Science of Virtues | A Project of the University of Chicago

When Citizens Deliberate

agomberg — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:03:10 GMT

By James S. Fishkin, Stanford University

What are the virtues of democratic citizenship when voters are bombarded by WMD—by which I mean “weapons of mass distraction”—stinging sound bites and campaign ads from the persuasion industry funded by a campaign finance system that seems to be broken? Our political system was born with an ideal of representatives “refining and enlarging the public views” and hence deliberating on the merits regardless of faction or partisanship. But the nexus of polling and campaign ads has taken us on a long journey from Madison to Madison Avenue. Citizens are mostly participants in an “audience democracy” in which they are occasionally moved to cheer for one side or another. Not much is expected of them when they are mostly on the sidelines.

To put this in context: What virtues we expect of democratic citizens depends on what kind of democracy we aspire to achieve. On some theories of democracy, it does not matter if citizens participate, if they are informed about the issues they vote on, if they care about the interests of the community rather than just their personal interests narrowly construed, or if they are willing to listen to the viewpoints of others. On what is the currently dominant democratic theory, the competitive democratic view of theorists like Joseph Schumpeter and more recent followers, all that fundamentally matters is whether the system has procedurally fair elections to decide which team of office holders takes office. Democracy is a “competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” It is not an exercise in collective will formation. On the competitive view, if citizens are misled by false campaigning, or if they mostly get discouraged and stay home, or if they are aroused by passions or interests adverse to the rights of others, it does not fundamentally matter. On the competitive view, the presidential primary process playing out before us is the epitome of competitive democracy. But from the standpoint of deliberative democracy advocates, it leaves much to be desired in terms of levels of citizen information and discussion and in terms of an actual focus on substantive issues of policy.

One of the arguments in support of the competitive view is that citizens are not really capable of much more. A low level of citizen competence, as an empirical matter, justifies low demands on what citizens can be expected to do. Hence an empirical exploration of citizen competence would have real implications for whether a more demanding view of what citizens ought to do is realistic or achievable. But citizens do not act in isolation; democracy requires an institutional context or design. The individual virtue of citizen behavior is inextricably tied to the institutions defining the contexts in which they act.

My colleagues and I are engaged in a research program in which random samples of ordinary citizens are recruited to participate in what I call “Deliberative Polls®” (see http://cdd.stanford.edu) They discuss policy or political questions in depth and arrive at considered judgments, revealed in confidential questionnaires, to provide an input to policy or politics. In the right context, citizens turn out to be highly competent to confront difficult trade-offs. They become measurably more informed, they are open to arguments offered by those with competing perspectives and they even are willing to make modest sacrifices in the public interest. In short, in the right context, random samples of the public are quite capable of behaving a bit more like ideal citizens.

In a series of eight Deliberative Polls in Texas on energy choices, random samples of the public rose greatly in their support for renewable energy and conservation and they were willing to pay slightly more on their electricity bills for it. In a series of decisions based on these results, the Public Utility Commission and the legislature brought Texas from being last among the fifty states in wind power in 1996 when we started, to being first in 2007. People were willing to make at least modest sacrifices in the public interest (pay slightly higher utility bills to provide a public good for the environment.) In Northern Ireland and in Bulgaria, Deliberative Polls showed how mutual understanding and increased tolerance were possible across deep ethnic divisions. The percentages of Protestants and Catholics who were willing to say the other community was “open to reason” or “trustworthy” rose significantly in Northern Ireland. In Bulgaria, in a national Deliberative Poll on the condition of the Roma, a series of policy attitude changes about housing, education and the criminal justice system showed a far greater acceptance of the Roma by the broader community and an embrace of policies that would integrate them far better. We found similar results in an Australian project on policies toward the Aboriginals.

In the most recent Deliberative Poll, What’s Next California? a random sample of registered voters set an agenda for possible initiative propositions to fix the state. Their deliberations helped give birth to the Government Performance and Accountability Act which is now going on the ballot for 2012. Their deliberations show how citizens can become better informed and master the most complex issues of state government if they are given the chance. If the initiative passes it will be the first time in 2,400 years that a random sample has deliberated and set the agenda for a vote approved by the rest of the population. The Athenian Council of 500 was selected randomly and set the agenda for voting in the Assembly just as this Deliberative Poll set the agenda for voting by the electorate in California. The Athenians famously expected more of their citizens in their polis than we do in the modern era. Deliberative democrats are exploring, empirically, whether modern citizens can live up to similar standards.

The Virtue of Mercy in Politics

agomberg — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:21:40 GMT

By Alex Tuckness and John Parrish
Science of Virtues

Mercy is highly regarded in theory, but often controversial in practice. The recent furor over Haley Barbour’s should have come as a shock to no one. American Presidents do not characteristically issue pardons and commutations right before they run for re-election, as they would if they thought it would lead the public to view them as more virtuous and fit for their job. Instead, pardons are frequently withheld until the last days or even hours of an executive’s tenure in office. That mercy is praised in the abstract but criticized in practice is ironic since it is among the least abstract of the virtues. It is often linked to showing pity for the weak and vulnerable in their concrete circumstances of need.

That the most controversial instances of mercy tend to be political is, we think, no coincidence. For an action to be perceived as virtuous requires it to fit with other assumptions people make about what ought to be done. Actually there are two types of “fit” at work. When we think of a virtue such as mercy, we often think of it in terms of a particular metaphor that serves as an archetypal case. Some think of the lenient judge as the paradigm of mercy, others the forgiving creditor, and others the compassionate benefactor. These can even be combined in some instances. The various metaphors shape our view of what we think the virtue looks like in practice, and thus we use each to establish whether something we observe fits with mercy. We call this “contextual fit”: does the context we observe seem analogous to the dominant metaphor that shapes our view of mercy? The other form of fit is “moral fit,” by which we mean background assumptions about concepts like morality and justice that allow us to say not only that something is akin to the actions of a lenient judge or a compassionate benefactor but that it is also morally praiseworthy.

In earlier centuries in the western tradition, all three metaphors held together because the same word “mercy” could be used to describe a set of actions both by God and by the king that had a kind of family resemblance to each other. Both God and the king were thought to be the final judicial authority, and thus also entitled to pardon. Violations of the law were also construed as a kind of personal wrong done to God or the king that generated a kind of debt. Finally, God and the king were both thought of as benefactors to the poor and needy. Mercy could thus bear all of these meanings at once.

Since the 17^th and 18^th centuries, however, the linkages holding these metaphors together have come apart, and both types of “fit” have thus been compromised in politics. In terms of contextual fit, far from seeing our chief executives as the final judicial authority, we instead view judges as checks on executive power and thus tend to see executive intervention in the judicial process as an unjust intrusion. We likewise do not think of chief executives as wronged parties with standing to forgive a debt. And similarly, we do not view chief executives as generous benefactors since the public funds they distribute do not belong to them. In terms of moral fit, the dominant contemporary conceptions of justice have frequently equated discretion with arbitrary rule or have elevated retributive justice to a place of prominence and then defined mercy as the violation of retributive justice. In mercy we thus see an example about how changing political and philosophical conditions can shape perceptions of what mercy is and when it is a virtue.

What Does it Mean to Forgive? Part 2

agomberg — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:13:48 GMT

By Jesse Couenhoven, Science of Virtues scholar

My response to the problem just mentioned—that there are many, sometimes fragmentary, conceptions of forgiveness now competing for prominence—is to steal a page from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. My goal is to develop a rich conception of forgiveness that is based on and offers insights about central Christian beliefs, especially those that can be described as being within the Augustinian tradition. One of the benefits of this project, I contend, is that it can assist modern Westerners (among others) in making sense of the otherwise seemingly helter skelter current meanings of the term—and the fact that even though forgiving has been trivialized in important ways, it continues to have deep moral and spiritual resonances.

That the present popularity of the term in political science and psychology owes a great deal to religious invocation of the idea of forgiveness is not hard to show—the influence of Bishop Tutu’s pleas for forgiveness in the context of apartheid in South Africa is undeniable, and prominent researchers in psychology (such as Robert Enright) have pointed out the influence of popular Christian self-help books such as Louis Smedes’ Forgive and Forget. To claim more than that, however, would require an exploration of recent intellectual history that would distract from the conceptual aims of my discussion.

Rather than tell a story about how a religious conception of forgiveness has been appropriated by a secular society in ways that have changed the meaning of the term without entirely severing its spiritual connotations, I seek to offer a plausible reconstruction of the traditional Christian meaning of “forgiveness”. I then hope to show that when forgiveness is understood in the manner I explore—as, primarily, a divine action, aimed at separating sinners from their sins via the loving gift of a new identity—it is easier to appreciate and account for the varied ways the term is used today, which make more sense as fragmentary appropriations of a complex theological concept than they do in their current form. The question of popular, non-religious uses of the idea of forgiveness, then, is one to which we can most fruitfully return once we have a better grasp on the traditional notion of forgiveness of which we have been losing sight.

To be sure, there are other ways of thinking about forgiveness (some more sensible and attractive than others). Nevertheless, I claim that that a traditional, Augustinian, conception of forgiveness is entirely defensible. The merits I claim for it are twofold. First, I think it makes sense of Christian stories and practices of forgiveness. Let me quickly expand on this claim, and why it matters. Most people around the world adhere to a religious faith; Christianity, of course, is the largest and in many ways (though not, to be sure, in every way) the most influential. Developing an Augustinian conception of forgiveness is an exercise in conceptual retrieval, a constructive attempt to mine the history of Christian (and not only Christian) thought for insights concerning the nature and power of forgiveness. If doing so can help enrich the lives of the billions who affirm the forgiveness of sins, that is no small thing.

One of the main ways that approaching forgiveness this way influences my task is the fact that the Christian tradition has often made central a question about forgiveness that differs from the one most often asked in the current literature on forgiveness. Instead of asking, “How can I forgive?”, the creedal affirmation of the forgiveness of sins suggests another question: “How can I be forgiven?” (this is a feature of Jewish traditions as well). In saying that we believe in the forgiveness of sin we certainly confess what we want to do and who we want to be, but primarily we confess how we have been blessed. Thus, rather than taking the perspective of a victim—one who has been wronged—I take the perspective of a perpetrator—one who has wronged; and who wrongs. We are, of course, often both victim and perpetrator, and often both at once. Nevertheless, though my discussion does not ignore the perspective of the victim, it does not prioritize it.

Second, an Augustinian account of forgiveness can be of use to more than my fellow believers. Though in some respects a traditional theory of forgiveness can strike some as counter-intuitive, I find that it also makes sense of a number moral commitments and aspirations many of us hold dear, whether we are religious or not. Central aspects of an Augustinian view can be appropriated by non-Christians (especially, but not exclusively, the vast numbers who are religious believers of another sort). The idea of forgiveness as metaphysical, for instance—the idea that forgiveness seeks a change in the moral character of perpetrators, rather than mainly therapeutic or political change for victims—can be appropriated by non-Christians.

In part, this is simply a straightforward conceptual point: even one who does not admire the theological sources of a traditional conception of forgiveness might agree with some of its normative claims. In addition, as I have mentioned, talk about forgiveness is in a special conceptual position. Many of the things non-Christians want to say about forgiveness turn out to have been influenced by Christian talk about forgiveness down the centuries. Thus, it would not be surprising if an articulate Christian account of forgiveness turned out to make sense of, or to offer conceptual resources to deepen, many of the things non-Christians have recently been saying about forgiveness.

