scholarly journals Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology. Editorial Note

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-276
Author(s):  
A. Campodonico ◽  
C. Navarini
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Editorial Note

Emotion and Virtue

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gopal Sreenivasan
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
Full Measure ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
Definition Of

What must a person be like to possess a virtue in full measure? What sort of psychological constitution does one need to be an exemplar of compassion, say, or of courage? Focusing on these two examples, this book ingeniously argues that certain emotion traits play an indispensable role in virtue. With exemplars of compassion, for instance, this role is played by a modified sympathy trait, which is central to enabling these exemplars to be reliably correct judges of the compassionate thing to do in various practical situations. Indeed, according to the book, the virtue of compassion is, in a sense, a modified sympathy trait, just as courage is a modified fear trait. While the book upholds the traditional definition of virtue as a species of character trait, it discards other traditional precepts. For example, the book rejects the unity of the virtues and raises new questions about when virtue should be taught. Unlike orthodox virtue ethics, moreover, this account does not aspire to rival consequentialism and deontology. Instead the book repudiates the ambitions of virtue imperialism, and makes significant contributions to moral psychology and the theory of virtue alike.

The Philosophy of Moral Development

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Anna Abram
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

This article presents a view of moral development based on the interdisciplinary study of moral psychology and virtue ethics. It suggests that a successful account of moral development has to go beyond what the developmental psychology and virtue ethics advocate and find ways of incorporating ideas, such as “moral failure” and “unpredictability of life.” It proposes to recognize the concept of moral development as an essential concept for ethics, moral philosophy and philosophy of education, and as a useful tool for anyone who wants to engage constructively in dialogues of religions, cultures and personal interaction.

Moral psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Slote
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Issues ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Moral Weakness ◽  
Moral Requirements ◽  
Wrong Action

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of valid morality, that is, with assumptions it seems necessary for us to make in order for there to be such a thing as objective or binding moral requirements: for example, if we lack free will or are all incapable of unselfishness, then it is not clear how morality can really apply to human beings. Moral psychology also deals with what one might call the psychological accompaniments of actual right, or wrong, action, for example, with questions about the nature and possibility of moral weakness or self-deception, and with questions about the kinds of motives that ought to motivate moral agents. Moreover, in the approach to ethics known as ‘virtue ethics’ questions about right and wrong action merge with questions about the motives, dispositions, and abilities of moral agents, and moral psychology plays a more central role than it does in other forms of ethical theory.

Toward an Empirically Informed Approach to Medical Virtues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Medical Role ◽  
The Impact

Several philosophers have developed accounts of virtue ethics that are more empirically informed than previous versions of this approach; however, such accounts have had only a limited impact on virtue ethical approaches to medical ethics. This chapter demonstrates how empirical research can help in the development of a strong evidence-based moral psychology of medical virtue. It draws out some general desiderata for an adequate moral psychology of medical virtue, and shows how empirical research is crucial for devising well-grounded accounts of medical role virtues, such as medical beneficence and medical courage. It also explains how research into the impact of policy changes on medical practice and doctors’ medical virtues can help with deriving defensible policy applications from medical virtue ethics.

No Character or Personality

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Harman
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Personality Theory

Abstract:Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley and Batson experiments have to do with such character traits as obedience and punctuality cannot help to explain the relevant differences in the way people behave in different situations. His appeal to personality theory fails, because, as an intellectual academic discipline, personality theory is in shambles, mainly because it has been concerned with conceptions of personality rather than with what is true about personality. Solomon’s rejection of Doris’s claims about the fragmentation of character is at odds with the received view in social psychology. Finally, he is mistaken to think that rejecting virtue ethics implies rejecting free will and moral responsibility.

scholarly journals The Soul, the Virtues, and the Human Good: Comments on Aristotle's Moral Psychology

Labyrinth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Kathi Beier
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychology ◽  
Ethical Inquiry ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

In modern moral philosophy, virtue ethics has developed into one of the major approaches to ethical inquiry. As it seems, however, it is faced with a kind of perplexity similar to the one that Elisabeth Anscombe has described in Modern moral philosophy with regard to ethics in general. For if we assume that Anscombe is right in claiming that virtue ethics ought to be grounded in a sound philosophy of psychology, modern virtue ethics seems to be baseless since it lacks or even avoids reflections on the human soul. To overcome this difficulty, the paper explores the conceptual connections between virtue and soul in Aristotle's ethics. It claims that the human soul is the principle of virtue since reflections on the soul help us to define the nature of virtue, to understand the different kinds of virtues, and to answer the question why human beings need the virtues at all. 

scholarly journals Virtue Theory against Situationism

Epistemology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
Virtue Epistemologist

This chapter looks at the shocking but robust results obtained by social epistemologists in experiments that prompt a situationist attack on virtue theory. Based on a body of troubling results in social psychology, an intriguing critique has been pressed in recent years against virtue ethics, raising doubts both about its moral psychology and about its normative content. Similar discoveries have been made by social psychologists about belief management so that a similar critique can be pressed against virtue epistemology. The chapter shows how the logical structure of scholars' response to the critique of virtue ethics is closely replicated by a response available to the virtue epistemologist.

Integrity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Davis
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Leading Role

The possession (or lack) of integrity is something that all morally serious people care about and think important. In both personal relationships and public life, to describe someone as exhibiting a lack of integrity is to offer a damning diagnosis. It carries the implication that this individual is not to be relied upon, that in some fundamental way they are not someone who we can, or should, view as being wholly or unequivocally there. The foundations of self and character are not sound; the ordering of values is not coherent. Important as the notion of integrity is, it is nevertheless difficult to characterize with precision. Attempts to analyse it seldom do justice to its complexity, or adequately reflect the diverse concerns that generate and sustain either philosophers’ or non-philosophers’ interest in it. Contemporary interest in the notion of integrity has a number of different, often overlapping, sources. It has been accorded a leading role in the debate between consequentialists and non-consequentialists; revived interest in virtue-ethics has naturally focused attention on it; and its connection with unity or coherence of personality make it central for moral psychology. As well as occupying a central position in three major topics within academic moral philosophy, integrity has also come to wider prominence in at least two ways: as a virtue increasingly missed in public life; and as a transcultural virtue that reflects a world that has become increasingly morally pluralistic. The notion of integrity, though complex, elusive, and analytically intractable, is one that goes to the core of our moral thinking, both in theoretical and practical terms.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Edward Harcourt
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One

The chapters in this volume have mostly been selected from papers given at a workshop and three conferences which brought together on the one hand a group of philosophers, most of whom were interested in one way or another in what has come to be known as ‘virtue ethics’—moral psychology in the wake of Aristotle—and, on the other, some developmental psychologists working, albeit in different ways, in an attachment paradigm. I organized these meetings partly because my own reading of attachment theory persuaded me there were a number of exciting points of contact between developmental psychology done this way and the kinds of questions Aristotle’s ethics raises, and which interest me; partly because almost no philosophers back then seemed even to have heard of attachment theory. This Introduction presents, inevitably through the eyes of a philosopher, what I take to be attachment theory’s main claims, and then tries to identify why philosophical moral psychologists should take it much more seriously than they have done to date—as I hope this volume itself will help them to do....

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