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Players of videogames describe their gameplay in the first person, e.g. “I took cover behind a barricade.” Such descriptions of gameplay experiences are commonplace, but also puzzling because players are actually just pushing buttons, not engaging in the activities described by their first-person reports. According to a view defended by Robson and Meskin (2016), which we call the fictional identity view, this puzzle is solved by claiming that the player is fictionally identical with the playercharacter. Hence, on this (...) view, if the player-character fictionally performs an action then, fictionally, the player performs that action. However, we argue that the fictional identity view does not make sense of players' gameplay experiences and their descriptions of them. We develop an alternative account of the relationship between the player and player-character on which the player-character serves as the player's fictional proxy, and argue that this account makes better sense of the nature of videogames as interactive fictions. (shrink)

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Traditionally, theories of mindreading have focused on the representation of beliefs and desires. However, decades of social psychology and social neuroscience have shown that, in addition to reasoning about beliefs and desires, human beings also use representations ofcharacter traits to predict and interpret behavior. While a few recent accounts have attempted to accommodate these findings, they have not succeeded in explaining the relation between trait attribution and belief-desire reasoning. On my account,character-trait attribution is part of a (...) hierarchical system for action prediction, and serves to inform hypotheses about agents’ beliefs and desires, which are in turn used to predict and interpret behavior. (shrink)

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This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoingcharacter-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape thecharacter traits of their members. This scholarship also describes some of the mechanisms through which this (...) process of reshapingcharacter takes place. Second, thecharacter-situation debate has narrowly focused on situational influences that affect behavior episodically and haphazardly. The OB/io research, however, highlights the importance of distinguishing such situational influences from influences that, like organizational influences, shape ourcharacter traits because they are continuous and coordinated. Third, the OB/io literature suggests that most individuals displaycharacter traits that, while local to the organization, can be consistent across situations. This puts pressure on the accounts ofcharacter proposed by traditional virtue ethics and situationism and provides empirical support to interactionist models based on cognitive-affective processing system theories of personality. Finally, the OB/io literature raises important challenges to the possibility of achieving virtue, provides valuable and untapped resources to cultivatecharacter, and suggests new avenues of normative and empirical research. (shrink)

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Character education in schools has been high on the UK political agenda for the last few years. The government has invested millions in grants to supportcharacter education projects and declared its intention to make Britain a global leader in teachingcharacter and resilience. But the policy has many critics: some question whether schools should be involved in the formation ofcharacter at all; others worry that the traits schools are being asked to cultivate are excessively (...) competitive or military. In this pamphlet Randall Curren sets out a robust defence ofcharacter education. He welcomes the political support it presently enjoys, but contends that greater clarity about the nature, benefits and acquisition of goodcharacter is essential. In particular, he argues that too narrow a focus on traits like perseverance and resilience is a serious mistake: these traits are only virtues when they are part of a wider set of moral and intellectual qualities, and when their exercise is guided by good judgment. Curren offers us a compelling and coherent account of what goodcharacter is and how it might be cultivated in schools. He explains why schools must be needs-supporting environments that provide students with opportunities to engage in rewarding activity, and why cultivating goodcharacter implies promoting the ‘fundamental British values’ of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance. His groundbreaking pamphlet promises to expand the scope and strengthen the foundations ofcharacter education in British schools, and should go a long way towards allaying the fears of its detractors. (shrink)

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The concepts expressed by social role terms such as artist and scientist are unique in that they seem to allow two independent criteria for categorization, one of which is inherently normative. This study presents and tests an account of the content and structure of the normative dimension of these “dualcharacter concepts.” Experiment 1 suggests that the normative dimension of a social role concept represents the commitment to fulfill the idealized basic function associated with the role. Background information can (...) affect which basic function is associated with each social role. However, Experiment 2 indicates that the normative dimension always represents the relevant commitment as an end in itself. We argue that social role concepts represent the commitments to basic functions because that information is crucial to predict the future social roles and role-dependent behavior of others. (shrink)