In summary, then, my suggestion is that all of our paradigms of forgiveness can be enriched by learning about and wrestling with nuanced developments of competing traditions of forgiveness, including Augustinian traditions. Searching for “something we can all agree on”, academic students of religion have often watered down the particularity of the traditions they engage. But leaving our intuitions unchallenged in such a manner is no service to anyone. It leaves us ignorant of the riches that might be mined from the views that billions of people around the world have held and do hold. It often serves as a defensive front, as well, that disengages faith perspectives from real encounters with social sciences, philosophy, and other disciplines. Discussion of forgiveness presents an appropriate opportunity for overcoming such ills, in the expectation that seriously wrestling with each other’s hopes for overcoming evil will enliven our understanding of virtue and deepen our relationships, as well.

What Does It Mean to Forgive? Part 1

agomberg — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:12:01 GMT

By Jesse Couenhoven, Science of Virtues scholar

It is hard to find anyone today who does not think of forgiving as virtuous, at least when done under the right circumstances. Yet this apparent consensus in favor of forgiveness can be misleading, because there is little accord about what it means to forgive! Some think of forgiveness as an attitude, others as an action, and still others consider forgiveness a religious concept unavailable to secular societies. So how can one go about clarifying the meaning of “forgiveness”? Margaret Urban Walker suggests in her fine book Moral Repair that we should not try to settle on one meaning of forgiveness; forgiveness is a rich concept in part because it is a term with many meanings. My view, by contrast, is that forgiveness researchers should develop and defend specific conceptions of forgiveness. If they take advantage of the insights provided by other views of forgiveness, my hope is that this process of articulating rival conceptions of forgiveness can be illuminating for all who value the virtues of forgiveness.

It can be helpful for scholars to begin the work of clarifying what they think forgiveness is by spending some time delimiting the concept, attending to what forgiveness is not. Mercy, pardon, and graciousness, for instance, are ideas that overlap with forgiveness in some ways, and it is helpful to know what, if anything, makes forgiveness a term with its own singular significance. One way to begin figuring out what difference it makes to speak particularly of forgiveness—as opposed to some other good—is to differentiate forgiveness from what it is not.

It is widely agreed that forgiveness differs from excusing—which says that while a person may seem to have been in the wrong, there is good reason to consider that person justified for having done what she or he did—or condoning—which says that what a person did was not wrong even if some might think it was. Saying that something is “just fine”, or is “no big deal”, is not the same as saying “I forgive you”. The idea is that forgiveness is an active stance, not simply a way of saying that something is not problematic, or does not matter. Since what does not matter does not need to be forgiven, we can say, minimally, that forgiveness is thought to be possible only when a person has a genuine grievance of some sort. It is also widely agreed that forgiveness differs from forgetting: because forgiveness is a response to a grievance, one must have that injury in mind, protest it, and address it in some manner, in order to forgive.

I find these distinctions important, and insightful—they begin to help us see what is distinctive and important about forgiveness. Interestingly, however, our everyday language tends to run roughshod over these distinctions. For instance, a briefly popular recent news story recounted the story of a six year old girl who was bitten by a shark. After surviving the attack, she told reporters that she forgave the shark, and that she did not believe it meant to harm her. My instinctive response was critical: talking that way diminishes the idea of forgiveness by falsely imputing moral intentionality to a fairly unintelligent animal, against which it is hardly fair to hold a grievance for simply doing what comes naturally to it. In addition, the girl seemed to be equating forgiveness with excusing. Yet making use of the idea of forgiveness in these ways is far from idiosyncratic. Rather than criticize this child for applying the idea of forgiveness to creatures that lack the agential credentials necessary for forgiveness, I find it helpful to see her as a guide. Her comments suggest that she is properly making use of a popular idea of forgiveness—one more broadly accommodating than the one that began to be hinted at above. The “folk” concept of forgiveness she is working with involves the ideas that forgiving is not being angry at, or visiting retribution on, something that has caused you trouble. And she has rightly perceived that it is now common to justify forgiveness—meaning, not visiting a punishment or penalty on someone—on the basis that that one is not really to blame. I find it hard to make philosophical sense of the claim that one can forgive a shark, because sharks cannot be blamed for their behavior. But this story reflects a common way of thinking about forgiveness.

Consider the fact that my car insurance company believes in something they call forgiveness: as a platinum customer (because I have been with the company for over six years), I have “accident forgiveness,” which means that Progressive will not hold it against me if I have a minor or even a major car accident. Here the idea of forgiveness in play seems to be that of not visiting a penalty on someone for that one’s being involved in something regrettable. Whether the accident was my fault is not something that the insurance company seems to care about.

Thinking about forgiveness in these ways—ways that ignore the distinctions between condoning, excusing, and forgiveness— are now common, but they drain the term of its significance, avoiding the profound questions about grace in the midst of fault that the term has traditionally evoked. Such ways of thinking about forgiveness undermine the meaning and inspiration the idea of forgiveness still widely evokes. If this is all that one means by forgiveness, we might as well use other terms, which would seem to serve just as well. But it would be better to reserve use of the term forgiveness for times when something deeper than excusing is taking place.

So far, then, my argument is that the meaning of forgiveness has to be delimited in certain ways in order for us to do justice to the significance we attribute to the term. For forgiveness to provide a way towards a positive future, as Bishop Tutu as so compellingly argued it can, it must be something more than excusing, forgetting, or overlooking evil. This line of thought can only take us so far, however. One can agree that the concept of forgiveness should be marked off in significant ways, yet still disagree about the positive content of the term. Should we think of forgiveness as overcoming resentment for good reasons, as avoiding retributive practices for the sake of love, as a divine act of redemption through atonement…? Since we don’t all agree about what it means to forgive, it seems clear that the meaning of the term cannot be determined by grammatical fiat. Intuitions about the term’s meaning fall all over the map, and use of the word in common parlance is vague and confused. In professional work, too, the term has a variety of implications.

In view of these difficulties, one might simply stipulate a definition for the idea of forgiveness, and then see what sort of headway one can make in developing that idea. One might also pursue a number of ideas of forgiveness, exploring their various strengths and weaknesses, perhaps in the interest of finding one that would be best, or in the interest of applauding many of them. However, we can do better than hold to a kind of forgiveness-fideism. And we should aspire to do more than merely map intuitions, and the relations between them.

The Virtue of Hope

agomberg — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:25:04 GMT

By Nancy Snow, Science of Virtues scholar

Landscapes of Hope: The ‘What,’ ‘Why,’ and ‘How’ of Hope

Hope is a virtue studied by surprisingly many disciplines. My research reviews disciplinary literature on hope, with the aims of describing an integrated conception of hope that spans these literatures, and arguing that the core of this conception can be considered an Aristotelian-type virtue.

Integrated conception of hope: ‘Hope’ can refer both to an attitude toward particular ends and to a general disposition. To hope for a particular end is to perceive it as a good, desire it, regard its occurrence as uncertain – either probable or possible – and use imagination and agency in efforts to attain it. We can also describe hope as the general disposition of ‘hopefulness’ – a dynamic orientation toward the future, characterized by the general expectancy of positive outcomes and openness toward future possibilities, even when those possibilities outstrip our conceptual repertoire. As with hope for particular ends, imagination and agency animate and inform hopefulness. Hope has a complex and positive emotional tone, and is at home among a network of other emotions and emotionally toned mental states. Hope is social in nature in the sense that individual hopers are aided and abetted by social support. Hope’s motivational force can be profound. People who lack hope seem to lack zest for life. In a deep sense, then, hope, both in the sense of hope for particular ends, but especially in the sense of hopefulness, seems to be a sine qua non of human life and agency. Hope’s pragmatic rationality lies in its ability to motivate us despite sometimes overwhelming odds, though its ability to do this can be epistemically irrational. Hope has a religious or spiritual dimension that can enable hopers to transcend the difficulties of their situation, especially the feeling of entrapment or captivity. Hope in all of its complexity has been widely found to be beneficial to persons suffering from physical and mental illness, whether in the process of recovery and cure, in the ongoing management of chronic illness, or in the context of palliative care for terminal illness.

In the Christian tradition, hope is a central theological virtue, along with faith and love. Hope has an eschatological dimension, pulling Christians toward an afterlife with God, and energizing believers to work for the kingdom of God on earth. The logic of hope follows the logic of Christ’s death and resurrection: in moments of despair, entrapment, or captivity, hope appears to believers as a manifestation of God’s redeeming grace, reminding us of the horizon beyond human time and of possibilities beyond those immediately knowable in the present. For Jews during the Holocaust, God’s voice commanded them to hope; for post-Holocaust Jews, God’s command is the imperative to nurture and affirm their Jewishness, for in doing so, they deny the triumph of evil over the chosen people of God.

Anthropological studies show that hope can be a method of knowing. As such, it is a disposition of cognitive openness to new ideas, enabling the knower to have flexibility and receptivity, as well as patience, resilience, and perseverance. Ethnographic studies of hope across cultures teach us that hope is deeply embedded in cultural traditions and contexts. How hope is conceptualized, as well as its potential efficacy, depends upon the cultural assumptions and frameworks in which it is embedded. Pragmatic social hope, which extols the American democratic vision, is embedded in the cultural and political traditions of the United States. Philosophers and cultural theorists maintain that expanding democracy can both result from and foster hope across the globe. An important function of societies is to distribute hope to their members, thereby creating nations of carers. When societies fail to distribute hope, nations of worriers can result. The capacities of societies to distribute hope can be weakened by the forces of global capitalism, yet economic growth can, in some cases, foster hope and confidence. Hope can be nurtured in both macro- and micro-institutional contexts, and can be used to overcome fear in societies.

Various hope theorists regard hope as an innate feature of the human psychological economy, though some regard it as purely learned. A middle view is the notion that hope is both innate and shaped by environmental factors. A depth psychological account of hope locates it deep within human consciousness, but acknowledges that how we hope is shaped by our material circumstances. A distinction can be made between conceptions or definitions of hope, and modes of hoping. Twelve such modes have been identified in hope literature, with the suggestion that all of these modes are to be found in actual hopers.

Thirteen tenets of hope: The core of the integrated conception – what is essential to hope – can be expressed in thirteen tenets:

1. Hope is both innate and socially learned or shaped, where what is meant by saying that “hope is innate” is that hope has a neurophysiological basis in human beings, but is brought to expression through the interplay of biological factors with environmental, including social, influences.

2. How hope is conceptualized and how people hope, that is, modes of hoping, are contextualized within social, cultural, and religious frameworks.

3. The structure of hope is that it is a belief/desire complex, where one desires some ‘X,’ and believes it possible, but not certain, that one will attain it.

4. This structure is teleological and forward-aiming; hope moves us toward some future goal.

5. The ends for which we hope are sometimes difficult, requiring effort, resilience, and perseverance.

6. Hope is a powerful motivator, spurring hopers on to achieve their specific goals.

7. Hopefulness, or dispositional hope, is an attitude of openness to future possibilities. It is the sine qua non of a life of vigor, vitality, and engagement.

8. Good hoping contributes to effective personal agency.

9. Hope is positively emotionally toned, and clusters with other positive emotions and mental states, as well as with motivating traits such as resilience and perseverance.

