics from both act-based and outcome-based approaches. If virtue ethics collapses into either act-based or outcome-based approaches, then virtue ethics is, at best, an instrument that enables us to become better deontologists or teleologists, and it carries no normative authority in its own right. To ensure the theoretical integrity of virtue ethics, several contemporary virtue ethicists distinguish virtue ethics from both the act-based and outcome-based approaches to ethics by appealing to the centrality of the concept of virtue to a broad range of core ethical issues. Christine Swanton, for example, argues that virtue ethics provides a distinct approach to ethics since it answers questions about “the modes and bases of moral response . . . , objectivity, the demandingness of ethics, practice, rightness of actions, [and] ‘maximizing’ or ‘satisficing’ conceptions of ethics” by appealing to the virtues.1 And how the virtue ethicist ought morally to appraise herself and others results from the centrality of the concept of virtue within virtue ethics. If virtue is conceptually central, then moral appraisal ought to proceed via appeal to the virtues, since accurate moral appraisal is a central factor in the moral agent’s life.2 Accurate moral appraisal can encourage trust in the moral agent. If S accurately appraises T as honest, S can trust that T will reliably display honest behavior in certain kinds of situation and, so, S can safely engage in a broad range of experiences and relationships with T. Trust is important for allowing, retaining, and strengthening the social bonds that foster the ethical benefits of friendship, partnership, community, and society. Moral appraisal, hence, ought to employ trait attributions. The second reason why moral appraisal should proceed via trait attribution is that the most plausible attempts morally to appraise others in a way that does not explicitly appeal to the virtues ultimately trace back to the virtues and, so, implicitly make reference to the virtues. You might attempt morally to appraise someone by pointing out the goodness of her act(s), even if they do not issue from a virtuous frame of mind. But the possible rifts between the moral nature of a person and her actions are well known. A bad person might perform right acts, while a good person might perform wrong acts and, further, a virtuous person might perform right acts 48

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that do not issue from her virtuous frame of mind, while a nonvirtuous person might perform wrong acts that do not issue from her non-virtuous frame of mind. Hence, moral appraisal of action, while not irrelevant to appraisal of the whole person, can easily run astray and, so, action appraisal is not a reliable form of person appraisal. A more plausible attempt morally to appraise others, which Aristotle would almost assuredly befriend, in light of his perspicacious remarks about human psychological states and functioning, makes reference to their mental states. You might attempt to appraise S for her temperance by pointing to one of her mental states that lies outside the virtue-related mental features that ground her temperance. But, of course, any relevant appraisal will point to the states of mind that ground a person’s virtue. In the spirit of relevance, you might appraise S for her compassion by claiming that “she is deeply committed,” or you might appraise her honesty by claiming that “she values truth telling in all her relationships.” But deep commitment is one component of a compassionate frame of mind, and believing that honesty is valuable is a component of an honest frame of mind. Appraisal of an agent in terms of one or even several mental features comprising her virtuous frame of mind, hence, traces back to the virtue in question. The appraisal of “deep commitment” traces back to compassion (and other virtues, assuredly), and the appraisal of “values truth telling” traces back to honesty. Thus, an appraisal in terms of someone’s virtue-related mental states is implicitly an appraisal in terms of virtue. It is also important to note that morally to appraise someone who is compassionate or honest by pointing out her deep commitment or her belief in the value of truth telling, while not inaccurate, is misleading. For, to claim that an agent is deeply committed suggests that she does not also possess the beliefs, emotions, reasoning patterns, and other mental features characteristic of compassion. But if an agent is only deeply committed or only values truth telling, and does not possess the full range of mental features relevant to compassion, then, if she merits moral appraisal at all, that appraisal 49

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is plausibly attributed by appealing to the valuable virtue-related mental features she does possess. Still, however, any relevant moral appraisal of an agent embodying a virtuous frame of mind ultimately traces back to virtue or, at least, one of the specific virtues. The third reason why moral appraisal should proceed via trait attribution is that accurate moral appraisal is necessary for trait attribution to serve its central non-appraising functions. Trait attribution is useful not only for moral appraisal, but it also serves as a source of information, explanation, prediction, and correction, insofar as it can be crucial for exerting pressure on others to change their behavior. It is important here to note that, while the appraising and informative purposes of trait attribution might not, strictly speaking, be distinct from one another, the informative purpose does not logically precede the appraising purpose. Suppose I accurately determine that another agent is honest; the attribution of honesty satisfies the appraising function insofar as the trait of honesty is intrinsically normative, while the same attribution satisfies the informative function insofar as it simply describes the fact about the agent that she possesses such a normative feature. While I do not wish to take on the burden of assuming any weighty notion of attribution and whether it necessarily includes the attributor’s intent, I leave open the possibility that the appraising and informative purposes are indistinct; if one attribution necessarily serves two purposes, then the appraising function is still necessary for satisfying the explanatory, predictive, and corrective purposes. But if honesty is intrinsically normative, then one cannot attribute honesty to an agent without thereby morally appraising her. And, so, trait attribution’s informative purpose does not precede its appraising purpose. Suppose I wish to solicit my friend for a charitable contribution. If I accurately attribute the traits of generosity and compassion to her, the information gained from these attributions will encourage me to spend time trying to convince her that my charity is effective and worthwhile, since generous and compassionate people are, all things considered, likely to donate to legitimate charities. And if my solicitation is successful, my friend’s coworker might wish to know why my friend gave away her money. Possessing accurate attribu50

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tions of generosity and compassion enables me to explain to the coworker that my friend cares deeply about others’ welfare, prizes her ability to help others, and so on. And, if the coworker gains a sufficiently detailed body of information about my friend’s financial, familial, and other situations, she can reasonably, though not with guaranteed accuracy, predict that the friend will respond favorably to her own solicitation for donation. Of course, if the virtues are unified, then my ability accurately to predict behavior given accurate trait attributions is compromised. If my friend is generous and the virtues are unified, then she possesses every virtue, including the virtue of justice. And it is consistent with my friend’s being generous that she only infrequently donates money since, in my friend’s case, the demands of justice might typically trump the demands of generosity. The informative, explanatory, predictive, and corrective purposes of trait attribution can be accurately and, thus, usefully achieved, however, only in the wake of accurate moral appraisal.3 Suppose I inaccurately appraise my friend as compassionate and, following this appraisal, attribute to her the trait of compassion. Believing that she is compassionate, I approach her with my convincing line of solicitation, believing that she is likely to donate to the cause. But she is not compassionate, does not care about the potential recipients of my solicitation I am hoping to help, and simply cannot be convinced to donate money, given her current beliefs and attitudes. If I had accurately appraised her as not compassionate and had attributed non-compassion, I would have realized that I faced two options: Since I must collect money for my charity by a certain deadline, I could either spend all my time trying to change my friend’s current state of mind and induce compassion in her, or, more pragmatically, I could move along to other people whom I accurately believe to be compassionate (and, perhaps, return to encourage compassion in my friend at a later time). Further, if my friend’s coworker asks why the friend did not donate any money, I am hard-pressed to find a useful explanation. I believe my friend is compassionate, so I cannot respond that she does not care for others, that she does not believe others suffer or that others are valuable. And if the coworker 51

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believes that my friend is compassionate, she is likely, on the basis of an inaccurate prediction rooted in the inaccurate appraisal and attribution, to solicit the friend, rather than to use the situation as an opportunity to learn more about the friend, deepen the bonds of their relationship, and foster the friend’s personal and moral development. Finally, if my friend believes she is compassionate, she will lack the guilt-laden and emotionally fueled pressure actually to become compassionate. All the reasons provided above establish that moral appraisal ought to proceed via trait attribution. Briefly to sum up, moral appraisal is an important ability that an ethical theory’s central conceptual tools should enable, all relevant and plausible attempts morally to appraise ultimately trace back to trait attribution, and accurate moral appraisal is needed to ensure accurate informative, explanatory, predictive, and corrective inferences. And the conclusion that moral appraisal ought to proceed via trait attribution, along with the two arguments I provide in the following two sections, entails the further conclusions that the traditional global conception of character is normatively inadequate, and that we must supplement the traditional account with a situational account of traits to enable virtue ethics robustly to satisfy the demands of ethics.

MOR AL APPR AISAL AND SITUATIONAL TR AITS

Recall the account in chapter 1 of what it is for an agent to possess a global trait of character: S possesses a global character trait GT just in case (1) S is in a frame of mind appropriate to GT, (2) S’s frame of mind would issue in GT-appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses, and (3) S’s GT-relevant responses would extend across a broad range of normal situations. Now, note the following account of situational traits of character: S possesses a situational character trait ST just in case (1) S is in a frame of mind appropriate to the global correlate of ST, and (2) S’s morally appropriate responses would not extend across a broad range of normal situations. So, if S is in a frame of mind appropriate 52

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to bravery, she is globally brave only if she is also disposed to respond bravely across a broad range of normal bravery-relevant situations. And if S is in a frame of mind appropriate to bravery, she is situationally brave with respect to those situations in which she would respond bravely, but she is not also globally brave. If S would respond bravely only in situations that involve public speaking, then S is public-speaking-brave. If S would respond bravely only in situations that involve public speaking or foreign travel, then S is publicspeaking- and foreign-travel-brave. With the explicit distinction between global and situational traits in mind, let us begin the first normative argument for situational traits. Moral agents differ radically in their emotional, intellectual, and experiential histories, and, hence, vary radically in their current mental features. Their emotional histories, in particular, can produce moral tensions that weigh heavily upon their better moral tendencies. Consider the fragmented psychology of Angela. Angela possesses the mental features appropriate to honesty; these include her belief that others are valuable, her desire to foster healthy human relationships, and her strength of will, which fuels her commitment to truth tell in difficult or awkward situations, among other features. To develop her honesty-related virtuous mental features, Angela has reflected patiently and somberly on her attitudinal and behavioral mistakes, and she has exerted a healthy degree of effort to become more virtuous. Further, Angela’s virtuous mental features are wellintegrated; they are firmly rooted insofar as they are resistant to revision, and they do not oppose one another. Angela should behave honestly across ten different kinds of situations, but, consistently, she is honest only to her friends and family; she is not honest to people outside her small social circle because she non-phobically fears intimate contact with strangers and mere acquaintances. Angela is a thoughtful and reflective, though imperfect, moral agent. She is aware of her moral failings, and she struggles internally in her attempt morally to improve. Still, however, despite her informed and sincere attempts to overcome her fear, to force herself to behave honestly when she knows she should, and to place herself in situations that enable her to confront her fear and 53

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empower her moral fortitude, she ultimately fails. The desires, beliefs, and emotional responses that accompany her shyness are firmly rooted and consistent with one another, such that the nexus of her shyness-related mental features issues in non-honest responses whenever she is not around friends or family. While Angela’s behavior is certainly not above moral reproach, she deserves moral credit for the honesty she does display, since she is responsible for developing and maintaining her honesty-relevant beliefs, desires, willpower, and so forth, and since her honesty-relevant mental features are well integrated.4 Further, Angela’s failure to behave virtuously does not stem from any grossly immoral beliefs, such as those embodied by racist, cruel, or selfish people. Hence, Angela’s meriting moral credit is consistent with the plausible claim that agents whose better moral tendencies are fragmented by grossly immoral mental states have no virtues at all.5 While Angela deserves some moral credit, she deserves, at the same time, moral discredit for her non-honesty toward strangers and acquaintances, since her shyness is well integrated. And which kind of character traits we endorse and attribute to Angela should allow for the best articulation of her moral desert. Further, which kind of traits we attribute to Angela should express useful and precise information about her central behavioral tendencies so that we may not only explain and predict her behavior, but so that we may gauge our psychological and behavioral responses accordingly. And situational traits exact all these purposes. The situational trait theorist deems Angela “friend-and-familyhonest,” for which she deserves moral credit. And if Angela were to display honest behavior only to friends, she would possess the situational trait of friend-honest, and this attribution reflects the slightly lesser degree of moral credit she would merit since she would behave honestly across a narrower range of situations. And anyone who is friend-and-family-honest but would display honest behavior across a greater number of friend-and-family-relevant situations is friend-honest to a greater degree than Angela. Not only are situational traits finely attuned to the accurate moral appraisal of psychologically complex agents, but their fine-grained 54

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trait attributions are also highly information-specific, thus allowing for behavioral and explanatory inferences, which can be useless, misleading, or even dangerous if they are not accurate. Suppose I attribute to Angela the situational trait of friend-and-family-honest on the basis of her known mental features and behavior across a variety of different honesty-relevant situations. I can reasonably predict her behavior across a variety of novel situations and, so, can attune my own and others’ thoughts, behavior, and feelings to these predictions. And an explanation of Angela’s curtness and twisting deception to strangers and acquaintances is provided by an appeal to her being only friend-and-family-honest. Of course, the trait situationist need not be so fine-grained in her trait attributions that situational traits are indexed to specific, particular situations. The empirical findings are noncontroversial: human behavior is highly intra-situationally consistent.6 The great flexibility of situational traits at reflecting moral agents’ virtue-related merit extends to describing agents who are traditionally virtuous. Suppose that Angela, after emerging from an arduous process of moral improvement that includes self-forgiveness, personal development, and even meditation, conquers the fear that previously disabled her, embodying a more robust virtue, so that she now would behave honestly across the complete range of situations in which she should behave honestly. The proponent of situational traits deems the new, more morally courageous and determined, Angela normal-situation-honest, or honest simpliciter. Since the situational trait theorist can attribute the trait of honesty simpliciter, situational traits both allow for overall character assessments, to the extent that they are ever useful, accurate, or necessary, and provide a characterological moral standard to which we can aspire. Normalsituation-virtues “provide a basis for predictability, for attachment and loyalty, and for sociability and mutual trust” and so, it is important for an account of character traits to be able to take the traditional virtues in hand.7 Note, however, that a distinguishing feature of situational traits of character is that the agent possessing a situational trait would respond virtuously in fewer situations than she ought. The situationally 55

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honest agent should respond honestly in, say, eight kinds of situations, but she would only respond honestly in, say, five. Hence, it is not, strictly speaking, appropriate to classify normal-situation-honesty, or honesty simpliciter, as a situational character trait. Situational traits might not entail global traits, but they are consistent with global traits; it is necessary to supplement the traditional understanding of global character traits with an account of situational traits. Situational traits are finely tailored to suit the various needs and uses of character traits and their attribution. They deliver different degrees of moral credit and discredit, they allow for highly information-specific trait attributions, which fuel accurate and pragmatically relevant prediction and explanation, and they are consistent with global traits of character, which might also satisfy a number of virtue-related purposes.

