Christine Swanton

The Generalization of Behavioral Teacher Training

A conceptual framework is developed that is systematically applied to the published literature on the generalization of behavioral teacher training. The framework is based on the definition of generalization proposed by Stokes and Baer (1977). Half of the studies reviewed met the two criteria for generalization; that is, (a) the training events, if any, which were scheduled in the nontraining condition, were both dissimilar to and less costly than those scheduled in the training condition, and (b) similar effects were demonstrated in the nontraining condition as in the training condition. The methodological adequacy of the generalization test is assessed in terms of (a) the number of data points presented, and (b) the conduct of reliability checks. Two variables are discussed which were hypothesized to explain the occurrence or nonoccurrence of generalization: the type of training provided and the teachers’ attitudes toward the training. Finally, it is suggested that further distinctions could be made between the studies demonstrating generalization. These distinctions involve the number and type of nontraining conditions, and the degree of unobtrusiveness of the monitoring procedures used in the nontraining condition.

Can Hume Be Read as a Virtue Ethicist

It is not unusual now for Hume to be read as part of a virtue ethical tradition. However there are a number of obstacles in the way of such a reading: subjectivist, irrationalist, hedonistic, and consequentialist interpretations of Hume. In this paper I support a virtue ethical reading by arguing against all these interpretations. In the course of these arguments I show how Hume should be understood as part of a virtue ethical tradition which is sentimentalist in a response-dependent sense, as opposed to Aristotelian.

Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Indirection: A Pluralistic Value-Centred Approach

Many forms of virtue ethics, like certain forms of utilitarianism, suffer from the problem of indirection. In those forms, the criterion for status of a trait as a virtue is not the same as the criterion for the status of an act as right. Furthermore, if the virtues for example are meant to promote the nourishing of the agent, the virtuous agent is not standardly supposed to be motivated by concern for her own flourishing in her activity. In this paper, I propose a virtue ethics which does not suffer from the problem. Traits are not virtues because their cultivation and manifestation promote a value such as agent flourishing. They are virtues in so far as they are habits of appropriate response (which may be of various types) to various relevant values (valuable things, etc.). This means that there is a direct connection between the rationale of a virtue and what makes an action virtuous or right.

What Kind of Virtue Theorist is Hume

The aim of this essay is to elaborate and defend a claim that the status of a trait as a virtue for Hume is grounded in a plurality of features. Not only are virtues approved as such because of their utility but also because of their immediate impact on our sentiment or taste. This latter general ground of virtue status spawns an interesting plurality of features which make a trait a virtue. To take this latter ground of virtue status seriously, we need to show how traits having this effect can properly be seen as admirable or good. That is the main task of this essay.

Outline of an intuitionist response to Nozick

Abstract The paper is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I counter criticisms that in Anarchy State and Utopia Nozick has no argument for his views on property rights, by presenting what I take to be his main argument that the absolutist nature of property rights makes redistributive taxation impermissible. In the second part, I outline an intuitionist response to this argument. This response presupposes the truth of all the premises of Nozicks argument except its basic absolutist premise : Never use persons (coercively) merely as a means without their consent.

