Politicians, preachers, and ordinary people speak often of character; psychologists study `personality', used as a term of art with meanings close to `character'. Most ethical philosophers in the last two hundred years, on the other hand, have not had much to say about character. This book attempts to understand character and to refocus ethical philosophy so that character is central.

For the “respectable” part of society there can be a presumption of virtuousness, rather like the presumption of innocence in the law. In both cases, the presumption can be defeated, as we learn more and get into specifics. We still might insist that to be genuinely virtuous is to be able to pass the more familiar sorts of tests of virtue, and to be reliably virtuous also in the ordinary business of life, especially in things that really matter. Something like (...) this is a necessary condition for virtue. Factors of motivation, especially those related to what a person's basic concerns are, can vary enormously. Imagine an extreme case. Someone might be inherently indifferent to what happens to other people, and have no sense of the inherent dignity or worthiness of moral principles, but also be totally convinced that God is watching his or her every move, and that the prospects of heaven or hell depend heavily on one's following accepted morality at every step. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman has argued that it does not make sense to ascribe character traits to people. The notion of morally virtuous character becomes particularly suspect. How plausible this is depends on how broad character traits would have to be. Views of character as entirely invariant behavioural tendencies offer a soft target. This paper explores a view that is a less easy target: character traits as specific to kinds of situation, and as involving probabilities or real possibilities. Such ascriptions are not (...) undermined by Harman's arguments, and it remains plausible that the agent's character often is indispensable in explanation of behaviour. Character is indispensable also as processes of control that impose reliability where it really matters. (shrink)

Corporations have scrambled to bring to market products positioned and advertised as addressing the needs of the environmentally-conscious consumer. The vast majority of claims presented in support of these products are best described, however, as confused, misleading or outright illegal. Ethical considerations have not yet been integrated into environmental marketing, and as a result, long-term harm on both the individual and societal level may result. A framework for reversing this trend is presented. It identifies the sequence of actions necessary for (...) the development and communication of ethical environmental marketing claims. The sequence is based upon two aspects of ethical theory: moral style and normative behavior. Specific implications for marketers'' actions at each stage in the sequence of framework development are also discussed. (shrink)

A major reason that Confucius should matter to Western ethical philosophers is that some of his concerns are markedly different from those most common in the West. A Western emphasis has been on major choices that are treated in a decontextualized way. Confucius’ emphasis is on paths of life, so that context matters. Further, the nuances of personal relations get more attention than is common (with the exception of feminist ethics) in Western philosophy. What Confucius provides is a valuable aid (...) in arriving at a more balanced sense of what ethics is concerned with. It also allows us to realize the importance of sensitivity to particulars. Finally, it highlights the importance of style (as well as the content of what is chosen) in behavior, and the ways in which relations with family and friends can connect with choices in a wider “public” sphere. (shrink)

This paper represents two polemics. One is against suggestions (made by Harman and others) that recent psychological research counts against any claim that there is such a thing as genuine virtue (Cf. Harman, in: Byrne, Stalnaker, Wedgwood (eds.) Fact and value, pp 117–127, 2001 ). The other is against the view that virtue ethics should be seen as competing against such theories as Kantian ethics or consequentialism, particularly in the specification of decision procedures.

Principles can seem as entrenched in moral experience as Kant thinks space, time, and the categories are in human experience of the world. However not all cultures have such a view. Classical Indian and Chinese philosophies treat modification of the self as central to ethics. Decisions in particular cases and underlying principles are much less discussed. Ethics needs comparative philosophy in order not to be narrow in its concerns. A broader view can give weight to how people sometimes can change (...) who they are, in order to lead better lives. (shrink)

Might there be knowledge of non-instrumental values? Arguments are give for two principal claims. One is that if there is such knowledge, it typically will have features that do not entirely match those of other kinds of knowledge. It will have a closer relation to the kind of person one is or becomes, and in the way it combines features of knowing-how with knowing-that. There also are problems of indeterminacy of non-instrumental value which are not commonly found in other things (...) that we can know about. The second claim is that there is a strong prima-facie case for holding that there is such knowledge, and that the usual arguments against this are all faulty. (shrink)