AGAINST GLOBAL TR AITS

Situational traits far exceed global traits’ ability successfully to appraise the psychologically complex agent’s moral status. Returning to Angela and her fragmented psychology demonstrates global traits’ narrow reach. Initially, many roads that might enable the trait globalist accurately to appraise Angela appear open, but, ultimately, each ends at an impasse. The trait globalist cannot simply attribute the trait of honesty to Angela without either suppressing the discredit she deserves or misleadingly suggesting that she would behave honestly across a broad range of normal situations. Similarly, the globalist cannot deem Angela non-honest and simultaneously capture her due credit in a way that does not grossly mislead. Even if Angela’s friend-and-family-honesty behaviorally dominates her tendency to be deceitful, the attribution of honesty fails to inform me of her anomalous immoral tendency and, so, licenses illegitimate predictions of inter-situational consistency. Globalist attributions that deem Angela partially honest or honest to a degree fail for similar reasons.8 Suppose that Angela would 56

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truth tell in only half the kinds of normal situations she encounters. It is true that attributing partial honesty does not license illegitimate predictions of inter-situational consistency, and I may even sometimes correctly predict when Angela will be honest. But my predictions will all be guesses; I can never rest secure that I can safely invite Angela to a formal dinner party, that I can trust her “sincere” confessions to me, or that I can recommend that my friend date her. Finally, the globalist might attempt to mirror the complex appraisal Angela merits by deeming her honest and her deceitful behavior to acquaintances and strangers non-honest. But again, the attribution of honesty is misleading, for it suggests that Angela would truth tell across a range of normal situations, but she simply would not. Further, it is Angela who deserves the discredit for her nonhonesty since it is fixedly rooted in her psyche, but the globalist attribution can discredit only her acts. Each attempt to generate the globalist resources appropriately to evaluate, inform, explain, predict, and correct fails; global traits are too inflexible to satisfy the purposes of traits and trait attribution. In an attempt to save global traits of character, their proponent might, instead, deny the relevance of Angela’s fragmented psychology to whether she is honest. I argue in chapter 1 that the most plausible conception of traditional character traits holds that the agent who struggles to behave virtuously can still be virtuous, despite the presence of a struggle-producing mental feature that inhabits her psychology. And so, as a different line of objection, the globalist might suggest that the fear which precludes Angela’s honest behavior toward acquaintances and strangers is non-normal. And, of course, if the fear is non-normal, then her failure to truth tell does not tell against her being honest; instead, the case is irrelevant to the debate over which account of traits is more plausible. But Angela’s fear, as I described it from the outset, is not phobic; her fear is of a nature and intensity that many people experience, and her fear does not interfere dramatically with the quality of her life or her ability to conduct her behavior as she chooses. Angela’s fear, hence, falls squarely within the range of normal situations.

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In a final bid to save global traits of character, the trait globalist might argue that the traditional understanding of character traits actually includes situational traits of character under its theoretical arc. The first variation on this objection notes that Aristotle’s comprehensive discourse on virtue reiterates the point that the situations in which an agent should respond virtuously vary relative to a range of different factors; for one agent, appropriate honesty-related responses might need to extend across five kinds of situations to ensure the agent’s honesty while, for another agent, appropriate honesty-related responses might need to extend across nine kinds of situations. Hence, since no universal standard prescribing the number and kind of situations in which the virtuous agent must respond appropriately to satisfy the demands of virtue exists, all traits of character that satisfy Aristotle’s account of virtue are situational, at least insofar as they are manifested in actual agents. But the proponent of this objection fails to understand the distinction between global and situational traits of character. If an agent possesses a global character trait, then she would respond appropriately across the kind and number of situations that she should. However, if an agent possesses a situational character trait, then she would respond appropriately in fewer situations than she should. Differential normative expectations do not entail situational traits; failing to satisfy differential normative expectations does. The second variation of the Aristotle-endorses-situational-traits objection, which is sensitive to the distinction between global and situational traits of character, notes that Aristotle explicitly claims that an agent can be generous but, yet, fail to spend rightly, and that an agent can be just but fail to behave justly.9 Situational traits, continues the objection, are distinguished by their possessors’ failing to meet their global normative expectations; hence, some instances of generosity and justice are situational. In response, even if some instances of generosity and justice are situational, no historical precedent or argumentative reason in Aristotle exists to support the claim that there are any other instances of situational traits included in the traditional understanding of character traits. So, if situational traits exist, they are not sufficiently 58

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widespread to satisfy the attributional purposes I have argued character traits should; hence, the existence of any situational traits beyond situational-generosity and situational-justice demands justification by appeal to the kinds of reason I have already provided. Further, Aristotle’s claim that generous people and just people can sometimes fail to behave generously or justly and, hence, can fail to satisfy their normative expectations but, yet, retain their virtue, is plausibly understood as positing an anomalous infrequently occurring feature of generosity and justice, rather than a regular frequently occurring feature. For it is a hallmark of Aristotle’s view about the nature of virtue that traits of character should regularly be connected to virtuous actions or responses. But agents who possess situational traits can regularly fail to satisfy their normative expectations. While I do, ultimately, argue (in section 5 of this chapter) that global traits entail situational traits; this entailment holds independent of any reasons appealing to global traits as they are traditionally understood. In the quest to allot appropriate merit in the given case of Angela’s fragmented psychology, the trait globalist has exhausted all her principle-based strategies. The premise that globalism has drained its merit-budgeting resources is key to my argument favoring situational traits. That the ungainliness of global traits engenders their own demise might seem dubious, in light of the numerous complexities in terms of mental grounding, dynamism, and globalism, of traditionally conceived traits of character that chapter 1 takes pains to enumerate. Complexity, however, does not entail subtlety or flexibility. Nor does complexity with respect to one feature of a trait—say, the agent’s frame of mind—entail relevant complexity with respect to moral appraisal. The proponent of global traits of character can argue either that global traits possess the resources to account for Angela’s fragmented psychology; that global traits, as they are traditionally understood, actually incorporate situational traits; or that the case is somehow flawed. All these strategies fail. But situational traits, whose flexibility is fueled by fine-grained trait attributions, not only serve the evaluative, informative, predictive, explanatory, and 59

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corrective purposes that a plausible account of character traits should, but possess a string of other virtues, as well. We should think of character traits as cutting across situations rather than arching over them.10 To begin a series of further objections, the proponent of global traits of character might object by recalling that the trait situationist endorses degrees of situational virtue as a boon, while deriding degrees of global virtue as a bane. An agent can be more or less situationally virtuous, dependent upon the nature of the kind of situation in which she would manifest her situational virtue, while the relevant respect in which an agent can be more or less globally virtuous involves the number of situation kinds in which she would manifest her virtue. However, if degrees of global virtue are theoretically problematic, then they are theoretically problematic simpliciter—or so the trait globalist might argue. But situational degrees of (situational) virtue better enable the moral agent to satisfy the goal of accurately attributing moral worth, while global degrees of (global) virtue undermine the agent’s satisfaction of this important and useful goal. Hence, degrees of virtue, whether they are situational or global, need not be univocal with respect to their advantageous or disadvantageous qualities. Further, from the fact that degrees of global virtue correspond to the greater or fewer number of situation kinds across which an agent would manifest virtuous behavior, it does not follow that situational traits are implicitly imbedded in the traditional understanding of character traits. First, three different kinds of factors can result in degrees of virtue: number of situation kinds across which an agent would manifest her virtue; number of individual situations within a kind across which an agent would manifest her virtue; and number, kind, and intensity of mental features that constitute the mental ground of an agent’s character trait. All three factors can be present in an instantiation of a trait that comes in degrees and, so, no simple reduction from degrees of global virtue to situational traits is available. Second, situational traits are defined by their possessor’s failing to meet normative expectations with respect to the number of situation kinds across which she exhibits virtuous responses, 60

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while degrees of virtue for the trait globalist, with respect to number of situation kinds involve agents who do meet their virtue-related normative expectations. Situational traits are not implicit in the traditional understanding of global traits of character. The foe of situational traits of character might object that situational traits fundamentally misdescribe fragmented agents’ actual responsorial tendencies. Julia Annas, for example, puts forth the case of Mary, a behaviorally fragmented moral agent.11 Mary is respectful of her colleagues, consistently treating them with dignity and courtesy; but she is not respectful of waiters, shop assistants, or soccer coaches, consistently being rude and demanding to these individuals. The situational trait theorist seems to think it nonproblematic to attribute to Mary the situational traits of respectful-tocolleagues and not-respectful-to-non-colleagues. But, argues Annas, “respect . . . is not a trait that switches off in situations where the opinions of the people concerned can be ignored.”12 Mary’s fragmented behavior to colleagues as opposed to non-colleagues indicates not that she possesses two distinct situational traits of character but, rather, that Mary’s fragmented behavior expresses hypocrisy or deference. But, as I indicate in section 3 of this chapter, if an agent’s behavior is situationally fragmented because of mental states that are grossly immoral, then that agent might possess no relevant situational trait at all. Annas does not describe Mary in sufficient detail such that we can determine whether Mary’s behavior is rooted in grossly immoral states, though it is highly plausible that it is. And if Mary’s non-respectful behavior is rooted in grossly immoral states, then the situational trait theorist is not committed to attributing any relevant situational trait to Mary. While there may be individuals to whom we should not attribute situational traits, such cases do not preclude the plausibility of positing and attributing situational traits in a wide range of distinct cases. The trait globalist might further protest that the primary normative function of trait attribution seeks to improve upon human agents’ moral behavior, and that always attributing global traits—even those that inaccurately describe and appraise their bearers—can yield better 61

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moral results than attributing situational traits. Perhaps, for example, attributing the trait of compassion to fragmented rogues like Oskar Schindler might encourage others to emulate his more praiseworthy behavior. But even if improving moral behavior is the primary function of trait attribution, it is not the sole function. Accurate appraisal is another purpose of trait attribution that underwrites several other pragmatic moral endeavors, and global traits, as I have argued, are too limited in their descriptive reach appropriately to satisfy the legitimate standards of character assessment. Further, inaccurate attribution of a global character trait might undercut its own wellintentioned purposes. Appraising Schindler as globally compassionate when he is not might encourage others to emulate not only Schindler’s situational compassion, but also his immoral behavior, falsely believing, as the global attribution suggests, that if Schindler is compassionate in some situations, he is compassionate in all situations, and, hence, that all of his behavior is morally emulable. The trait globalist might further object that someone like Angela, who is friend-and-family-honest, might also be stranger-courageous, and just-to-indigent-persons. But it is implausible to think that someone could possess a handful of disparate, empirically unrelated situational traits. Only the advent of extensive empirical research could show that an agent possesses the frames of mind appropriate to honesty, courage, and justice, and that she embodies some further mental attitude or attitudes that preclude her behaving virtuously across a global range of situations. But even if there did exist an agent in possession of this complex web of mental features, her situational traits might be empirically related by one emotional experience. Third, no principled reason suggests that situational traits must be empirically related by one psychological or physiological mechanism. Angela might develop her situational traits through the operation of a handful of different physiological conditions or unrelated emotional experiences in her past. The proponent of situational traits need not provide an account of how a set of situational traits develops in an agent in order to establish the theoretical and pragmatic role of sit62

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uational trait attributions within a complete, grounded, and useful understanding of virtue ethics. As with traditional global character traits, determining whether someone possesses a situational trait is no insignificant task. To accurately deem an agent just-to-the-poor, one would have to determine whether she is in a just frame of mind by interacting with and observing her, and by observing her behavior in a wide range of justice-requiring situations, over the course of several years. Accurate trait attributions, whether they are global or situational, are difficult and time consuming to establish. However, insofar as any pragmatic purposes of trait attributions rely upon accurate trait attributions, global and situational traits lie in equal stead.