10. Hope can offer its possessors many diverse benefits.

11. Hope is strongest when socially supported.

12. Societies are important distributors of hope.

13. There are different modes of hoping, that is, ways in which people hope, some of which have been identified by hope theorists.

Next on the agenda: Hope has traditionally been regarded as a theological and/or moral virtue. The next steps in my research agenda are to spell out how and why hope is a moral virtue and argue that it is also a civic and intellectual virtue. As well, I will investigate pathways for cultivating hope, and examine the phenomenon of false hope.

On Juvenile Justice

wattawa — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:40:58 GMT

by Alesha Seroczynski, Institute for Educational Initiatives, University of Notre Dame

Read more about Seroczynski's virtues project.

I recently read some disturbing statistics from studies conducted on juvenile death row inmates before the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juvenile offenders in 2005. In 2003, Chris Mallett, Public Policy Director at Bellefaire Jewish Children’s Bureau in Ohio, collected academic, psychological and socio-historical data on 53 of the 80 juveniles on death row. He found that 74% had experienced family dysfunction, 60% were victims of abuse and/or neglect, 43% had a diagnosed psychiatric disorder, 38% suffered from substance addictions, and 38% were indigent. More than 30% of those studied had experienced six or more distinct childhood traumatic events; all offenders averaged four such experiences (Mallet, 2003). In addition, 70% of those juveniles studied had been identified as either mentally retarded or developmentally delayed (MRDD), 25% of these early in grade school. By ninth grade, however, 30% of these death row juveniles had dropped out of school. Mallett found that this mitigating evidence was presented to juries in fewer than half of the offenders’ trials and often “only in a cursory manner” (Mallet, 2003, p. 456), despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that the “court must consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances in relation to both the crime and the offender” (Cothern, 2000, p. 3) when sentencing a juvenile.

This study only added support to a growing number of disconcerting findings about juvenile death row inmates. For example, Robinson and Stephens (1992) found that in addition to histories of poverty, abuse, addictions, and mental illness, one-third of 91 cases reviewed evidenced low IQ or borderline mental retardation. In an earlier study of 14 juveniles on death row (38% of the total juvenile death row population at the time), nine had major neuropsychological disorders, all but two had IQ scores under 90 (100 is average), nine had below average reading abilities, and three had learned to read only after arriving on death row (Lewis, et al., 1988).

I work with juvenile offenders at the other end of the continuum. Students in Reading for Life are first-time offenders; their hearts still p rick with guilt when they consider their crimes and the consequences realized by their families and community. Because nearly six out of ten first-time offenders return to court (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006), helping these kids make more virtuous choices is critical. It’s not easy, however; and for reasons related to some of the finding discussed above. For example, at least half of our students score below average in reading ability, and several have tested no better than a third grade reading level. Let me reiterate: 16- and 17-year-old high school students can read no better than the average third grader. For those of you with children, that’s an 8-year-old reading Junie B. Jones, which barely qualifies as a “chapter book,” and certainly is not a novel.

In our groups, we teach the students about seven classic virtues: Aristotle’s four (justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude), and Aquinas’ extension of those (fidelity, hope, and charity). We define each and use modern literature to help the students find ways to adopt and practice each of the virtues themselves. Justice, we tell students, is not just related to the law—justice is any judgment that is fair. To be just is to be equitable to all parties, whether the decision is coming from a judge, teacher, parent or friend.

So I ask you, does the sentencing of dozens of children with the psychological, social, emotional, intellectual and academic profiles given above seem just? It certainly did not to me. Instead it felt like some grand failure on society to intervene early and often enough to provide these kids with the counseling and educational assistance necessary to nurture them into productive members of society. I could almost see these kids in my mind, sitting in an empty cell (often for a decade or more), awaiting the date of their executions, mulling over and over the injustice of their birth, their parents, their schools—albeit, their lots in life. Shame on us!

No doubt there are many ways to slice the blame. Children who cannot read often have parents who never read to them (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002; van Steensel, 2006). In our project, we have encountered more than one student who remarks that our book is the first they have ever received. One girl even brought in a 12”x12” crate with about a dozen books in it and declared, “Look! I’ve started a library!” She was grinning from ear to ear. I nearly wept; my own children would need a semi-truck of crates to contain their personal library. Most of these families have to choose between food, utilities, and rent; books are an indulgent luxury—like rock candy and Christmas oranges during the Great Depression. We must do more to get books to these children, even in infancy.

Programs like Head Start and other low-income preschools (e.g., see monroecircle.com) have been phenomenal at preparing at-risk children for grade school; there is no doubt that preschoolers who attend quality Head Start programs perform better in kindergarten and beyond (Hindman, Skibbe, Miller, & Zimmerman, 2010; Lee, 2008; Zigler & Muenchow, 1992). But something happens to a lot of these kids, and we seem only modestly concerned. No Child Left Behind has done more for the industry of standardized testing than it has for struggling students; states have found a myriad of avenues to bypass NCLB standards. Instead of improving the quality of the educational setting for our nation’s students, NCLB has instead resulted in an almost universal reduction of state standards in order to satisfy NCLB requirements and maintain federal funding (Cronin, Dahlin, Adkins, & Kingsbury, 2007). In Indiana, third grade testing requirements are statistically significantly lower than those of eighth graders; 7% of Indiana middle school students who passed our ISTEP in third grade can expect to fail it by the eighth grade (Cronin, et al., 2007). This gives both educators and parents the impression that students and schools are doing better at the elementary level than they are as kids move into middle school. Moreover, students who pass ISTEP (Indiana Statewide Testing for Education Progress) in third through seventh grades may suddenly be confronted with an exam which they are no longer capable of passing, especially if they were already performing in a low-average range of academic achievement. I doubt that it is more than just coincidental that students can begin dropping out of school (and become significantly more delinquent) in ninth grade, just about the time that they can no longer pass the mandatory academic achievement examination. It is easy to have 100% pass rates, which are federal NCLB requirements, if along the way you lose the 30-40% of those who can’t cut it. This is a national academic injustice!

References

Cothern, L. (2000). Juveniles and the death penalty. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved from http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/184748.pdf.

Cronin, J., Dahlin, M., Adkins, D, & Kingsbury, G.G. (2007). The Proficiency Illusion. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Hindman, A.H., Skibbe, L.E., Miller, A., & Zimmerman, M. (2010). Ecological contexts and early learning: Contributions of child, family, and classroom factors during Head Start, to literacy and mathematics growth through first grade. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25, 235-250.

Lee, K. (2008). The effects of children’s Head Start enrollment age on their short- and long-term developmental outcomes. Social Service Review, 82(4), 663-702.

Lewis, D.O., Pincus, J.H., Bard, B., Richardon, E., Prichep, L.S., Feldman, M. & Yeager, C. (1988). Neuropsychiatric, psychoeducational, and family characteristics of 14 juveniles condemned to death in the United States. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 584-589.

Mallett, C. (2003). Socio-historical analysis of juvenile offenders on death row. Criminal Law Bulletin, 39(4), 445-468.

McGurk, N. (2008, October 17). Low graduation rate in South Bend a hot topic. The South Bend Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/31148759.html.

Robinson, D.A., & Stephens, O.H. (1992). Patterns of mitigating factors in juvenile death penalty cases. Criminal Law Bulletin, 28(3), 246-275.

Sénéchal, M. & LeFevre, J. (2002). Parental involvement in the development of children's reading skill: A five-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.

van Steensel, R. (2006). Relations between socio-cultural factors, the home literacy environment and children's literacy development in the first years of primary education. Journal of Research in Reading, 29(4), 367–382.

Snyder, H. N. & Sickmund, M. (2006). Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved from http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/nr2006/downloads/NR2006.pdf.

Zigler, E. F., & Muenchow, S. (1992). Head Start: The inside story of America’s most successful educational experiment. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons.

Among all Physicians, is there a Physician?

agomberg — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:40:41 GMT

By Farr Curlin, Science of Virtues Scholar

In his forthcoming book, A Case for Irony, philosopher Jonathan Lear explores Kierkegaard’s concept of irony to advance the virtue of ironic existence. Irony, as Kierkegaard used the term, arises from the fact that to be human is to put ourselves forward in our various social roles, e.g., as parents, students, worshipers, skeptics, scientists or clinicians. Lear notes that this putting ourselves forward implies a form of pretense. Humans literally pretend, and they pretend in terms of established social understandings and practices. For example, those who put themselves forward as physicians wear white coats and beepers, answer pages, ask questions of and touch patients in prescribed ways. They even depart from conventional norms in socially established ways. Some physicians forego the white coat, others the beeper, others even the physical exam. In all of these cases, the physician can give an account of what she is doing and why. Lear emphasizes that it is necessary and not to be caricatured that we put ourselves forward in these socially established ways.

Yet, in putting ourselves forward and giving an account of what we are doing, we are conscious that our account may be incomplete and that what we are doing may fall short. This consciousness establishes the structure of the ironic question, “Among all x, is there an x?” where x is any human practical identity. Consider the question, “Among all physicians, is there a physician?” What we might call the left-hand sense of physician is the social pretense. It includes all those who put themselves forward as physicians in socially established ways. What we might call the right-hand sense of physician is that toward which the pretense aims, but inevitably falls short. The right hand sense is what a physician (left hand sense) would be if her or she fully realized the practical identity toward which she aspires.

This concept of irony seems to have something to do with how we think about virtue with respect to any practical identity. Lear notes that although the structure of the ironic question is a tautology, we do not hear it that way. We recognize the ironic question as a genuine question, because we recognize that there is a potential gap between the left and right hand senses of all human identities and social roles. Although it would seem ridiculous to say, “That cat is really a cat,” it seems perfectly reasonable to say, “That physician is really a physician.” It seems reasonable because we know implicitly that among those who put themselves forward as physicians in the left hand sense, not all answer equally to the call of physician in the right hand sense. Virtuous physicians seem to answer the call better than most. We might say that virtuous physicians are those few, among all who put themselves forward as physicians, who are in fact physicians.

Ironic experience, Lear explains, happens in the first-person and involves two moments. With respect to medicine, the first moment happens when I become aware of a gap opening up between how I put myself forward as a physician and what I would be doing if I were to actually become the physician I am pretending to be. Irony’s second and paradigmatic moment involves what Lear calls “ironic uptake.” In this moment I am unsettled. I am shaken. I do not sense merely that I do not live up to the best socially established standards for medicine. Rather, I recognize that I do live up to the best socially established standards for medicine, and that is the problem.

Lear describes this second moment as uncanny: that which was familiar—being a physician—is rendered unfamiliar. I sense that all I have been taught about being a physician, and all of the practices available to me for living out that identity, fall radically short of what being a physician really requires. In this ironic moment, I am faced with new and radical questions: What is health? What does it mean to heal? Who are my patients? What am I seeking when I go about doing what I do as a physician? What is all of this accomplishing? Because of this second moment, Lear notes, Kierkegaard’s ironic observation that becoming human does not come easily “has less to do with the arduousness of a task than with the difficulty of getting the hang of it.”

