Character and Concept

Traditional virtue ethics and the widely accepted view of character that such ethical theorizing depends upon have recently come under attack by situationist philosophers. Most prominent among these philosophers is John Doris and Gilbert Harman. Situationism attempts to undermine the concept of character used to support most versions of virtue ethics by appealing to research on conformity in the social sciences. Such research is intended to show that robust character traits are an illusion. More specifically, both Doris and Harman are global character trait eliminativists who take the social-psychological research to warrant the abandonment of the concept of character. This book is an attempt to defend the standard notions of character from the concerns raised by situationists. It draws heavily upon the mental space mapping theory known as conceptual blending developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner and makes use of the insights gleaned therefrom to disarm the situationists character eliminativist position. Primarily, this is done by showing how entrenched and useful is the notion of character to our common understandings and interpretations of ourselves and others.