In the last six or seven years, aphantasia has received attention from media outlets, television shows, and social networks. This alleged condition, however, has hardly been discussed in the philosophy of mind. In this paper, I assess some of the research conducted in cognitive science and provide, for the first time in the literature, a comprehensive assessment of possible explanations for aphantasia. Specifically, the hypotheses I submit for consideration ascribe the reports of absence of visual imagery to (i) a discrepancy (...) at the level of concepts, (ii) a failure of attentional mechanisms that modulate introspection, (iii) a lack of personal-level access to sub-personal imagistic representations, and (iv) an absence of sub-personal imagistic representations. I conclude that hypotheses (i) and (ii) can be rejected while hypotheses (iii) and (iv) can be accepted as defensible candidates for explaining aphantasia, although the latter is better suited to account for the available evidence in both comparative and absolute terms. Finally, I present some educated guesses and empirical research that could shed further light on the study of this condition. (shrink)

Are we responsible for our characters? This question is the heart of this chapter. People are responsible for their characters because they chose them. Holding people responsible for their characters, even if these are largely involuntary, is effective and functional in a way in which holding people responsible for involuntary actions is not. People should be responsible and liable both for their characters and for actions that flow from their characters. The fact of the matter is whether someone is responsible (...) for her or his character and this fact is independent both of how we actually talk in such matters and of whether it is advantageous that we continue to talk in such a way. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the idea of unity of virtues by analyzing justice. The nature of justice cannot be appreciated without a prior understanding of the limited scope of the word and of the concerns that are related to it. Justice is an artificial virtue that has to be qualified. To be a just person is to make appropriate decisions in some of the areas in which one deals with other people. Virtues can have important and visible links with other areas (...) of a person's character. Virtue-ethics would be immune from the criticisms and would have no more disadvantages than does character-ethics. However, it is likely to say that there are people who, by the highest standards, genuinely possess some virtues but lack others. Virtue requires that one have all virtues. Virtues cannot be treated as essentially separate from one another. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to examine the place of character in ethical philosophy. For the reason that of our ability to put ourselves in one another's places while taking most elements of our own characters as given, there is a strong tendency not to think of the relevance of character to the value in a life and to concentrate on how externals fall out. A person's character matters a great deal to the value within her or his life. Character is crucial (...) to the value of a life, but character is a personal matter in a number of senses. A large part of the place of character in ethics is in making possible a clearer and more realistic sense of the values of virtue. Ethical philosophy can provide adequate accounts of the moral choices and values in people's lives only if the crucial role of character is recognized and examined. (shrink)

Characteristically religious ethical systems consist of much more than a morality: that is, much more than judgments marked by serious societal pressure and the appropriateness in offenders of a sense of moral guilt. Religious ethics characteristically demands also control and modification of thoughts and desires. This supra-moral element is prominent in Buddhism, where it flourishes primarily in the "Samgha". The ethics of Buddhism can be understood only by means of a concept of the supra-moral.

This chapter explains the importance of happiness and the definition of a valuable life. John Stuart Mill ties happiness to satisfaction of desire, and equates it with pleasure toward which, he contends, all desires ultimately point. Kant discusses happiness as the common focus of goal-directed behavior. Aristotle illustrates that a person's degree of eudaemonia depended heavily on that person's possession and exercise of excellences, including intellectual abilities and moral virtues. Value of a life as simply its degree of happiness has (...) considerable plausibility. A very good life requires a strong and moderately good character. A happy life will have to contain some value within itself, in virtue of what happiness involves, this value need not be above the average of lives, so that the happy life need not count as a good one. (shrink)