In the same way, we might say that becoming a virtuous practitioner in any practical identity (including being human), does not come easily. It requires not only commitment to be living into the best socially available standards and practices for that identity. It also requires recognizing and responding well to irony—the experience of being arrested by a sense that all of the available social practices and norms for that identity fall radically short of what the identity actually requires. Those who possess the virtue of ironic existence will then detach from the current social pretense in order to engage in new social practices that more closely approximate the identity toward which those practices aim. In other words, the ironic physician will detach from the current social pretense of medicine in order to set out again in a quest to become the (virtuous) physician she is not yet.

Justice and Fairness

agomberg — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:14:24 GMT

By Laurie Santos, Science of Virtues scholar
Yale University

Imagine that you’re walking home from work one day when you’re approached by a researcher who asks you to do a quick study. You agree, and accompany him into a small computer lab. The experimenter explains that you’ve been paired up with a partner who’s currently waiting in another room. In the study, you and your partner have the opportunity to gain money as part of different allocations that you can win from the experiment. Your role will be to make a choice between the possible allocations for yourself and your partner. You are then asked to choose between two donation buttons. The first button, the experimenter explains, will deliver $90 into your bank account and $10 into your partner’s bank account. The other button will deliver a bit less to you— now just $60— but it will deliver $40 into your partner’s account. Which do you pick?

Over the past few decades, researchers used relatively simple choices like the one described above to explore the nature of one our most important virtues: our sense of justice. By varying the specifics of the choices— such as the payoffs given to the participant versus the partner— researchers have gained new insights into the principles that underlie our intuitions about justice. Using scenarios like these, researchers have learned that people around the world seem to base their choices on notions of fairness (see reviews in Camerer, 2003; Henrich et al., 2005). For example, most people will favor choices with payoff allocations that are relatively equal across the two partners (e.g., Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). Interestingly, people tend to prefer such equal outcomes even when they come at a substantial cost (see review in Camerer, 2003); people in the above scenario, for example, tend to prefer the more equal split $60-40 split to an option that gives them an unequally high payoff. People also appear to take into account factors other than mere equity when making their choices. Participants donate more money in cases in which their partners have contributed toward a common pool or otherwise worked to earn part of the payoff (e.g., Oxoby and Spraggon, 2008). In addition, people are willing to punish third parties who do not behave fairly even in cases where they stand little to gain from their punishment (e.g., Fehr and Gachter, 2002).

For those scholars of human virtue, these findings may be relatively unsurprising— to many thinkers, it may seem obvious that people will make choices about donations and allocations on the basis of their beliefs about justice. What is surprising— I would argue— is how easily we can tap into the specifics of these beliefs— the essential features of people’s notions about what’s fair and unfair— by using such simple experimental scenarios. One of my favorite things about the field of experimental psychology is just this— rather than having to speculate about the deep principles that underlie people’s notions of justice, we have methods for delving into such principles merely by using simple questions and scenarios.

Such methods have been invaluable for informing our understanding of adults’ intuitions about justice (see reviews in Fehr and Schmidt, 1999). In our current project, we’re using just this approach to get at an even trickier issue regarding people’s notions of justice: where these justice principles come from in the first place. As we’ve continued our interdisciplinary discussions about the nature of virtue, I’ve become more and more convinced that a complete understanding of human virtue will require more insight into the origins of justice principles, as well as other virtuous ideals and behaviors. To lay these basic questions out most clearly: Are people born with a predisposition to behave in ways that are just? Do people need only to be shaped by social experience and learning to develop just behaviors? Or does a sense of justice instead take a long time to mature, arriving in its adult form only through a lot of practice, intentional tweaking, and hard work? The answers to these questions have important implications for many aspects of our understanding of justice, and for the science of virtue more broadly. If it turns out that people gain a sense of justice (and perhaps other virtues) only through extensive teaching and experience, we would want to incorporate these insights into designing programs for enhancing fair behavior. Indeed, we would tailor our programs to incorporate exactly those experiences that growing children need to develop justice principles in the first place. In contrast, if some of children’s notions of justice are in place without experience or teaching, then we would need to take these more ingrained principles into account when designing ways to enhance children’s just behave as it matures into its adult state. In addition to its implications for policies, learning about the origins of justice (and other virtues) can also help our debates about how to define what it means to be virtuous in the first place. If children begin acting in accord with justice principles at the same time as they develop self-discipline and other aspects of cognitive control, then we might assume that these just behaviors were truly “virtuous” in the sense that they were performed willfully and through discipline. In contrast, if we learned that children are predisposed to act in ways that adults would say are just even without the capacity for self-control and discipline, then we might instead question whether these so-called just actions really qualify as virtuous to begin with. In this way, learning about the origins of justice principles and behaviors may inform debates about which behaviors are qualified to count as virtuous.

For all these reasons, understanding the origins of human justice principles is an important problem for a complete science of virtue. The trick, then, is finding methods to discover where these principles come from. After all, philosophers have debated this question for centuries and— at least historically—there has been relatively little philosophical consensus on this issue of how virtues develop in the first place (e.g., see Aristotle ca. 350 BC/1925; Rawls 1971). The good news is that experimental psychology has developed an empirical way that to explore conceptual origins: by investigating the behavior and decisions of young children and closely-related non-human primates. These two subject populations are ideal because they both lack the kinds of experiences that lead to the development of the virtues we see in adult humans. In this way, young children and non-human primates can provide a window into whether virtuous behaviors, such as justice principles, can be present in the absence of the kinds of experiences that have shaped adult human intuitions.

Using this logic, my colleague Kristina Olson and I have begun studying the origins of justice by investigating how four year-old children and capuchin monkeys make decisions about how to allocate resources. Do these populations care about equity and fairness even though they lack the sorts of teaching that adult humans have experienced? To test this, we’ve developed a version of the experimental donation task described above for testing adults that can be used with young children and non-human species. In the end, the task we came up with was pretty similar to the hypothetical one explained above. Children and capuchin subjects are each individually paired up with a partner and are then allowed to donate resources (different numbers of stickers in the case of children and different kinds of food treats in the case of monkeys) to themselves and their partners using a machine that delivers different payoffs. Just as in the adult human studies described above, we can vary the specifics of children’s and monkeys’ choices— such as the payoffs given to the participant versus the partner— to see if they too employ principles like equity, fairness, and so on. We can also vary other aspects of the situation— such as whether the subjects are anonymous— to explore whether these populations continue to make just decisions even when their actions can be performed without the presence of the usual social pressures.

Our experiments are still ongoing, but our studies have already revealed a few enticing hints about the origins of some of our most basic justice principles. First, our pilot data has shown that both children and capuchin monkeys seem to care about increasing their partner’s welfare when they are receiving a highly-valued reward. On average, both children and capuchin subjects seem motivated to provide the best possible reward for their partners when they’re obtaining a highly-valued reward. Capuchins, for example, are willing to give their partner a highly-valued grape instead of a lower-valued cucumber piece (see image above). In this way, capuchins appear to be motivated not only by their own rewards, but also by what happens to others. In addition, they act on this prosocial motivation, selectively delivering a higher payoff to their partners when they’re allowed to do so. In addition, our pilot data suggests that both populations seem to have the goal of increasing equity across themselves and their partners in cases in which their partner is watching their actions. However, our pilot data has also revealed some limits on these populations’ justice principles. Children, for example, seem to become much stingier in situations where they are anonymous. Indeed, children fail to make equitable choices when their partner can’t see them, often delivering the lower-valued reward to their partner no matter what they’ve obtained for themselves. Such results suggest both although both populations have some notions of justice in place in the absence of experience, they do always live up to these principles in their actions. These pilot results thus indicate that there may be an interesting role for behavioral shaping and cognitive control to play in the developmental of adult-like justice behaviors.

Although our pilot results are an exciting start, we still have a lot to learn about the origins of human virtue, both in terms of our current project on development of justice as well as a richer study of the origins of other virtuous behaviors. Excitingly, we also have empirical methods in place that can allow us to directly investigate the starting points of human virtue, both in terms of our early intuitions and behaviors. By gaining new insights into where virtue begins, we hope to contribute to the larger goal of shaping where our virtue end up and promoting increases in the virtuous behaviors of adults.

Photo:

A view of our capuchin subject’s choice: he can choose to give his awaiting partner (top right) either a less tasty cucumber piece (left) or a tasty grape (right). So far, our results suggest that capuchins are motivated to provide the higher valued reward, suggesting they have some prosocial motivations towards others

References

Aristotle (350BC/1925). Nichomachean Ethics. London: Oxford University Press.

Camerer, C. (2003). Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Fehr, E. & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137-140.

Fehr, E. & Schmidt, K. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817-868.

Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., et al. (2005). Economic man in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Science, 28, 795-815.

Oxoby, R. J. & Spraggon, J. (2008). Mine and yours: Property rights in dictator games. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 65, 703-713.

Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

The Virtue of the Virtues

agomberg — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:48:02 GMT

By Alesha Serocyznski, Science of Virtues scholar

This past week, a co-mentor, David, and I had a very interesting discussion with a group of high school boys. We are reading through the book Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi, a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Michael L. Printiz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. This captivating debut novel is about a very economically depressed, post-apocalyptic society where early American indentured servanthood and Darwin’s notion of survival-of-the-fittest assume new, and particularly disturbing, qualities.

In the opening chapter we meet Nailer, the adolescent male protagonist, and Sloth, his not-so-sluggish or dim female co-worker. Almost immediately, Bacigalupi creates a chilling and suspenseful situation where Sloth must choose between saving Nailer’s life or potentially garnering enough financial resources to free herself and her entire family from economic slavery. Needless to say, the parallel contemporary ethical dilemmas are endless.

But David put an interesting and provocative spin on our discussion by asking the boys what virtues each of the characters displayed in the scene, and one of our participants provoked even further contemplation by proposing that, in this instance, Sloth was hopeful.

“Hopeful?” I queried.

“Yea, hopeful,” he replied. “She had hope that the oil and money would make her a Lucky Strike, too. She would be rich and free. No worries, right.”

Fortunately, the boys were quick to recognize that Sloth had forsaken other equitably important virtues like fidelity, justice, and charity; and in doing so, eventually compromised the integrity of her misplaced hope. But this conversation gave me pause, primarily because I am as guilty as the next person of believing that the virtues are almost universally and ubiquitously good. This may not be the case, however, and this example compelled our group to think further about incidences when an overemphasis on one virtue compromised the merit of the others. Stop reading for a minute, and imagine comparable situations in your own life, or in our collective history…

Of course, I immediately thought of Hitler and his regime, whose fanatic fidelity led to the loss of millions of lives. Just one Socratic question pulled this response from another boy. A third noted an even more personal example—where fidelity to one’s friends can get you in trouble, expelled from school, even arrested. At this point I caught the eye of a fourth boy who had just shared with me before group that he was arrested two weeks ago for claiming ownership of a joint found in his sister’s car. Neither he nor I can predict what this act of familial fidelity will cost him over the next few years—jobs, educational opportunities, even his own hope.

Aristotle himself recognized the need for exercising all virtues in tandem (Nicomachean Ethics, 1941/350 B.C.); and both Jesus and Solomon warned us of the perils of misplaced virtue (John 5:45; Proverbs 11:23, respectively). Indeed, it seems that Solomon’s excessive fidelity to his 1,000+ wives and concubines compromised his own divinely-inspired prudence, and led to little hope and much despair at the end of his days (e.g., Ecclesiastes 7: 23-29; of course, most of us would question the prudence of so many alliances when so few of us today can remain faithful to just one).

