New Directions for a Dispositional Theory
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THE CHARACTER OF CHARACTER: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR A DISPOSITIONAL THEORY Nicole Smith Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Committee: Daniel Jacobson, Advisor Judith A. Zimmerman, Graduate Faculty Representative Christian Coons David Shoemaker ii ABSTRACT Daniel Jacobson, Advisor My dissertation aims to solve a puzzle, a paradox, and a problem. The puzzle is to explain why people act in uncharacteristic (i.e., seemingly cruel) ways in a number of social psychological experiments, such as Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment, in which 65% of the participants complied with the experimenter’s demands to issue a series of increasingly powerful “shocks” to an unwilling recipient. I argue that owing to features of the experimental design participants were made to feel: out of their element, confused, disoriented, pressured, intimidated, and acutely distressed, and that the “experimenter” (actually a confederate) exploited these factors, which is the central reason why the majority of participants complied with his demands despite being reluctant to do so. The paradox is that, although ordinary people seem to be good, bad, or somewhere in between, evidence (again from social psychology) seems to suggest that most people would behave deplorably on many occasions and heroically on many others. This, in turn, suggests the paradoxical conclusion that most people are indeterminate—i.e., no particular character evaluation appears to apply to them. I argue to the contrary that the social psychological evidence fails to support the claim that people would behave deplorably on many occasions. Milgram’s participants, for example, faced extenuating circumstances that should mitigate the degree to which they were blameworthy for their actions, and this, in turn, challenges the claim that they behaved deplorably. iii The problem is that no existing theory has been able to adequately account for the connection between possessing certain character traits and performing certain actions. Commonsense suggests that there is a connection between, for instance, being a truthful person and telling the truth, but it has been challenging for philosophers to capture precisely what the connection is in an empirically defensible way. I argue that there is a strong empirical connection between character traits and action, but that to understand this connection, it must be admitted at the outset that interfering factors may come between traits and their manifestations in action. The key is to develop a theory that can give an account of which sources of interference are character trait undermining and which are not. I go some way toward developing such a theory. iv To Ian: For encouraging me to go through, not around the hard problems. And I’m so pleased Ms. Bronte got it right! To my mom, one of the best moral psychologists I know: For helping me to appreciate the value of perseverance. To Dan, Dave, and Christian: For helping me over the rainbow and back. In loving memory of my dad (Here’s to hoisting up the John B. sails!) and Shiloh (“The coolest beagle in Ann Arbor”). v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to Bill Simpson for his support and guidance during my years as an undergraduate—without it, I’m fairly certain I would have lost my way. A special thanks is also owed to Dan Jacobson, David Shoemaker, Christian Coons, and Sarah Buss for their support over the last several years. I would also like to thank Mark Alfano, Nomy Arpaly, Emily Austin, Neera Bahdwar, Eric Brown, John Brunero, Ray Buchanan, Randy Clarke, Sinan Dogramaci, John Doris, Julia Driver, Billy Dunaway, Jerry Green, Alex Grzankowski, Chris Heathwood, Joshua Hollowell, Charlie Kurth, Steve Finlay, Heidi Maibom, Hugh Marlowe, Michael Mckenna, Christian Miller, Howard Nye, Jason Raibley, Alex Plakias, Adam Pautz, Ian Proops, Rachelle Robles, Mark Sainsbury, Mark Schroeder, Tim Schroeder, Michael Smith, Daniel Star, Trisha Trigilio, Eric Vogelstein, Arthur Ward, Eric Wiland, Susan Wolf, and Judith Zimmerman. In addition, I want to acknowledge the members of the audiences at the North Carolina Philosophical Society Meeting and the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress in 2011. I am grateful to the philosophy department at Bowling Green State University for awarding me a much needed dissertation fellowship from 2009–2010, in which the seeds of this project were sown. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I. BULLIES IN LAB COATS ............................................................................ 10 Background ............................................................................................................ 11 Obedience ............................................................................................................ 13 A Bully in Experimenter’s Clothing ........................................................................... 19 Implications for Moral Psychology ........................................................................... 37 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 39 CHAPTER II. GOOD PEOPLE, BAD CIRCUMSTANCES ................................................ 41 The Indeterminacy Paradox ...................................................................................... 42 The Fragmentation Thesis .......................................................................................... 45 The Stanford Prison Experiment.................................................................... 45 The Milgram Experiment............................................................................... 48 Against the Fragmentation Thesis .............................................................................. 51 Objections and Replies .............................................................................................. 71 The Goodness of Ordinary People ............................................................................. 78 CHAPTER III. FAILURES TO MANIFEST OR MANIFEST FAILURES?........................ 86 The Trait-Action Problem .......................................................................................... 89 The Dispositional Theory of Character Traits ................................................ 90 The Masking Thesis ....................................................................................... 97 The Empirical Thesis ..................................................................................... 101 vii Problems with Existing Attempts to Solve the Trait-Action Problem ....................... 103 A New Solution to the Trait-Action Problem ............................................................. 109 REFERENCES........... ............................................................................................................ 122 1 INTRODUCTION Concepts related to a person’s character feature prominently in our ordinary discourse and thought: some people strike us as sweet and kind, while others come across as complete jerks. History tells us about some downright evil people we wish had never been born, and, yet, we can take some comfort in contemplating the lives of the occasional moral saint. We often evaluate people in terms of their character (e.g., we say they are good or bad) and we also attribute character traits to them (e.g., we say they are conscientious, loyal, or generous). We are inclined, moreover, to think of many of those we encounter in our daily lives as generally decent people. In general, concepts of character, broadly construed, serve as a compass by which we navigate a substantial portion of the normative terrain. Indeed, we often reference these features of persons when we hold them responsible or when we deem them praiseworthy or blameworthy for their actions, or even when we excuse or forgive them for their mistakes. The trouble is that the application of character concepts is strained in contexts where people behave in seemingly uncharacteristic ways. How, for instance, can we make sense of someone who normally would not hurt a fly, but who nonetheless finds himself in a circumstance where he issues what he takes to be increasingly painful shocks to an unwilling recipient? The aim of my dissertation is to solve this and other puzzles, and to propose new directions for theorizing about character traits. BEYOND THE STANDARD INTERPRETATIONS Moral psychology has taken on new life in recent years owing to the rapid expansion of interdisciplinary research in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, among 2 others. In particular, psychology, of both the social and cognitive varieties, is quickly becoming deeply integrated into normative inquiry, and nowhere is this more apparent than in work on character. I welcome this development, for there is no better place to start in the explanation of human action and behavior than with detailed descriptions of the actual actions and behaviors of ordinary people in real (or controlled) situations. It leaves less to the philosopher’s imagination —avoiding what Nomy Arpaly has referred to as “an unbalanced diet of examples” (2003: 20)— and relies more heavily on the very subject matter at issue; namely, moral agents in action. As with any new development, however, caution is recommended, especially when drawing