Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism

411 Pages·1991·10.8 MB·English

by  Owen Flanagan

•
Varieties of
Moral
..
Personality
ETHICS AND
•
PSYCHOLOGICAL
REALISM
•
Owen Flanagan
•
Varieties 0/ Moral Personality
Varieties of
Moral Personality
Ethics and Psychological Realism
OWEN FLANAGAN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridr,e, MaJJachusetts
London, Enr,land
Copyright © 1991 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College
All rights reserved
Primed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First Harvard University Press paperback edi(ion, 1993
Library of Congress Catalof!,ing-in-Puh!iration Data
Flanagan, Owen).
Varieties of moral personality: ethics and psychological
realism / Owen Flanagan.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-93218-8 (alk. paper) (clorh)
ISBN 0-674-93219-6 (pbk.)
1. Ethics~Psychological aspeCts. 2. Psychology and
philosophy. I. Tide.
BJ45·F53 199 I
170 '.I'9-dc20
90-39222
CIP
To my father, Owen, Sr., and
to the memory of my mother, Virginia
Preface
This book is an atcempt to solve a problem. Over the past decade I
have become increasingly aware that my two philosophical passions-
philosophy of mind and psychology, on the one hand, and ethical the-
ory, on the other-have had little to do with each other. To be sure,
claims about human nature are ubiquitous in ethics. But most ethicists
pay no attention to the bearing on these claims of the exciting new
work in psychology and the other human sciences. The two literatures
almost never join the same debates, or if rhey do, they do so in com-
plete ignorance of each other. It seemed to me, however, that the
opportunities for fruitful interaction were abundant, and that discuss-
ing certain recent findings about the nature of mind, self, and identity,
the social construction of persons, and the nature of the emotions,
temperament, reasoning, and trait attribution in terms of some peren-
nial ethical debates was long overdue. If the idea were to catch on, it
might also help diminish my sense that keeping up with the growing
literarure in both ethics and the philosophy of psychology inevitably
broughr me to disconnected places in philosophical space.
I drew inspiration from colleagues who were working, fairly suc-
cessfully, to bring epistemology into greater conracc wirh psychology
and cognitive science. And I took heart from the spirited debate within
logic and normative epistemology about whether, and if so how, our
logical and episremic norms should be adjusted in response to psycho-
logical findings regarding actual logical and epistemic performance.
My problem concerning the relation of normative ethics to findings
about moral responsiveness and the psychological capacities subserving
morality seemed to mirror precisely the lnain issues in these debates.
Some of the thinking behind this work goes back to memorable
Vll
viii I Pre/ace
conversations I had with colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University during the summer
of 1979. I began actually writing the book while I was a visiting
professor at Duke University in 1985-86. I am grateful to my col-
leagues and students at Duke for the wonderfully ftiendly, supportive,
and stimulating atmosphere they provided. Conversations with Robert
Brandon, Michael Ferejohn, Martin Golding, Kathryn Jackson, Rick
Roderick, and David Sanford were invaluable in the beginning stages.
I tried out the early chapters of the book on the students in my
seminar, Contemporary Ethical Theory, at Wellesley College in 1986-
87. Their responses helped me gain a clearer sense of what I wanted
to say and how it ought to be said. The entire first draft was completed
during my sabbatical from Wellesley in 1987-88. I spent that year as
a visiting scholar in psychology at Harvard University. The Psychology
Department at Harvard is housed in William James Hall. It was a
source of special inspiration and delight to be writing each day in a
building named for my favorite philosopher. The understandable irony
that the psychologists had claimed him for their own did not escape
me. James was skeptical about the possibilities for smooth relations
between psychology and ethics. But, like me, he took the relation
between the two inquiries to constitute one of the central problems in
philosophy. James, I am fairly sure, would have found what I say here
too naturalistic for his taste. But I also think that he would have
approved of drawing psychology and ethics back toward each other,
even if it meant that seemingly intractable problems would be brought
once again [0 the fore.
I deeply appreciate the generosity of the Psychology Department
at Harvard for giving me visiting-scholar status and an office in which
to work. I am grateful to Wellesley College for providing me with a
sabbatical and to the National Endowment for the Humanities fm
awarding me a Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Schol-
ars, which provided a fair portion of my salary during the 1987-88
academic year. Grants from the Mellon Foundation and research funds
associared with the Class of 19 I 9 Professorship at Wellesley enabled
me to hire able student-scholar assistanrs to help with bibliographic
research.
Numerous philosophers, psychologists, political theorists, friends,
and acquaintances provided inspiration along the way. Some of them
simply encouraged me and gave me confidence in the worthwhilenc·ss
of the project. Others made comments and suggestions that sent me
Preface I ix
back ro the drawing board. Many, especially the psychologists I
probed, gave me important leads and clarified poinrs I did nor fully
understand. Jeffrey Abramson, Robin Akert, D. Yvonne Allison,
David Brink, Kendra Bryanr, Claudia Card, Jonathan Cheek, Patricia
Smith Churchland, Paul M. Churchland, Judy DeCew, Stephen Eng-
strom, Juliet Floyd, Steve Gerrard, Gerd Gigetenzer, Carol Gilligan,
Martin Golding, Henry Grunebaum, Michael Hardimon, Stanley
Hauerwas, Kathryn Jackson, Jerome Kagan, Nannerl Keohane, Daniel
Litde, Alasdair MacIntyre, Mary McGowan, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Michele
Moody-Adams, Susan Moller Okin, David Pillemer, Adrian M. S.
Piper, Hilary Pumam, Jennifer Radden, Andrews Reath, Margaret
Rhodes, Annie Rogers, Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, George Sher, Susan
Silbey, Michael Stocker, Frank Sulloway, Andreas Teuber, Lawrence
Walker, Joyce Walworrh, Sheldon White, and Kenneth Winsron all
served in one or more of these capacities.
Several people--Jonathan Adler, Lawrence Blum, Roberr Bran-
don, Marilyn Friedman, Marcia Lind, Ruth Anna Pumam, Bernard
Williams, Ken Winkler, and David Wong-provided detailed written
comments on various parrs of the manuscripr. I am especially grateful
ro them for helping me make this book far better than it would oth-
erwise have been. I also thank Kathryn Jackson for letting me use a
few paragraphs from an article we wrote rogether and published in
Ethics in 1987 in Chapters 9 and 10. Michael Aronson of Harvard
University Press has been enthusiastic about the projen from the
beginning. His support, guidance, and excellent comments and sug-
gestions have been invaluable. Finally, three reviewers for the Press
and the studenrs in my seminar Moral Psychology in the fall of 1989
provided one last round of extremely helpful comments on the manu-
script.
Although they have already been mentioned, I have had the great
fortune to have as friends Larry Blum, Ruth Anna Pumam, Amelie O.
Rorty, Ken Winkler, and David Wong. In addition to the goods of
friendship, these five have provided me with continuous conversation
over the course of several years on matters of moral psychology, and on
the question of the relation between normative ethics and empirical
psychology. I am deeply indebted ro them. They have all in their own
way inspired me and deeply affected my thinking about the issues
discussed here.
My wife, Joyce Knowlton Walworth, and our children, Ben and
Kate, rook great interest in the projecr. Ben provided suggestions for