Abstract
Most discussions of John Doris’s situationism center on what can be called descriptive situationism, the claim that our folk usage of global personality and character traits in describing and predicting human behavior is empirically unsupported. Philosophers have not yet paid much attention to another central claim of situationism, which says that given that local traits are empirically supported, we can more successfully act in line with our moral values if, in our deliberation about what to do, we focus on our situation instead of on our moral character. Call this prescriptive situationism. In this paper, we will point toward a previously unrecognized tension between these two situationist theses and explore some ways for the situationist to address it.
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Notes
For studies showing our widespread predilection to use character traits see Kunda & Nisbett (1986)
See his (1998) and (2002), and cf. Harman, who advocates a much more austere version of the situationist thesis (1999).
For a discussion of the Hartshorne and May findings, including numerous dissenting opinions on the matter, see Burton (1963).
Zimbardo (1999) http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/24 (Accessed 21 March, 2010)
See, for example: Blass (1996), Darley (1995), Doris & Murphy (2007), Elms (1995), Goldhagen (1996); Haney & Zimbardo (1998), Latané & Darley (1970), Lutsky (1995), Meeus & Raaijmakers (1995), Miller (1995), Modigliani & Rochat (1995), Newcomb (1929), Rochat and Modigliani (1995), Rosenthal (1999), Sears (1963), and Zimbardo (2007).
Streck & Wiechmann (2008) http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/lynndie-england-rumsfeld-knew-614356.html (Accessed 4 September, 2009)
“Globalism,” Doris says, “is an empirically inadequate account of human functioning” (2002, p. 61).
These claims are important for understanding Doris’s motivation for his general approach. If broad-based (global) traits that issue in stable behavior are not conducive to “successful social functioning” and “sound mental health,” then what are they? Presumably something to be avoided.
Strictly speaking, this claim is problematic. The fact that we do respond to these sorts of persons with the so-called reactive attitudes reveals, not that we have excluded them from the moral community, but that we in fact take them to be full members of our moral community, members liable to the full range of our practices of holding morally blameworthy for conduct and character, a basic Strawsonian point (see, for example, McKenna 2012 and Wallace 1994).
Even here, however, we are not interested in challenging the truth of this prescriptive claim discussed below. Rather, we wish to call attention to a seemingly problematic tension generated by the acceptance of this claim along with the descriptive claims we have already discussed.
This seems tame. If you receive two invitations for company on Friday evening, one to study with a friend at the library, another to cruise onto Rush St. in Chicago with a hard-drinking group of misogynist co-workers, the morally-conducive situation seems obvious enough. As Doris sees things, if you apply this prescription for deliberation when faced with moral choices, you have a greater chance for success than if you had banked on your strong character, but found yourself bombarded with pressures to vice the whole evening, one which climaxes with a dazed and confused taxi ride back home.
For more on exercises of skilled self-control, see Mele (1987).
See Doris (2002, p. 112).
Upton (2009) has also pointed out the fact that common criticisms of Doris’s situationist project have centered on what we have called his “descriptive project.”
One obvious way character could remain obscure to observation is if someone takes a principled stand on issue like the relief of poverty, and discharges this duty in one lump sum. So both Sally, who gives ten dollars to someone on the street two hundred times per year and Jessie, who writes one check for two thousand dollars every year, might be equally compassionate. Yet one is much more likely to observe Sally’s behavior. Kamtekar (2004) illustrates this point vividly.
Upton has reviewed some of this critical literature in her 2009.
If we, as moral agents, really do not have a characterological moral psychology and should therefore abstain from using characterological terms when predicting and explaining moral behavior, we take it to follow that we should not take character traits to be a goal for the moral agent. In fact, Doris says as much: “Rather than striving to develop characters that will determine our behavior in ways substantially independent of our circumstances, we should invest more of our energies in attending to the features of our environment that influence behavior outcomes” (Doris 2002, p. 146).
We take reliability here to mean only something quite modest, maybe something like: Gwenda is a reliable situation-chooser if she deliberates about moral choices in terms of situations 60 % of the time, and chooses the more morally conducive situation 60 % of the time.
One might wonder whether we are entitled to the assumption that Gwenda could do this. We think we are, for a few reasons. First, keep in mind we are not supposing that Gwenda always chooses morally conducive situations, only that she is reliable in doing so. On its face, there seems to be no reason to think this is question-begging. Second, if Doris wants us to take seriously the claim that situationist first-person moral deliberation is a strategy grounded in an empirically adequate view of human psychology, surely it should be the kind of activity that he thinks is possible for humans to do reliably. Third, but less importantly, if some version of an ‘ought implies can’ principle is correct, then it is reasonable to assume that if Doris recommends that we reliably utilize situationist deliberative strategies, that such a thing is possible.
Doris (1998, p. 517).
We thank an anonymous referee for pushing us to clarify this point.
Doris (1998, p. 506).
We thank a referee for this journal for raising this point.
