Character , Global and Local

Philosophers have recently argued that we should revise our understanding of character. An individual’s behaviour is governed not by a set of ‘global’ traits, each elicited by a certain kind of situational feature, but by a much larger array of ‘local’ traits, each elicited by a certain combination of situational features. The data cited by these philosophers supports their theory only if we conceive of traits purely in terms of stimulus and response, rather than in the more traditional terms of inner mental items such as inclinations. We should not adopt the former conception, since doing so would impede pursuit of the ethical aims for which we need a theory of character, whereas retaining the latter conception will facilitate this pursuit. So we should not revise our understanding of character in this way. John Doris has recently argued that the conception of character employed in philosophical ethics should be revised. We must abandon the idea that behaviour is regulated by such ‘global’ traits as honesty, generosity, compassion, and courage, and think instead in terms of such ‘local’ traits as ‘sailing-in-rough-weather-with-one’s-friends-courageous’. The specification of each trait should refer to an array of situational features. This view is becoming influential: Peter Goldie has endorsed it, and Maria Merritt has formulated a variant according to which the situational features relevant to the specification of a trait are always social features. 1 We must adopt this ‘fragmentary’ theory of character, its proponents argue, in order to explain the data from certain experiments in social psychology. The subjects in each of these experiments were presented with opportunities for compassionate behaviour, but surprisingly few took these opportunities under such countervailing pressures as the presence of a passive bystander or of a polite experimenter in a technician’s coat asking them to deliver seemingly dangerous electric shocks to what appeared to be another volunteer. One kind of experiment shows that the likelihood of a given subject behaving compassionately decreases in inverse proportion to the degree of hurry that subject is in. This data, the argument runs, indicates that behaviour is not determined by such traits as compassion, but by such traits as in-a-hurrycompassion, on-time-compassion, time-to-spare-compassion, presence-of-a-passivebystander-compassion, defying-authority-compassion, and so on. 2 White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/1214/