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Character and the will are rarely discussed together. At most, philosophers working on the one mention the other in an eliminativist vein—ifcharacter is represented as something chosen, for example, it can be chalked up to the work of the will; if the will consists merely of a certain arrangement of mental states, it can be seen as little more than a manifestation ofcharacter. This mutual neglect appears perfectly justified. If bothcharacter and will are (...) determinants of action, to treat them separately would be to overdetermine agency at best, and at worst to fragment it. While defending this reasoning, I argue that things are not so simple, becausecharacter and will serve distinct explanatory and normative functions, respectively. The difference in function, however, does not prove thatcharacter and will must be ontologically distinct sources of agency; only that our discourse about them must keep them apart. (shrink)

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If there are no fictional characters, how do we explain thought and discourse apparently about them? If there are, what are they like? A growing number of philosophers claim that fictional characters are abstract objects akin to novels or plots. They argue that postulating characters provides the most straightforward explanation of our literary practices as well as a uniform account of discourse and thought about fiction. Anti-realists counter that postulation is neither necessary nor straightforward, and that the invocation of pretense (...) provides a better account of the same phenomena. I outline and assess these competing theories. (shrink)

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A distinction is made between acting hypocritically and thecharacter trait of being a hypocrite. The former is understood as resulting from the employment of a double standard in order to obtain a wrongful advantage, while a particular problem with the latter is that hypocrites do not give trustworthy testimony.

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This paper defends the following principle: For any visually perceptible set of objects and any visual phenomenalcharacter, there could be a veridical perception of exactly those objects with thatcharacter. This principle is rejected by almost all contemporary theories of perception, yet rarely addressed directly. Many have taken the apparent inconceivability of a certain sort of “shape inversion” — as compared to the more plausible, frequently discussed “color inversion” — as evidence that the spatial characters of our (...) perceptions are uniquely suited to and/or revelatory of the structure of their objects, such that alleged perceptions of those objects that differed radically in spatialcharacter could not be veridical. I argue that these conclusions are unjustified: I claim that the difficulty involved in constructing coherent “shape inversion” scenarios is attributable to the complex relations among visual and tactile shape experiences, as opposed to relations between shape experiences and worldly shape properties. (shrink)

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Experiences, by definition, have phenomenalcharacter. But many experiences have a specific type of phenomenalcharacter: presentationalcharacter. While both visual experience and conscious thought make us aware of their objects, only in visual experience do objects seem present before the mind and available for direct access. I argue that Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness have a particularly steep hill to climb in accommodating presentationalcharacter.

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Our goal in this paper is to articulate a novel account of the ordinary concept ART. At the core of our account is the idea that a puzzle surrounding our thought and talk about art is best understood as just one instance of a far broader phenomenon. In particular, we claim that one can make progress on this puzzle by drawing on research from cognitive science on dualcharacter concepts. Thus, we suggest that the very same sort of phenomenon (...) that is associated with ART can also be found in a broad class of other dualcharacter concepts, including SCIENTIST, CHRISTIAN, GANGSTER, and many others. Instead of focusing narrowly on the case of ART, we try to offer a more general account of these concepts and the puzzles to which they give rise. Then, drawing on the general theory, we introduce a series of hypotheses about art concepts, and put those hypotheses to the test in three experimental studies. (shrink)

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Are we really to blame only for actions that manifest ourcharacter, as Hume claims? In this paper, I explore Hume's reasoning and the nature of blame in general. I suggest that insofar as blame comes in a relational variety as well as the more familiar reactive one, there may be something to be said for linking blame withcharacter flaws after all.

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This paper brings together two erstwhile distinct strands of philosophical inquiry: the extended mind hypothesis and the situationist challenge to virtue theory. According to proponents of the extended mind hypothesis, the vehicles of at least some mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) are not located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent whose states they are. When external props, tools, and other systems are suitably integrated into the functional apparatus of (...) the agent, they are partial bearers of her cognitions, motivations, memories, and so on. According to proponents of the situationist challenge to virtue theory, dispositions located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent to whom they are attributed typically do not meet the normative standards associated with either virtue or vice (moral, epistemic, or otherwise) because they are too susceptible to moderating external variables, such as mood modulators, ambient sensibilia, and social expectation signaling. We here draw on both of these literatures to formulate two novel views – the embedded and extendedcharacter hypotheses – according to which the vehicles of not just mental states but longer-lasting, wider-ranging, and normatively-evaluable agentic dispositions are sometimes located partially beyond the confines of the agent’s skin. (shrink)