I think this may be at the heart of many of our gut reactions this past month to Richard Miller’s proposal that sociopaths can be empathic. Doesn’t empathy imply a sort of virtue; that is, pursuit of the good for all (cf. the “good life” for just one person, i.e., the sociopath)? Perhaps Nancy Snow will take up this topic of hope as virtue versus vice, because it deserves a more critical and thoughtful discourse than I can generate in this blog. Certainly, I hope to generate caution among us scholars of virtue; that we are careful to remember that the over-reliance on one virtue can quickly lead to companionable vices. I know that in my project participants, I want to generate the virtue of hope that is part of a collection of virtues—a virtue tool belt, we tell them—that will help them exercise temperance in their fidelity, prudence in their charitable justice, and fortitude in their own life hopes and dreams—for the collective, not just the individual, good.

References

Aristotle. (1941). Nicomachean Ethics. In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle. New York: Random House. (Original work published 350 B.C.).

Holy Bible, new international version. (2002). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

19th century Iban and the Locus of Flourishing

agomberg — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:32:34 GMT

By Daniel Hruschka, Science of Virtues scholar

Today with a population of more than half a million, the Iban of Borneo are heirs to 15 generations of intrepid pioneers who spread their way of life throughout the island’s northwest coasts and rivers. Traditionally, the Iban farmed rice and hunted, living in impressive wooden long-houses in groups of 100 to 200 people. Iban praised and immortalized exemplary men as “wealthy and courageous”, qualities that not only helped these men and their families, but also promoted flourishing in their long-house and their tribe. Notably, such men excelled in three spheres of activity—farming, pioneering, and prior to the imposition of Dutch law in the early 20^th century, the taking of human heads.

I do not imagine that anyone reading this post would approve of head-hunting. From our perspective, killing another human being is horrific and inexcusable (although some of us may entertain conditions when it is appropriate!). Thus, at first glance it is tempting to dismiss the Iban case as irrelevant for a science of virtue. On the contrary, I argue that diverse cross-cultural cases, like that of the Iban, provide important material for honing our own definitions, intuitions, and understandings of virtue, and for clarifying what we mean by core concepts of ‘flourishing’ and ‘excellence.’

For the purpose of this post, let us focus on flourishing. If the central themes of Iban festivals and mythology are any indication, Iban assessed flourishing in several ways. Flourishing families and communities were harmonious and were rich in rice, children, and something we might call spiritual energy. All of these goods reinforced each other, but an important part of fostering these goods was through the taking of human heads. If a community member were fatally ill, the blood from a killed human might cure the malady. If a deceased community member was stuck in limbo, taking a human head would permit the deceased to become dew, thus nourishing the land for future rice harvests. If a community member’s head had been taken, then the person’s soul had become a slave in another place for another people, and the only way to set that person free was to take a head from the captor’s community. All of these were reasons for taking heads.

Rather than an unreflective convention or a narrowly self-interested activity, taking heads was aimed at promoting the flourishing of one’s self, one’s family, and one’s community. Indeed, not taking heads when a community member (alive or deceased) was in need, would have been cowardly at best and immoral at worst. Moreover, a good head-hunter possessed many of the character traits laid out by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, including bravery, temperance, generosity, justice, and practical wisdom.

So why is a good head-hunter not a paragon of virtue? I argue here that this depends on how we answer important questions about our bounds on flourishing. In short, flourishing for whom? It is important to note here that indiscriminate killing was not acceptable among the Iban. Indeed, killing a fellow group member was equivalent to incest. It upset the universal order and could lead to sterility, in terms of offspring, rice production, and the future taking of heads. On the other hand, individuals outside the group were fair game. From our modern mindset, this seems horribly parochial, limiting the locus of flourishing to a small, select set of human beings.

However, even prominent philosophical accounts of virtue have circumscribed (often implicitly) the locus of flourishing. Aristotle started off his Nichomachean ethics focusing on the good for an individual and for a city (p. 3), and in other work defends differential treatment for slaves. Alisdair MacIntyre more recently defined the locus of flourishing as the “whole set of social relationships in which we have found our place” (p. 108). According to this definition, if Aristotle had grown up among the Iban, and had found his place in a set of tribal relationships, perhaps he could have justified taking the heads of outsiders as long as it was for the “common good.” Rather than promoting smug self-approval, the Iban case should also provoke us to examine our own implicit biases in who deserves what and when and whose flourishing matters. Who do we think should have access to healthcare, to citizenship, and to our charity? How do our daily habits, from our driving routine to our consumer purchases, negatively affect individuals and communities that conveniently lie outside of our immediate gaze? If we hope to define virtue in terms of its effects, specifically whether and how it promotes flourishing, we will need to examine how we define the locus of flourishing. Is it our species, our long-house or some place in between?

Forgiveness and Justice

agomberg — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:18:33 GMT

By: Kathryn Coe, Ph.D., Science of Virtues scholar, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis

Craig T. Palmer, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia

Introduction

In our study of forgiveness, one aspect that has seemed to emerge consistently is how the processes for the resolution of conflict differ between small-scale, tradition-based societies and larger groups, including the early nation states. The behavioral rules of conduct that are found in more traditional societies, and the systems that support those rules, appear to be aimed at promoting enduring, cooperative relationships among individuals who are identified as kin. The system promotes forgiveness and reconciliation by requiring people to talk things through so that social relationships can be repaired and will continue and that, in an important sense, no one loses. In nation states, traditions largely have broken down and behavioral codes govern interactions that center on the exchange of goods and services that occur between non-kin. In such societies, the behavioral codes, as Jones (1997: 167) writes, “define and protect individual rights” and “dispense justice.” Individual rights and justice are often at the expense of enduring, cooperative relationships; they mean, according to former Chief Justice, Arthur Goldberg “that you consent to lose” (cited in Holthaus, 2008:25). As these early states typically included multiple kinship-defined traditional societies (e.g., a number of distinct tribes), they were vulnerable to splitting along these kinship divisions (van den Berghe 1981); consequently, a fundamental change in the rules of conduct and the system supporting those code was required. These changes included forgiveness being replaced by punishment.

Nearly anywhere you look in the anthropological literature you will see references to “traditional” societies. The use of this term implies that in the midst of the seeming chaos of cultural diversity in the world, there exists a recognizable dichotomy between traditional and nontraditional societies. Although this dichotomy is obviously actually a continuum, it provides a useful place from which to approach the cross-cultural study of rules of conduct and of forgiveness. The cause of the emphasis on forgiveness in traditional societies can be found in the definition of tradition as cultural behaviors copied from ancestors. Thus, traditional societies are those in which cultural behaviors tend to be have been copied from ancestors for many generations. These copied behaviors included not only the rituals that are recognized as being stereotyped and repeated from one generation to the next, but also the everyday behaviors related to subsistence, and most importantly, social interaction.

Although some traditional kinship-based societies are small, the tradition of passing descent names from ancestors to descendants over many generations enables some traditional societies to become very large over a period of many generations, as large numbers of kin are identified explicitly. As van den Berghe and Barash (1980:404) explain, unilineal descent “can be seen as a cultural adaptation enabling up to millions of people to organize.” In societies like the Tiv, we find “the whole population of some 800,000 traces descent by traditional genealogical links from a single founding ancestor” (Keesing 1975: 32-33; see also Evans-Pritchard 1951:29).

While traditions that dictate the use of descent names make it possible to identify, as kin, large numbers of individuals, other traditions that encourage enduring cooperation with those kin are necessary to produce the cooperative social relationships that form these individual kin into a society (Coe, 2003; Palmer and Steadman 1997). By enduring cooperation, we mean cooperation between individual that lasts over the lifetime and that then is transmitted to the children of the respective parties. These strategies including the use of the arts, including storytelling, and moral systems.

The ethnographic record is replete with evidence that ancestors have passed on such moral codes, sometimes referred to as tribal or ancestral law, to their descendants. Rattray (1929:3) writes that the origin of moral codes are ancestors, who “from time immemorial,” were the “primitive custodians of the unwritten, uncodified, unclassified rules of conduct.” Primitive law was ancestral: “All of it [primitive law],” Culwick and Culwick (1935: 8) write, “is neither more nor less than the rules of behaviour ordained by the ancestors” (see also Hoebel 1949: 366), and codes are said to “be based on the practices of one’s own ancestors” (Edel & Edel, 1957: 87). These rules often have no other justification than “we do it this way because the old men say it is wiser” (Sun Chief, 1942: 268), or “it was the custom of their ancestors” (Tylor, 1891: 252), and it is now our “duty” to our ancestors to behave the way they specified (Johnson, 1984; Westermarck, 1912).

The ancestors who gave the rules are said to still participate in social life, rewarding those who obey and punishing those who violate their rules (Santos Granero, 1991), a claim that may be universal in all traditional societies (Steadman et al. 1996). Middleton states that among the Lugbara, “the rules of social behaviour are the ‘words of our ancestors’” (1960:27). Santos Granero (1991: 226) reports that even today, tribal people such as the Peruvian Amuesha, claim that “’yi’ (morality), which promotes such kinship responsibilities as love and generosity,” is crucial to the existence and perpetuation of harmonious and enduring social relationships. “Immoral” behaviors, in contrast, are those that are “antisocial,” demonstrating selfishness or “greediness or meanness” (Santos Granero, 1991: 226) in their “disregard for kinship duties and failure in one’s duties towards other fellow Amuesha” (p. 45). Selfish behaviors are the ones that require forgiveness and forgiveness is a crucial part of the moral behavior prescribed by ancestors for their descendants to follow. For example, it is the first trait listed in the Ndembu’s “concept of the ‘good man’ . . . who bears no grudges, who is without jealousy, envy, pride, anger, covetousness, lust, greed, etc., and who honours his kinship obligations . . . [and] respects and remembers his ancestors” (Turner 1979: 374 emphasis added).

In contrast, in a non-traditional society the laws and the procedures that are designed to identify guilt and seek justice through fines and punishment that matches the judged severity of the crime may damage, irreparably, enduring social relationships (van Baal, 1981). In the many parts of the world where traditional moral codes continue to exist within a non-traditional punitive legal system, it is possible to observe people using the two systems on the basis of whether or not the people involved are kin. That is, the type of relationship in which individuals are involved (kinship or non-kinship) affects the manner in which conflict is resolved. Breaches in enduring kinship relationships,or social relationships that had a “time dimension…are not amenable to handling through law” (Yrgvesson, 1978: 83). Collier (1973) found that in her work with the Zinacantecan of southern Mexico that if individuals wished to preserve a valued relationship they would avoid legal procedures and seek traditional procedures that make reconciliation possible. This is because strong punishment and “revenge denies the presence of social ties” (van Baal, 1981: 106). To resolve problems and allow social relationships to continue, settlements will typically “restore the victim of the crime to his status and give the criminal the opportunity to be reaccepted as a member of the group by his atonement” (van Baal, 1981: 106).

Due to their very nature, relationships based on traditions cannot be instantly reinstated. It is, however, possible to learn about consequences of certain aspects of traditions, such as their ability to encourage forgiveness, and then implement mechanisms resembling those aspects in a way that produces similar consequences, such as increased forgiveness, in modern societies.

References:

Coe, K. (2003). The Ancestress Hypothesis. Newark: Rutgers University Press.

