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A Virtue Ethics’ Response to Situational Accounts of Decision Making

By: James Shortly

University of Toronto

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This paper was an assignment given to me in an "Issues in Philosophy of Mind" class at the

University of Toronto. I was tasked with comparing and evaluating the differing accounts of the

self offered by Gilbert Harman and Greg Gigerenzer.

I. Introduction

In this work, I shall review two papers that re-examine how we should talk about decision

making, with respect to how it relates to the environment — one by Gilbert Harman, the other

by Greg Gigerenzer. In section III.I, I shall explicate Harman's paper, which contends that we

have no character traits, and hence that our decisions cannot be influenced by them, but,

rather, are instead strongly determined by the situation in which we make those decisions — a

thesis referred to as “situationism”. I shall then argue in section III.II that this view offers an

unsatisfactory account of decision making; for, because it does not offer a robust account of

the internal factors that are at play in the decision making process, adopting Harman's view

would leave us unequipped to explain how different people can have a variety of responses to

essentially the same external stimuli. In section IV.I I shall then explicate Gigerenzer's paper,

which improves on Harman’s view by arguing that we should talk about our internal decision

making faculty as being 'coupled' with our environment (which shall henceforth be referred to in

this paper as “our situation”), thus allowing us to talk about both the internal and external

factors that are involved in the decision making process. However, I will then argue in section

IV.II that because one implication of this theory is that we can be coupled with almost anything,

this characterization expands our notion of personhood too much, and hence a more intuitive

theory with the same (or greater) explanatory power and predictive success is to be preferred. I

shall then demonstrate in section V why a virtue ethics account of decision making — derived

principally from Alasdair MacIntyre's work, After Virtue, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics —

is preferable as a theory of decision making; for it allows us to account for both the internal and

external factors that are at play in decision making, thus granting it greater explanatory power

and predictive success than Harman’s account, while also agreeing with our intuitions about

how we want to talk about personhood, and thus improving on Gigerenger’s account.

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II. Preliminary Remarks, and the Establishment of the Rules of Evaluating Explanations

Before I begin my examination of the different accounts of decision making offered by

Harman and Gigerenger, I would first like to make some preliminary remarks with respect to

both my explication of Aristotle’s account of character traits, and with respect to the

methodology of my examination. First, a distinction must be made between Aristotelian virtues

and character traits; for while all virtues might be character traits, the converse is not true. This

is important to bear in mind because, while Harman’s account explicitly styles itself as a

critique of a “Virtue Ethics” account of decision making, many of the traits he cites do not seem

to be virtues or vices according to Aristotle, but are simply “natural character traits”. For the

purposes of this essay, however, what is more important to examine is the existence and use

of the more general “character traits” in an account of decision making, as opposed to just

focusing on the character traits that Aristotle considers to be virtues, such as courage. Thus,

while the examples that I will use will be drawn both from what would be considered virtue

traits, and non-virtue traits, what is at stake in this paper is whether all kinds of character traits,

including virtue traits, should be incorporated into an account of personhood.

Second, what is also largely at stake in this paper is the issue of what counts as a good

explanation, and an examination of whether Harman’s, Gigerenger’s, or Aristotle’s account of

decision making meets the criteria for a good explanation. I would therefore like to clarify the

means by which I will go about evaluating various kinds of explanations, where explanation is

defined as an account that attempts to grant us a greater comprehension of some aspect of

our experience. In attempting to establish the criteria of a good explanation, a few clear

examples come to mind, which I have derived principally from my experience of the qualities

that people often gesture towards in arguing that a particular explanation is a good

explanation: explanatory scope, predictive success, and conformation to our intuitions (which

are derived from experience).

By explanatory scope, I mean that a better explanation will explain more things than an

inferior one; thus, if theory A explains x and y related phenomena, while theory B explains x, y,

and z related phenomena, theory B is to be preferred. By “related phenomena” I mean that “x

and y” are related if they are different aspects of the same phenomena, like how (as we shall

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see later on in this paper) the internal and external factors that play into decision making are

both different aspects of the same phenomena in need of explanation: decision making.

However, I accept that there certainly is some ambiguity in the relative importance of various

explanations; for example, I accept that if theory A explains x, d, and f while theory B explains

x and z, it is possible that explaining z is more important than explaining d and f, and therefore

theory B could be preferred even though it explains less “things”. However, it is beyond the

scope of this paper to explore this issue, and as such I shall just establish the general rule that

in cases where two theories overlap in their explanations of a particular phenomena, if one

theory goes farther and explains more related phenomena, it is to be preferred as an

explanation. Thus, an account which explains x, y and z related phenomena is to be preferred

over an account that just explains x and y related phenomena.

The second criterion of a good explanation is predictive success. What this means is that, if

one theory proves to yield more accurate predictions than another when what is being

predicted accords with the same phenomena that is the subject of explanation, it is therefore to

be preferred as an explanation. For instance, if I were to attempt to explain certain aspects of

human behaviour by characterizing general human nature as being “covetous”, while someone

else attempts to explain those same actions by characterizing human nature as being

“rational”, then the explanation that is to be preferred is determined, in part, by whether we

observe humans to generally act more rational or covetous.

