Words&Dirt

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Moral Psychology series represents the sole source of truly academic writing that I’ve managed to keep up with since college. When I was contemplating applying to graduate school back in 2012, the field of moral psychology was my target niche, so reading these books over the years has been a way of catching up with my former self, and also of gesturing at imagined selves that might have been. And while it is fun to revisit that dynamic once more, my main takeaway is to marvel at just how far afield my intellectual concerns have strayed from certain ideas and debates that used to enthrall me.

All five volumes in this series have been worthy and difficult reads, and this fifth installment, Virtue and Character, is no exception. The overarching goal of the series is to record and display interdisciplinary discussions that strive to exert meaningful influence on how we think about morality and the human mind. As Daniel Lapsley aptly puts it, “Psychologists who want to get their ethics right and philosophers who want to get their facts straight encouraged common effort to do empirically responsible moral philosophy and philosophically responsible moral psychology. This volume is one illustration of that effort” (171).

The structure of these books is interesting in that the reader encounters not only a coterie of dense articles addressing each volume’s main themes, but is also treated to brief responses from other academics from various fields (usually psychology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience). Each article is followed by two responses from suitable interlocutors, and capped off with a final response to the responses from the original article’s author(s). The result is a lively simulation of good-natured agreement and debate––a formalized version of what one might hope to witness during Q&A sessions at academic conferences. This is a great strategy for rendering tough articles more accessible to nonspecialists. For one particular chapter in this volume, I didn’t understand one jot of the author’s argument until I read the responses, which gave much-needed succor without which I may have remained shackled to my own intellectual limitations.

It would take an unforgivable word count to properly cover all my responses to the many ideas contained here, so I’ll just focus on a few that stood out. The first of these is my discovery of Situationism, a psychological position that posits the nonexistence of stable character traits, instead arguing that human behavior is driven primarily by reactions to whatever situation(s) we find ourselves in. On this account, one could not be considered a “good” person who would remain virtuous regardless of context, but only as someone who has reacted in a “good” way to many different types of situations (or maybe a very limited range of situations).

Although I find situationism interesting, I think it illustrates how esoteric these explorations can become in academia. Certain types of distinctions I used to relish now deflate my engagement; I find myself thinking: If I approve or disapprove of someone’s behavior based on fair observation, does it really matter whether that behavior is a result of a stable character trait or just a result of that person reacting to a particular situation? While I can imagine some significant examples where this distinction might prove germane (e.g. I would expect someone with strong and stable character traits to remain consistent if thrown into a new and challenging situation, whereas I might be more skeptical of such consistency if I apply a situationist approach), for the most part I simply don’t care if “character” exists in some strict sense. I just want people to be more patient, peaceful, and contented, and to learn to flourish without trampling on the flourishing of others. Such goals are not easily achieved, and I am not convinced that answering the kinds of questions situationists like to ponder is the right way to achieve them.

I feel similarly about the problem of moral motivation. Prima facie, motivation matters a great deal for moral calculus (e.g. instinctively, I would want a longer prison sentence for a person who plans and enjoys an act of murder and a shorter sentence for someone who takes a life in a crime of passion). However, given my adherence to material determinism, which I wrestled while reading the previous volume in this series, I actually don’t care that much about motivation. If people were always going to do what they end up doing, which I believe, then caring about motivation might have important consequences for emotional life, but should be irrelevant when trying to formulate practical solutions to difficult problems. Obsessing over motivation, which is ultimately impossible to prove given that we can’t directly interface with another person’s mind, might just distract us from crafting workable responses to societal ills. Another thought I had was that perhaps caring about motivation corresponds with tribal lines (i.e. I care a lot about the motivation(s) of people in my in-group, but not as much about the motivation(s) of people in my out-group). I’m not convinced that’s necessarily a helpful or ethical framework with which to approach the world, but it may be an important descriptive element of how humans intuitively gauge the importance of motivation.

I heartily enjoyed learning about Batson’s notion of “moral hypocrisy,” which he defines as “motivation to appear moral while, if possible, avoiding the cost of actually being moral” (21, emphasis his). This jives with the situationist outlook, for if people are merely concerned with appearing moral then they will craft their moral life according to acts that help them appear “good” in various situations, rather than cultivating habits/traits that are consistent throughout all social domains (there’s an obvious connection here to the act of virtue signaling).

I found myself instantly relating to this idea, which in turn freaked me out and caused me to examine my moral behavior in a new way. It’s definitely true that I value the appearance of being moral very highly, and while I’m still not sure if I value it over and above actually being moral, I’m not comfortable ruling that out completely (which makes me quite uncomfortable indeed!). The cost of being truly moral in the modern world is huge and hydra-like, and it doesn’t help that we don’t have anything close to a unified definition of what being “truly moral” even looks or feels like. I always value ideas that make me uncomfortable enough to question my usual modes of thought, and there’s no doubt that I’m hooked on the feeling of appearing moral in the eyes of others while simultaneously trying to minimize the cost of appearing so. That makes me a moral hypocrite, I suppose, but if that’s true then I think I’m in good company. Hard to think of anyone who doesn’t meet that definition in one way or another. At any rate, it is healthy to be reminded of the unambiguous truth that focusing on actually being good or doing good (however one defines it) is superior to simply appearing so.

