Situationism Versus Situationism

Keywords

Character; John Doris; Situationism; Virtue; Virtue Ethics

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.

Publication Date

2-1-2015

Publication Title

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice

Volume

18

Issue

1

Number of Pages

9-26

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9481-9

Socpus ID

84957939113 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84957939113

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