DOWN FROM GLOBAL TR AITS

Considerations appealing to the nature of dispositions and appropriate trait attributions both suggest that virtue ethicists should endorse situational traits of character. But a third argument in support of situational traits that appeals to the normative integrity of the concept of justice is available. This third argument suggests that global traits actually entail situational traits, but not for reasons that are rooted in global traits, as they are traditionally understood. Sharon is just in the traditional sense. She is in a just frame of mind, as she possesses all the beliefs, desires, attitudes, patterns of reasoning, and other mental features relevant to justice—notably, she has worked hard to develop her robust strength of will always to behave justly. Further, she both should and would behave justly across a range of three kinds of normal situation which, for Sharon, comprises a broad range of normal kinds of situation. It is intuitively plausible that more than three situations must comprise the broad range of situations in which an agent should behave virtuously, since possessing the virtues is supposed to enable an agent to flourish. However, I construct the case of Sharon, who should behave justly in three kinds of situation, solely for the purpose of argumentative simplicity. Now, at the same time that Sharon is traditionally just, 63

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she is also fearful of behaving justly, since she knows that always behaving justly can gain her the resentment of people who hope to, but should not and will not, benefit from her actions. While Sharon wishes to remain in everyone’s good graces, she realizes it would be wrong to behave unjustly solely to salve her own insecurity over others’ potentially resenting her. And, so, Sharon overcomes her twinge of fear and always does the just thing. Over time, however, as Sharon grows more sensitive to others’ responses to her just behavior, she allows her fear of others’ resentment to grow. The intensity of her fear of behaving justly increases just enough to preclude her behaving justly in one kind of situation. The traditional understanding of character traits holds that Sharon is not just, as she would behave justly across a range of fewer normal situations than she should; she would behave justly across only two, rather than three, kinds of situation. I contend that the traditional trait theorist is committed to thinking of Sharon as housing a trait of character. If the traditional trait theorist denies that Sharon possesses any justice-related character trait, she cannot retain the integrity of the concept of justice. To maintain the claim that Sharon does not possess any justice-related character trait, the traditional trait theorist must endorse the following principle: No agent can possess any emotion or other mental state sufficiently intense to preclude traitrelated behavior and still possess (some variant of) the relevant trait. But, by endorsing this principle, the traditional trait theorist commits herself to a series of unjust virtue attributions. Compare Sharon to Ginnie. Ginnie, like Sharon, is in a just state of mind and both should and would behave justly across the same range of kinds of situation that Sharon should. Ginnie, however, possesses a weak strength of will, for which she deserves merit, and only a relatively impotent fear that does not preclude her behaving justly. According to the traditional trait theorist, since Sharon would not behave justly in all three kinds of situation, she is not just, but Ginnie would always behave justly and, so, Ginnie is just. While I do not wish to invoke any controversial accounts of justice to establish a point about the nature of virtue attribution, it is clearly inappropri64

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ate for the traditional trait theorist to treat Sharon and Ginnie so differently with regard to attributing, or not attributing, the trait of justice. Hence, to avoid treating Sharon and Ginnie unjustly, the traditional trait theorist must concede that at least some individuals possessing a justice-related state of mind can also possess an emotion that precludes just behavior in one kind of situation and still possess (some variant of) justice. Since Sharon would behave justly to strangers and acquaintances, but not to her family, since she fears being resented by her family, Sharon is stranger-and-acquaintancejust. Suppose now that the intensity of Sharon’s adverse emotional state escalates to the point that it precludes just behavior across not only one, but two, kinds of situation. Due to the great effort she has extended to develop her strength of will, and to her willpower’s integration within her psyche, she still merits some form of positive moral appraisal. Ginnie, meanwhile, with her paltry strength of will, never had to struggle to be just, and she would behave justly across all three kinds of situation. Unless the traditional conception of character traits endorses situational trait attributions, it is committed to appraising Sharon as unjust and Ginnie as just. But, again, this justice attribution is unjust, as it positively appraises Ginnie but fails to capture the positive appraisal Sharon deserves. Since Sharon would behave justly in only one kind of situation, to strangers only, the traditional trait theorist can, upon embracing situational traits, deem Sharon just-to-strangers. Suppose further that Sharon, while she is still in a just frame of mind, would behave justly in no situations due to an escalating number and/or intensity of behavior-precluding emotional states. The virtue ethicist can still legitimately attribute to her some variant of the trait justice.13 For, again, to deny Sharon any variant of the trait justice is unjust. Sharon has tried and failed to quell a set of potent behavior-precluding emotions. But she has also contributed significant effort to develop and maintain her just state of mind, for which we should appraise her positively. Entirely to deny her any variant of “justice” compromises the integrity of the trait’s conceptual content. 65

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The traditional trait theorist might insist that no attribution of justice is appropriate for anyone who would not always behave justly, as the core of the concept of justice includes just behavior. Justice is valuable primarily because of the just states of affairs it can produce and, without corresponding just behavior, the trait of justice is worthless. It is, indeed, important not only to be just, but also to produce just states in the world. But just behavior is central only to the traditional conception of justice. Accurate moral appraisal, as an accurate informative, predictive, and explanatory base, is also central both to the concept and instantiation of justice. And since the traditional conception cannot provide accurate moral appraisals, it must expand to allow for situational trait attributions, which can deliver accurate moral appraisals. As a further objection, the proponent of global traits of character might charge that the friend of situational traits lowers the standards for possessing courage to such an extent that every coward will have courage of a sort, for every coward would behave courageously under some conditions. But this is not so. The situational account does not, for example, transform Walter Mittys into Captain Ahabs. Both fictional characters are situationally courageous provided they are in a frame of mind appropriate to global courage, but their situational courage is relative to two vastly differing sets of situations. Mitty is courageous relative only to a limited range of situations since his many intense fears preclude most of the courageous behavior that he might otherwise display. But Ahab, possessing fewer precluding fears, is courageous relative to a much broader range of situations and, so, deserves greater moral credit than Mitty. Further, some cowards fail to act courageously because they utterly lack the frame of mind appropriate to courage. Such people simply fail to merit any attribution of situational courage. The trait globalist might also object that situational traits are not useful, as some of them are epistemically inaccessible. We typically attribute character traits on the basis of observed behavior. Even though a globally construed liar might sometimes tell the truth and a globally construed honest person might sometimes lie, if someone is observed telling the truth in a variety of situations, it is reasonable 66

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to attribute honesty to her. But according to the friend of situational traits, someone can be situationally honest even if she never actually behaves honestly. So, since some situational traits divorce traits from actual behavior, traits can lie beyond public purview and there is no basis for attributing them to others. And only if we can legitimately attribute character traits to others are we able to expect certain kinds of behavior from them and adjust our own behavior and plans accordingly. But many situational character traits will issue in actual behavior, so all the traits that are publicly accessible on the traditional account are also accessible on the situational account. It would take greater effort than mere observation to reveal the presence of traits whose correlated behavior is always precluded, but if we can know anything about others’ mental lives, then surely there are ways to determine whether they possess the appropriate mental features. More important, publicly accessible behavior is no sure indicator of a character trait, so the usefulness of both accounts is in jeopardy. Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett argue that we often posit traits on the basis of consistent behavior that is not representative of someone’s long-standing dispositions.14 They argue that we often posit traits even though behavior is frequently merely the product of one’s environment, and, of course, a liar could, with some effort, frequently tell the truth. So, with regard to this aspect of their usefulness, situational and global traits are on equal footing. Additionally, some objectors may allege that the trait situationist’s analysis of character traits is trivial. According to the trait situationist, someone is situationally honest just in case she would behave honestly in a specified situation or situations, provided she is in a frame of mind appropriate to honesty. “Situational honesty” is analyzed in terms of “honest behavior in the already-specified situation” and “frame of mind appropriate to honesty.” The charge of triviality does not concern either what counts as honest behavior or which mental features are appropriate to an honest frame of mind. Both the situational and global accounts, as I have presented them, can agree on these matters, and the appropriate behavior and frame of mind can be specified independent of the term “honest.” Instead, 67

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the charge of triviality points out that “situation” appears on both sides of the analysis: abbreviated, someone is situationally honest just in case there are situations in which she would behave honestly. If this analysis were trivial, it would yield no information about when someone would manifest a character trait, it would not enable us to distinguish different moral agents’ behavioral and attitudinal tendencies from one another, and it would not enable us to distinguish different levels of moral credit. But in attributing situational honesty to someone, the situational account picks out the specific situations in which someone would behave honestly. In doing so, it yields information about when someone would manifest a trait, it allows us to distinguish different peoples’ varying behavioral and attitudinal tendencies, as it picks out the different situations under which people would respond honestly and, as I have already argued, it is eminently successful in allowing us to distinguish different levels of moral credit, based on the breadth and nature of situations across which someone would behave honestly. Finally, because human psychology is so complex, the situational account of character traits might end up endorsing some very long and wordy trait attributions. Except insofar as this makes employing situational trait attributions time consuming and cumbersome, this is nonproblematic. It is better to employ wordy trait attributions that satisfy their intrinsic normative purposes than to employ curt, compact attributions that do not. To cap off this list of objections on a more hopeful note, the nature and motivational role of adverse affective states in the psychology of people like Angela, Ginnie, and Sharon suggest a direction of improvement for moral agents who struggle to act rightly. People like Angela often fail to act virtuously because their resentment, disgust, fear, nervousness, shyness, insecurity, or even social awkwardness overcomes their better moral tendencies. Learning how to contain and lessen the impact of these adverse affective states might produce better moral agents. How, exactly, humans should foster their own personal development so as to eviscerate their resentment, shyness, and so on, is empirically undetermined at this time, but it assuredly involves things such as deep personal reflection, for68

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giveness, meditation, honest, intense communication with others, and perhaps even hypnosis or cognitive behavioral therapy.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have provided two arguments in support of the situational account of character traits. Problems of appraisal that can arise require fine-grained character traits for the proper attribution of moral desert; and global accounts of character, even if they posit different degrees of virtue, are still too coarse-grained adequately to manage these problems. Further problems dealing with the appropriate attribution of traits themselves arise, and unless we posit situational traits of character to account for these problems, we invite intuitively unjust trait attributions. Metaphysical considerations dealing with dispositions lead us to posit situational traits; normative considerations dealing with proper moral appraisal lead us to situational traits; and normative considerations dealing with intuitively just trait attributions lead to situational traits. Hence, situational traits of character. In the next chapter, I continue the discussion of situational character traits by critically examining one other extant account and defense of nonglobal traits. John Doris has provided the only other well-developed defense of non-global traits of character.15 But, I argue, Doris’s primary argument in support of non-global traits fails, and his account suffers a range of further theoretical problems.

NOTES 1. Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 4. 2. In chapter 2, I endorse an expansive, liberal account of usefulness for metaphysical dispositions. Owing to the normative differences between metaphysical dispositions and character traits, moral appraisal is one use to which character traits, but not metaphysical dispositions, can and should be put.

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3. Of course, if trait attribution necessarily satisfies both the appraising and informative purposes, then the moral appraisal that comes with trait attribution is still necessary for satisfying the informative purpose. 4. See Nomy Arpaly’s and Timothy Schroeder’s well-developed account of praise and blame. Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder, “Praise, Blame and the Whole Self,” Philosophical Studies 93 (1999), 161–88. 5. See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 146–47. 6. See, for example, L. Ross and R. E. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 101; J. C. Wright and W. Mischel, “A Conditional Approach to Dispositional Constructs: The Local Predictability of Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1987), 1161–1162; Y. Shoda, W. Mischel, and J. C. Wright, “Intraindividual Stability in the Organization and Patterning of Behavior: Incorporating Psychological Situations Into the Idiographic Analysis of Personality,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (1994), 681–83. 7. Railton, “Made in the Shade,” 93. 8. Hursthouse appears to endorse a related strategy for appraising psychologically complex agents. Such agents, she claims, “can be accommodated by suitably qualified ascriptions of virtue.” See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 149. 9. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1121a5–7, 1134a16–17. 10. Hursthouse and Swanton both seem clearly opposed to situational traits. See Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 14, where she claims that agents who are not perfectly virtuous might appropriately be described as possessing a misguided form of virtue, not as being honest but candid or outspoken, as possessing a perverted form of virtue, as on the right path but not possessing the virtue, or as possessing virtue to an imperfect degree. Also see Hursthouse, 149: “Other blind spots that we can assign to a person as the result of their socialization and think that only someone exceptional might have seen past can be accommodated by suitably qualified ascriptions of virtue; some people with such blind spots can be fairly or even exceptionally [virtuous] . . . but . . . not perfectly virtuous.” Finally, see Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 25: “Inasmuch as virtue demands that we transcend various personal desires, attachments, feelings, and emotions in our responses to the demands of the world, we want to know just what is the nature and extent of that demand.” 11. Julia Annas, “Comments of John Doris’ Lack of Character,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71, 640. 12. Annas, “Comments,” 640. 70

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13. In chapter 2, I deny the plausibility of attributing a metaphysical disposition to an object that would not, owing to the nature of the background conditions it inhabits, display its characteristic dispositional behavior. The normative differences between metaphysical dispositions and character traits justify attributing a trait to an agent who would not display the trait’s characteristic responses. 14. L. Ross and R. E. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). 15. Doris, Lack of Character.

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SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ecently, John Doris has initiated a potentially serious concern about the traditional global account of character traits.1 Doris examines a prolific body of social psychological research that includes thousands of experiments conducted over roughly a thirtyyear span, and concludes that global traits of character cannot adequately describe most of the human population and are hence, in this sense, empirically inadequate. Since an account of character traits that fosters successful moral deliberation and produces good outcomes must be empirically adequate, Doris argues, virtue ethicists must endorse non-global traits, which he calls “local traits,” that he argues more accurately reflect human agents’ actual characterological tendencies. In this chapter, I provide several arguments against Doris’s local traits which, it is important to note up front, are structurally distinct from my situational traits.2 I begin by reviewing a few social psychological experiments that are representative of the experiments Doris employs, and then I reconstruct his argument in support of local traits. Next, I focus on problems with the nature of, and justification for, Doris’s local traits that have heretofore, in the

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growing collection of responses to Doris’s work, remained untouched. Prior to examining several relevant and representative social psychological findings, I wish to issue one caveat. Doris’s defense of local traits of character has stimulated a great number of critical responses, most of which focus on the nature of global traits and their alleged empirical inadequacy.3 But in this chapter, I do not deal with, nor do I intend to deal with, this body of literature. Further, three other philosophical figures, including neither Doris nor myself, have suggested that virtue ethicists should endorse non-global traits of character.4 But since Doris’s account of local traits is the only other extant account that is fully developed, I examine only Doris’s.

