According to situationists, the available empirical psychological data show that prevalent conceptions of virtue are ‘empirically inadequate.’ The charge is ambiguous. I begin by differentiating four families of empirical inadequacy charges, explaining the conceptual connections among the families, and showing how different situationists press different versions of the charges from each family. Then I explain how the empirical psychological model known as the ‘cognitive affective personality system,’ or ‘CAPS model,’ enables distinct responses to these varied charges. The CAPS response has (...) come under fire, though, and I close by responding to the five main challenges raised against it. (shrink)

I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics (...) ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement's creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations. Going beyond social psychological experiments, I examine two methodological sources not found in situationist debates. First, I argue for ethnography as an empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women's dawa movement. Secondly, the work in the philosophy of mind on ‘affective scaffolding’. (shrink)

A wealth of research in social psychology indicates that various ethically arbitrary situational factors exert a surprisingly powerful influence on moral conduct. Empirically-minded philosophers have argued over the last two decades that this evidence challenges Aristotelian virtue ethics. John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt have argued that situationist moral psychology – as opposed to Aristotelian moral psychology – is better suited to the practical aim of helping agents act better. The Aristotelian account, with its emphasis on individual factors, invites (...) too much risk of morally bad conduct insofar as it ignores the power of situational factors which lead us astray. Moral agents are often better off detecting and intervening on situational factors to help themselves act better. This paper offers an argument against the claim that situationism enjoys practical advantages over Aristotelian virtue ethics. There is empirical evidence suggesting that people can improve their behavior via Aristotelian strategies of deliberate self-improvement. This evidence also suggests that focusing our ethical attention on morally trivial factors may result in worse overall conduct. Accordingly, Aristotelianism may fare better than situationism on the practical issue of moral improvement. (shrink)

Indirect situationist critiques of virtue ethics grant that virtue exists and is possible to acquire, but contend that given the low probability of success in acquiring it, a person genuinely interested in behaving as morally as possible would do better to rely on situationist strategies - or, in other words, strategies of environmental or ecological engineering or control. In this paper, I develop a partial answer to this critique drawn from work in early Confucian ethics and in contemporary philosophy and (...) psychology. From early Confucian ethics, I lean on the concept of li, or ritual. Ritual represents both a set of situational manipulations that are especially effective at directly producing moral behavior and at indirectly cultivating virtue over time, and also a virtue that consists of facility with and expertise in these situational manipulations. Appealing to the particular example of social power, I then argue that one is justified in attempting to acquire virtue if one knows that one will frequently encounter circumstances in which purely situationist strategies lose effectiveness, if these circumstances also carry moral urgency: the risk of great harm or opportunity for great benefit to others is high, and if utilizing the potent combination of situationist strategies and virtue envisioned by the early Confucians as ritual is possible. (shrink)

The early work by Gilbert Harman and John Doris on character and situationism has fostered a vast literature over the past 15 years. Yet despite all this work, there are many important issues which remain largely unexplored. The goal of this paper is to briefly outline eight promising research directions: neglected moral virtues, neglected non-moral virtues, virtue assessment and measurement, replication, non-Aristotelian virtue ethics, positive accounts of character trait possession, prescriptive situationism, and virtue cultivation.

_ Source: _Page Count 36 The situationist movement in social psychology has caused a considerable stir in philosophy. Much of this was prompted by the work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. Both contended that familiar philosophical assumptions about the role of character in the explanation of action were not supported by experimental results. Most of the ensuing philosophical controversy has focused upon issues related to moral psychology and ethical theory. More recently, the influence of situationism has also given rise (...) to questions regarding free will and moral responsibility. There is cause for concern that a range of situationist findings are in tension with the reasons-responsiveness putatively required for free will and moral responsibility. We develop and defend a response to the alleged situationist threat to free will and moral responsibility that we call pessimistic realism. We conclude on an optimistic note, exploring the possibility of strengthening our agency in the face of situational influences. (shrink)

The situationist movement in social psychology has caused a considerable stir in philosophy. Much of this was prompted by the work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. Both contended that familiar philosophical assumptions about the role of character in the explanation of action were not supported by experimental results. Most of the ensuing philosophical controversy has focused upon issues related to moral psychology and ethical theory. More recently, the influence of situationism has also given rise to questions regarding free will (...) and moral responsibility. There is cause for concern that a range of situationist findings are in tension with the reasons-responsiveness putatively required for free will and moral responsibility. We develop and defend a response to the alleged situationist threat to free will and moral responsibility that we call pessimistic realism. We conclude on an optimistic note, exploring the possibility of strengthening our agency in the face of situational influences. (shrink)

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

Using research in social psychology, philosophers such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that human beings do not have – and cannot acquire – character traits such as virtues. Along with defenders of virtue ethics such as Julia Annas and Rachana Kamtekar, they assume that this constitutes a dangerous attack on virtue ethics. I argue that even if virtues and vices did not exist and everyone accepted that truth, (1) we would continue to make attributions of character traits in (...) our ordinary practices and institutions and (2) it would still be useful to strategically harness – rather than suppress or ignore – our virtue (and vice) attributions. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between an agent’s moral responsibility for their actions and the situations in which an agent acts. Decades of research in psychology are sometimes thought to support situationism, the view that features of an agent’s situation greatly influence their behavior in powerful and surprising ways. Such situational fea­tures might therefore be thought to threaten agents’ abilities to act freely and responsi­bly. This chapter begins by discussing some relevant empirical literature on situationism. It then surveys several ways (...) of construing the situationist threat to moral responsibility as reducible to worries about determinism, manipulation, or luck. It is then argued that the best way to understand the situationist challenge is as a threat to reasons-responsive­ness. A common strategy for responding to the situationist threat to reasons-responsive­ness—the so-called modal response—is discussed. The chapter then defends a view called pessimistic realism: While the situationist literature puts human agency in an unflattering light, it does not show that agents’ reasons-responsiveness capacities are generally un­dermined by situational features. Several objections both to the modal strategy and to pessimistic realism are discussed. The chapter concludes with three thoughts concerning future directions. (shrink)