1. I agree that there is nothing semantically tricky about the broad claim that ethical theories ought to take into account what people are like. What I do think is semantically tricky is the *particular way* in which it is claimed that virtue ethics does not take the findings of situationism into account. Someone who wishes to dispute virtue ethics can phrase the findings of situationism in the following manner: “Empirically, people do not have stable characters of the type hypothesized by virtue ethicists.” However, someone wishing to reconcile virtue ethics with situationism can phrase the findings as follows: “Empirically, people do not have the level of consistency in their characters that virtue ethicists say they ought to have.” The content of these two formulations is not very different, and neither is contradicted by the actual experimental findings. Reliance on the former to posit problems for virtue ethics ignores the possibility of interpreting the facts as done in the latter. The claim, therefore, that situationism causes problems for virtue ethics is based on a semantic trick.

2. My objection is not to the use of scientific language or technique per se in philosophy, but rather the misapplication or inconsistent application of it. Take the moral hypothesis “People ought to have robust virtues.” What is needed to scientifically reject it? The finding that having robust virtues is “too demanding” is not sufficient, at least not without a host of other premises. (I see that you agree on this narrow point, and begin to sketch out what the other premises might be.)

An individual relativist might reject the hypothesis on the basis of being “too demanding,” but this is not scientific since her particular moral beliefs are not consistent with hypothesis-testing. So too with nihilists (or noncognitivists, say). The use of scientific language or technique in ethics presupposes (or ought to presuppose) a moral framework in which hypotheses represent broad truth claims. “People are seriously morally deficient” seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable broad truth claim that is not easy to scientifically refute, that is, to refute without an appeal to relativism, nihilism, noncognitivism, etc.

3. I have no problem with the field of moral psychology, do not wish to “reject” it, and indeed applaud much of the work being done in it. Nevertheless, one must be careful not to overstate or misapply its findings. My much narrower claim is that situationist arguments purporting to refute virtue ethics are based on such overstatements and misapplications.

I hope to study the implications of this stuff on moral/character education. Fortunately, for these purposes, I can probably ignore the details of the debate. I’m worried about situationists’ arguments and suggestions that character education is necessarily fruitless and/or that we should primarily focus on changing what kinds of situations to which people are subjected instead of what kind of character people/kids develop. The educational theory literature has not picked up on these philosophical developments, so maybe I can break some ground there.

If you do ever have the time and inclination to get into the literature, just let me know, and I can send you the reading list I used for my independent study on situationism.

2. I didn’t previously mean to imply that ethics is an actual or hard science (although I do happen to think it bears more of a resemblance to the sciences than people tend to assume, and I think studying the philosophy of science supports that finding, but that is an issue for another day). I use sciencey language merely to reflect the minimal assumption that some ethical theories are better than others, and that there are criteria on which to judge this. The criteria commonly include, but are not limited to, conformity to common ethical intuitions, logical validity and soundness of a theory’s justifications, and consistency amongst its verdicts. Reflective equilibrium must be reached amongst these criteria, and different philosophers value them differently. This process does not require ruling out any theory on which most or all people turn out to be moral failures (although some individual ethicists may take that approach). It just means that a theory which meets the criteria of not being too permissive is likely to fare poorly on other criteria (e.g., conformity to the most basic and shared of moral intuitions).

Actually, neither nihilism nor relativism appears to have this alleged consequence, either. While “nihilism” describes a broad family of views, nihilists are most likely to think that people are neither moral nor immoral (because morality is not real, measurable, or objective). Individual relativism is likely to result in everyone or nearly everyone being highly moral, not immoral, because the standards for morality are purely personal. And cultural relativism, by definition, entails that most people act morally, because the standard for moral behavior is set according to whatever happens to be the group’s norm.

3. In any case, you need not attempt to reject the field of moral psychology altogether in order to make a decent case that at least some plausible form of virtue ethics is not threatened by the empirical/situationist considerations (prominent virtue ethicist Julia Annas does just that, so you are in good company).

“At least some of them appear to think that, if character traits have any real role in determining behavior at all (as virtue ethicists hold), that they would prevent at least the totally egregious moral transgressions witnessed in the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments.”

See, I would think just the opposite. The more removed an experimenter gets from everyday life, the less inclined I am to think that the results of his/her experiments will actually bear upon discussions of things like character traits to any real degree. By my lights, the conclusion to be drawn from something like the prison experiment is this: “When we really screw with people’s heads, even the nicest person can act like a real asshole.” But this seems to me to fall well short of undermining the belief that, in the common course of our everyday lives, people exhibit traits of character that play some role in the determination of their decisions, actions, etc.

As you suggest, no virtue ethicist will deny that we are manipulable beings. So I would think it should come as a surprise to no one that we behave in out-of-the-ordinary ways when placed in circumstances to which we are largely unaccustomed, and that are psychologically very moving. What would truly be strange, though, would be if it only takes something like the presence or absence a dime in a coin-return slot to do the manipulating.

“But when people who work with Fred see him at home, or people who go to school with Fred see him in a restaurant, it is rather likely that he will act in a way that is incompatible with the traits they thought Fred had …”

Is that really the case? I mean, initially, I’m inclined to doubt that Fred (or any other person with normal brain function and the like) would really exhibit a significantly different set of character traits around his co-workers than he does around his family. And as far as I can tell, the only way to actually confirm something like this would have to involve studying Fred’s behavior across a wide-enough range of relevant circumstances (at home, at work, in a restaurant with family, in a restaurant with co-workers, etc., etc., etc.). But as you said, there just aren’t (m)any studies of this nature taking place.

The more interested I get in virtue ethics, the more interested I’m sure I’ll become in these issues. But for now, I’m still relatively unfamiliar with the literature, so it all still feels to me like a bunch of relatively hasty conclusions.

First, the argument appealing to “what humans are like” is largely a semantic game. You can think of unexpected deviations in behavior as existing outside of character, or you can think of consistency as a dimension of character. It is not at all as if humans were immortal and saddled with an ethics suited to mortal humans.

Second, although philosophers like to dress up and play scientist, using words like “empirical” and “falsifiable” (and for all I know there may be merit in the approach), it seems to me that here (with the “too demanding” line of reasoning) they are doing something profoundly unscientific. They are, at the outset, ruling out any moral theory that results in most people being seriously morally deficient. There is no basis for this, unless one is a relativist or a nihilist, in which case the science metaphor is even more inappropriate. (This has bothered me ever since I was at a talk at which a philosopher you have heard of used “everyone is immoral” as the lynchpin in his reductio ad absurdum argument).

I agree that moral advice should not be so simplistic, but I have never put much stock in the moral prescriptions of virtue ethics, which I take to be the weakest point of the theory.