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The article presents the results of our observations on syntactic, semantic and plot peculiarities of oral language activity, we find it justified to consider the above mentioned parameters as identification criteria for discovering characterological differences of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking objects of contact profiling. It describes the connection between mechanisms of psychological defenses as thecharacter structural components, and agentive and non-agentive speech constructions, internal and external predicates. Localized and described plots of oral narratives inherent to representatives of different (...) class='Hi'>character types. (shrink)

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This paper concerns the central virtue ethical thesis that the ethical quality of an agent's actions is a function of her dispositionalcharacter. Skeptics have rightly urged us to distinguish between an agent's particular intentions or occurrant motives and dispositional facts about hercharacter, but they falsely contend that if we are attentive to this distinction, then we will see that the virtue ethical thesis is false. In this paper I present a new interpretation and defense of the (...) virtue ethical thesis and show how to rebuff the skeptical attacks advanced by Thomas Hurka, Julia Markovits, and Roger Crisp. The key, I contend, is for virtue ethicists to adopt an embodied value conception ofcharacter instead of the aretaic trait conception suggested by Aristotle. (shrink)

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One way to frame the problem of moral luck is as a contradiction in our ordinary ideas about moral responsibility. In the case of two identical reckless drivers where one kills a pedestrian and the other does not, we tend to intuit that they are and are not equally blameworthy. TheCharacter Response sorts these intuitions in part by providing an account of moral responsibility: the drivers must be equally blameworthy, because they have identicalcharacter traits and people (...) are originally praiseworthy and blameworthy in virtue of, and only in virtue of, theircharacter traits. After explicating two versions of theCharacter Response, I argue that they both involve implausible accounts of moral responsibility and fail to provide a good solution to the problem of moral luck. I close by noting how proponents of moral luck can preserve a kernel of truth from theCharacter Response to explain away the intuition that the drivers are equally blameworthy. (shrink)

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We makecharacter trait attributions to predict and explain others’ behaviour. How should we understandcharacter trait attribution in context across the domains of philosophy, folk psychology, developmental psychology, and evolutionary psychology? For example, how does trait attribution relate to our ability to attribute mental states to others, to ‘mindread’? This thesis uses philosophical methods and empirical data to argue forcharacter trait attribution as a practice dependent upon our ability to mindread, which develops as a product (...) of natural selection acting on culture instead of genes. This analysis carves out trait attribution’s distinct place within an emerging complex and mature scholarship on pluralistic social cognition. (shrink)

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In “Demonstratives”, David Kaplan introduced a simple and remarkably robust semantics for indexicals. Unfortunately, Kaplan’s semantics is open to a number of apparent counterexamples, many of which involve recording devices. The classic case is the sentence “I am not here now” as recorded and played back on an answering machine. In this essay, I argue that the best way to accommodate these data is to conceive of recording technologies as introducing special, non-basic sorts of contexts, accompanied by non-basic conventions governing (...) the use of indexicals in those contexts. The idea is that recording devices allow us to use indexicals in new and innovative ways to coordinate on objects. And, given sufficient regularity in the use of indexicals on such devices, linguistic conventions will, over time, come to reflect this innovation. I consider several alternatives to this ‘character-shifting’ theory, but none is able to account for the data as well as the present proposal. Many face additional theoretical difficulties as well. I conclude by explaining how thecharacter-shifting theory not only retains many of the virtues of Kaplan’s original semantics, but also coheres with a plausible view on the nature of semantic theorizing more generally. (shrink)

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Autonomy, traditionally conceived, is the capacity to direct one’s actions in light of self-given principles or values.Character, traditionally conceived, is the set of unchosen, relatively rigid traits and proclivities that influence, constrain, or determine one’s actions. It’s natural to think that autonomy andcharacter will be in tension with one another. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: whilecharacter influences and constrains choice, this poses no problem for autonomy. However, in particular cases (...)character can affect autonomy by generating a particular kind of influence upon choice. As a first approximation,character limits autonomy when it influences the agent’s choice in a way that were she aware of it, (1) she would disavow the influence, and (2) the influence could no longer operate in the same way. Put a bit differently, I argue thatcharacter undermines autonomy when it generates reflectively unstable perceptions of warrant. (shrink)

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Some of our largely unchosen first-order reactions, such as disgust, can underwrite morally-ladencharacter traits. This observation is in tension with the plausible idea that virtues and vices are based on reasons. I propose a way to resolve the tension.