Collier, J. (1973) Law and Social Change in Zinacantin. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Culwick, A. T., & G. M. Culwick (1935). Ubena of the Rivers. London, G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

Edel, M. & Edel, A. (1957). Anthropology and ethics. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Evans-Pritchard, E. (1951). Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer. Oxford University Press.

Hoebel, E. Adamson (1949). Man in the primitive world. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Holthaus, G. (2008). Learning Native Wisdom. Lexington: University of Kentucky.

Johnson, O. (1984). Ethics. (5^th ed). New York: Hold, Rinehart, and Winston.

Jones, O. (1997). Law and Biology. J. Contemp. Legal Issues, 8: 167-208.

Keesing, R. (1975). Kin Groups and Social Structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Turner, V. (1979). Divination as a phase in a social process. In Reader in Comparative Religion (4th edition, W. Lessa and E. Vogt, eds.). New York: Harper Collins. pp. 373-376.

Palmer, C. T., & Steadman, L. B. (1997) Human kinship as a descendant-leaving strategy. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 20(1):39-51.

Rattray, R. S. (1929). Ashanti law and constitution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Santos Granero, F. (1991). The power of love: The moral use of knowledge amonst the Amuesha of Central Peru. London: London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, 62: The Athlone Press.

Steadman, L. B., Palmer, C. T., & Tilley, C. (1996) The universality of ancestor worship. Ethnology 35 (1): 63-76.

Sun Chief (1942). The autobiography of a Hopi Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Turner, V. (1979). Divination as a phase in a social process. In Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Perspective (4th edition, W. Lessa & E. Vogt, eds.). New York: Harper Collins. pp. 373-376.

Tyler, E. (1960, first published in 1881). Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Van Baal, J. (1981). Man’s quest for partnership. Netherlands: Van Gorcium.

Van den Berghe, Pierre L. 1981. The Ethnic Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier.

Van den Berghe, P. & Barash, D. (1980). Inclusive fitness and human family structure. In Selected Readings in Sociobiology (J. H. Hunt, ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Yrgvesson, B. (1978). The Atlantic fisherman. In The Disputing Process in Ten Societies (L. Nader & H. Todd, eds.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 59-85.

Virtue: A Normative Concept

agomberg — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:47:44 GMT

By Gilbert Meilaender, Science of Virtues Scholar
Valparaiso University

In order to think about the possibility of a science of virtues, we must, of course, reflect on what we mean by virtue. In the simplest sense virtues are dispositions to act in certain morally good ways. Thus, a courageous person is disposed to face danger without fleeing, and we would be hesitant to characterize as courageous someone who runs away from danger. Yet, strangely enough, a person characterized by courage might in some circumstances flee from danger without causing us to doubt that he possessed the virtue. Although fleeing is not itself a courageous act, the one who flees might nonetheless have the virtue. And, on the other hand, a person who lacked the virtue of courage might on occasion face danger without fleeing. Sometimes, therefore, we will discover no perfect fit between virtuous character and a disposition to act in specific ways.

A little better characterization of virtues is to think of them as something like skills that we acquire through habituation. The pitcher who throws a low strike over the outside corner of the plate may just be lucky. If, however, he can do it time after time--habitually--he has acquired a skill. Virtues are something like that, though also a bit different. They are not simply skills that, like technical competence, enable us to carry out a particular task with proficiency; rather, they are skills that fit us for life generally. Acquiring virtues is more like learning to drive a car than it is like merely being able to parallel park. Driving requires a capacity to respond in fitting ways to countless circumstances that arise along the way, not just the ability to carry out a single maneuver.

This account of virtues as something like skills more closely approximates a reasonable description of what we mean by virtue, but even habituation cannot be the complete story. It is hard for a pitcher to become skilled, because throwing that low, outside strike is inherently difficult, no matter how badly he wants to throw it. In virtuous action, however, much of the difficulty may come precisely from what we want, from our own contrary inclinations. If I deliberately throw a pitch outside the strike zone, that does not mean I lack the capacity to throw a strike. But if I deliberately cheat the opposing team, I seem to lack a certain virtue. Thus, virtues are not only habitual; they also, as Philippa Foot put it, engage the will in a way that skills do not.[i]

We should not pit habit and will against each other, however. If time after time I willfully cheat the opposing team, a day may come when I do so habitually--and can no longer find my way back to virtuous behavior.

Perhaps, then, we should say that, as skills engaging the will, virtues are traits of character that shape who we are and what we see. Virtue and vision will be inextricably intertwined. As Stanley Hauerwas once put it, “as persons of character we do not confront situations as mud puddles into which we have to step; rather the kind of ‘situations’ we confront and how we understand them are a function of the kind of people we are.”[ii] On the one hand, our vision of human flourishing will be shaped by the virtues or vices that mark our character. On the other, we will regard as virtuous only those traits that help to form a life we think praiseworthy. There is no normatively neutral ground to be found here.

Take, then, a simple question at the heart of my own project, a question that becomes more rather than less puzzling the longer I think about it: Should we devote our energy and resources to work that aims to retard human aging and to extend indefinitely the maximum life span of human beings? Vision and virtue will intertwine as we puzzle over such a question. If we are formed by virtues such as patience, hope, and love, how will they shape our sense of what goals are worth seeking? And will not our vision of what constitutes a flourishing human life help, in turn, to determine whether we think such traits are virtues or vices?

[i] Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 7-8.

[ii] Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 114f.

Virtues and Three Layers of Human Personality

agomberg — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:35:15 GMT

By Dan P. McAdams, Northwestern University

In the two conference calls we have had, I was struck by how discussion regarding the nature and definition of a virtue might connect to current ideas in psychological science regarding the structure of human personality. For example, the distinction between habituation and human free will (from the Power Point slides for 1/11/11) maps roughly, I think, onto a distinction that has been at the center of personality psychology for over 100 years – that between stylistic behavioral traits on the one hand and human motives on the other. Can a virtue be but a habituated trait? Or do we require an act of will and choice – some kind of motivated decision – in order to make an attribution of virtue? My reading of personality psychology suggests that virtue may be perceived from at least three different standpoints. I call these the standpoints of actor, agent, and author. Each reflects a particular layer of personality structure.

If we assume that human beings evolved as social animals striving to get along and get ahead in group life, then it makes good sense to suggest that personality is first and foremost about the characteristics of the social actor. From the first few weeks of life, human infants engage in social performances, long before they are even aware of themselves as actors on a social stage. Their performative styles are strongly driven by inherent temperament tendencies – differences in recurrent mood for example (e.g., positive affectivity), tendencies toward approach and avoidance (e.g., behavioral inhibition), and the like. Over the course of many years and repeated gene X environment interactions, these temperament differences morph into dispositional traits, such as extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and so on. Individual differences in dispositional traits show remarkable longitudinal stability in the adult years. Dispositional traits form the most basic layer of personality, characterizing an actor’s recurrent and recognizable style on the social stage. Basic traits such as conscientiousness (encompassing tendencies such as perseverance, discipline, and self-control) and agreeableness (encompassing tendencies such as altruism, nurturance, and niceness) carry a strong moral cachet in human groups, suggestive of virtue. A person who is dispositionally high in agreeableness, therefore, may be seen by others (and by the self) as habitually caring and compassionate. Might we not call this an attribution of virtue? In this case, the “habitual” nature of the behavior is less about learning a “habit,” research suggests, and more about actualizing one’s genetic potential, given the high heritability of dispositional traits. My younger daughter (age 24) is habitually nice, sincere, and caring – not every minute of every day, of course, but often, more often than most other social actors out there. It is no surprise that she has chosen nursing as a profession. By contrast, my older daughter (generally low on agreeableness) scores off the map on the high end of conscientiousness. People admire her virtues of perseverance and hard work. An important point here is that we do not need a language of choice, will, or motivation to characterize my daughters – or anybody, for that matter – from the standpoint of the social actor’s dispositional traits. To the extent that we see these traits expressing virtue, we may wish to conclude that habitual social behaviors that carry strong moral cachet, as recurrently performed by certain social actors across many different social arenas, may be enough to qualify as the expression of a virtue, even without a language of moral choice. Call it virtue lite, perhaps. Virtue as habitual social performance. But if William James was right when he characterized habit as “the great fly-wheel of society,” then we should not underemphasize the importance of those dispositional traits that lead to everyday virtuous performance.

Human beings are social actors from the beginning, but eventually they are more, too. In the middle-childhood years, a second layer of personality begins to form. Recurrent personal goals (things I want to achieve today, tomorrow, in my life) begin to layer over dispositional traits in the elementary-school years, as personality begins to express itself from the standpoint of the motivated agent. Human beings may be goal-directed from birth, but it is not until middle childhood that consistent individual differences in children may be seen with respect to the goals, plans, programs, and projects they lay out for themselves – desired ends to which they orient their will. At this point, the language of agency – will, choice, decision – becomes a legitimate part of personality discourse. Goals layer over traits in personality; goals are distinct from traits, and cannot be reduced to traits. Ten-year-old Kristen is a highly outgoing and impulsive girl (social actor: trait) who has decided that she wants Jesus to come into her heart, wants Erika to be her best friend, and hopes that her estranged mother and father will reconcile (motivated agent: goal). Unlike traits, goals orient the personality toward the future; they are expressly teleological constructs, and therefore carry connotations of planning, choice, decision, and so on. Some goals suggest virtue – either in terms of their content (my New Year’s resolution is to be a more caring husband) or by the complicated or conflicted calculus that the agent plays out in his or her mind in an effort to come, say, to a morally defensible decision. We might say, then, that as a motivated agent, a person expresses virtue when he or she intends to achieve a virtuous end, decides, wills, strives, or acts in accord with a plan to achieve something good. You don’t need the language of traits to capture this meaning of virtue. The motivated/Layer-2 sense of virtue is not about habitual social performance. It is instead about the decisions and choices people make, the goals they decide to pursue, the motivated plans and programs that shape their future behavior. Of course, dispositional traits may influence goals, and goals may, over the long haul, become so “habitual” in a person’s life that they come to influence traits. Still, traits and goals are distinct personality constructs, reflecting the conceptual distinction between the person as a social actor and the person a motivated agent.

In young adulthood, a third layer of personality begins to form, even as dispositional traits and characteristic goals and motives continue to develop. In order to meet the demands of what the famous psychoanalytic theorist Erik Erikson described as ego identity, the young adult must develop a self-affirming and integrative story for his or her life. We become autobiographical authors in late adolescence and young adulthood, as an emerging life story comes to layer over goals, which layer over traits. As a person develops a story for his or her life, he or she extends the self back in time as well as forward, reconstructing the past and imagining the future in such a way as to confer upon life a sense of unity and purpose. A person’s internalized and evolving life story –what personality psychologists often call a narrative identity – provides a convincing explanation for who I was, how I came to be who I am now, and where my life is going in the future. A life-narrative perspective on virtue moves us beyond habitual social performance (personality as actor) and self-chosen virtuous goals (personality as agent) to consider, perhaps, a virtuous life writ large – a career in virtue, living out a virtuous narrative for one’s life. Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, have argued that virtues may be instantiated in the stories of people’s lives. What does this mean? It means more, I think, that doing good things and making good decisions. There is something here about the good life, in a broad sense. Thinking about personality from the standpoint of the autobiographical author may introduce terms and ideas that are worthy of this third especially expansive and challenging meaning of virtue.

Sources:

McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press.

