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1A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of PsychologyIn Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character, Oxford University Press. pp. 249-267. 2016.The goal of this paper is to summarize a novel empirical framework that I have developed for thinking about the moral character traits which I claim are widely possessed by many people today. Given limitations of space, though, I will not be able to motivate or defend the framework. Instead I will simply outline some of the main ideas. Also, to help make the discussion less abstract, I will focus on harming motivation and behavior, but the framework is intended to generalize to all domains of ou…Read more
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164Character and Moral PsychologyOxford University Press. 2014.This book first reviews Miller's theory of Mixed Traits, as developed in his 2013 book Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. It then engages extensively with situations, the CAPS model in social psychology, and the Big Five Model in personality psychology. It ends by taking up implications for his view in meta-ethics (a modified error theory) and normative ethics (a challenge for virtue ethics).
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35Review of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, Volume 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (7). 2009.This is the third of three volumes on moral psychology edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and published by MIT Press in 2008.
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2The Psychology of VirtueIn Alejo José G. Sison, Gregory Beabout & Ignacio Ferrero (eds.), Handbook on Virtue Ethics in Business and Management, Springer. pp. 491-500. 2017.This chapter provides a brief overview of recent work in psychology on virtue, with a focus on the implications of that research for business. It begins by characterizing what is involved in having a virtuous character trait. It then reviews some of the claims made in two of the leading research traditions on traits in psychology: situationism and the Big Five model. Finally it ends with an application of research on the Big Five trait of conscientiousness to the business environment.
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187Moral Relativism and Moral PsychologyIn Steven Hales (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Relativism, Blackwell. 2011.Much recent work in meta-ethics and ethical theory has drawn extensively on claims about moral psychology. The goal of this paper is to provide a broad overview of some of these claims and the implications that certain philosophers are taking them to have for the plausibility of moral relativism.
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58Review of Kristján Kristjánsson's Virtues and Vices in Positive Psychology: A Philosophical Critique (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2015.Kristján Kristjánsson's new book is the first detailed treatment of positive psychology from a philosophical perspective (at least as far as I am aware). Kristjánsson has been an active contributor to a number of debates in recent years at the intersection of moral philosophy, psychology, and education, and brings his vast familiarity with the relevant literature to bear in engaging with this movement. The result is a book that raises a number of good questions and concerns about positive psycho…Read more
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1Some Foundational Questions about CharacterIn Miller Christian (ed.), Character: New Perspectives in Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology, Oxford University Press. pp. 19-40. 2015.This chapter for our edited volume (Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology) provides background material on what we consider to be several of the fundamental questions about character, such as whether character traits exist, what their makeup is, and how they can be improved.
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73Gert on Subjective Practical RationalityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (5): 551-561. 2008.The purpose of this paper is to consider Joshua Gert’s novel view of subjective practical rationality in his book Brute Rationality. After briefly outlining the account, I present two objections to his view and then consider his own objections to a rival approach to understanding subjective rationality which I take to be much more plausible.
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137The Problem of CharacterIn van Hooft Stan & Saunders Nicole (eds.), The Handbook of Virtue Ethics, Acumen Publishing. pp. 418-429. 2014.I first summarize the main line of argument used by Harman and Doris against Aristotelian virtue ethics in particular. In section two I present what seems to me to be the most promising response to their argument. Finally in section three I briefly review and assess the other leading responses in the now sizable literature that has developed in this area.