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Having an agreed-upon definition ofcharacter education would be useful for both researchers and practitioners in the field. However, even experts incharacter education disagree on how they would define it. We attempted to achieve greater conceptual clarity on this issue through a prototype analysis in which the features perceived as most central tocharacter education were identified. In Study 1 (N = 77), we askedcharacter education experts to enumerate features ofcharacter education. Based (...) on these lists, we identified 30 features. In Study 2 (N = 101), experts assessed which features were central tocharacter education through a categorization task. In Study 3 (N = 166), we assessed the extent of centrality using scalar items. We conclude by offering practical advice for the development of futurecharacter education studies and programs rooted in what is deemed central to such programs. (shrink)

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Despite the tremendous growth of interest in both emotion andcharacter in recent years, little has been said about the relation between the two. I argue that emotions have a proximal and fundamental role in determiningcharacter. The proximal role consists in the effects of emotion on the way that a person perceives and ensuingly cognizes the object of emotion. This plays a significant part in determiningcharacter-relevant actions. The fundamental role consists in the function that emotions (...) have in sustaining values on whichcharacter traits are based. Emotions enablecharacter traits to persist by maintaining the importance of these values and thus countering “axiological entropy,” which is the diminution over time of the tacit sense of importance of such values. Emotions are thus essential to the possession ofcharacter traits, andcharacter development involves developing an appropriate emotional repertoire. (shrink)

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Certain consequentialists have responded to deontological worries regarding personal projects or options and agent-centered restrictions or constraints by pointing out that it is consistent with consequentialist principles that people develop within themselves, dispositions to act with such things in mind, even if doing so does not lead to the best consequences on every occasion. This paper argues that making this response requires shifting the focus of moral evaluation off of evaluation of individual actions and towards evaluation of wholecharacter (...) traits and patterns of behavior. However, this weds consequentialism to a sort of psychological determinism, with which it is incompatible, because it makes any sort of assessment in terms of right or wrong incoherent. The paper concludes by sketching an ethical theory that abandons right and wrong as its organizing concepts, but nevertheless preserves much of the spirit of consequentialism. Relationships between whole patterns of behavior and the production of good and bad consequences can be studied and analyzed, and this information can be used to improve society and ourselves, without it being required that any individual persons acts or dispositions to behave be evaluated as right or wrong. (shrink)

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This essay examines the relation between philosophical questions concerning personal identity andcharacter development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s philosophy. Shaftesbury combines a metaphysical account of personal identity with a normative approach tocharacter development. By contrasting Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s views on these issues, I examine whethercharacter development presupposes specific metaphysical views about personal identity, and in particular whether it presupposes the continued existence of a substance, as Shaftesbury assumes. I show that Hume’s philosophy offers at least (...) two alternatives. Moreover, I consider whether and how Hume’s philosophy leaves scope forcharacter development and how he departs from Shaftesbury’s normative project of self-formation. (shrink)

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According to thecharacter condition, a person is morally responsible for an action A only if acharacter trait of hers non-accidentally motivates her performing A. But that condition is untenable according to the out ofcharacter objection because people can be morally responsible for acting out ofcharacter. We reassess this common objection. Of the seven accounts of acting out ofcharacter that we outline, only one is even a prima facie counterexample to the (...)character condition. And it is not obvious that people act out ofcharacter in that sense. We argue that whether the out ofcharacter objection succeeds ultimately depends on the unnoticed methodological commitment that cases that may not resemble human life provide good data for theorizing about moral responsibility. But even if such cases provide good data, the forcefulness of the objection is at least deflated given that its persuasive power is supposed to come from clear real-life cases. (shrink)

