Bradford Cokelet

Philosophers provide excellent resources for developing a science of virtues, and an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers and psychologists seems ideal. This suggestion is not new, but there has been little guidance for psychologists about how philosophical work can be useful in developing a science of virtue. This article provides some guidance by dividing the contributions of philosophers into three categories. First, many philosophers provide theories of virtue’s nature or value, but these are generally not useful for psychological scientists and can be safely ignored. Second, awareness of the range of philosophic positions can enable scientists to recognize contentious theoretical assumptions that they are making. Psychologists need not try to resolve these debates; they can choose to only identify which position(s) they are taking. Third, awareness of the range of philosophic positions and the competing conceptual analyses of various virtue concepts and traits can help psychologists to identify and test new empirical hypotheses.

In the first controlled, non-self-report studies to show an influence of university-level ethical instruction on everyday behavior, Schwitzgebel et al. (2020) and Jalil et al. (2020) found that students purchase less meat after exposure to material on the ethics of eating meat. We sought to extend and conceptually replicate this research. Seven hundred thirty students in three large philosophy classes read James Rachels’ (2004) “Basic Argument for Vegetarianism”, followed by 50-min small-group discussions. Half also viewed a vegetarianism advocacy video containing factory farm footage. A few days after instruction, 54% of students agreed that “eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical”, compared to 37% before instruction, with no difference between the film and non-film conditions. Also, 39% of students anonymously pledged to avoid eating factory farmed meat for 24 h, again with no statistically detectable difference between conditions. Finally, we obtained 2828 campus food purchase receipts for 113 of the enrolled students who used their Student ID cards for purchases on campus, which we compared with 5033 purchases from a group of 226 students who did not receive the instruction. Meat purchases remained constant in the comparison group and declined among the students exposed to the material, falling from 30% to 23% of purchases overall and from 51% to 42% of purchases of $4.99 or more, with the effect possibly larger in the film condition.

This book is a methodological guide for the emerging, interdisciplinary science of virtue traits and their value. The authors situate this emerging empirical field in the history of psychology, critically survey existing work, defend the scientific validity of virtue science, and develop a general model that can guide, unify, and catalyze future research. In addition, chapters discuss how philosophy and philosophers can contribute to empirical inquiry and how a mature science of virtue could inform moral philosophy. The book is co-authored by two psychologists and a philosopher who pursued joint empirical work on fairness and then began to discuss larger methodological issues raised by that collaboration. o Expected publication date: January 31, 2024 o Paperback ISBN: 1108747981

This paper introduces a new form of virtue ethics—patient-centered virtue ethics—and argues that it is better placed to compete with Contractualism, Kantianism, and Utilitarianism, than existing agent and target-focused forms of virtue ethics. The opening part of the paper draws on T.M. Scanlon’s methodological insights to clarify what a theory of narrow morality should aim to accomplish, and the remaining parts argue that while familiar agent and target-focused forms of virtue ethics fail to meet those criteria, patient-centered forms promise to do better. In addition, the paper rebuffs some prominent objections to virtue ethics that don’t adequately take into account the distinction between giving an account of the nature and importance of moral rightness and wrongness and giving an account of what makes acts right and wrong.

Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-to-day interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced.

Bommarito raises many interesting questions about the nature of moral virtue and vice, and it establishes inner virtue as an interesting and worthwhile topic. His book will motivate readers to debate the merits of various general accounts and, even though it does not offer a compelling argument for the manifest care account, it establishes that account as an option worthy of further discussion and development. I want to emphasize that the book contains numerous interesting discussions of specific inner virtues and vices, including ones commended by Buddhist and Confucian philosophers. Moral philosophers in general, and especially ones working on virtue theory, are sure to benefit from it.