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164Divine Will Theory: Desires or Intentions?In L. Kvanvig Jonathan (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press. 2013.Due largely to the work of Mark Murphy and Philip Quinn, divine will theory has emerged as a legitimate alternative to divine command theory in recent years. As an initial characterization, divine will theory is a view of deontological properties according to which, for instance, an agent S‟s obligation to perform action A in circumstances C is grounded in God‟s will that S A in C. Characterized this abstractly, divine will theory does not specify which kind of mental state is supposed to ground…Read more
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218Divine Desire Theory and ObligationIn Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 105--24. 2008.Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quin…Read more
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404Social psychology and virtue ethicsThe Journal of Ethics 7 (4): 365-392. 2003.Several philosophers have recently claimed to have discovered a new and rather significant problem with virtue ethics. According to them, virtue ethics generates certain expectations about the behavior of human beings which are subject to empirical testing. But when the relevant experimental work is done in social psychology, the results fall remarkably short of meeting those expectations. So, these philosophers think, despite its recent success, virtue ethics has far less to offer to contempora…Read more
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143Atheism and the Benefits of Theistic BeliefIn L. Kvanvig Jonathan (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press. pp. 97-125. 2013.Most atheists are error theorists about theists; they claim that theists have genuine beliefs about the existence and nature of a divine being, but as a matter of fact no such divine being exists. Thus on their view the relevant theistic beliefs are mistaken. As error theorists, then, atheists need to arrive at some answer to the question of what practical course of action the atheist should adopt towards the theistic beliefs held by committed theists. The most natural answer and the one that we…Read more
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54Review of Gabriele Taylor, Deadly Vices (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 41 409-413. 2007.Much attention in the recent resurgence of interest in virtue ethics has been paid to the virtues. At the same time, however, comparatively little has been written about vices. In Deadly Vices, Gabriele Taylor aims to remedy this by offering a detailed discussion of the vices that are traditionally labeled the seven deadly sins: sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. Among her central claims about them is that they are each focused primarily on the self, and that they lead to se…Read more
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709The Euthyphro DilemmaIn Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 1-7. 2013.The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato‟s dialogue Euthyphro. In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (Plato 1981: 10a), and proceeds to advance arguments which clearly favor the first of these two options (see PLATO). The primary interest in the Euthyphro Dilemma over the years, however, has primarily concerned the relationship between God …Read more
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2Naturalism and EthicsIn Kelly Clark (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Blackwell. pp. 416-434. 2016.In this chapter I consider the work of four leading naturalistic moral psychologists – Joshua Greene, Shaun Nichols, Jesse Prinz, and John Doris. Each of them draws a different meta-ethical conclusion, and they would likely disagree amongst themselves on a number of points. But here my goal is to consider, as much as space allows, whether the moral realist should feel threatened by the empirical work which they cite and the arguments which they base upon it.
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143Identifying with Our DesiresTheoria 79 (2): 127-154. 2013.A number of philosophers have become convinced that the best way of trying to understand human agency is by arriving at an account of identification. My goal here is not to criticize particular views about identification, but rather to examine several assumptions which have been widely held in the literature and yet which, in my view, render implausible any account of identification that takes them on board. In particular, I argue that typically identification does not involve either reflective …Read more
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99Moral Psychology, Volume V: Virtue and Character (edited book)MIT Press. 2017.Philosophers have discussed virtue and character since Socrates, but many traditional views have been challenged by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience. This fifth volume of Moral Psychology grows out of this new wave of interdisciplinary work on virtue, vice, and character. It offers essays, commentaries, and replies by leading philosophers and scientists who explain and use empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience to illuminate virtue and character and related issues in m…Read more
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Honesty Revisited: More Conceptual and Empirical ReflectionsIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Christian Miller (eds.), Moral Psychology, Volume V: Virtue and Character, Mit Press. pp. 295-307. 2017.I am very grateful to Jason Baehr and Bella DePaulo for the careful attention they have paid to my chapter. As I noted, this is my initial foray into providing a conceptual account of the virtue of honesty, and for that matter it is about the only such attempt any philosopher has offered in the past forty years. If others start to go down this road too, I would be thrilled. Following the structure of my paper, I will start with conceptual matters before turning to the implications of the empiric…Read more
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257Empathy, social psychology, and global helping traitsPhilosophical Studies 142 (2): 247-275. 2009.The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits.…Read more
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210The Conditions of RealismJournal of Philosophical Research 32 95-132. 2007.The concern of this paper is not with the truth of any particular realist or anti-realist view, but rather with determining what it is to be a realist or anti-realist in the first place. While much skepticism has been voiced in recent years about the viability of such a project, my goal is to articulate interesting and informative conditions whereby any view in any domain of experience can count as either a realist or an anti-realist position.