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This chapter offers acharacter-based criticism of ‘the culture of speed’ condemned by the Canadian literary scholars, Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber in their influential polemic, The Slow Professor. Central to their criticisms of speed and praise of slowness are, I argue, substantive concerns about their effects on moral and intellectualcharacter. I argue that a full reckoning of the wrongs of academic cultures of speed must include appreciation of the ways they promote a host of accelerative vices (...) and failings while also impeding exercise of a range of the virtues vital to enactment of our core academic commitments to teaching, scholarship, and collegiality. (shrink)

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Recent discussions of phenomenal consciousness have taken increased interest in the existence and scope of non-sensory types of phenomenology, notably so-called cognitive phenomenology. These discussions have been largely restricted, however, to the question of the existence of such a phenomenology. Little attention has been given to thecharacter of cognitive phenomenology: what in fact is it like to engage in conscious cognitive activity? This paper offers an approach to this question. Focusing on the prototypical cognitive activity of making a (...) judgment that p, it proposes a characterization in terms of a Ramsey sentence comprised of twenty-three phenomenological platitudes about what it is like to make a judgment. (shrink)

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Can doctors maintain goodcharacter? This paper shifts the focus from patient care to ethical considerations that bear on the physician and impact her as a person. By decentering patient care, the paper highlights certain factors that habituate a particular way of reasoning that is not conducive to inculcating goodcharacter. Such factors include, standards of professionalism, being influenced by external monitors, and emphasis on adherence to guidelines. While such factors may benefit patients, they often adversely affect the (...)character of physicians. (shrink)

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Gossip is rarely praised. There seems little virtuous that is about talking behind someone’s back. Whether there is anything virtuous about gossip, however, depends on the kind of gossip. Some gossip is idle, but some evaluative gossip promulgates and enforces norms. When properly motivated, such gossip effects positive change in society and counts as gossiping well. The virtue of gossiping well even includes some kinds of false gossip, namely the sort that exaggerates a pre-existing trait, thereby creating a caricature of (...) a person’scharacter in order to establish a moral exemplar (or anti-exemplar). (shrink)

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In Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee reveals that American man of integrity Atticus Finch harbors deep-seated racist beliefs. Bob Ewell, Finch's nemesis in To Kill a Mockingbird, harbors the same beliefs. But the two men live out their shared racist beliefs in dramatically different fashions. This article argues that extant dispositionalist accounts of belief lack the tools to accommodate Finch and Ewell's divergent styles of believing. It then draws on literary and philosophicalcharacter studies to construct the required (...) tools. (shrink)

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Proponents of phenomenal intentionality share a commitment that, for at least some paradigmatically intentional states, phenomenalcharacter constitutively determines narrow intentional content. If this is correct, then any two states with the same phenomenalcharacter will have the same narrow intentional content. Using a twin-earth style case, I argue that two different people can be in intrinsically identical phenomenological states without sharing narrow intentional contents. After describing and defending the case, I conclude by considering a few objections that (...) help to further illustrate the problem. (shrink)

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Our focus here is on whether, when influenced by implicit biases, those behavioural dispositions should be understood as being a part of that person’scharacter: whether they are part of the agent that can be morally evaluated.[4] We frame this issue in terms of control. If a state, process, or behaviour is not something that the agent can, in the relevant sense, control, then it is not something that counts as part of hercharacter. A number of theorists (...) have argued that individuals do not have control, in the relevant sense, over the operation of implicit bias. We will argue that this claim is mistaken. We articulate and develop a notion of control that individuals have with respect to implicit bias, and argue that this kind of control can groundcharacter-based evaluation of such behavioural dispositions. (shrink)

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We explored the relationship between 24character strengths measured by the Global Assessment ofCharacter Strengths (GACS), which was revised from the original VIA instrument, and moral functioning comprising postconventional moral reasoning, empathic traits and moral identity. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was employed to explore the best models, which were more parsimonious than full regression models estimated through frequentist regression, predicting moral functioning indicators with the 24 candidatecharacter strength predictors. Our exploration was conducted with a dataset (...) collected from 666 college students at a public university in the Southern United States. Results showed thatcharacter strengths as measured by GACS partially predicted relevant moral functioning indicators. Performance evaluation results demonstrated that the best models identified by BMA performed significantly better than the full models estimated by frequentist regression in terms of AIC, BIC, and cross-validation accuracy. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the findings for future studies addressingcharacter strengths and moral functioning. (shrink)