THE FINDINGS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

The relevant body of social psychological experiments typically manipulates a situation of the environment a subject inhabits and observes the impact of the situation change upon the subject’s behavior. Three structurally similar experiments, which have been focused on extensively by psychological and ethical situationists, prevail upon the reader to conclude that (most Western) human behavior is situationally dependent. Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, and J. M. Darley and C. D. Batson’s Princeton Theological Seminary Experiment are all notable for their methodological rigor.5 Milgram’s wellknown and frequently cited Obedience Experiment concerns the human tendency to obey authority and the factors that seemingly reinforce this tendency. Milgram solicited subjects for his experiments by placing an ad in a local newspaper, which drew subjects from a diverse range of age- and gender-related, educational, socioeconomic, and cultural groups. Milgram encouraged each subject electrically to shock another participant in the experiments (actually a confederate of Milgram’s pretending to experience pain from faux shocks) with a series of thirty shocks, each shock increasing in74

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crementally in intensity, every time the other participant failed accurately to recall a word pair. Milgram encouraged the subjects to apply the shocks simply by firmly uttering a series of verbal provocations, which included “Please continue,” “The experiment requires that you continue,” “It is absolutely essential that you continue,” and “You have no other choice, you must go on.” The participant who was receiving the faux shocks, after screaming in pretend agony after being shocked with 330 volts, feigned unconsciousness but, yet, two-thirds of the subjects continued to shock the other participant eight more times, up to 450 volts. The subjects’ broad demographic distribution precludes any likelihood that Milgram attracted a group of psychopaths, or other individuals who antecedently possessed a tendency to inflict cruel behavior, as subjects. The only plausible explanation of the subjects’ behavior is the nature of the situation, which included an authority figure prompting them to shock another human being. Like Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment focuses on harming behavior. Zimbardo chose twentyone college-age males for the experiment. The males volunteered to be experimental subjects, but were selected on the basis of the hallmarks of sound mental health which they all exhibited. The males were randomly assigned to play either the role of guard or the role of prisoner in a basement wing of Stanford University, where the wing’s rooms were set up to function as prison cells. The “guards” were given a brief list of general rules to follow, which would guide their guard-like behavior, and the “prisoners” were told only that they must follow the guards’ rules. On the morning of the second day, a power struggle erupted between the prisoners and guards; the guards responded by spraying the prisoners with a fire extinguisher, stripping the prisoners naked, and forcing the ringleaders into solitary confinement. The struggle escalated to the point where guards forced the prisoners to engage in a series of increasingly cruel and degrading punishments, which included smearing food in the prisoners’ faces, forcing the prisoners to play nearly naked leapfrog, and forcing the prisoners to clean toilets with their bare hands. An outside observer, astonished by the 75

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guards’ behavior and the prisoners’ traumatized reactions, encouraged Zimbardo to terminate the experiment after only six days of its planned two-week length. Afterward, several of the guards confessed to both their genuine and intense frustration and anger with the prisoners’ behavior and also to their satisfaction gained from punishing the prisoners. The guards, who displayed no detectable signs of psychopathy, any other psychological malady, or even any tendency to behave so cruelly (one guard claimed prior to the experiment that he was a pacifist), nonetheless, engaged in brutish and vile behavior; the only explanation for their behavior is the nature of the situation they inhabited.Focusing on helping behavior, Darley and Batson asked students of Princeton’s Theological Seminary to deliver a speech on the biblical figure the Good Samaritan, who willingly helped others when no one else would. One-third of the students were told that they must hurry to a different building to deliver their talk, one-third were told that they were right on time to deliver their talk, and one-third were told that they had plenty of time to reach their destination. On their walk to the speech site, each student encountered a confederate of the experimenter who appeared to need the student’s help, being in some kind of physical distress. Sixty-three percent of students who were early helped the confederate, but only 45 percent of students who were on time helped, while a paltry 10 percent of students who were in a hurry helped. Absent any features of character that might explain the covariance of helping behavior and degree of hurry, situationists conclude that the seminarians’ behavior was engineered by the situation, not by their preexisting internal mental states or traits of character. In one general brand of experiment designed to discern the situation’s impact upon subjects’ helping behavior, a confederate of the experimenter places her belongings next to the experimental subject.6 In one kind of variant on the experiment, the confederate requests that the subject watch over her belongings and, in the second kind of variant, the confederate makes no such request. After a few minutes, a thief, who is actually a second confederate of the experimenter, attempts to steal the first confederate’s belongings. Over76

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whelmingly, in the first kind of variant, where the first confederate asks the subject to watch her belongings, most subjects attempted to thwart the perceived theft while, in the second kind of variant, where the first confederate makes no corresponding request, most subjects did not attempt to thwart the perceived theft. These experiments were conducted in a variety of different experimental settings, including the beach, a restaurant, and a university library, and each experiment was conducted with subjects, first confederates, and second confederates hailing from a diverse range of demographic categories, including gender, age, and educational level. In this general brand of experiment, subjects’ helping behavior seems clearly dependent upon the same feature of the environmental aspect of the situation (and/or that feature’s impact on the experimental subject’s psychological state), in particular, whether the first confederate has asked the subject to watch her belongings; no demographic or other environmental factors could explain why some subjects help the first confederate, while other do not.7 A vast collection of social psychological experiments leads to the situationist’s conclusion. The psychological situationist literature suggests that human helping behavior is highly correlated with factors such as pleasant weather, noise level, familiarity with a potential victim, and nonurban origins. Human beings are much more likely to help others in the presence of sunshine, moderate temperatures, and low wind velocity, in the absence of loud, grating noises, when they have personally met a potential theft victim, and if the potential helper was raised in a rural environment.8,9

FROM EMPIRICAL ADEQUACY TO NON-GLOBAL TR AIT

Doris concludes from this voluminous group of psychological experiments that most human beings are not globally compassionate. If the experimental subjects were globally compassionate, they would have demonstrated helping behavior across a broad range of normal situations, including the normal situations of the experimental settings, in which subjects were not asked to watch the first 77

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confederate’s belongings, in which subjects were prompted electrically to shock a stranger, in which young men were asked to play the role of prison guard, and in which putatively compassionate seminary students were in a hurry. Since most subjects did not help in these situations, they are not globally compassionate. At best, most of the subjects are helpful-when-asked, compassionate-when-notprodded-to-do-harm, compassionate-when-not-playing-the-role-ofprison-guard, and helpful-when-not-hurried; that is, most of the subjects are locally compassionate. And since the theft and shocking experiments were conducted in a variety of different environmental settings upon subjects representing a broad range of gender, age, and class groups, it is reasonable to conclude that they accurately represent the behavior most humans would exemplify. Most human beings are, hence, not globally compassionate, and the traditional account of character traits, with the global traits it posits, cannot accurately describe most human beings. Global traits of character are, in this sense, empirically inadequate. According to Doris, however, trait attributions that accurately describe human beings are necessary for producing successful moral deliberators and actors. Empirically adequate trait attributions, that is, local rather than global trait attributions, will help moral agents reason, deliberate, and act in morally appropriate ways. He argues, first, that attributions of global traits can produce deceit, disappointment, resentment, and hero-worship, while attributions of local traits can encourage more valuable psychological states and help us to experience the good in people. For example, suppose a friend behaves honestly toward us in a trying ethical situation, and we attribute to her the global trait of honesty. The trait attribution, insofar as it is global, licenses our expecting her to behave honestly across a broad range of kinds of situation. But if globalism is empirically inadequate, it is highly unlikely that the friend will display honesty across the expected broad range of situations. Since the friend would probably fail to satisfy the attribution, the global attribution would lead to the disappointment and resentment we would feel if we witnessed our friend telling a lie. If, instead, we attribute

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friend-honesty to the friend, our more accurate local attribution will preclude our feeling disappointment and resentment when the friend inevitably fails to satisfy the unreasonably high standards we have implicitly imposed upon her. Doris also argues that global trait attributions are inimical to community, charity, and forgiveness. We can use global attributions socially to debar others whom we deem unworthy since we deny ascribing to them certain global traits that we think are positive, or we might fail to be kind, charitable, or forgiving to people we deem globally unworthy. But local attributions remind us that we all have different good and bad behavioral tendencies and, thus, that almost nobody is wholly morally corrupt or deserving social exclusion, and that we should be kind, charitable, and forgiving to almost everyone. Finally, Doris argues that employing local trait attributions can enable us to avoid certain ethically dangerous situations and seek favorable situations that are more likely to yield from agents behavioral and attitudinal responses that are morally appropriate. His Professional Flirtation case suggests this point. Suppose that S, like most human beings, possesses certain situational liabilities. In particular, her loyalty to her spouse is situationally dependent upon her own sobriety; unfortunately, S is faithful-when-sober but unfaithful-when-tipsy. When S’s spouse leaves town for the weekend, S’s colleague at her place of employment, with whom S has engaged in flirtation in their professional workplace, invites S to his house for drinks and dinner. Only with the descriptively accurate trait attribution of loyal-only-when-sober can S recognize her actual morally destructive behavioral tendency. Only with this descriptively accurate trait attribution can she avoid the situation that produces disloyalty and, so, preserve the integrity of and trust within her marriage. Doris concludes that since empirically adequate trait attributions foster better moral reasoning, deliberation, and choices, we should attribute empirically adequate traits like loyal-only-when-sober, mountain-climbing-courageous, and family-and-friends-just.

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LOCAL TR AITS AND IMPROVING MOR AL AGENCY

The primary extant objection to the basic line of reasoning exemplified by Doris holds that the social psychological findings fail to show that traditional virtue ethics is empirically inadequate.10 The psychological research elicits a multitude of cases in which subjects fail to behave as virtuous subjects seemingly would. But a subject’s failure to behave in, say, a seemingly compassionate manner does not entail, or even probabilify, that she is not compassionate. Nor, correspondingly, does a subject’s performing compassionate actions entail or probabilify that she is compassionate. Whether a subject is compassionate depends upon whether she is in a compassionate frame of mind, and whether she possesses any additional emotional or psychological mental features whose nature or intensity might preclude her behaving compassionately. Hence, to establish that the global account of character traits is empirically inadequate, that is, to establish that most humans do not possess global traits, empirical research would have to establish either that most humans are not in a virtuous frame of mind, or that while many humans are in a virtuous frame of mind, they also possess additional adverse mental features that would preclude their virtuous behavior. The relevant social psychological research, however, focuses almost exclusively on subjects’ behavior and, hence, while it is relevant to whether moral agents are virtuous or not, it simply cannot establish that subjects either are or are not globally virtuous. I will not focus on whether traditional virtue ethics is empirically adequate insofar as it endorses global traits, however. The locus of my concern centers on Doris’s account of local traits, in particular, on the nature of, and justification for, endorsing local traits. The banes Doris cites as attaching to global trait attributions do not arise merely from attributing global traits but, instead, from misattributing global traits. Suppose that a married flirt attributes global fidelity to herself on the basis of her own loyal behavior in one kind of situation. The behavioral expectation generated by the global attribution leads her to accept a social invitation from her flirtation partner, since she predicts that she will behave loyally across 80

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a broad range of situation kinds. But the married flirt has capriciously deemed herself loyal and, hence, if marital disaster ensues, she can blame her own global misattribution. She could just as easily misattribute loyal-while-having-dinner-and-drinks-with-flirtation-partner to herself on the basis of behavior that is not representative of her actual tendencies in this kind of situation. If the married flirt waited to discover whether she really possessed the frame of mind and consistent behavior that is appropriate to global loyalty, she would not wrongly attribute to herself either the global or the local trait, she would not develop illicit expectations of her own moral strength, and she would not jump blindly into morally dangerous situations. In a similar spirit, suppose that an agent attributes the global trait of courage to others without sufficient evidence that their courageous behavioral tendencies yield morally appropriate behavior across a broad range of different kinds of normal situation. She is simply setting herself up to experience a variety of negative emotional responses. An agent can just as easily misattribute local traits on the basis of insufficient evidence. But if we gather the appropriate evidence and refuse wantonly to attribute global traits, then we can legitimately expect behavioral consistency from people to whom we attribute global traits. Bad feelings need not ensue. Doris’s argument that global attributions are inimical to community, charity, and forgiveness is vulnerable to the same objection. Misattributing global traits can lead to our deeming others unworthy and, thus, excluding them and failing to show generosity and forgiveness. Of course, misattributing local traits can also lead to isolating, stingy, and cold behavior. We should promote community, charity, and forgiveness irrespective of whether we misattribute or appropriately attribute global or local traits. Doris’s argument does not entail that virtue ethicists should endorse local traits of character. The strongest conclusion available to Doris is that we must gain a sufficiently broad evidence base prior to attributing either global or local traits; but this conclusion is amenable to proponents of either local traits or global traits. As a retreat from his invalid arguments, Doris might endorse a weaker 81

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conclusion. According to the weaker conclusion, we should take into account the actual characterological tendencies of others when determining how psychologically to respond and how behaviorally to interact with them. This weaker conclusion, however, is not even faintly controversial.