The essay has two purposes. One is to point out connections and parallels between, On one hand, The debates of metaphysical realists and anti-Realists, And on the other hand, The debates surrounding moral realism. The second is to provide the outlines of a case for a kind of position that would generally be classified as moral realism. One feature of this position is that it emerges as parallel to, And compatible with, A metaphysical position that would generally be classified as (...) anti-Realism. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent interest in the consequences of closed timelike curves (CTCs) for the dynamics of quantum mechanical systems. A vast majority of research into this area makes use of the dynamical equations developed by Deutsch, which were developed from a consistency condition that assumes that mixed quantum states uniquely describe the physical state of a system. We criticize this choice of consistency condition from an epistemic perspective, i.e., a perspective in which the quantum state represents a state (...) of knowledge about a system. We demonstrate that directly applying Deutsch’s condition when mixed states are treated as representing an observer’s knowledge of a system can conceal time travel paradoxes from the observer, rather than resolving them. To shed further light on the appropriate dynamics for quantum systems traversing CTCs, we make use of a toy epistemic theory with a strictly classical ontology due to Spekkens and show that, in contrast to the results of Deutsch, many of the traditional paradoxical effects of time travel are present. (shrink)

This anthology provides a set of distinctive, influential views that explore the mysteries of human nature from a variety of perspectives. It can be read on its own, or in conjunction with Joel Kupperman’s text, _Theories of Human Nature_.

My thesis is that advocacy in the classroom is rarely appropriate with regard to live moral, political, or social issues, and for that matter not always appropriate with regard to issues within a discipline. By advocacy I mean a teacher's presenting a view as her or his own in a way that might well elicit students' agreement. My argument against advocacy is supported by two sets of assumptions. One concerns the aims of higher education. The other concerns a distinction between (...) moral, political, and social issues that can be regarded as subjects of legitimate disagreement, on one hand, and on the other hand issues of these sorts that cannot be so regarded. (shrink)

Critics often give reasons in support of their evaluations of works of art. They say, for example, that a work is bad because it is repetitive, or the characters are not well-delineated, or the colors are too uniformly bright. Or they say that a work is good because of the delicate balance of colors, its wit and excitement, or the way in which each variation of the theme is fresh and yet related to the previous variation.

The paper plays against the philosophical stereotype that facts are bits of reality, ‘furniture of the universe’, and that values in contrast are either mysterious bits of reality or responses to facts. It follows Strawson in regarding facts as interpretative constructs. Values also are interpretative constructs, characterized by a normal (but not universal) connection with motivations. So is there a deep difference? There is a sense of ‘facts’, marked by phrases such as ‘Stick to the facts’, in which the interpretative (...) element embedded in a ‘fact’ is uncontentious and would be invisible to most people. The interpretative element in values, in contrast, usually is very noticeable. But values in which this element comes to be uncontentious and taken for granted congeal into facts. (shrink)

Half-truths are statements that have some insight or truth in them, but do not amount to a final or definitive truth that all competent judges should be able to accept. Complete truth requires that the relevant interpretative structures can be taken for granted, and can be expected to be understood by all competent language users. Disciplines such as philosophy, history, and sociology do contain a small number of complete truths, concerning some logical relations or such matters as the year of (...) Columbus' arrival in the new world or recorded vote totals in some elections. But most of what they yield (the most interesting part) will consist of half-truths. (shrink)

What is the nature of environmental problems? This article attempts to illuminate this question by exploring the relationship between environmental ethics, environmental problems and their solution. It does this by examining and criticising the argument contained in a recent issue of Environmental Values asserting that environmental ethics does not have a role to play in solving environmental problems. The major point made in this rebuttal article is that environmental problems are essentially normative in nature. Therefore, normative discourse, and environmental ethics (...) in particular, do have a crucial role to play in environmental thought and action. The discussion concludes with the judgment that a failure to recognise this essential contribution of normative discourse to environmentalism by committing to a conservative empirical reductionism of environmental problems is detrimental to the necessary ethical and social change required to save the world. (shrink)