A Review of “Character as Moral Fiction”, by Mark Alfano

This is an engaging book, which covers a great deal of ground in an interesting and fresh way. It applies the situationist critique of the existence of character traits both to virtue ethics and to virtue epistemology. In relation to virtue ethics, Alfano reaches the following conclusion. Even if the critique of virtue ethics that, since it ‘presupposes the explanatory and predictive power of the virtues, it rests on a foundation of sand’ [82], succeeds, we should develop a conception of factitious virtu according to which virtue attribution does not track facts of virtue possession. The point of such attribution is to induce an agent’s identification with virtue traits, and beliefs that ‘others expect him to act in trait-consonant ways, which in turn leads to trait-consonant conduct’ [83]. A major feature of the book is citation of, and commentary on, numerous psychological studies relating not only to the situationist critique, but to factitious virtue and to social distance. A difficulty with this account of the situationist challenge to virtue ethics is that virtue ethics (on dominant conceptions) is committed to the possible existence of character, not virtue in all possible worlds or even in this benighted world: a pessimistic virtue ethicist might not believe in the effective explanatory power of virtue, because of its rarity. Another virtue ethicist might not even believe in a prevalent existence of character, because most of us are in a state of self-control (whether or not we are trying to acquire vice or virtue). Much of the book is devoted to the situationist challenge, a challenge related to the existence of character. The major problem, according to Alfano, is not that agents are improperly responsive to situation, but that they are responsive to ‘non-reasons’ in the form of such things as moods and ambient smells [44]. To which a virtue ethicist would reply: ‘What is wrong with that?’ A huge amount of behaviour that is not contrary to virtue is appropriately responsive to moods: I feel like going to a cafe because of a smell of coffee; I go out because I am vaguely bored. At the root of the problem is the claim that too much behaviour is inappropriately responsive to mood. To which one might reply: If the pessimism is justified, maybe we (some of us) are setting the standard for virtue too high, or we should improve our game in relation to personal virtue cultivation and social environment, or both.

Robert Solomon’s Aristotelian Nietzsche

In taking seriously Nietzsche as a moral philosopher Robert Solomon situates Nietzsche in the Aristotelian virtue ethical tradition. This is broadly understood as teleological and “self realizationist”. Accordingly it is reasonable to conceive of both as subscribing to the following constraint on virtue: (C1) A trait cannot be a virtue if it characteristically impairs or undermines the growth and development of its possessor.

Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (review)

Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius by May Sim is a rich and wideranging work comparing two ‘‘virtue oriented’’ philosophers both of whom are synonymous with important traditions. These are the virtue ethics of Aristotle and what one might call the virtue-oriented role ethics of Confucius. The book is not just a catalog of similarities and differences, though these are significant. Sim also goes deeply into some fundamental issues in ethics, which, alas, have become somewhat invisible in the dominant strands of current analytic ethics: the importance of character, the centrality of roles to an ethical life, and the importance of the Doctrine of the Mean to the understanding of right action. My discussion will focus on what I consider to be three basic issues considered at length by Sim. These may be broadly described thus: (1) The problem of moral relativism, (2) the nature of the ethics of roles, and (3) how action can be assessed as right. We consider each of these issues in turn. 1. A basic issue is that of the putative moral relativism of Confucius, in contrast with Aristotle. As Sim explicates Aristotle, he is not vulnerable to the problem of relativism since he has a standard by which to evaluate traditions and practices, namely ‘‘Aristotle’s fixed metaphysics of human nature’’ (p. 36), and a conception of the social circumstances required to realize this nature (that is, the nature proper to human beings). These circumstances for Aristotle are ‘‘to be born free men rather than slaves, have our basic necessities supplied, and have political connections to help us accomplish our actions,’’ and, above all, ‘‘to have other phronimoi around so that we have models after whom to tailor our habituation of the moral virtues’’ (p. 37). The contentious issue for Sim is whether Confucius is a moral relativist, since apparently he has ultimately no standard with which to evaluate traditional li (‘‘normative observances’’). She shows how some commentators, by interpreting shu as ‘‘interpersonal care and love,’’ forming the ‘‘basis of zhong, li, xin, and the other Confucian virtues’’ (p. 43), try to provide a non-Aristotelian standard for virtue. For shu, so understood, is not reducible to tradition, but is a tradition-independent notion of love or care. However, Sim claims that ultimately the attempt is unsuccessful, and that there is a need for a ‘‘metaphysics’’ that ‘‘might be helpful in the reconstruction’’ (p. 45). My knowledge of the Confucian tradition is not up to establishing whether a certain (non-subjectivist) reading of Hume’s moral metaphysics would be ‘‘helpful’’ here, but it strikes me that Hume, rather than Aristotle, could provide the needed assistance. 2. As explicated by Sim, the nature of the ethics of roles is a rather murky issue, particularly in relation to Confucius. It seems to me that there are four separate questions in play.

Reply to Baier

Annette Baier quite properly asks two questions: (1) What kind of theoretical beast is a ‘normative ethical theorist of virtue’? (2) How can one inflict such a creature on Hume, especially in relation to his conception of justice?