In my favorite article of the bunch, Jayawickreme and Fleeson push back against moral hypocrisy and situationism with some fascinating and cutting-edge research. Their central argument is that, even if the expression of moral behavior is flexible and sensitive to context, individuals exhibit a remarkable consistency over time that (at least partially) rescues the idea that humans possess moral character:

Generally, everyone routinely acts in a wide range of ways on a given dimension of behavior, yet different people’s ranges of behaviors are centered on different portions of the dimension, and each individual’s center remains very stable across large periods of time. (85)

In other words, if you take a random sampling of my behavior, it will be impossible to predict with any reliability whether I will be, for example, kind, cruel, intolerant, or generous in any particular moment. But if you examine how often I tend to exhibit those behaviors over time (i.e. the number of instances that I exhibit kindness, cruelty, intolerance or generousity in a given week, month, year, etc.), my overall behavior will be very consistent. This shows how humans are situationists in one sense, but also that we simultaneously possess moral characteristics that have some form of reliability and stability. It also leaves open the possibility that people might occasionally (or often) do the right thing even if they won’t be observed or praised for it, thus doing away with any strong claim that we are all merely moral hypocrites in the end. Although I think there are some potential problems with Jayawickreme and Fleeson’s research methodology, which depends largely on subjects self-reporting their behavior, I found this research extremely compelling and convincing; I hope their findings are bolstered as research in the field progresses.

The last topic I’d like to discuss here is the important consequences of this book’s contents for identity politics. This type of political ideology/activism, which arose and persists for entirely legitimate historical and contemporary reasons, has recently become a vicious generator of enmity and derision in American political and social life. Our national debate is shot through with the painful (and sometimes desirable) question of whether and in what context it is appropriate to focus on commonality or difference when articulating and trying to solve collective problems. It is a messy situation made worse by increasing radicalism on both ends of the political spectrum, and I’ve watched with dismay over the last year or two as communication surrounding these issues has become less and less rational. To my deep regret, I’ve jumped into the foray one or twice in a fashion that makes me cringe in retrospect.

Regardless of political leanings, it does no one any good to ignore empirical findings about the potential consequences for a society that carves itself into increasingly-parochial identity groups with often-conflicting agendas. Positing identity features as the central locus of political life exacerbates and accelerates the drawing of in-group/out-group boundaries. This makes it more difficult for people to understand and accept one another, and also undercuts our ability to fruitfully challenge each other and cultivate progressive growth. Empathy and compassion are limited resources, so we must think critically about how they can be best allocated. Cameron and Rapier explain:

Intergroup biases in compassion shift depending on how people construe the breadth of their social groups and the norms that these groups prescribe. Research on the common in-group identity model (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2000) finds that encouraging people to recategorize out-groups as part of a common in-group increases compassion and helping. (384)

If we accept this finding, then we should also accept that the opposite is true: when we recategorize members of a common in-group as part of an out-group, then we can expect compassion and helping to diminish. This need not imply that such acts of recategorization are categorically undesirable (they may even be necessary in some cases), but should make us wary of trends that encourage ever-finer distinctions between identity groups and the formation of ever-smaller and more peculiar tribes. A society with that trend at its core will necessarily relinquish its ability to craft a vision of the common good, and will eventually become incapable of reaching civil compromise when designing legislation, distributing economic resources, and creating norms for social engagement.

In their response to Cameron and Rapier, Montgomery, Kappes, and Crockett cite research demonstrating that people are less likely to read and respond appropriately to the distress cues of out-group members vs. those of in-group members––another dampener on our ability to extend compassion to those different from ourselves (413). Cameron and Rapier then posit a potential solution:

Encouraging people to feel similar to others in non-conscious and subtle ways––such as establishing behavioral synchrony with another person––can increase compassionate behavior toward that person (Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2011). In this way, our readiness to feel compassion parochially can actually be used to “bootstrap” a higher level of compassion for those who are not related to us. (432-3)

So, not only is the continual proliferation of out-group distinctions potentially harmful, but the softening and/or dissolution of those same distinctions can be salutary. America (and Earth in general) has this dynamic completely backwards at the moment, and the immediate result is an explosion of internecine struggles between people and groups who have much more in common than their respective ideologies lead them to believe. Meanwhile, the global elite is exploiting these petty conflicts in order to perpetuate its plundering of the ecosystem and political/economic institutions, and using the profits to build castles to withstand the coming storms––natural and anthropogenic alike. Citizens seeking to make a positive difference should seek to reverse this trend with all the intelligence and energy they can muster.

Okay, that’s more than enough soapboxing for one morning. I’ll sign off now. Many thanks to Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller for putting this volume together, and to all the contributors as well. Despite falling down a few rabbit holes that didn’t quite seem worth the trouble, it was a fun ride.

 Rating: 7/10