THREE THEORETICAL CONCERNS

Three theoretical concerns further beset Doris’s account of local traits of character. A globally courageous agent would, among other things, behave courageously across a broad range of normal situations, but someone who is only mountain-climbing-courageous would behave courageously in only one kind of situation. And the agent who is mountain-climbing-courageous fails to behave courageously across a broader range of kinds of situation either because she is not in a courageous frame of mind or because she possesses some adverse and intense behavior-precluding mental feature(s). The globally courageous agent, however, is in a courageous frame of mind and possesses no such adverse mental features. Courage and mountain-climbing-courage are, hence, radically different concepts, and Doris provides no reason why we should think of mountainclimbing-courage as a normatively valenced character trait at all, rather than merely a simple disposition to behave, unrelated in any relevant way to the traditionally understood trait of courage. If local “traits” are not character traits, there is no reason for the virtue ethicist to supplant, or even modify, her traditional account of character traits with local traits. Doris’s non-global traits, which he calls “local traits,” are not sufficiently structurally related to global traits to warrant their classification as traits of character. However, my non-global traits, which I call “situational traits,” are modeled after the structure of global traits. To possess a situational trait, a moral agent must be in a frame of mind that is appropriate for the global correlate of the trait. For example, to be situationally courageous, an agent must possess those mental features that would ground her global disposition. It is the 82

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requirement that both the situationally courageous agent and the globally courageous agent be in a globally courageous frame of mind that conceptually unites situational traits to global traits. And, while the situationally courageous agent might respond courageously in a few kinds of situation, or even no kinds of situation, she still merits the attribution of situational courage, for the reasons I have provided in chapter 3. The second theoretical concern that besets Doris’s account of local traits is that, even if local traits can appropriately be classified as character traits, Doris gives the virtue ethicist no reason to endorse local traits, since he neglects to establish that appropriately sensitive attributions of psychological states could also enable moral agents better to reason, deliberate, and act. Doris does not establish that character trait attributions are necessary for appropriate moral reasoning, deliberation, and action. Suppose that S protects herself from her fear of the intimacy of close relationships by lying to friends and family, while she is consistently honest with strangers and acquaintances. The explanation that S fears intimacy enables T to attune her thoughts and behavior toward S in a way that lets T avoid morally dangerous situations with her. On Doris’s view, no attribution of a local trait that S may or may not possess is necessary. I have tried to establish, however, in chapter 3, that trait attributions are necessary for the virtue ethicist’s appropriate moral appraisal; appropriately sensitive attributions of psychological states are not sufficient. Third, Doris argues for local traits on the basis of their (alleged) empirical adequacy; local traits’ normative cachet rests upon their accurately describing most of the (Western) human population. But if the empirical situation were to change, such that humans came to possess global traits or even no traits at all, Doris’s local traits would be empirically and normatively obsolete. Doris is committed to the view that such an empirical transition would obviate the normative function of local traits he cites (since local traits’ justification is based on their alleged empirical adequacy) and, hence, obviate the need for local traits altogether. Doris is only a fair-weather friend of local traits. 83

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If non-global traits are to enjoy any justificatory stability, their support must be based on normative or theoretical considerations, rather than empirical considerations. And my account of situational character traits’ justification explicitly rests upon theoretical and normative considerations.

HYPOTHETICAL AGENTS AND REAL AGENTS

Doris and I take opposing argumentative approaches to defending non-global traits of character. Doris’s central defense of local traits rests on their alleged empirical adequacy, while I support situational traits because of their theoretical necessity. While Doris fails to show that the evidence establishes, or even suggests, the empirical inadequacy of global traits and the empirical adequacy of local traits, my defense of situational traits invites a related, empirically based, objection. My two primary normatively based arguments in support of situational traits are that if we do not endorse situational traits, we are unable accurately to execute the crucial moral function of appraising moral agents, and the concept of justice loses its normative integrity. I hope to have established that we should endorse situational traits by appealing to two cases, both of which share one central feature: In each case, an agent embodies a virtuous frame of mind (Sam houses the mental states appropriate to honesty, Jan the mental states appropriate to justice) but, yet, each agent fails to behave virtuously across the full range of situations in which she should because of an inner personal struggle over an emotional state that ultimately guides her (non-virtuous) behavior. But nowhere have I even suggested that any agents possessing this complicated web of mental states actually exist. In section 3 of this chapter, I argue that the social psychological research which Doris takes to establish the (typical) nonexistence of global traits and the (typical) existence of local traits is insufficient to support our endorsing local traits at the ethical level. Given the weighty and heretofore undecided philosophical

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problems, which I cover in chapter 1, underlying the possibility of rigorously establishing that an agent does or does not possess a certain kind of character trait, it is not surprising that Doris’s arguments for local traits fail. However, as I suggest in chapter 1, the commonsense evidence compiled by sensitive, reflective, intelligent agents suggests that we, as moral agents, regularly succeed, albeit with sporadic failures, at discovering the mental states of ourselves and others. It is upon this kind of evidence that my cases depend. Our partnerships, friendships, marriages, and other relationships with people bring us into regular contact (and conflict) with their beliefs, desires, motivations, and expectations. And this kind of evidence strongly suggests the existence of agents who genuinely care about honesty, understand the nature of its value, reason about honesty in virtuous ways and, yet, struggle to manifest their inner virtue behaviorally. From the existence of such psychologically complex and realistic agents, however, it does not automatically follow that virtue ethicists should endorse situational traits, as Doris might hope. Only a very few real agents might possess the situational traits which the agents in my cases possess. In such a case, situational traits would not adequately describe most of the population, and situational traits would not be empirically adequate, as Doris defines it. Further, even if most people did possess the kinds of situational traits I describe, nothing explicit or implicit in Doris’s arguments precludes proponents of global traits, with their global trait attributions, from appraising moral agents with extra-characterological terminology. Of course, I argue in chapter 3 that an appeal to virtue is necessary adequately to appraise moral agents, but Doris’s argument for situational traits is missing this crucial step. If we are to accept situational traits, we must do so on the basis of theoretical and normative considerations. With these considerations in mind, the virtue ethicist can, upon endorsing situational traits, better understand and employ the theoretical, normative, and pragmatic underpinnings and implications of virtue ethics and, so, improve upon her own moral standing.

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CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have argued against the only other extant account of non-global traits of character. I hope to have established four primary critical points against Doris’s account. First, the banes which Doris attaches to global attributions of character and, hence, putatively lead us to posit and attribute local traits of character, result not from global attributions of character but, rather, global misattributions of character. Second, Doris’s local traits are not sufficiently structurally related to global traits to merit their classification as traits of character at all. Third, Doris’s argument for local traits is missing the crucial premise that trait attributions are necessary for enabling moral agents better to reason, deliberate, and act. Finally, since Doris’s argument pivots upon local traits’ alleged empirical adequacy, the plausibility of his account is dependent upon the contingent empirical situation. I end the discussion of situational traits of character in chapter 5 by applying the situational account to a long-standing debate in the domain of theoretical ethics. Non-consequentialists have argued that consequentialist demands introduce elements of both psychological and conceptual tension into one’s friendships such that consequentialists cannot actually hold genuine friendships; any ethical theory that precludes the possibility of genuine friendship is thereby seriously vitiated. But I argue that application of situational traits to this debate resolves the debate in favor of genuine consequentialist friendships.

NOTES 1. Doris, Lack of Character. 2. Section 5 of this chapter notes the specific differences between my situational traits and Doris’s local traits. 3. See, for example, Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology,” A Priori 2 (2003), 20-31; Rachana Kamtekar, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character,” Ethics 114 (2004), 458–491; Chris-

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tian Miller, “Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics,” The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003), 365–92; and Gopal Sreenivasan, “Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution,” Mind 111 (2002), 47–68. 4. See Kamtekar, “Situationism;” Joel Kupperman “Virtue in Virtue Ethics,” in Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology: The Situationism Debate, ed. C. Upton; and Peter Vranas, “The Indeterminacy Paradox: Character Evaluations and Human Psychology,” Nous 39 (2005), 1–42. 5. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1974); C. Haney, W. Banks, and P. Zimbardo, “Interpersonal Dynamics of a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973), 69–97; J. M. Darley and C. D. Batson, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973), 100–108. 6. At least four specific experiments exemplify the structure and outcome of the experiment that I here discuss. See W. Austin, “Sex Differences in Bystander Intervention in a Theft,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), 2110–2120; T. Moriarty, “Crime, Commitment, and the Responsive Bystander: Two Field Experiments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975), 370–76; S. H. Schwartz and A. Gottlieb, “Bystander Anonymity and Reactions to Emergencies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980), 418–30; and D. R. Shaffer, M. Rogel, and C. Hendrick, “Intervention in the Library: The Effect of Increased Responsibility on Bystanders’ Willingness to Prevent a Theft,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 5 (1975), 303–19. 7. I do not explore in any further detail the claim that behavior is situationally dependent, as several other writers have executed this task sufficiently. See, for example, Ross and Nisbett, Person and the Situation. See also Vranas, Indeterminacy Paradox. 8. M. R. Cunningham, “Weather, Mood, and Helping Behavior: Quasi Experiments with the Sunshine Samaritan,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), 1947–1956; K. E. Mathews and L. K. Cannon, “Environmental Noise Level as a Determinant of Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (1975), 571–77; D. R. Shaffer, M. Rogel, and C. Hendrick, “Intervention in the Library: The Effect of Increased Responsibility on Bystanders’ Willingness to Prevent a Theft,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 5 (1975), 303–19; D. M. Gelfand, D. P. Hartman, P. Walder, and B. Page, “Who Reports Shoplifters? A Field-Experimental Study,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 25 (1973), 276–85.

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9. Situationism is not noncontroversial. Contrary to situationists, personologists hold that personological features are a better predictor of human behavior than are situational features. But it is unclear whether there is even a clear-cut distinction between situationists and personologists. See, for example, Joel Kupperman, Character (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press), 165–66. 10. See note three of this chapter for a brief list of philosophical figures who employ this line of objection.

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SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND THE FRIENDLY CONSEQUENTIALIST he primary argumentative strand of this book aims to establish that situational traits of character are necessary to satisfy the theoretical demands of character traits and their attribution. Among its other virtues, however, the situational account of character traits, coupled with a plausible, realistic understanding of the nature of friendship, vindicates the consequentialist against the familiar charge that she cannot be a genuine friend. In defense of the conclusion that situational traits help to reconcile the putative tension between consequentialism and genuine friendship, I begin by offsetting an objection that targets my application of one ethical theory’s findings to a (seemingly) distinct ethical theory. Second, I examine the two primary versions of the charge that consequentialism and friendship are in conflict with one another, and then proceed to develop a new trait-based version of the charge that strengthens the incompatibilist’s position. Finally, I argue that that the trait-based version of the incompatibilist’s argument assumes that character traits are global. If traits are construed situationally and we are more sensitive to the legitimate boundaries of real friendships, however, it becomes apparent that the consequentialist can possess genuine friendships.

T

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FROM VIRTUE ETHICS TO CONSEQUENTIALISM

It is important at this early stage to repudiate the objector’s concern that any tension resides in employing a virtue-inspired account of situational traits of character for the purpose of generating a consequentialist conclusion. Wherein lies the justification, the objector might query, for applying the theoretical and pragmatic fallout from virtue ethics to any debate within consequentialist ethics? The theoretical and pragmatic conclusions of the consequentialist are likely to bear only a paltry relevance to the virtue ethicist’s theoretical and pragmatic concerns. Character traits figure prominently in the theoretical architecture and pragmatic proceedings not only of virtue-based approaches to ethics, but also of several sophisticated variants of consequence-, act-, and contract-based approaches to ethics. Consequentialists, deontologists, and contractarians can all put character traits to use for a range of important theoretical and pragmatic purposes. Perhaps, for example, a moral agent might best satisfy the demands of consequentialism by developing certain traits of character. Hence, the inference from virtue-inspired situational character traits to the trait of friendship as it relates to consequentialism is illicit only if the virtue-based justification for situational character traits is inconsistent with any of consequentialism’s central tenets. The only premise in chapter 3’s arguments for situational character traits appealing to virtue ethical considerations holds that moral appraisal of agents ought to proceed via trait attribution, and the primary support for this premise is that the central needs of virtue ethics should be satisfied by virtue ethical concepts. Virtue-inspired situational traits conflict with consequentialist views only if the consequentialist is beholden to the claim that moral appraisal of agents ought not to proceed via trait attribution. But, assuming that the relevant variants of consequentialism actually employ character traits at some level, there is no reason why

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the consequentialist should deny that appraisal should proceed via trait attribution. For if the consequentialist should develop character traits as a means to producing the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for the greatest number possible, and the only factors relevant to agent appraisal deal with an agent’s ability to produce the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, then it is not unreasonable that agent appraisal should proceed via trait attribution. My aim is not to defend any specific version of consequentialism, or to defend a fully developed view about consequentialist factors that are relevant to agent appraisal. Instead, my aim is only to suggest that drawing a trait-based conclusion about friendship and consequentialism from a virtue-inspired account of character not only involves no overt contradictions, but seems a wholly plausible endeavor.