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3Categorizing Character: Moving Beyond the Aristotelian FrameworkIn David Carr (ed.), Varieties of Virtue Ethics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 143-162. 2016.Philosophers have inherited a familiar taxonomy of character types from Aristotle. We are all acquainted with the labels of the virtuous, vicious, continent, and incontinent person. The goal of this paper is to argue that we should jettison this framework. The main reason is that psychological research in the past fifty years has suggested a much more complex picture of moral character than what can be usefully captured by these four categories. In its place, I will suggest a better taxonomy tha…Read more
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117Character and Situationism: New DirectionsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3): 459-471. 2017.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, prescripti…Read more
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50Review of William Casebeer, Natural Ethical Facts (review)Philosophical Quarterly 55 (220): 532-534. 2005.The aim of William Casebeer’s book is ‘to show that, theoretically speaking, there is no reason to rule out a scientific naturalized ethics tout court, and that, practical speaking, by taking into account recent developments in evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences, the outlines of one promising form of such an ethics can be sketched’ (p. 1-2). The result is an interesting treatment of a wide variety of issues at the intersection of cognitive science, meta-ethics, normative theory, and…Read more
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2Virtue Cultivation in Light of SituationismIn Julia Annas, Darcia Narvaez & Nancy E. Snow (eds.), Developing the Virtues: Integrating Perspectives, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 157-183. 2016.Various themes have been discussed under the heading of ‘situationism’ in psychology over the past forty years. Much of this discussion has been extremely controversial, leading to deep divisions among psychologists and, more recently, among philosophers as well. In this paper I will pick up on one of those themes having to do with the influence of certain unconscious mental dispositions. I will assume that these dispositions are widely possessed, and also that they disqualify the people who hav…Read more
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73My goal in this brief introduction is twofold: first, to briefly sketch some of the life of this remarkable man; and second, to provide an overview of the papers that make up this collection. The papers themselves have been organized around the following central topics in Quinn’s research: religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religious epistemology, religion and political liberalism, Christian philosophy of religion, and religious diversity.
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1Russell on Acquiring VirtueIn Alfano Mark (ed.), Current Controversies in Virtue Theory, Routledge. pp. 106-117. 2015.This is a response paper to Daniel Russell's paper in the same volume. I raise some challenges to Russell's model of virtue acquisition which draws extensively on the CAPS model in psychology and on parallels between virtues and skills.
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1Lack of Virtue and Vice: Studies of Aggression and Their Implications for the Empirical Adequacy of CharacterIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics: Volume 2, Oxford University Press. pp. 80-112. 2015.In two recent books, I have drawn on hundreds of studies in psychology in order to systematically develop and empirically support a new conception of the character traits which I claim most people possess. Here I will focus on just one underexplored area of the psychological literature – research on harmful as opposed to helpful behavior – and use it in a preliminary way to further support my positive view.
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12HonestyIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Christian Miller (eds.), Moral Psychology, Volume V: Virtue and Character, Mit Press. pp. 237-273. 2017.No one in philosophy has paid much attention to the virtue of honesty in recent years. Here is a trait for which it is easy to find consensus that it is a virtue, and furthermore, a very important virtue. It also has obvious relevance to what we see going on in contemporary politics, for instance, or in sports, the entertainment world, and education. Yet as far as I can tell, only one article in a philosophy journal has appeared in several decades which discusses this virtue at any length. In t…Read more
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211The Real Challenge to Virtue Ethics from PsychologyIn Snow Nancy & Trivigno Franco (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Virtue: An Empirical Approach to Character and Happiness, Routledge. pp. 15-34. 2014.In section one, I briefly review the Harman/Doris argument and outline the most promising response. Then in section two I develop what I take the real challenge to virtue ethics to be. The final section of the chapter suggests two strategies for beginning to address this challenge.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |