Situationism versus Situationism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (1):9-26 (2015)
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Abstract

Most discussions of John Doris’s situationism center on what can be called descriptive situationism, the claim that our folk usage of global personality and character traits in describing and predicting human behavior is empirically unsupported. Philosophers have not yet paid much attention to another central claim of situationism, which says that given that local traits are empirically supported, we can more successfully act in line with our moral values if, in our deliberation about what to do, we focus on our situation instead of on our moral character. Call this prescriptive situationism. In this paper, we will point toward a previously unrecognized tension between these two situationist theses and explore some ways for the situationist to address it.

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Author Profiles

Brandon Warmke
Bowling Green State University
Travis Joseph Rodgers
Valencia Community College

Citations of this work

Does Situationism Threaten Free Will and Moral Responsibility?Michael McKenna & Brandon Warmke - forthcoming - New Content is Available for Journal of Moral Philosophy.
Proposing an Islamic virtue ethics beyond the situationist debates.Muhammad Velji - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.R. Jay Wallace - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.John M. Doris - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Conversation and Responsibility.Michael McKenna - 2011 - , US: Oxford University Press USA.

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