GENUINE FRIENDSHIP AND CONSEQUENTIALISM

The charge that the consequentialist cannot be a genuine friend may seem misguided at first, for the good consequences that the consequentialist can bring about by promoting her own and others’ friendships are substantial and palpable. Healthy friendships can promote the psychological health of the participating friends by providing fun, relief, self-esteem, satisfaction, and confidence, and agents whose psychological health is enhanced through friendship are better equipped to establish healthy pleasure-producing familial, professional, and other morally tinged relationships. But Bernard Williams and Michael Stocker hold that consequentialists cannot avoid psychological alienation (often called “motivational alienation”) in their friendships.1 They argue that, to promote the overall good, the consequentialist must aim at and be motivated by maximizing agent-neutral value, but that a genuine friend’s aims and motivations would, instead, be directed at her friends. To avoid this conceptual incompatibility and its attendant psychological alienation, Peter Railton suggests that the genuine friend

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adopt indirect consequentialism, which does not require that agentneutral value be the object of the genuine friend’s motivations and aims.2 Instead, the genuine friend must simply satisfy the consequentialist condition that she maximize the overall good, perhaps by following certain rules or always acting from a certain character or set of motives. As long as she satisfies this condition, the consequentialist is able to avoid psychological alienation, focus on other people, and so develop and maintain friendships. Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking respond, however, that Railton’s move to indirect consequentialism fails to vindicate a consequentialist justification of friendship.3 They claim that if the indirect consequentialist’s relationships became suboptimal, that is, if they failed to maximize the good, she would terminate them. But, according to the ordinary concept of friendship, “true and good friends will have a motivational disposition which involves a preparedness to act for the friend, such that the claims of friendship will sometimes trump the maximization of agent-neutral value.”4 Cocking and Oakley do not hold that a genuine friend would never terminate her friendships if they became suboptimal. Their pluralistic axiology endorses competing values such that, in some cases, the claims of friendship override those of agent-neutral value while, in other cases, the claims of agent-neutral value override those of friendship. So, in acting under the disposition proper to friendship, a genuine friend would sometimes, though perhaps not always, sacrifice maximizing the good to promote a friendship. However, Cocking and Oakley claim that the indirect consequentialist of the variety Railton endorses would never make such a sacrifice, for she would be disposed to terminate any relationship that became suboptimal. Cocking and Oakley claim that because of this alleged conceptual incompatibility between friendship and consequentialism, someone should, although she might not actually, feel psychologically alienated from someone who would always abandon a friendship to promote agent-neutral value. It is important to note that Cocking and Oakley misunderstand a crucial element of Railton’s position. They claim that Railton’s indirect consequentialist would be disposed to terminate any relation92

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ship that became suboptimal. But Railton states that “it may be that [someone] should have a character such that he sometimes knowingly and deliberately acts contrary to his objective consequentialist duty.”5 Further, Railton explicitly addresses a case wherein an indirect consequentialist sometimes appropriately favors his wife over promoting a greater amount of agent-neutral value.6 Thus, Railton’s response to Cocking and Oakley would be that the indirect consequentialist would sometimes promote her friendships at the expense of promoting agent-neutral value, which is why the consequentialist can be a genuine friend. I pursue Cocking and Oakley’s line of objection since the version of consequentialism it targets, wherein an agent’s responses should always coincide with the greatest utility, is both interesting and not wholly implausible and, so, worth consideration. Williams, Stocker, and Cocking and Oakley argue that the root of the putative incompatibility between genuine friendship and consequentialism is conceptual—a consequentialist embodies feature x, while a genuine friend could not, by the proper definition of genuine friendship, embody feature x—and that a kind of psychological alienation would arise if a genuine friend were to try to embody x. Oddly, however, none of the players in the contest over the alleged incompatibility of genuine friendship and consequentialism provides an account of the nature of psychological alienation. It is important to provide such an account, since an understanding of psychological alienation reveals why alienation is so destructive of genuine friendships. Williams’ and Stocker’s psychological alienation arises over their claim that consequentialism requires friends’ aims and motivations to be directed at utility sums, rather than at other moral agents. Presumably, the “consequentialist friend” and her partner in friendship could both develop a kind of alienation from one another, given the consequentialist’s aims and motivations. The consequentialist friend who does not think about her friend’s likes, dislikes, interests, and experiences is very unlikely to maintain the “friendship” for any sustained period of time; introspection over the nature of one’s own friendships confirms that a genuine friend must actually think 93

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about her friendship partner’s likes, interests, and such, in order to behave in an affable manner and verbally respond to the friend in a way that is sensitive to the particular kind of bond that unites the two friends. And if the partner in friendship senses that the “consequentialist friend” is always thinking about utility instead of the friendship partner’s funny comments, questions, and confessions, the friendship partner is likely to become offended and feel like she lacks value in the consequentialist’s eyes. (I do not here question whether Railton’s indirect consequentialism provides a satisfying response to Williams’ and Stocker’s favored brand of psychological alienation.) A similar kind of psychological alienation can arise from the nature of friendship that Cocking and Oakley endorse, wherein a genuine friend would not abandon a suboptimal friendship. A consequentialist might not be able to sustain friendships at all; as soon as she made a friend, utility sums might shift and the consequentialist might be obligated to abandon the friend. And the consequentialist’s partner in “friendship” would likely be offended by the consequentialist’s view about the friendship partner’s value, reasoning as follows: “She would abandon this friendship that I care about at the drop of a hat; she does not really care about me, and that hurts my feelings deeply and disinclines me toward being her friend.” If the behavioral and attitudinal portrayal that consequentialists must exemplify produces psychological alienation, then genuine friendship is deeply problematic, if not doomed. Elinor Mason defends the consequentialist against Cocking and Oakley’s objections that consequentialism and genuine friendship are conceptually incompatible, and that a troubling psychological alienation would arise in the “consequentialist friend.”7 While Cocking and Oakley argue that the indirect consequentialist would be disposed to terminate any particular friendship that became suboptimal, Mason argues that the indirect consequentialist should be disposed to terminate her pro-friendship disposition, or friendly character, when it becomes suboptimal. Mason claims that we possess relatively stable characters and, so, to accord with our psychological nature, a consequentialist should develop and 94

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act from a friendly character that maximizes the good. If consequentialism required that each of our particular relationships maximize the good, we would probably be required to abandon our friends on a frequent and regular basis. And under these circumstances, our characters would have to be more flexible than they are so that we could psychologically tolerate abandoning our friends without incurring severe isolation and depression, thereby bringing down utility sums. Further, utility sums favor possessing a friendly character, even one that governs only suboptimal friendships, for the indirect consequentialist whose friendships are suboptimal is better off than one who has no friends at all. Presumably, terminating one’s friendly character is different from terminating the friendships that it governs, though Mason does not defend this important claim. Plausibly, one’s friendly character consists at least partly in one’s general liking of others, one’s general concern for others, and other mental features whose object is no particular individual. But one’s friendship consists in liking a particular individual, caring about that individual, and other mental features directed at that person. And someone could stop liking and caring about an individual without putting an end to her general liking and concern for others. Mason concludes that if one’s friendly character, as opposed to one’s particular friendships, is the subject of termination, indirect consequentialism is compatible with genuine friendship. “The circumstances in which a [friendly character] becomes suboptimal are relevantly different from, and far less likely to occur than, the circumstances in which a particular relationship would become suboptimal.”8 And if someone’s friendly character maximizes the good, then her particular friendships are justified, even if they are suboptimal. Thus, indirect consequentialism and genuine friendship are not conceptually incompatible. And, further, the indirect consequentialist who adheres to the appropriate condition of termination will not be psychologically alienated from her friends, presumably because the possibility of her having to abandon her friends is decidedly unlikely. 95

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NEW DIRECTION FOR COCKING AND OAKLEY

Mason’s shifting the subject of termination from one’s particular friendships to one’s friendly character does not help the friendly consequentialist. For the intuition underlying the key premise of Cocking and Oakley’s incompatibility argument also underwrites a revised version of this argument that withstands Mason’s response. According to Cocking and Oakley’s key premise, a genuine friend is disposed to sometimes sacrifice maximizing the good in order to promote her particular friendships. Plausibly, this premise is motivated by Cocking and Oakley’s pluralistic axiology, which implies that friendship, if not intrinsically valuable, generates reasons that compete with reasons grounded in objective value. Friendship is, hence, sometimes worth protecting even if it fails to promote the overall good, and the conditions under which we would terminate a friendship should accord with its value and the reasons it generates. Now, suppose that, as Mason argues, the indirect consequentialist is disposed to terminate her friendly character when it becomes suboptimal. Whenever her friendly character no longer maximizes the good, she must terminate the particular friendships that her friendly character governs, along with her friendly character. But the intuition underlying Cocking and Oakley’s key premise was that friendship is intrinsically valuable and, so, sometimes worth protecting. And an intrinsically valuable friendship should sometimes be worth protecting even if its governing friendly character becomes suboptimal. This intuition underwrites a revised version of the key premise; the revised key premise enables Cocking and Oakley to generate a new argument for the incompatibility of consequentialism and friendship. According to the revised premise, a genuine friend is disposed to sometimes sacrifice maximizing the good in order to promote her friendly character.9 Someone’s friendly character might become suboptimal, but she may still promote it in some cases and, in these cases, she may keep the intrinsically valuable friendships that are governed by her friendly character. But Mason’s claim was that an indirect consequentialist is disposed always to terminate her 96

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friendly character when it fails to maximize the good. Thus, to be a genuine friend, someone must be disposed to sometimes sacrifice maximizing the good while, to be an indirect consequentialist, someone must be disposed never to sacrifice maximizing the good. Cocking and Oakley might argue that one cannot be disposed both always to terminate and sometimes to keep one’s friendly character despite its connection to suboptimal outcomes. And, so, indirect consequentialism and genuine friendship are conceptually incompatible. Cocking and Oakley might further argue that, to the extent that the consequentialist’s applying the condition of termination directly to her friendships is psychologically alienating, her applying the condition of termination indirectly to her friendships, via her friendly character, is equally psychologically alienating. According to Cocking and Oakley, the consequentialist who would abandon her friendships when they became suboptimal would produce alienation in her appropriately receptive friends: the condition of termination fails to accord with the nature and intrinsic value of friendship. And, they might argue, it is unclear why the condition of termination, when indirectly applied to the consequentialist’s friendly character, does not equally fail to accord with the nature and value of the relationships it governs. It might even be more alienating to others that you, as a consequentialist, are prepared to abandon your entire friendly character, your basic friendly approach to other human beings, if it became suboptimal. The claim that drives this new incompatibility argument is that one cannot be disposed both to always terminate and to sometimes keep one’s friendly character despite its connection to suboptimal outcomes.10 If someone possesses the disposition appropriate to the consequentialist, she cannot simultaneously possess the character appropriate to genuine friendship; the indirect consequentialist cannot possess a friendly character. And this is why the indirect consequentialist cannot be a genuine friend. But why shouldn’t the indirect consequentialist be able to possess a friendly character? To defend the new incompatibility argument, Cocking and Oakley must show why the genuine friend’s character is incompatible with indirect consequentialism. They might produce 97

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two lines of defense in support of this incompatibility, but neither is successful; ultimately, even the most potent version of the incompatibility argument fails. As a first line of defense, Cocking and Oakley might cite one feature of the consequentialist’s disposition, namely, the condition of termination that her friendly character maximizes the good. If the consequentialist’s friendly character fails to satisfy the condition that it maximize the good, she must terminate this character. They argue that this terminating condition is inimical to the concept of genuine friendship, since its pivotal justificatory and guiding role is to maximize the good.11 And since the indirect consequentialist must adopt the terminating condition as part of her disposition to maximize the good, Cocking and Oakley could conclude that the disposition itself is inimical to genuine friendship. But this attempted defense of the alleged incompatibility between the indirect consequentialist’s disposition and the genuine friend’s character is not in fact open to Cocking and Oakley. This is because they endorse a pluralistic axiology according to which the claims of agent-neutral value sometimes trump the claims of friendship, and vice versa. When the claims of friendship and agent-neutral value compete, an agent endorsing Cocking and Oakley’s ethical theory will, appropriately, sometimes let the claims of agent-neutral value win. And in these cases, the terminating condition is pivotal in justifying and guiding her actions. Thus, since the terminating condition plays a crucial justificatory and actionguiding role in their own justification of friendship, Cocking and Oakley cannot consistently object to its presence in a consequentialist justification of friendship. Nor can they consistently hold that it is the terminating condition’s scope of application, its applying in every case, which is their real concern. For it might turn out for Cocking and Oakley that the claims of agent-neutral value always, again appropriately, trump those of one’s friendly character. In such a case, the terminating condition applies as if the agent were a consequentialist but yet its scope of application is nonobjectionable. And, so, appeals to the role that the terminating condition plays in the indirect consequential98

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ist’s motivational structure fail to show that she cannot possess a friendly character. Of course, it does not follow from these considerations that the indirect consequentialist can be a genuine friend; it follows only that this attempted defense of the alleged incompatibility between indirect consequentialism and genuine friendship fails. Cocking and Oakley have available to them a second argument to support the claim that the indirect consequentialist cannot possess the character trait appropriate to genuine friendship. According to the revised key premise I have suggested they endorse, a genuine friend is disposed to sometimes sacrifice maximizing the good, such that the claims of her friendly character will sometimes trump the maximization of agent-neutral value. If this is right, then the genuine friend would sometimes promote her friendly character over agent-neutral value; but an indirect consequentialist would always promote agent-neutral value over her friendly character. But, assuming the indirect consequentialist’s and the genuine friend’s values were ever to clash in some situation, someone could not, in practice, both sometimes favor her friendly character in her actions and always favor agent-neutral value in her actions. Therefore, if the genuine friend’s and the indirect consequentialist’s respective characters and dispositions are conceived as being wedded to action, then the indirect consequentialist cannot possess a genuinely friendly character. But this attempted line of defense assumes a traditional global understanding of character traits. The proper understanding of character traits is key to the issue of whether the indirect consequentialist can be a genuine friend. On behalf of Cocking and Oakley, I have suggested a new version of the charge that indirect consequentialism and friendship are incompatible, and this new version of the charge relies upon a traditional understanding of character traits. Given this traditional understanding, the indirect consequentialist cannot possess the character trait proper to genuine friendship. Application of situational, rather than global, character traits to the debate I have here canvassed and advanced shows that the indirect consequentialist can, indeed, be a genuine friend. The more plausible situational 99

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understanding of character traits resolves the debate in favor of the friendly consequentialist.