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This paper advances the development of a phylogeny-based psychology in which cognitive ability types are individuated as characters in the evolutionary biological sense. I explain thecharacter concept and its utility in addressing (or dissolving) conceptual problems arising from discoveries of cognitive abilities across a wide range of species. I use the examples of stereopsis in the praying mantis, internal cell-to-cell signaling in plants, and episodic memory in scrub jays to show how anthropocentric cognitive ability types can be reformulated (...) into cognitive characters, thereby promoting the integration of psychology with other sciences of evolved traits. (shrink)

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Why are personal attacks so powerful? In political debates, speeches, discussions and campaigns, negativecharacter judgments, aggressive charges and charged epithets are used for different purposes. They can block the dialogue, trigger value judgments and influence decisions; they can force the interlocutor to withdraw a viewpoint or undermine his arguments. Personal attacks are not only multifaceted dialogical moves, but also complex argumentative strategies. They can be considered as premises for further arguments based on signs, generalizations or consequences. They involve (...) tactics for arousing emotions such as fear, hate or contempt, or for ridiculing the interlocutor. The twofold level of investigation presented in this paper is aimed at distinguishing the different roles that ad hominem have in a dialogue and bringing to light their hidden dimensions. The reasoning structure of each type of attack will be distinguished from the tactics used to increase its effectiveness and conceal its weaknesses. (shrink)

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Many jurisdictions prohibit or severely restrict the use of evidence about a defendant’scharacter to prove legal culpability. Situationists, who argue that conduct is largely determined by situational features rather than bycharacter, can easily defend this prohibition. According to situationism,character evidence is misleading or paltry. -/- Proscriptions oncharacter evidence seem harder to justify, however, on virtue ethical accounts. It appears that excludingcharacter evidence either denies the centrality ofcharacter for explaining (...) conduct—the situationist position—or omits probative evidence. Situationism is, after all, presented as antithetical to virtue ethics. -/- This essay provides a virtue ethical defense ofcharacter evidence exclusion rules. We show that existing virtue ethical rebuttals to situationism themselves support prohibitions oncharacter evidence; even if behavior arises from stablecharacter traits,character evidence should be prohibited. In building our case, we provide a taxonomy of kinds ofcharacter judgment and reconcile the ubiquity and reasonableness ofcharacter judgments in ordinary life with the epistemic legitimacy ofcharacter evidence prohibitions in law. (shrink)

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People tend to think of our intellectual characters as at least partially malleable. We can become more – or less – virtuous or vicious epistemic agents. However, people also tend to think of characterological change as typically slow and incremental. I use recent empirical work on the effects of psychedelic experiences on personality to argue that such circumscribed experiences may be epistemically transformative, for better or worse. We have good, if tentative reasons to believe that psychedelics can alter their user's (...)character traits in ways that may lead her to become a more (or less) virtuous epistemic agent after as little as one or two trips. This, in turn, means that even if psychedelics do not drastically alter our stock of, say, true or justified beliefs, they can still drastically change our epistemic standing. Since, plausibly, the value (or disvalue) of epistemic traits is not exhausted by their capacity to assist or hinder the attainment of the ends of inquiry, psychedelic experiences are epistemically valuable (or disvaluable) in ways hitherto little explored by philosophers of psychedelics. (shrink)

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Recent proposals for a “criticalcharacter epistemology” attend to the ways in which environments, institutions, social practices, and relationships promote the development of epistemic vice whilst acknowledging that the contexts of differently situated agents demand different epistemiccharacter traits. I argue that a tension arises between two features of criticalcharacter epistemology: the classification as “epistemically corrupting” of environments, institutions, or structures which promote the development of epistemic vice; and commitment to normative contextualism—the doctrine that the normative (...) status (the status of a trait as a virtue or as a vice) of some or all epistemiccharacter traits is context-dependent. I show how these two features lead to the claim that certain traits both are epistemic virtues and hinder the development of epistemic virtues. To make such an evaluation consistent, I propose a modified form of normative contextualism: dual-level normative contextualism. (shrink)

