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

Instilling virtue

Two debates in contemporary philosophical moral psychology have so far been conducted almost entirely in isolation from one another despite their structural similarity. One is the debate over the importance for virtue ethics of the results of situational manipulation experiments in social psychology. The other is the debate over the ethical implications of experiments that reveal gender and race biases in social cognition. In both cases, the ethical problem posed cannot be identified without first clarifying the cognitive structures underlying the problematic phenomena. In this chapter, I argue that the two kinds of phenomena share a basic cognitive structure, which is well articulated by the findings of the empirical psychology of attitudes, especially if these findings are understood in the context of the cognitive-affective system theory of personality. On the basis of this joint construal of situationism and implicit bias, I argue that the negative programme of ethical improvement that many philosophers recommend in response to one or other problem is unrealistic. Instead, we should consider more seriously the prospects of the positive programme of ethical improvement recommended by Aristotle, the direct aim of which is to instil deeply in ourselves the values at the heart of each of the virtues

Knowing one's own desires

Do you know your own desires in some way that other people cannot know them? Richard Moran claims that his influential theory of first-person authority over beliefs and intentions can also cover desires. However, his deliberative model can apply to desire only if one already has some other way of knowing one’s own desires. Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of pure reflection, on the other hand, portrays a direct epistemic access to one’s own desires that can ground fundamental first-person authority over desires and intentions

Habituation and first-person authority

Richard Moran’s theory of first-person authority as the agential authority to make up one’s own mind rests on a form of mind-body dualism that does not allow for habituation as part of normal psychological functioning. We have good intuitive and empirical reason to accept that habituation is central to the normal functioning of desire. There is some empirical support for the idea that habituation plays a parallel role in belief. In particular, at least one form of implicit bias seems better understood as a case of habituated belief than as a mere association or an example of what Tamar Gendler calls ‘alief’. If there is to be genuine first-person epistemic authority over persisting mental states, therefore, an alternative account to Moran’s is required in the case of desire and perhaps in the case of belief. More generally, the neglect of habituation in recent philosophy of mind is a symptom of the need for philosophers to take the temporal structure of rational agency more seriously

Randomly sparsified Richardson iteration is really fast

Recently, a class of algorithms combining classical fixed point iterations with repeated random sparsification of approximate solution vectors has been successfully applied to eigenproblems with matrices as large as $10^{108} \times 10^{108}$. So far, a complete mathematical explanation for their success has proven elusive. Additionally, the methods have not been extended to linear system solves. In this paper we propose a new scheme based on repeated random sparsification that is capable of solving linear systems in extremely high dimensions. We provide a complete mathematical analysis of this new algorithm. Our analysis establishes a faster-than-Monte Carlo convergence rate and justifies use of the scheme even when the solution vector itself is too large to store.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figure

Knowing one's own desires

Do you know your own desires in some way that other people cannot know them? Richard Moran claims that his influential theory of first-person authority over beliefs and intentions can also cover desires. However, his deliberative model can apply to desire only if one already has some other way of knowing one’s own desires. Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of pure reflection, on the other hand, portrays a direct epistemic access to one’s own desires that can ground fundamental first-person authority over desires and intentions

Instilling virtue

Two debates in contemporary philosophical moral psychology have so far been conducted almost entirely in isolation from one another despite their structural similarity. One is the debate over the importance for virtue ethics of the results of situational manipulation experiments in social psychology. The other is the debate over the ethical implications of experiments that reveal gender and race biases in social cognition. In both cases, the ethical problem posed cannot be identified without first clarifying the cognitive structures underlying the problematic phenomena. In this chapter, I argue that the two kinds of phenomena share a basic cognitive structure, which is well articulated by the findings of the empirical psychology of attitudes, especially if these findings are understood in the context of the cognitive-affective system theory of personality. On the basis of this joint construal of situationism and implicit bias, I argue that the negative programme of ethical improvement that many philosophers recommend in response to one or other problem is unrealistic. Instead, we should consider more seriously the prospects of the positive programme of ethical improvement recommended by Aristotle, the direct aim of which is to instil deeply in ourselves the values at the heart of each of the virtues

Character, attitude and disposition

Recent debate over the empirical psychological presuppositions of virtue ethics has focused on reactive behavioural dispositions. But there are many character traits that cannot be understood properly in this way. Such traits are well described by attitude psychology. Moreover, the findings of attitude psychology support virtue ethics in three ways. First, they confirm the role of habituation in the development of character. Further, they show virtue ethics to be compatible with the situation manipulation experiments at the heart of the recent debate. Finally, they show how the cognitive-affective theory of personality and the two-system theory of behavioural cognition are compatible, thereby undermining the current empirical challenge to virtue ethics. Empirical research into the nature and development of attitudes should therefore be central to philosophical discussions of virtue and character