THE CONSEQUENTIALIST FRIEND

An agent possessing a traditionally conceived friendly character trait fits the pattern of global character traits depicted in chapter 1. First, the traditionally friendly agent possesses the mental features appropriate to friendship; she cares about friendship, recognizes its value in her life, desires to have friends and treat them well, reasons appropriately about situations involving friends, nurtures the willpower to respond appropriately in difficult situations involving friends, and so on. Second, the traditionally friendly agent’s friendly character is dynamic insofar as it issues in appropriately friendly behavioral and attitudinal responses. And third, the traditionally friendly character is global, as the agent possessing the friendly character would respond appropriately across a broad range of normal situations. The incompatibilist, who holds that consequentialism and genuine friendship run contrary to one another, is committed to the claim that the indirect consequentialist’s adhering to the condition that her friendly character maximizes the good fails to mitigate someone’s not behaving in a friendly way. And, so, the indirect consequentialist’s adhering to the condition that her friendly character maximizes the good is a normal situation that precludes her keeping her friendly character and friendships along with it, while she otherwise possesses the mental features relevant to genuine friendship. So, on the traditional account of character traits, since the indirect consequentialist’s genuinely friendly mental features are divorced from the appropriate friendly behavior due to the presence of the normal terminating condition, the indirect consequentialist’s friendly “character” is not global and, hence, she does not possess the genuine friend’s character. However, the proponent of situational traits attributes to the indirect consequentialist a situational trait of character. Suppose the 100

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indirect consequentialist possesses the mental features relevant to genuine friendship. She genuinely cares about developing and nurturing friendships, she recognizes the value of friendship in her own and others’ lives, and so on. These mental features are divorced from action in some situations because of the presence of the indirect consequentialist’s terminating condition. But the proponent of situational traits deems her situationally friendly, and this trait predicate picks out those situations under which she would display the appropriate friendly behavior, namely, those situations under which utility sums favor her friendly character. The indirect consequentialist is favorable-utility-sums-friendly. She possesses this situation-relative trait despite the fact that it would not always issue in actual behavior. And, so, if character traits are conceived situationally, rather than globally, the indirect consequentialist can possess the traits appropriate to both the consequentialist and the genuine friend. Countenancing situational traits of character allows the consequentialist to be a genuine friend. The objector to my compatibility argument might immediately protest that situational friendship does not entail genuine friendship; genuine friendship, she might insist, is necessarily global, and suboptimal-utility-sum-situations are normal situations in which a genuine friend should behave in a friendly manner. A genuine friend would not abandon her friendly character for the sake of utility sums! But this objection begs the question. The question at issue concerns the situations in which a genuine friend should keep her friendly character, and the incompatibilist’s reiterated assertion that the genuine friendly should keep her friendly character in suboptimal-utility-sum-situations does not help to strengthen her argument. One glaring problem with my compatibility argument presents itself: The disposition proper to genuine friendship might not ever issue in any actual acts, as the consequentialist condition of termination might always supersede these acts, and someone may object that we need to promote our friendships and their governing characters in our actual behavior. Hence, while indirect consequentialism and genuine friendship might be conceptually compatible in 101

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some situations, other specific situations might arise in which utility sums preclude the possibility of an agent’s developing or maintaining genuine friendships and, thus, a friendly character. Assume that promoting our friendships via behavior is the primary way of promoting our friendly characters. Friendship is valuable for a variety of reasons. It promotes the general welfare, happiness, and self-esteem, it makes possible activities and institutions that are necessary for living in communities, and it generally makes our lives full. And friendship’s intrinsic features allow for it to have these functions. Friendships involve loyalty, trust, sympathy, mutual liking, shared interests, concern for the other’s sake, desire for the other’s well-being and company, the belief that one’s friend is valuable, promises, commitments, expectations, and shared activities and experiences. Over time, as these features of friendship are borne out behaviorally, the psychological bonds of friendship develop and flourish. Now, if Mason is right, utility sums favor our possessing a friendly character, and it is highly unlikely that circumstances would change so that our friendly characters became suboptimal. In these favorable circumstances, our friendly characters would issue in actual behavior in our friendships and, so, it would be possible to develop deep, meaningful friendships governed by robust, act-oriented character traits. But do our friendly characters need to issue in actual behavior? If the empirical situation never favored our friendly characters, then we could probably never develop friendships at all, as actual friendly behavior is necessary to develop the trust, loyalty, and other psychological bonds characteristic of friendship. But suppose that the empirical situation shifted from favorable to unfavorable; suppose that we were able to develop the deep bonds of friendship but that we were, then, forced by consequentialist moral considerations no longer to promote our friendly characters via actually promoting our friendships in behavior. Could we retain our friendships and friendly characters under these circumstances? Yes. In several kinds of case, people retain their friendly characters, and the friendships governed by them, when the possibility of 102

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acting to promote their characters becomes remote or nonexistent. People often endure long periods of self-chosen or forced isolation during which they either do not or cannot actually interact with others and, thereby, promote their friendly characters in their behavior. Other people suffer the death of all their friends and, so, cannot actually behave in a way that promotes their friendly characters. But, yet, in both kinds of situation, people plausibly retain both their friendships and the friendly characters governing them, despite the fact that neither the friendships nor their governing characters connect up with any actual behavior. This is especially plausible in situations where isolated friends wish they could interact with one another and regret that they cannot. Now, suppose that the empirical situation has favored the consequentialist and her friendly character, allowing her to develop deep, meaningful friendships. If the empirical situation shifted to become unfriendly to her friendly character, she would be morally required to behaviorally promote other values; she could not behaviorally promote her friendships and their governing character. Nonetheless, she could retain her friendships and her friendly character. Although some overriding consideration may preclude you from behaviorally promoting your friendships, this consideration need not weaken the deeply felt psychological bonds connecting you to your friends. Your friends might need to be mature in order to comprehend why you must cut off the behavioral aspect of your relationship. Specifically, a genuine friend would realize that a seemingly trivial shift in utility might result in her consequentalist friend’s (traditional) friendly character’s becoming suboptimal. But a genuine friend would not conclude that you valued her less than a seemingly trivial shift in utility. A genuine friend would understand the nature of your consequentalist moral commitments and, so, friendship’s psychological bonds would remain. A genuine friend might even be grateful for your cutting off the behavioral aspect of the relationship, reasoning thus: “I love my (consequentialist) friend, and her cutting off the behavioral aspect of our relationship is further evidence that she is a decent, morally grounded person, which is partly why I befriended her in the first place. I respect and 103

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love her, though I will be behaviorally isolated from her for a time.” And, consistent with one of the major purposes of character trait attribution, to attribute a friendly character to you, despite the fact that you do not behaviorally promote it via your friendships, is to attribute a kind of moral credit to you. This credit attribution recognizes that you have gone through the long and difficult process of developing the psychological bonds of friendship and that, in this realm at least, you are a worthy person. Hence, while the proponent of situational traits of character posits traits that may preclude actual behavior, situational traits are perfectly consistent with our pre-theoretic intuitions about the relation between actual behavior and character. Mediated by the appropriate understanding of character traits, consequentialism and genuine friendship are, conceptually speaking, perfectly compatible. Further, there is no reason for thinking that consequentialism and genuine friendship, whose proponents possess the appropriate respective disposition and character, are psychologically incompatible. I can be psychologically (and behaviorally) bonded to my friends, while still believing that I might in the future rationally decide, however regrettably, to isolate myself from these friends and meditate in a cave for a decade. Similarly, I can still be bonded to my friends, while believing that I may behaviorally isolate myself from my friends in virtue of consequentialist moral considerations. My friends might feel psychologically alienated from me if they fail to understand the nature and depth of my feelings, beliefs, motivations, or reasons. But that alienation is the unfortunate fault of my friends, not consequentialism. My opponent might suggest that the compatibilist position I endorse ultimately collapses into the claim that a genuine friend would understand her consequentialist friend’s actions and, so, is neither conceptually nor psychologically alienated from her friend. Hence, the opponent might continue, this defense could be applied to the original incompatibilist arguments put forth by Williams and Stocker, and my appeal to character traits is superfluous. But this objection misconstrues my position. Suppose the consequentialist were to abandon her suboptimal friendly character and 104

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its accompanying friendships. Even if her newly abandoned friends understood the consequentialist’s actions, it does not follow that consequentialism and genuine friendship are compatible. For the consequentialist might abandon her friends with beliefs, feelings, and motivations that are inconsistent with genuine friendship. She might abandon her friends curtly or harshly, with no explanation or sorrow. A consequentialist who possesses a genuinely friendly character would abandon her friends with gentle tact and a loving, sorrowful explanation. Her friendly character ensures that she would approach her friends with the sensitivity and empathy they deserve. The appropriate understanding of character traits is crucial to this compatibilist debate.

DYNAMIC FRIENDSHIP VS. DYNAMIC CONSEQUENTIALISM

One final concern for the compatibilist remains. The compatibilist position I here defend is effected by showing that someone who possesses the disposition appropriate to the indirect consequentialist can also possess the character trait appropriate to the genuine friend, provided her friendly character trait is situational. But, runs the objection, this is not the only way to make indirect consequentialism and genuine friendship compatible. A distinct compatibility position can be achieved by arguing that someone possessing a traditional, global, friendly character can also possess the disposition appropriate to indirect consequentialism, provided her consequentialist disposition, assuming it is a trait of character or sufficiently similar to a trait of character, is situational. The indirect consequentialist could, indeed, possess a disposition, or character trait, that is situational, but situational traits are not, and could not be, appropriate to indirect consequentialism. The disposition proper to indirect consequentialism is essentially global, for its central purpose is to enable the indirect consequentialist to bring value into the world. If the indirect consequentialist’s disposition is not conceived globally, it cannot so enable her. 105

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Further, the purposes of someone’s friendly character extend far beyond that of the indirect consequentialist’s disposition. A genuine friend’s character enables us to morally assess her, to explain and predict her behavior, and to inform others about her. And, as I have already argued in chapter 3, if an agent’s friendly character is understood as global, it cannot serve its purposes. Hence, the indirect consequentialist’s disposition must be understood as global, while the genuine friend’s character can be understood as situational. And, so, the particular compatibility argument I have advanced is the only one available to the compatibilist.

CONCLUSION

I have argued that a new version of the charge that consequentialism and friendship are incompatible is available. According to this version of the charge, the consequentialist cannot possess the character trait proper to genuine friendship. However, an understanding of friendship that is fully supported by the weight of common sense, along with a situational understanding of character traits, ameliorate any tension ostensibly plaguing the friendly consequentialist. The consequentialist can possess the character trait proper to genuine friendship; the friendly consequentialist is strained neither by conceptual incompatibility nor by psychological alienation. The primary purpose of this book has been to defend a situational account of character traits. In particular, I have tried to show that my account of situational traits is distinct from and superior to John Doris’s account of local traits, and that a range of metaphysical, ethical-theoretical, and normative considerations converge on the conclusion that virtue ethicists should endorse situational traits of character, though not necessarily to the exclusion of global traits. The second major purpose of this book has been to show that situational traits of character are not for naught; it is false that situational traits lack any important philosophical implications. Instead, I argue that situational traits play a crucial role in resolving a long-standing challenge to the plausibility of a central ethical theory. 106

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Situational traits of character also potentially carry philosophical implications where, and to the extent that, philosophical debates appeal to character traits. The range of ways and subdisciplines within which one might appeal to character traits is vast and, so, situational traits might bear significant import in ways that are not currently apparent. Finally, the potential import of chapter 2’s argument that metaphysical dispositions are contextual is significant. For extant accounts of perception, epistemic virtue, reason externalism, belief content, and laws of nature, among others, appeal to the dispositional nature of these phenomena. Contextualism about dispositions as applied to debates in these particular subdisciplines might yield important results. Contextualism about dispositions and situationism about character traits are both theories that are rich with philosophical possibility, and both clearly merit further consideration.

NOTES 1. Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 75–150; Michael Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 453–66. 2. Peter Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,” in Consequentialism and Its Critics, ed. Samuel Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 93–133. 3. Dean Cocking and Justin Oakley, “Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation,” Ethics 106 (October 1995), 86–111. 4. Cocking and Oakley, “Indirect Consequentialism,” 109. 5. Railton, “Alienation,” 121. 6. Railton, “Alienation,” 120–21. 7. Elinor Mason, “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?” Ethics 108 (January 1998), 386–93. 8. Mason, “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?” 392–93. 9. The revised key premise is not question-begging, as it clearly follows from considerations underpinning Cocking and Oakley’s original key premise.

