First I'm going to describe Nadelhoffer's article, then I'll comment on it. He begins with a quick introduction of the subject of virtue ethics:
We commonly describe people's behavior in terms of character traits such as honest, courageous, generous, and the like. Furthermore, we praise and reward those who display virtuous character traits and we look down upon those who exemplify vices such as dishonesty, cowardice, and stinginess. That virtue ethics [developed most fully by Aristotle] captures this aspect of our everyday moral practices-i.e., our tendency to describe human behavior in terms of dispositional traits that give rise to virtues and vices-is purportedly one of its chief selling points.
Only it turns out that relatively simple empirical tests seem to show that this isn't how people actually work. And some philosophers take this evidence as a serious challenge to the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics. Nadelhoffer calls this the Situational Challenge, and give this example of the kind of evidence it involves:
To get a feel for the sorts of empirical pressures that allegedly face virtue theorists, consider the surprising results from the "helping for a dime" studies reported in Isen & Levin (1972). Subjects were random pedestrians in San Francisco, CA and Philadelphia, PA who stopped to use a public payphone. Whereas some subjects found a dime that had been planted in the phone booth by researchers, other subjects did not find a dime. When subjects left the phone booth, a female confederate of the researchers dropped an armful of papers and researchers recorded whether or not the individuals leaving the phone booth stopped to help.
The results were shocking: the subjects who found the dimes were 22 times more likely to help a woman who "dropped" her papers than the subjects who did not find the dime. Let that sink in for a moment. The slight elevation in emotion caused by randomly finding a dime on top of pay phone made a significant difference on subjects' moral behavior-something presumably all participants would deny if asked. Perhaps the most surprising feature of these results isn't that something so morally insignificant-namely, finding a dime in a phone booth-had such a pronounced effect on people's moral behavior, rather it's that these results appear to be representative of moral behavior rather than anomalous.
Now, I would never argue that there's no moral influence exerted by the development of character. But if such a small environmental influence can have such a powerful effect, then it's clear that character-building practice and the virtue theory backing that practice up are but one part of the picture--a part that may loom large in some situations but that's just the point: their workings are situational, not absolute.
Nadelhoffer goes on to discuss how virtue theorists have responded, first of all by denying that there's any challenge at all:
Unsurprisingly, virtue theorists have not taken the Situationist Challenge lightly. Perhaps the most common rejoinder to characterological skepticism is to suggest that the situationist literature is entirely consistent with traditional accounts of virtue ethics. Indeed, we are told that the only reason virtue ethics appears to be under empirical attack is that the skeptics have purportedly either misread or misrepresented the ancient virtue theorists. In making their case on this front, virtue theorists often appeal to the purported rarity of truly virtuous individuals. Merritt (2000) summarizes this so-called "argument from rarity" (Doris 1998, p. ) in the following manner:
Now many sympathizers with virtue ethics will want to say, "So what?" The experimental evidence shows only that most people aren't genuinely virtuous. (And haven't we always known this anyway, without needing experimental psychology to reveal it?) That doesn't mean there's a problem with the normative ideal of virtue ethics. It just means that being genuinely virtuous is a rare and difficult achievement" These people have a point. (p. 367-68)
There are also other alternatives:
Of course, this is not the only line of response open to the virtue ethicists. Rather than falling back on the rarity of virtue-which is not a move without its dialectical and theoretical costs-virtue theorists could also opt for any of the following strategies:- The Empirical Counter-Challenge: One could directly dispute the data from situational psychology rather than try to show that the data are compatible with the characterological moral psychology of virtue ethics.
- The Immunization Thesis: One could accept the data on situationism at face value and suggest that we can use these data to immunize or shield ourselves from the etiological encroachment of morally irrelevant situational variables-i.e., armed with a better understanding of the threat of situationism, we will be better equipped to allow our dispositions to find expression in our action.
- The Mischaracterization Response: Rather than focusing on the supposed rarity of truly virtuous agents and behavior, virtue theorists could focus instead on trying to show that characterological skeptics have misunderstood or misstated other importance aspects of virtue theory.
- The Revisionist Response: The virtue theorists could accept that the data on situationism puts serious pressure on classical versions of virtue ethics. So, rather than defending the Platonic or Aristotelian views from the challenge, these virtue theorists could offer revisionist or rival versions of virtue ethics that are purportedly better equipped to deal with the situationist challenge.