McAdams, D. P., & Olson, B. (2010). Personality development: Continuity and change over the life course. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 517-542.

On Exercising Temperance

agomberg — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:25:32 GMT

By Alesha Seroczynski, Science of Virtues scholar

This last month I was invited to read to three fourth grade classes at an elementary school in our area. Like most schools in our district, over 60% of the students at Nuner Elementary participate in their free or reduced-lunch program—a pretty good indicator of familial low or poverty-level income. The staff at Nuner had organized a Celebration of Reading Event and several prominent local personalities were invited. I was humbled to be among the South Bend School Corporation superintendent, the mayor of South Bend, local non-profit presidents, several popular and long-standing newspaper, radio and television journalists; even members of a local college’s basketball team. I think I got the nod because a former student currently words at Nuner

I never turn down opportunities like these, though, because I so enjoy trying to get children to think on a more virtuous plane. My go-to novel on such occasions is invariably Kate DiCamillo’s (2003) The Tale of Despereaux. Now—much like my elementary students—if you’ve seen the movie (probably with your children), you have in no way fully experienced the beauty of this Newberry Medal winner. I always fast forward to chapter three where Despereaux’s brother and sister attempt to train him in the finer-points of mousehood—like the art of scurrying and the culinary joys of a well-glued novel. Despeareaux, as you may know, is not any ordinary mouse though. He is much more interested in the brilliant light streaming through the stained glass windows than scampering across the castle floor; he would far prefer to actually read the words written on those tasty pages. And in so doing, he discovers a greater purpose. He discovers virtue. To be virtuous, though, DiCamillo reminds us that sometimes we must not succumb to the pressures of those around us; and that often “an interesting fate…awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform” (p. 25).

In settings like these, kids rarely just want to be read to; they want to know the reader. They asked me what I do, where I work, how long I went to school for that. In one class, a particularly bold young man asked me if I make a lot of money as a professor. “You know,” I said, “something important that I have learned in my 40+ years is that if you are doing what you love, the money will take care of itself.” He seemed quite taken aback.

When we got to the end of Chapter 3, I asked them what it means “to conform.” They quickly understood classroom rules and the importance of conforming to those. When I asked them to think of a time when not conforming would be a good thing, however, they were stumped. I brought the group back to this boy’s early question about income. “What does society say about money?” I asked. They quickly knew that they were supposed to make a lot of it. “What if we did not conform?” I probed. “What if we just said we don’t care what other people are making? What if we just do what we love, what we know will be for the good of all people—regardless of how rich we get? Now, that would be ‘not conforming’ for a good reason.”

This is a tough concept for kids today to absorb, and no wonder. We adults can hardly grasp it ourselves. In the last two decades, America has become more than a military superpower. Our national consumer spending is so excessive we make the rest of the world look like kids in a peanut gallery. Consider these figures produced by the New York Times in 2008, just before our economy tanked.

Moreover, the size of our country does little to account for our excesses. Only one country (Norway) spends more per capita than we do on electronics, and only four countries (Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Finland) spend as much per capita on alcohol and tobacco products as the U.S. We are, without a doubt, leading the world in per capita spending on clothing, household products, and recreation (The New York Times, 2008). In 2007, we spent over $1,000 in each of these three areas per person annually.

The market “crash” of 2008 hardly slowed us down. Despite the fact that we hear almost daily reports about our sluggish economy and trepid consumer spending, our GDP (i.e., Gross Domestic Product; a measure of the dollar value of goods and services produced and consumed within a given time frame; Sherman, 2010) has actually returned to pre-recession levels (The Associated Press, 2010). Moreover, in the midst of the “Great Recession” our own GDP was almost as high as all 27 members of the European Union, as well as the combined total of 170 countries not included in the top 12 producer/consumers (International Monetary Fund, 2010). And although unemployment continues to hover around 10% nationally (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010), and less than 2% of our population is considered “wealthy” (i.e., earns more than $250,000 annually; Leonhardt, 2010), we continue to spend like there is no tomorrow. On this most recent Black Friday, the New York Times reported that “American’s are shopping selfishly again” (Clifford, 2010).

I am not an economist, and I acknowledge that these are complicated issues; but I am a developmental psychologist, and I know for certain that if we do not provide our children with an alternative economic model, we could be witnessing the beginning of our own capitalistic end. No consumer-driven-only economy in the history humankind has ever survived. Certainly, what the Great Recession has done more than anything is accentuate the growing disparity between the rich and poor in America. Allan Ornstein (2007) agrees, and in his book Class Counts: Education, Inequality, and the Shrinking Middle Class, he notes that “capitalism…if left unchecked and unrestrained, … leads to vast inequalities, augmented by Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, and a host of get-rich schemes, as well as by the perverted notion that greed is good …” (p. 80).

Greed is not good. We must not want more to get more. We must want more to do more good—that is the virtuous path of a temperate personal, national, and international economy.

References

Clifford, S. (2010, November 26). “Shoppers flock back to the malls to hunt deals.” The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/business/27shop.html?scp=3&sq= black%20friday&st=cse.

International Monetary Fund (2010, October). World Economic Outlook Database; Nominal GDP list of countries; Data for the year 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/ 02/weodata/index.aspx.

Leonartdt, D. (2010, December 5). “What does $60 billion buy?” The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/what-does-60-billion-buy/?scp=1&sq=consumer %20spending%20by%20country&st=cse.

Ornstein, A. (2007). Class Counts: Education, Inequality, and the Shrinking Middle Class. Plymouth,U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Sherman, H.J. (2010). The Roller Coaster Economy: Financial Crisis, Great Recession, and the Public Option. London, England: M.E. Sharpe.

The Associated Press. (2010, November 23). U.S. Economic Growth Revised Higher. National Public Radio. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2010/11/23/131536297/u-s-economic-growth-revised-higher.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2010). Unemployment rate. Retrieved from: http://www.google.com/ publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate.

What your global neighbors are buying. (2008, September 4). The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/04/business/20080907-metrics-graphic.html.

Empathy and Virtue

agomberg — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:12:42 GMT

By Richard Miller

Principal Investigator: Virtuous Empathy: Scientific and Humanistic Investigations

Inquiry into matters of empathy and virtue must proceed today on polemical note. What should prompt disquiet is the fact that recent discussions of empathy romanticize the concept and thus contribute to confusion about both empathy and aspects of moral theory. Call this romanticized picture the “folk concept” of empathy. According to the folk concept, humans and perhaps non-human primates have natural tendencies that enable pro-social behavior. Empathy thereby serves an explanatory function: it provides a causal story for why humans and non-human primates carry out one or another form of altruism. One key piece of evidence in this account is that humans and some non-human primates appear to have natural tendencies to exhibit care for another in situations of distress. Another key piece of evidence is that children at a very young age exhibit a keen desire to track and mimic the affective expressions of their caretakers. These data conspire to suggest that humans have strong dispositions to place themselves in another’s shoes and exercise appropriate care as a result. Scholars who champion this folk notion often encourage the cultivation of empathy as a recipe for promoting other-regarding actions as a way of addressing society’s ills. And the cultural dissemination of this account is not trivial. President Obama seemed to presuppose this folk concept when he identified empathy as a trait he would like to see in a Supreme Court Justice nominee.
But this folk concept is deficient for three reasons. First, it fails to indicate what makes empathy obligatory. The concept thus lacks an account that indicates why, on moral grounds, we should want to be empathic, or what it is about empathy that would lead us to fault an agent whose actions lack empathic qualities. The folk concept of empathy makes it a matter of talent or fortune.

This first deficiency implies a second: the problem of determining what passes for a morally praiseworthy trait, and why. In order to address that question, it is necessary to have a free-standing idea of what constitutes morally praiseworthy or morally blameworthy behavior. That is to say, such an account should provide reasons that identify what it is about empathic behavior that renders it morally admirable. Simply identifying a disposition to imagine another’s point of view, for example, does not articulate what it is about such imaginings that we’d want to admire or cultivate. It fails to indicate what would make an empathic disposition virtuous. Sadists are empathic insofar as their pleasure derives from 1grasping the pain they impose on their victims, but that fact hardly renders their actions morally commendable. Indeed, psychopaths seem especially adept at adopting another’s point of view as a means of manipulating their victims. Folk concepts of empathy routinely ignore such unsavory examples.

A third problem arises from the fact that the concept of empathy often does two kinds of work. It is sometimes deployed to provide answers to theory of mind questions: how is it that we imagine or take up the views of another? At other times it is deployed to provide answers to pro-social questions: how is it that we act altruistically? But these two questions need to be kept distinct.

All of these matters invite inquiry into empathy that seeks greater conceptual precision than is currently the case. Identifying differences between empathy and virtue will help us understand how, and on what terms, an ethical empathy, or an account of empathy as a virtue, is possible.

1 See C. Daniel Baston, “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related by not Distinct Phenomena,” in The Neuroscience of Empathy, ed. Jean Decety and William Ickes (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2009), 3-15.

Part 2: On Juvenile Justice

agomberg — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:24:10 GMT

by Alesha Seroczynski

University of Notre Dame

If you read my last Science of Virtues blog (http://scienceofvirtues.org/forums/p/512/519.aspx), you know that I ended with the supposition that students in Indiana could pass our state achievement exam (the ISTEP) in the elementary years and then, without any changes in educational environment and/or individual learning ability, suddenly begin to fail the achievement exam in middle school or early high school. This is due to the fact that, when held against a nationally standardized exam like the NWEA, the ISTEP becomes increasingly more difficult—at grade level—with each passing year.

This summer I met a student during one of our intake assessments who is experiencing this very same phenomenon. As his mother was recounting his educational background, she became increasingly despondent about her son’s middle school experience. “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “He used to do O.K. in school; he used to pass the ISTEP. But recently he just doesn’t seem to be able to [pass it].” He has not been diagnosed with any learning disability, and subsequently has no individual plan for academic assistance. I asked if anyone had noted the trend and stepped in to intervene. “No,” she replied. “No one has said or done anything.” She seemed very defeated.

As a result of academic marginalization, this boy, and so many others like him, become increasingly ambivalent about school and detach from the process. He attends school regularly, but doesn’t always understand class lessons. He tries hard, but can’t quite pass most exams. Eventually, he feels set up to fail, and knows that options for his future are narrowing with each passing semester. Both he and his mother can sense the injustice of the situation and know that the boy is heading toward high school failure or dropout, yet they feel incapable of obtaining assistance. Some do try to get help; but they find themselves embroiled in a mass of paperwork and meetings—if they are even able to get that far. They hardly understand the professional vernacular and feel shunted by overworked and underpaid teachers and case managers. After months or years of academic setback, immobility, and failure--much like Seligman’s dogs (1975)--some youth just give up. When pressed by his grandmother about obtaining assistance from school officials or continuing to work with our mentors to improve his academic situation, another student in our project apathetically replied, “That’s just someone else to disappoint.” Our public school system simply is not fair.

Of all the virtues, Justice is one that our students seem to thoroughly, almost intuitively, understand. They know that many of their academic environments are unjust, although they can hardly appreciate the long-term effects of a state- or nationwide educational system that has failed to adequately prepare them for life. Unfortunately, school districts that fail No Child Left Behind standards go for years in a decrepit state of academic affairs before officials step in to remediate the situation. Indeed, the most dire school system in our area has seen three superintendents fail at reforming area schools in the amount of time it has taken one student to move from kindergarten through high school [which, unfortunately, many of them do not; the graduation rate in South Bend, Indiana’s public schools was a paltry 62% in 2008 and an improving 71% in 2009 (Bien, 2010)].

