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Is Situationism All Bad News?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

LUKE RUSSELL*
Affiliation:
University of Sydneyluke.russell@usyd.edu.au

Abstract

Situationist experiments such as the Milgram experiment and the Princeton Seminary experiment have prompted philosophers to warn us against succumbing to fear of embarrassment and sliding down slippery slopes. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that situationism is all bad news for moral agents. Fear of embarrassment can often motivate right actions, and slippery slopes can slide us away from wrongdoing. The reason that philosophers have seen situationism as bringing all bad news is that they have focused on the very demanding moral goals of virtuous and autonomous action, while ignoring important moral goals that are less demanding. Fear of embarrassment does undermine virtuous and autonomous action, but that very same fear can help us to act resolutely and rightly, and allows us to manipulate would-be wrongdoers into doing the right thing. This is good news.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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19 It is very unlikely that the results of the Isen and Levin mood-effect experiment or the Matthews and Cannon noise-effect experiment can be explained through fear of embarrassment. Sabini and Silver argue that they can discount such effects, because the affected behaviour – helping people to pick up papers – is not ‘a very important manifestation of a moral trait’ (Sabini and Silver, ‘Lack of Character?’, p. 540). Yet ethics is not concerned only with the very important manifestations of moral traits, but also with minor right and wrongs and the performance of comparatively trivial and supererogatory virtuous acts.

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43 Some people will reject the claim that the achievement of any one of these goals on its own is good, claiming instead that the value of the various goals forms some kind of organic unity. It could be argued that correct judgement is good only when the agent resolutely acts in accordance with that judgement, although this does not fit well with the common view that the akratic person is better than the vicious person who not only acts wrongly but makes false moral judgments (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1150b29). More plausibly, it could be argued that synchronic resoluteness is good only when the agent has judged correctly. After all, it is worse, all things considered, when someone who has made evil plans has the resolve to carry them out. However, the most plausible view is that there always is something good about the achievement of each of these goals independently, but that, in the overall evaluation of an action or a person, this good can be greatly outweighed by the harms that sometimes are produced by the achievement of these goals.

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48 Thanks to Michael Smith and John Doris for giving valuable feedback on this article.