And Nadelhoffer sums up:
Regardless of which of these strategies the virtue theorist adopts, it is clear that the empirical data on the dispositional and situational roots of behavior have forced virtue theorists to carefully reexamine both the views of the ancients as well as the contemporary views rooted in these earlier views. While the data themselves do not (and presumably cannot) undermine virtue ethics full stop, they do represent an empirically-tractable challenge that virtue theorists must take seriously.
So What? The Pragmatic Turn
Now, I take it that philosophers may well be capable of arguing over this for the next hundred, maybe thousand years or so. As I said, I think it's obvious that virtue theory has some validity to it. And so there's also value in trying to refine or reformulate it in light of this new evidence.
But I also think that these may not be the most important sorts of questions we should be arguing over, merely because they have such ancient roots. Rather, for a variety reasons--most basically that of pragmatics, seeking to find ways towards the greatest good--I think that the most important questions may revolve around what other factors influence us toward virtuous behavior, or, more broadly, toward "good enough" behavior that enables us to live in what we recognize as: (a) A good society, in which social relations are predominantly synergistic and mutually beneficial.
(b) The "Beloved Community" of Martin Luther King and Josiah Royce, which has been described as:
an inclusive, interrelated society based on love, justice, compassion, responsibility, shared power and a respect for all people, places, and things-a society that radically transforms individuals and restructures institutions.
(c) Any other desired specification for a preferred state of society.
In short, I am suggesting that we shift our thinking from the individual and individual-transactional level alone which takes society as a given (Kegan's Level 3) to the next-higher level (Kegan's Level 4) that takes society as an object, and considers individuals always embedded within it, but also capable of standing critically outside it and making changes to it.
So What? The Political/Ideological Turn
The sort of approach I'm suggesting here is one that opens up a much wider range of alternatives for critical inspection and debate. One consequence of doing this is that we find ourselves in a position of being able to reflect upon some consequences of virtue ethics that generally escape the sort of scrutiny they deserve.
If one takes virtue ethics to be the standard for all moral and ethical reasoning, one ends up, for example, with the conservative, virtue-based ideology that lead the National Review to defend segregation in 1957 thus:
The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes', and intends to assert its own.
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numberical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
Virtue and honor have always been used to justify racism. They were watchwords of the Confederacy, as well as the segregated South, not to mention apartheid South Africa. Even to this day, anti-black prejudice is justified in characterological terms--though much less offensively and much more subtly than once was the case. And not just anti-black prejudice. So long as characterological explanations are over-valued compared to actual empirical evidence, they will readily lend themselves to the justification of prejudice, and the consolidation of group privilege and power, with the inevitable result of social injustice. We see this sort of dynamic all about us just now: against Hispanics, against Muslims, against gays and lesbians, against blacks.
Furthermore, we are told by people who know virtually nothing about Martin Luther King that they are merely following his lead in judging people by the "content of their character", although they--in virtually total ignorance of King's thought--have no idea of how he defined character in "The Drum Major Instrinct."
Giving Each Its Due
The characterological approach is inevitably subject to myriad confusions because it lacks sufficient breadth of vision--considering individuals and character traits in isolation--as well as depth of insight into differences of culture which it easily misrepresents as character failings, rather than what they actually are.
As with the example of Newtonian mechanics compared to relativity or quantum mechanics, one needs the less obvious, but more comprehensive theory in order to be able to see just where the classical theory works well enough to be relied on, and where it starts to break down, and why. It is only the more advanced, more sophisticated theory that can be the foundation for mediating between the two, even though both of them have their place. The classical theory is incapable of properly grasping its own limitations.
So, too, for virtue ethics and the conservative moral & political tradition embodied in it from the time of Aristotle down to the present day. We can and should continue to respect it for the light that it sheds on what it gets right. But it is fundamentally incapable of grasping its own limitations, and thus respect for what it does properly should never become deference concerning what it does not.
This is the fundamental insight that Obama and all his neoliberal fellow-travellers utterly and totally lack. |
STATE BLOGS
Who could be against virtue? Who could be opposed to the embodiment of what is right?