Indeed, some empirical work suggests that hot contexts can actually help us to see what to do. Knobe 2005 argues that when faced with moral decisions, we employ a kind of “moral module” that elicits certain affective responses (like disgust); our affective responses in such hot contexts can then actually guide us to respond in the right ways.
An anonymous referee suggested that our position is vulnerable at this point. Doris can simply say that not all global traits are bad, just the ones called upon by virtue ethicists. This is an interesting avenue, were Doris to take it, but we think that this move will not save Doris. As we see it, Choosing is rather like Aristotelian phronesis, wherein one takes good (or the best) steps to get what one wants. Doris encounters a problem: if phronesis is ruled out by his descriptive claims, he has prescribed the very thing he has said is to be avoided. That is precisely the tension to which we are seeking to draw attention. If he does not rule out phronesis, then his assault on traditional (Aristotelian) character terms is not so thoroughgoing as we have been led to believe. Peter Nichols suggested this kind of response in conversation.
We owe this suggestion to Michael Bishop.
In this section we draw heavily from a very helpful discussion on practical skill and virtue by Annas (2005, p. 518).
Granted, for some, the ceasing of some mere skill does bring great distress because that skill has become their final end. We might think of athletes, whose greatest aim in life is to become the best at some mere skill. But we would also think of such persons as having misguided aims in life. If one’s ultimate end in life is to sink a little white ball into a hole in the ground in the fewest number of strokes, one’s most pressing problem is not having lost this skill, but having set one’s ultimate goals in having such skill. Such a person is not a counterexample to this requirement; rather, such a person serves to show how seriously misguided it is to live one’s life as if one’s primary function is to engage in mere practical skill.
At this point, one might wish for us to develop more fully the internal structure of Choosing. We are hesitant to do so for a couple of reasons. First, what we have called Choosing is really Doris’s own notion, and Doris himself does not address in detail its internal structure. Because our goal in this paper is to highlight a tension that exists within Doris’s own project, we do not want to impart a lot of theoretical baggage regarding what is involved in Choosing. The danger here would be that, in giving a fuller account of Choosing, Doris may respond to our criticisms by saying, “Well that’s just not what I have in mind when I suggest we should become good Choosers.” And that would be that. By forwarding an admittedly bare notion of Choosing, we take ourselves to have the best chance at revealing a tension in Doris’s project. Second, we believe we can motivate this tension by drawing attention to the external similarities between Choosing and other global traits. At the least, we take ourselves to have shown a striking external similarity between them. If we are correct, this shifts the burden to Doris to have to say more about what Choosing is and whether it really does differ from global traits. The reason the burden would become his is because if our arguments go through, then for all he has said, Doris appears committed to taking Choosing to be a global trait. If Doris wants to say more about what he has in mind with respect to Choosing, that is of course his project to take up. But that is not our project.
It has been suggested to us that something like learning how to perform a certain medical procedure on a sick family member or learning certain anger management skills in order to avoid becoming an abusive parent seem to be skills but that they look to be on all fours with Choosing with respect to the MSRs. Granted, actions like the above are surely skills, but they do not look like mere skills. There appears to be an aspect of virtue in both of them, at least, that is how they intuitively strike us.
See Aristotle (2002: II.1.1103a20, 1103a30).
For a full treatment of the kind of skill involved in virtue, see Annas (2005).
Here is one possible suggestion: Choosing involves acting on principles or rules, while virtue-like traits involve acting after consideration of various courses of action (or vice versa). This is indeed a difference meriting further investigation, but it does not appear that the difference holds. In the first place, the virtuous person will simply see the virtuous thing to do; she will not need to deliberate or consider courses of action (perhaps the same can be said of a vicious person—the cheater will simply see an opportunity to cheat). Second, there is no reason why Choosers must act exclusively from either rules or considered courses of action—they may well act from a combination of rules and considered courses of action. Although we take no particular stance on the etiology of action as such, we do think that when it comes to Choosing, what typically happens is that the Chooser sees a situation and then applies a rule, such as “Don’t be in a private room alone with an attractive colleague.” Other times, the morally relevant features of situations may not be immediately obvious and so we may need to reflect and consider the options before us. Once we have done so, however, we may then apply the relevant rule. Supposing that the disposition to do so is broad and stable, our claim is then that Choosing is very similar to other moral broad and stable character traits. We therefore cannot see why Choosing per se would differ from other kinds of broad-based character traits in this respect. We thank an anonymous referee for raising this point.
This suggestion was initially put to us by Michael Bishop.
We wish to thank Jamin Asay, Gregory Sadler, and Craig Warmke for commenting on previous incarnations of this paper, as well as Peter Nichols, who offered many valuable discussions about situationism. Some of these ideas were presented at Northern Illinois University, University of Iowa, Grand Valley State University, and Franklin College, and we thank those audiences for their generous feedback. Finally, we thank Michael Bishop, who helped plant the ideas that resulted in this paper almost 10 years ago and who read multiple early drafts.
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Rodgers, T.J., Warmke, B. Situationism versus Situationism. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 9–26 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9481-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9481-9