I’m going to address two points that make this article look very weak. The first major objection is the study that is referred to at the beginning of the article. There biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t imply generalizability at all. Doris, however, takes the findings to represent the entirety of the human race. It’s hard to tell how well the study was actually constructed and how applicable it would be today (the study was from 1975) since there is almost no information given about the study. For instance, maybe all the subjects were collected on a Wednesday afternoon and the only people frequenting the phone booths were of more similar profession or personality than Doris wants you to interpret.
On a more fundamental level the use of this data at all doesn’t sit right with me for the following reason. Doris states that if virtue ethics ignores this data by saying that virtue ethics isn’t descriptive but ideal instead, then virtue ethics is giving up a (necessary) part which is that it is applicable and practicable for anyone. My problem with using this data, then, is that people in one society might differ from people in another society. Does this make one society weak to Doris’ objection and the other invulnerable? I think instead the study might be an indication that the group of people sampled (and maybe our whole society) is lacking in virtue and needs to better itself. Virtue ethics needn’t say people can’t be wholly virtuous, but rather that they aren’t currently and we have some significant catching up to do.
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4 comments:
Questioning the validity of Doris' research, and trying to tackle her argument through such a means, I believe is weak in itself. Doris is a Psychology professor whose research complies with standard psychological survey standards, regardless of whether the study was done in 1975 or 2008, the validity of the research is not something trulely questionable unless one has significant proof otherwise. For psychological research to be published and then used in class, would not one assume that the research was conducted in coherence with survey standards?
I think that what this study shows is that while Virtue Ethicists commonly only concern themselves with standing character traits, occurent moods that are readily influenced by outside forces will prompt the non-consistent individual to act in contrast to one's character trait. So much so that the sheer amount of occurent fluctuations of the vicious nature, or at least, unvirtuous nature, would perhaps grow to become standing traits. Seeing this, it seems to me that society presents the individual with numerous instances to justify non-virtuous action on the account of stress, guilt, or unhappiness that they experience on the account of non-human interacting experiences, such as not getting a dime from the phone booth. In effect, the individual chooses to wallow over monetary issues (even the slightest) than to be a virtuous or flourishing individual. I think the most pertinent question then is what kind of society conditions and places such a high value on monetary and material objects to such a point that a human individual actively chooses to sacrifice helping the dignity of oneself and of a fellow human because the value of materials is so great that the individual simply believes he cannot function in such a virtuous manner in a given particular situation? A society that does a bad job at educating and conditioning individuals to value human worth and virtue over monetary causes.
I absolutely believe that these questions are relevant to modern philosophical debate based on the reasoning previously stated.
In response to your first objection, I find that I would have to agree. I think it would be useful to have a larger sampling of the population and a similar but different experiment that would reproduce the same results. I find if the experiment would recreate the same results I would tend to be more persuaded. But nevertheless, it is a very interesting finding. If it is true, I think there are greater ramifications than she believes.
For your second objection, I don't think different societies would matter. If you refer back to the notes, Doris explains that the data was broken down by the sex of the subject. So, it may not necessarily be the case that there are less virtuous people in our culture. Simply put, I don't think there is enough information about the experiment for us to make any kind of claim like the one you're making. Because it could have been the case that maybe they ran out of dimes, or other such trivial things.
However, if that isn't what you are referring to, and actually mean that only our society would have such data. What Doris is referring to is a part of human nature, how every human being responds in a situation. While human cultures may have differences, the way in which people respond would be the same. This isn't a heavy moral question; it only asks the question would you help someone when their papers are dropped. I think that in every culture this would be considered a polite action. And so, the behavior from the experiment wouldn’t be able to say that any one society would be more virtuous unless their results are vastly different.
Like John, I trust the validity of the experiment Doris refers to. But I think in his use of the experiment, Doris is lacking in a important element (something both John and Gary allude to): what, specifically, is the difference between those subjects who found the coin and those who did not? What function does the coin play?
"I think...the study might be an indication that the group of people sampled (and maybe our whole society) is lacking in virtue and needs to better itself." I agree this could hold true for the 26 subjects who "did not help," but it does not acknowledge the 15 subjects who did make the compassionate action. Don't they demonstrate virtue? I would have liked Doris to say not just that they do, but to provide a hypothesis as to what is going on in the mind when that person finds the dime--why it leads to beneficence.
John seems to propose it's a "monetary" issue: that greed or poverty (however minimal) gets in the way of good action. I think it may have less to do with the money per se than the fact that some good has happened. I don't believe the people who walk away with a time are happy at their new wealth; they are happy at their good luck.
I find it plausible that when one is in a good mood, he's more likely to do good for others. I suppose this correlates to Doris' claim that the situation, not the disposition of the agent, will usually determine his behavior.
While it can seem suspicious that the specifics of Isen and Levin’s experiment were not disclosed by Doris in his paper, I do not see a need to question its validity. The study seems to be authentic, and it is likely that specific efforts were made (provided Isen and Levin are decent scientists) in order reduce the possibility of tilting the data. But since the study itself was not the aim of what Doris was trying to say, but was rather simply a side note to support his point, it is understandable (and not suspicious) that he left out the details. Additionally, Doris might state that the spread of time of the study does not matter; he states on page 508 that “because the preponderance of our life circumstances may involve a relatively structured range of situations, behavioral patterns are not, for the most part, haphazard.” This being said (or written, I guess), Doris would likely attribute the results not to a similarity of personalities that passed the phone booth on Wednesday, but to the circumstance itself. If this were true, then the spread of time during which the experiment was conducted would not matter.
Regarding your second objection to Doris’ paper, it seems contradictory to me to reject situationism by saying a study that supports it is too exclusive to one society. My understanding of Doris, at least, was that he would say a person can be influenced by several situational factors, among them, what the majority how of one’s peers act (p. 509). I could easily be wrong, but I feel that Doris would concede these peers in turn could be influenced by different situations unique to their own culture. So, how a majority acts could vary from culture to culture in different situations, a possibility you seem to acknowledge in your blog post when you state that people in different societies may vary. However, if virtue ethics were “applicable and practical to everyone,” in the sense that every person could possess the same virtues, the exclusiveness of the study wouldn’t be a problem: test the virtue of one society, and you’ve tested them all. Though a broader experimental range would have been better for the sake of statistics (which could actually have helped to disprove Doris), by suggesting that other societies be experimented upon as well it, undermines the Aristotelian thought that virtues are universal.
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