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The concept ofcharacter has a long history in moral philosophy. Three fundamental versions can be identified: the Aristotelian, the Humean, and the Kantian. The Aristotelian concept ofcharacter is based on the model of the wise person, who shapes her feeling according to reason. The Humeancharacter is based exclusively on feelings, having as a criterion the feeling of approval for virtue and disapproval for vice. The Kantiancharacter is based on freedom as autonomy and (...) on the feeling of respect. I argue that the Kantian concept avoids the risk of depending on metaphysics (as the Aristotelian model does) and of lacking universal value (as the Humean model does). (shrink)

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This article aims to theoretically analyse so-calledcharacter friendship from the perspective of emotions. From this angle, our research enables us to distinguish different types of emotions, and we propose a conceptual model of the hierarchy of the emotions ofcharacter friendship and their influence on social behaviour. With this model in hand, the article discusses whether other-oriented emotions fully explain the emotional underpinnings ofcharacter friendship. We find other-oriented emotions to be ambiguous because they may or (...) may not be selfless. Thus we question whether these emotions can adequately explain the bonding content ofcharacter friendship. We conclude that there is a higher affective tier related to moral emotions and moral behaviour, which we have labelled the ‘bonding feeling’. This feeling is described with reference to its historical precedents (Rof Carballo’s ‘affective warp’), thus explaining its particularity. (shrink)

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Character judgments play an important role in our everyday lives. However, decades of empirical research on trait attribution suggest that the cognitive processes that generate these judgments are prone to a number of biases and cognitive distortions. This gives rise to a skeptical worry about the epistemic foundations of everyday characterological beliefs that has deeply disturbing and alienating consequences. In this paper, I argue that this skeptical worry is misplaced: under the appropriate informational conditions, our everydaycharacter-trait judgments (...) are in fact quite trustworthy. I then propose a mindreading-based model of the socio-cognitive processes underlying trait attribution that explains both why these judgments are initially unreliable, and how they eventually become more accurate. (shrink)

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Our focus here is on whether, when influenced by implicit biases, those behavioural dispositions should be understood as being a part of that person’scharacter: whether they are part of the agent that can be morally evaluated.[4] We frame this issue in terms of control. If a state, process, or behaviour is not something that the agent can, in the relevant sense, control, then it is not something that counts as part of hercharacter. A number of theorists (...) have argued that individuals do not have control, in the relevant sense, over the operation of implicit bias. We will argue that this claim is mistaken. We articulate and develop a notion of control that individuals have with respect to implicit bias, and argue that this kind of control can groundcharacter-based evaluation of such behavioural dispositions. (shrink)

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As Shakespeare is closer in time and spirit to medieval psychology than to popular modern explanations of psyche, this article presents a fourfold analysis of ecstasy from Aquinas' Summa Theologiae to examine the characters of the play. I also suggest performance choices which make a variety of these ecstasies of soul more visible.

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While most discussions of corruption focus on administration, institutions, the law and public policy, little attention in the debate about societal reform is paid to the “internalities” of anti-corruption efforts, specifically tocharacter-formation and issues of personal and corporate integrity. While the word “integrity” is frequently mentioned as the goal to be achieved through institutional reforms, even in criminal prosecutions, the specifically philosophical aspects ofcharacter-formation and the development of corporate and individual virtues in a rational and systematic (...) way tend to be neglected. This paper focuses on the “internalities” of anti-corruption work with special emphasis on the pre-requisites that need to be ensured on behalf of the social elites in order for proper individual and collectivecharacter- formation to take place throughout the society. The author argues that a systematic pursuit of socially recognised virtues, both those pertaining to society as a whole and those specific to particular professions and social groups, is the most comprehensive and strategically justified way of pursuing anti-corruption policy, while institutional and penal policies can only serve an auxiliary role. The pursuit of institutional and criminal justice policies against corruption in a society that is subject to increasing relativism with regard to values and morality is at best ineffective, and at worst socially destructive. Thus the paper suggests a re-examination of the social discourse on the level of what the author calls “value strategy” and the gradual building of a plan to create and solidify specifically designed features of “corporatecharacter” for key sectors of the society. This approach can serve as the main long-term strategy to improve the public profile of integrity and reinforce morality in both the public and civil sectors. (shrink)