Some school administrators and teachers are fighting back, however, refusing to succumb to the racial, gender, and socioeconomic pressures that might fate students to a lifetime of academic injustice. One such school, Urban Prep, is located in the shadow of the University of Chicago in the south-side neighborhood Englewood (see www.urbanprep.org). For the past four years Chicagoans have watched closely as Tim King and a group of African-American education, business, and civic leaders developed this all-male, all-African American, public charter school filled with impoverished students [95% qualify for free or reduced lunch (Briggs, 2007)]; and most have been stunned by, and even skeptical of, its success. Whereas only 44% of African-American boys graduate from high school in Chicago—just below the national average of 47% (Schott Foundation, 2010)—and only 30% go on to college (Ryu, 2008), Urban Prep has managed to graduate 70% of its starting freshmen, and get 100% of those 107 students into over 100 four-year colleges and universities. Even more impressive, these students were randomly selected to attend Urban Prep with a lottery system, and only 4% were reading at grade level when they started (Zorn, 2010).

In an interview with Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn (2010), King attributed his school’s success to four key elements: respect, responsibility, ritual, and relationships. These four Rs have provided a foundation on which a group of lost youth can begin to build a new, more hopeful future. I would argue that it is this key virtue—Hope—that Tim King and his teachers have been able to instill in these boys over the past four years. Hope that there is more than the poverty-stricken, drug-infested, gang-controlled existence that most of these boys know as life. Hope that they will become their family’s first college graduate. Hope that they will one day be an agent of hopeful change for another at-risk youth. As one recent Urban Prep graduate reflected: “I see [guys I grew up with] doing their own thing, or hanging in the streets, just smoking and drinking all day. I try to tell them there’s something better than that.” This same young man concluded, “It’s hard to say how they’ve saved my life, but they have.” (Cohen, 2010). Kudos to you, Tim King, and all Urban Prep faculty! You have reestablished justice in an unfair academic community and set a hopeful bar high. We would all do well to try to reach it.

References:

Bien, K. (2010, January 8). Graduation rates surge for area schools. The South Bend Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/81010482.html.

Cohen, S. (2010, June 27). 100 percent of school’s first class college-bound. The Associated Press. Retrieved from http://www.urbanprep.org/media/apArticle_June2010.pdf.

Eldeib, D. (2010, May 25). Urban Prep’s signing day: It is a big deal. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/05/urban-prep-signing-day-celebrates-classroom-achievement.html.

Ryu, M. (2008). Minorities in higher education 2008: 23rd status report. Washington, D.C: American Council on Education. Seligman, M. (1975). Helplessness. San Francisco: Freeman.

Schott Foundation for Public Education. (2010). Yes we can: The Schott 50 state report on public education and black males. Retrieved from http://www.blackboysreport.org/bbreport.pdf. Zorn, E. (2010, May 27).

Experimental inner-city, all-boys school gets a grade of ‘incomplete,’ for now. The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ ezorn/2010/05/urbanprep.html.

New Science of Virtues Winners: Press Release and Video

wattawa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:01:39 GMT

From the News Office of The University of Chicago:

Scholars initiate research to ‘jumpstart new field of inquiry’ on virtues

March 15, 2010

by William Harms

The sciences, the humanities and religion all provide perspectives on what constitutes good behavior, according to scholars leading the New Science of Virtues project and awarding grants to researchers at Chicago and other institutions to further explore the subject.

“The project,” said Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor in the Divinity School, “is an attempt to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore the question of virtue and establish an organized, coherent body of knowledge, thus, creating a ‘science’ of virtue.

“It doesn’t mean that everything about virtue can be tested in a laboratory, but rather it passes certain tests of coherence and logic, makes sense, and has data to support certain kinds of conclusions,” said Elshtain, a co-principal investigator. Other co-principal investigators are Don Browning, the Alexander Campbell Professor of Religious Ethics and the Social Sciences Emeritus in the Divinity School, and Howard Nusbaum, Chair of Psychology, who also is scientific advisor for the project.

The New Science of Virtues project, generated by the interdisciplinary research incubator on campus called the Arete Initiative, welcomed 40 scholars from such fields as philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology and economics to present potential studies at a January conference. Researchers of 19 of the proposed projects were chosen to share $3 million from the John Templeton Foundation to pursue their research.

“The goal of the New Science of Virtues Project is to try to jumpstart a new field of inquiry,” Nusbaum said. UChicago scholars whose projects were chosen are:

James Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, whose team will look at “The Virtue of Self-Control.” This study will examine how self-control develops as a way for people to perform worthy activities and overcome less-worthy rival goals.
Farr Curlin, Assistant Professor in Medicine, and his team will undertake a study titled “The Good Physician.” This project will be the first national, longitudinal study of the moral and professional formation of American physicians over the course of their medical training. Curlin and his team will be examining the various forces at work during the training of physicians that have an impact on the development of a good or virtuous physician.

Scholars said the interdisciplinary nature of the research will help them explore the topics more thoroughly.

“I had a deep sense of what a pleasure it would be to learn from people who are so deeply formed in a discipline that I only know at a very surface level,” Curlin said. “Their understanding can inform my work, making it much more precise, and then, in the end, come up with interpretations and inferences that are really sound.”

The project leaders also expect that the scholarly community established around the topic of virtues will stimulate a whole new conversation. “One of the goals is to get a wide academic and cultural discussion going,” Browning said.

The New Science of Virtues project website, www.scienceofvirtues.org, will facilitate this goal by providing a public platform for scholarly conversation.

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO.

Click here to view the list of winners.

Photo by Jasmine Kwong.

How do I use the New Science of Virtues website?

wattawa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:45:40 GMT

The New Science of Virtues website was designed as a research networking tool for virtues scholars and as an information hub where virtue-related news, events, and publications are regularly posted. The website will be updated to reflect the work of the Science of Virtues Research Network as individual research projects progress and as new ideas and lines of inquiry emerge. In addition to communicating the relevance of A New Science of Virtues to a broader audience, the website is in place to encourage conversations and potential collaborations among scholars from multiple fields worldwide. To that end, interested investigators may create personal profiles and communicate with one another on an international level. Anyone may become a website Network Member by registering here.

The website has many features that would be of interest to scholars, research scientists, and thoughtful lay readers:

•   Profiles: Creating a profile page allows other scholars to find you. Your profile may include your education, affiliation, a link to your website, your recent publications, research interests, a photo, and a short biographical sketch. When you add your research interests to your profile, the website creates text hyperlinks that allow you to generate a list of all other Network Members who have listed the same research interest.

•   Discussions: Bloggers are currently being recruited for the website. To blog, please send an inquiry to virtueswebsite@uchicago.edu. While there is a permissions process for submitting content to the blog, any Network Member may post comments in response to any blog entry by clicking the “Add Comment” button on the right-hand sidebar of the Discussions Tab.

•   Publications: Current publications are updated regularly. Network Members may post publications of their own or one of another author that may be of interest to other virtues scholars. You may do this by clicking on the right-hand sidebar button, “Add Publication”, located on the Publications Tab. Please restrict your postings to peer-reviewed journals in this section. If you want to post a pdf file directly to the website, please contact virtueswebsite@uchicago.edu.

•   News: News items that relate to the virtues are regularly updated as well. This part of the website serves to connect the research being done in this project to other current research and events. Again, any Network Member may post a news item by clicking on the right-hand sidebar button, “Post News Release”, located on the News Tab.

•   Research: This part of the website will be dedicated to communicating the progress of the research that is funded by this project. Videos, project summaries, and updates will soon be posted in this space.

•   RSS Feeds: You may choose to be informed when new blog entries, publications, or news items are added to the website through a Google Reader or similar application. On the News, Publications, and Discussions Tabs you may do this by clicking on one of the “Subscribe” links under “Syndication” in the right-hand sidebar.

If you have any problems using these features, please do not hesitate to send an email inquiry to virtueswebsite@uchicago.edu.

-Joy Wattawa, Assistant Director of Communications, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, The University of Chicago

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons.

Why a "science of virtues?"

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:56:53 GMT

The Science of Virtues Request for Proposals grew out of a consultation in May 2007 sponsored by the Templeton Foundation called “A New Science of Virtue.” Organized and chaired by Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, the consultation brought together an interdisciplinary group of the world-class scholars and scientists to think through the possibilities of a new “science of virtue.”

One consensus of the consultation was that a key to advancing the study of virtue lay in developing fruitful interrelationships between the sciences and the humanities. For example, among philosophers, which questions would benefit from scientific research, or a more thorough integration of our understanding of human neurophysiology? Among scientists, which scientific theories or programs require perspective and guidance from the humanities, such that scientists know they are asking the right questions in the first place?

The “Science of Virtues” RFP was inspired by theories that synthesize traditional notions of virtue, narrativity, and human psychobiological tendencies such as those of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (1999), Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another (1991), Owen Flanagan’s Varieties of Moral Personality (1991), and Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur’s What Makes Us Think? In the sciences, research has helped clarify the way cognitive capacities and social experience interact to shape moral behavior (Donald Pfaff, Antonio Damasio, John Cacioppo, Michael Gazzaniga). However, researchers such as Jonathan Haidt have argued that there is still a tendency for cognitive and social neuroscience to reduce morality to neural systems that have clear parallels to the dominant moral principles of modern liberal democracies, thereby giving no scientific account of virtue concepts found in the Western past as well as of most of the rest of the world (Haidt, “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion,” Edge, 2007). We hope that developing collaborations between the humanities (including theologians such as Stephen Post and Don Browning) and the sciences will help researchers in disparate traditions gain new perspective by taking serious the implications of findings within those traditions.

With this hope in mind, RFP leaders chose to change the title from “A Science of Virtue” to “A Science of Virtues” in order to de-emphasize traditional views of virtue as transcendent or necessarily universal. Modern virtue theory, especially when engaging with theories from the empirical sciences (including the social sciences), should not ignore calls for awareness of the philosophical, cultural, and historical assumptions inherent in scientific practice. Likewise, virtue theory in the humanities should not ignore the philosophical implications of research in the neurosciences.

Above all, we seek extremely creative proposals for how the sciences and humanities might draw from one another to understand “virtues” for modern society. We would like to emphasize that there are many scholars within the fields of psychology, religion, and philosophy working on virtues. However, one of the goals of this RFP is to stimulate highly original and creative work in fields that might not normally engage with such a question. We are not seeking to merely add to the existing traditions in virtues scholarship (that would happen without us). Current funding mechanisms do not typically allow, for example, computer scientists, engineers, microbiologists, or physicists to ask questions about virtue. We are passionate about providing opportunities for scholars with totally new approaches in fields that might not otherwise engage in this conversation. We leave the definition of “virtues” open. Anything less would undermine our hope to foster creativity and innovation in constituting a new field of inquiry.

- Joy Wattawa, Assistant Director for Interdisciplinary Outreach and Communications, Arete Initiative, University of Chicago

Information for this entry was taken from an unpublished Literature Review written by Don Browning, Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Ethics and the Social Sciences, the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.

Photo by Gaetan Lee.