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10. Since Cocking and Oakley’s conceptual incompatibility claim explicitly underpins their alienation claim, I focus almost exclusively on their conceptual claim. My argument is no strawman. 11. Cocking and Oakley, “Indirect Consequentialism,” 98.

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INDEX

action appraisal, 49 agent-neutral value, 91, 92, 93, 98, 99 alienation, 91–92, 93, 97, 103, 104 Annas, Julia, 61 Aquinas, Thomas, 3 Aristotle: on character traits, 3–4; practical wisdom of, 7; on situational character traits, 58–59; on virtue, xv, 3, 8, 9–10, 59; on willpower, 22n10 attribution: behavior promotion through, xv, 61–62; of compassion, 51–52, 62; Doris on, 78, 80–81, 83, 85, 86; of friendliness, 103–104; of global character traits, xv, 56–57, 60, 64–65, 69, 78, 80–81, 86; inaccurate, 62, 80–81; of local traits, 81; moral appraisal via, 52, 83, 84, 90, 91; as moral credit, 80–81, 83, 104; of situational character traits, xv,

47–52, 56–57, 59, 60, 62–63, 64–65, 66–68, 69, 78–79, 83 authority, 48, 74–75 background conditions: absence of, 33–34; for compassion, 80; disposition and, 32–43, 71n13; for fragility, 30–32, 38; with ideal account, 34–39; normal, 39–40; unusual, 36 Batson, C. D., 74 Behavior: helping, 77; prediction of, 55; promotion of, through attribution, xv, 61–62; public, 67; as situation-dependent, 87n7 benefit: of compassion, xii–xiii; of friendship, 91; of virtue, xi boundaries, 89–90 bravery, 3, 4–5, 6, 10; disgust with, 11; fear and, 23n15; global, 81, 82–83; by situation, 13, 66; situational, 52–53, 82–83

113

INDEX

Caucasian Americans, 19 causality, 34 ceteris paribus clause, 41–42 C-fragile, 43 character traits: Aristotle on, 3–4; classification of, xv; in consequentialism, 90; context of, 43–44; core features of, 3–4, 29; degrees of, 15–16; development of, 62–63; as disposition, 3, 25–44; informativeness of, 50–52, 70n3; as input/output function, 26, 28–29; instrumental role of, 2, 78; moral appraisal and, 47–50, 69n2, 70n3; as normative, 44; in philosophy, 1, 2; relationships between, 62; responses from, 11–12; role of, in morality, 2; semantics of, 5–7; situation for, 31; unity of, 3, 6; virtue ethics on, 2–3; visibility of, 67. See also friendliness; global character traits; local traits; situational character traits Classification: of character traits, xv; as disposition, 27; of local traits, xvi Cocking, Dean, 93, 94, 97; conceptual incompatibility claim of, 108n10; pluralistic axiology of, 92, 96, 98 commitment, 49 compassion, 5–6; background conditions for, 80; benefit of, xii–xiii; development of, 16–17; Doris on, 77–78; global, xii, 77–78; inaccurate attribution of,

51–52, 62; other virtues and, 49–50; pleasure from, xi; situational, xii–xiv, 13–14 complexity, 56–57, 59 consequentialism: character traits in, 90; friendliness and, xvi, 97–98, 99, 100–102, 104–105; friendship and, xvi, 91–92, 93–106; indirect, 91–93, 95, 96–98, 99, 100–102, 105, 106; maximizing the good in, 95, 96, 98, 100; moral appraisal in, 90–91; situational character traits and, 100–101 consistency: Doris on, 23n19; of mental grounding, 7–11 context: of character traits, 43–44; of disposition, xv, 31, 43–44 contextual account, 37, 38, 40; fragility in, 41, 43; relativization of disposition predicate in, 42–43; triviality of, 42 contextualism, 107 continence, 8 courage. See bravery cruelty, 74–76 Darley, J. M., 74 death, 103 deliberation, 4 deontology, 2 depression, 13–14 development: of character traits, 62–63; of compassion, 16–17; of virtue, 16–17, 19 disgust, 7–8, 10; bravery with, 11 disposition: activation of, 5; ascriptions, 39–40, 49n12; background conditions and,

114

INDEX

32–42, 71n13; character traits as, 3, 25–44; classification as, 27; context of, xv, 31, 43–44; initiation events with, 33–34, 37; as input-output function, 26, 28–29; manifestation of, 33–34, 37; moral appraisal and, 69n2; Mumford on, 45n12; normative, 71n13; predicate relativization of, 42–43; relativization of, 36–37; usefulness of, 35, 36, 37–38, 39, 40, 45n12 Doris, John, 69, 82, 84; on attribution, 78, 80–81, 83, 85, 86; on compassion, 77–78; on consistency, 23n19; criticism of, xvi, 74, 86; on global character traits, 23n19, 73, 78–79 dynamism, 11; mental framework and, 14 electro-fink case, 31, 41–42 emotional history, 53–54; overcoming, 68–69; trauma in, 5–6 ethics of being, 14 ethics of doing, 14 event mediation, 28–29 expectations, 58, 59–61, 84 experiments, social psychology, 77, 79; global character traits and, xv–xvi, 80; local traits and, 84; Obedience Experiment, 74; Princeton Theological Seminary Experiment, 74, 76, 78; Stanford Prison Experiment, 74, 75–76, 78; virtue ethics with, 80

fear: bravery and, 23n15; of resentment, 64, 65; situational, 53–54, 55, 57 fragility, 26, 27, 29; background conditions for, 30–32, 38; Cfragile, 43; in contextual account, 41, 43; relativization of, 36 friendliness: attribution of, 103–104; consequentialism and, xvi, 97–98, 100–102, 104–105; as global character trait, 100, 101, 106; indirect consequentialism and, 97–98, 99, 100–102; predictiveness of, 106; promotion of, 102–3; situational, 105; termination of, 94, 95, 96–97, 98; traditional, 100; utility of, 102 friendship: alienation in, 91–92, 93, 97, 103, 104; benefit of, 91; boundaries of, 89–90; in consequentialism, xvi, 91–92, 93–106; maximizing the good in, 96, 97, 99, 100; promotion of, 103–104; situational, 101; termination of, 92–93, 94, 95, 97; utility of, 93–94, 95; value of, 93–94, 96, 102 generosity, 8, 50; justice and, 51, 58, 59 global character traits (GT): attribution of, xv, 56–57, 60, 64–65, 69, 78, 80–81, 86; bravery, 81, 82–83; compassion, xii, 77–78; with complexity, 56–57, 59; cultivation of, 16, 19; degrees of, 60; Doris on, 23n19,

115

INDEX

initiation events, 32; absence of, 33–34; causality of, 34; disposition with, 33–34, 37 input-output function, 26, 28–29 introspection, 17–18 isolation, 103–4

73, 78–79; flexibility of, 56–57, 59; friendliness as, 100, 101, 106; honesty, 56–67, 78; for improvement, 61–62; inaccurate attribution of, 62, 80–81; indirect consequentialism as, 105, 106; informativeness of, 56–57; loyalty, 80–81; mental framework and, 14–15; moral appraisal with, 59, 60; normality and, 12–13; predictiveness of, 56–57; situational character traits and, xiv, 82–83; social psychology experiments and, xv–xvi, 80; verification of, 18–19, 20 Good Samaritan, 76 GT. See global character traits guilt, xii–xiii

justice, 3, 7, 10; generosity and, 51, 58, 59; moral appraisal of, 66; normative integrity of, 63–64, 65–66; as situational character trait, xv, 63–65 Kant, I., 2; on motivation, 24n24; on right action, 22n5

honesty, 10; global, 56–67, 78; normal, 56, 57; as normative, 50; situational, 28, 53–56, 66–68, 78–79; value of, 49 Hursthouse, Rosalind, 24n24, 70n8, 70n10 hypocrisy, 61; with Princeton Theological Seminary Experiment, 76 ideal account, 30, 31, 34–39 ideal conditions, 38 incompatibilist, 100 incompatibility, 108n10 informativeness: of character traits, 50–52, 70n3; of global character traits, 56–57

local traits, 78–79; classification of, xvi; empirical adequacy of, 83, 84; inaccurate attribution of, 81; situational character traits and, xv–xvi, 73, 82, 106; social psychology experiments and, 84 loyalty: global, 80–81; situational, 79 Malzkorn, Wolfgang, 30; arbitrariness of, 39; on Mumford, 38; referentiality and, 40 Martin, C. B., 31; on conditional analyses, 41 Mason, Elinor, 94–95, 96 mental framework: dynamism and, 14; global character traits and, 14–15; intensity of, 11 mental grounding, 4–5; consistency of, 7–11; as mental framework, 6–7; negativity tinge in, 23n15

116

INDEX

traits, 58, 59, 60–61, 84; of virtue ethics, 48

Milgram, Stanley, 74–75 Mill, J. S., 2 moderation, 3 moral appraisal: character traits and, 47–50, 69n2, 70n3; in consequentialism, 90–91; disposition and, 69n2; global character traits with, 59, 60; of justice, 66; via trait attribution, 52, 83, 84, 90, 91; virtue and, 48–50 moral credit, 80–81, 83, 104 morality, 2 moral obligations, 6 moral perfection, 7 moral sensitivity, 12–13 moral tension, 53–54 motivation, 24n24 Mumford, Stephen, 30, 34–35; on conditional analysis, 46n14; higher order fact and, 42; infinite possibilities for, 37; Malzkorn on, 38; usefulness and, 36, 38, 45n12

Oakley, Justin, 93, 94, 97; conceptual incompatibility claim of, 108n10; pluralistic axiology of, 92, 96, 98 Obedience Experiment, 74 observation, 18 obtaining account, 30, 31–32, 33–34

negativity, 7, 8–11, 14, 23n15 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3 Nisbett, Richard, 67 Normal: background conditions, 39–40; global character traits and, 12–13; honesty, 56, 57; as referential, 38, 39; situation, 13–14 normal account, 30, 31, 38; arbitrariness of, 39–40 normativity, 2; character trait, 44; of honesty, 50; of justice, 63–64, 65–66; with situational character

pain, 74–75; pleasure over, 91 passion, 9 perceptual sensitivity, 4 personologists, 88n9 philosophy, 1, 2 Plato, 3 pleasure: from compassion, xi; over pain, 91 practical wisdom, 7 predictiveness: for behavior, 55; of friendliness, 106; of global character traits, 56–57 Princeton Theological Seminary Experiment, 74, 76, 78 Prior, Elizabeth, 30 Professional Flirtation case, 79 protection, 5 psychologists, 19 racism, 19 Railton, Peter, 91, 92, –93 rationality, 22n5 “Realism and the Conditional Analysis of Dispositions” (Mumford), 45n12 reasoning, 4

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INDEX

resentment, 64, 65 respect, 61 responsibility, 76–77 right action, 22n5 Ross, Lee, 67 Schindler, Oskar, 62 selfishness, 16 shyness, xii–xiii, 53–54 situation: bravery by, 13, 66; dependent behavior, 87n7; normal, 13–14; sensitivity to, 12–13 situational character traits: Aristotle on, 58–59; attribution of, xv, 47–52, 56–57, 59, 60, 62–63, 64–65, 66–68, 69, 78–79, 83; bravery, 52–53, 82–83; compassion, xii–xiv, 13–14; consequentialism and, 100–101; degrees of, 54–56, 60; empirical adequacy of, 85; fear, 53–54, 55, 57; flexibility of, 55, 59–60; friendliness, 105; friendship, 101; global character traits and, xiv, 82–83; helping behavior in, 77; honesty, 28, 53–56, 66–68, 78–79; indirect consequentialism and, 100–101; inferences from, 54–55; justice as, xv, 63–65; local traits and, xv–xvi, 73, 82, 106; loyalty, 79; normative expectations with, 58, 59, 60–61, 84; opposition to, 70n10; triviality of, 67; usefulness of, 66–67; visibility of, 67

situationism, 88n9 Smith, A.D., 30, 31–32 solicitation, 50–51 Stanford Prison Experiment, 74, 75–76, 78 Stocker, Michael, 91, 93 Swanton, Christine, 10, 48, 70n10 theft, 76–78 therapy, 6 totality, higher order fact of, 42 trust, 20, 48 unity: of character traits, 3, 6; of virtue, 9, 51 universal law, 2 usefulness, 69n2; of disposition, 35, 36, 37–38, 39, 40, 45n12; Mumford and, 36, 38, 45n12; of situational character traits, 66–67 utility: of friendliness, 102; of friendship, 93–94, 95 virtue: Aristotle on, xv, 3, 8, 9–10, 59; benefit of, xi; compassion and, 49–50; degrees of, 15–16, 54–56, 60; development of, 16–17, 19; as global, xii; ground of, 29; intrinsic value of, 6; moral appraisal and, 48–50; perfection of, 7–11, 70n10; requirements of, 13–14; struggles with, xii, 7–11, 12, 18, 57, 63–66, 68, 84, 85; unity of, 9, 51; verification of, 18–19, 20

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INDEX

virtue ethics: act-based approaches and, 47–48; on character traits, 2–3; normative authority of, 48; outcomebased approaches and, 47–48; potential problems with, 6; with social psychology experiments, 80; vagueness of, 3

virtue rule, 10 visibility, 67 Williams, Bernard, 91, 93 willpower, 4: Aristotle on, 22n10; intensity of, 11, 64, 65 wisdom, 3, 7 Zimbardo, Philip, 74, 75

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