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You can perceive things, in many respects, as they really are. For example, you can correctly see a coin as circular from most angles. Nonetheless, your perception of the world is perspectival. The coin looks different when slanted than when head-on, and there is some respect in which the slanted coin looks similar to a head-on ellipse. Many hold that perception is perspectival because you perceive certain properties that correspond to the “looks” of things. I argue that this view is (...) misguided. I consider the two standard versions of this view. What I call the PLURALIST APPROACH fails to give a unified account of the perspectivalcharacter of perception, while what I call the PERSPECTIVAL PROPERTIES APPROACH violates central commitments of contemporary psychology. I propose instead that perception is perspectival because of the way perceptual states are structured from their parts. (shrink)

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This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquiredcharacter’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquiredcharacter is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquiredcharacter is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ (...) class='Hi'>character; rather, it is the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empiricalcharacter. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquiredcharacter into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquiredcharacter. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquiredcharacter to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

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It seems like people havecharacter traits that explain a good deal of their behavior. Call a theorycharacter realism just in case it vindicates this folk assumption. Recently, Christian Miller has argued that the way to reconcilecharacter realism with decades of psychological research is to adopt metaphysical reductivism aboutcharacter traits. Some contemporary psychological theories ofcharacter and virtue seem to implicitly endorse such reductivism; others resist reduction of traits to finer-grained mental components (...) or processes; and still others remain silent on the metaphysics of traits. In this paper we argue thatcharacter realists do not have to, and in fact should not, be reductivists. We introduce a theoretical dilemma for reductivistcharacter realism. Then we explain how nonreductivists can meet the standards for empirical adequacy laid out by Miller and others. Further, we argue, hylomorphic nonreductivism avoids the theoretical dilemma that threatens reductivism. It also fits nicely the major commitments of recent models of virtue in psychology. Thus,character realists should not be reductivists. (shrink)

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I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue ofcharacter is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue ofcharacter is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can (...) hold direct authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue ofcharacter as hexis prohairetikē. (shrink)

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Focusing on the 'today'/'yesterday' case, I argue that Perry is wrong in accounting for and explaining indexical belief states in terms of Kaplanian characters and in taking these states to be internal (narrow) mental states inside the subject's mind. It is shown that this view is at odds with Perry's own reliance on remembering a past day as a necessary condition for retaining a belief about it. As a better tool for explaining appropriate indexical beliefs, I offer an alternative which (...) is neo-Fregean in that it takes senses or modes of presentation as playing only a cognitive, not a semantic role. It, however, takes remembering a past day as necessary for retaining a belief about it, rather than keeping track of time as urged by Evans. I also consider unfeasible Evans's further requirement which he takes over from Frege: that in order to retain a belief about a certain past day we need to think of it now under the same mode of presentation as we did on that very day. (shrink)

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My interest lies in offering a phenomenological perspective on how noise is experienced, with particular attention to what may be common to different sorts of noise phenomena. As a counterpoint to the notion that noise is an empty or constructed notion, I argue for two desiderata of a phenomenological account of noise; accommodating a plurality of noise experiences, on the one hand, and clarifying their specific phenomenalcharacter, on the other. I then pursue these desiderata by turning to an (...) examination of some contemporary views of perception that have implications for how the phenomenalcharacter of perceptual noise in particular is to be understood; an epistemic misfire view and a sensory misfire view. After clarifying each and its appeal, I convey concerns about the one and the other. I propose a third alternative for further exploration - a perceptual disjoint view - and point to how it ought to explored. On the premise that there is something like a unity of consciousness or experience, I lay out the idea that there may then be many forms of 'disunities' of experience. From an analysis of the latter, I suggest, one may account for many different types of experiences of noise, though with a common ‘phenomenal’ thread running through them. (shrink)

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