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5 - Judging Character

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

John M. Doris
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Summary

It was not that remarkable at all, if you thought about it.

Raymond Carver

One response to my position is an incredulous stare: It would be more than remarkable, this unflinching gaze implies, if our time-honored notions of character were so empirically undersupported. At the same time, I risk bored yawns: The sort of behavioral variability I've been going on about is familiar to everyone, including the character theorist. Then I must beware the dreaded “Oh yeah?”/“So what?” dilemma: All philosophical positions look false on some readings and uninteresting on the others (Sturgeon 1986). In this case, the “oh yeah”er flatly rejects situationism, while the “so what”er denies that situationism pressures a suitably nuanced reading of characterological moral psychology. Given the evidence, I'm confident that “oh yeah” represents a doomed heroism; the situationist tradition has progressed beyond a point where cavalier dismissal is an intellectually responsible retort. Nor does “so what” seem particularly promising; major strains of both characterological moral psychology and personality psychology feature commitments unsettled by situationism. But this is not yet to say that these commitments are widespread outside the academy; maybe people's everyday conception of moral personality is more sophisticated than that of those who write about character for a living. Rather than making arguments with broad resonance, perhaps I've merely scored a few points in a game of academic ping-pong. This conjecture evinces an appealing populism, but it wants for evidential support, as will become clear with a survey of the experimental literature on person perception.

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Chapter
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Lack of Character
Personality and Moral Behavior
, pp. 92 - 106
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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  • Judging Character
  • John M. Doris, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book: Lack of Character
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139878364.006
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  • Judging Character
  • John M. Doris, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book: Lack of Character
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139878364.006
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Judging Character
  • John M. Doris, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book: Lack of Character
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139878364.006
Available formats
×