The third criterion of a good explanation is that it conforms to our intuitions. The reason that

I add this criterion is that, given that I established that an explanation ought to yield us a

greater comprehension of an aspect of our experience, because our intuitions are themselves

derived (at least in part) from experience, as for example our intuition that a certain alleyway is

dangerous is derived in part from our visual impression of the alleyway, if an explanation

conforms to our intuitions, then this only serves to strengthen the explanation’s status as an

explanation with respect to the psychological role that an explanation plays in allowing us to

comprehend aspects of our experience. For it stands to reason that an explanation will yield us

a greater comprehension of a phenomenon if we have some kind of direct experience of the

phenomenon in need of explanation, as then we can actually “see” the explanation “play out” in

our experience. For example, to return to the human nature explanation, if I have fairly

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extensive experience of humans as acting covetously, then an explanation of human nature as

being inherently covetous will strike me all the more as an explanation; by conforming with my

intuitions about human nature (as derived from experience), this explanation will serve to

explain the phenomenon that I encounter in a way that also accords with my experience of it.

Therefore, because of the immediacy and directness by which we can engage with an

explanation that conforms with our intuitions, I shall establish another general rule:

explanations that conflict with our intuitions count against an explanation being a good

explanation. Therefore these kinds of explanations will require an increased incentive by

means of possessing more explanatory scope and/or predictive success in order to be

accepted as an explanation of some aspect of our experience in favour of more intuitive

accounts. For example, while it might conform with our intuitions to believe that the sun

revolves around the earth owing to our experience of perceiving the sun as appearing to move,

because believing instead that the earth revolves around the sun yields greater predictive

success when it comes to working with astronomical data, we will accept this belief even

though it conflicts with out intuitions. Thus, if, in examining two explanations of the same

phenomenon, it is determined that the counter-intuitive explanation does not offer more

explanatory scope or predictive success than the more intuitive one, then, in that respect, we

have no good reason to prefer it in favour of the explanation which does conform to our

intuitions.

Although Harman and Gigerenger may agree with the first two criteria, they will most likely

find this last criterion to be contentious, given the fact that, in part, what motivates their

accounts of decision making is a response against intuitions that they think mislead us. Thus,

in evaluating their explanations of decision making, I shall therefore establish another rule: in

evaluating explanations that disregard the importance of conforming to intuitions, the

“conforming to intuitions” rule established in the preceding paragraph shall only be turned to in

deciding between a non-intuitive explanation, and an intuitive one, if it is determined that these

two explanations are relatively equal in both their explanatory scope, and predictive success.

As we can see, because this rule ultimately follows from the first intuition rule, which was

established in the preceding paragraph, it is therefore un-contentious if one accepts this first

rule on the basis of my argumentation for its use.

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To summarize, below is a list of rules for evaluating competing explanations, which form

the standard by which I shall examine Harman, Gigerenger, and Aristotle’s competing

explanations of decision making:

Rules

1. Explanatory Scope Criterion: In cases where two theories overlap in their explanations of a

particular phenomenon, if one theory goes farther, explaining more related phenomena, it is

to be preferred as an explanation.

2. Predictive Success Criterion: If one account proves to yield more accurate predictions than

another, when what is being predicted accords with the same phenomenon that is the

subject of explanation, it is therefore to be preferred as an explanation.

3. Conforming to Intuitions Criterion: Explanations which conflict with our intuitions count

against an explanation being a good explanation, and thus these kinds of explanations will

require an increased incentive by means of possessing more explanatory scope and/or

predictive success, in order to be accepted as an explanation of some aspect of our

experience in favour of more intuitive accounts.

4. In evaluating explanations that disregard the importance of conforming to intuitions, the

“conforming to intuitions” rule established in Rule 3 shall only be turned to in deciding

between a non-intuitive explanation, and an intuitive one, if it is determined that these two

explanations are relatively equal in both their explanatory scope, and predictive success.

III.I Harman's Situational Account of Decision Making

Harman defines character traits as "virtues and vices like courage..as well as certain other

traits like friendliness or talkativeness", and he distinguishes these character traits from

psychological disorders like schizophrenia, and "innate aspects of character", like shyness or

being generally happy (Gilbert Harman, 316). He argues that these character traits have

traditionally been invoked in order to explain differing behaviour, offering the example of how

we might say that an honest man returns a wallet that he found on the street because he is

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honest, while a dishonest man keeps the wallet because he is dishonest (GH, 317). In

response to this method of explaining human decision making, his paper first contends that

there is no empirical evidence for the existence of character traits, and, furthermore, in our

ordinary thinking process, we place too much emphasis on attributing character traits to people

in order to explain behaviour, while simultaneously ignoring the situation (i.e. environment) in

which these decisions were made (GH, 316). Given this, Harman thinks that we should look at

the specifics of the situation in which a particular decision is made in order to try to explain why

that decision was made (GH, 317).

In support of this view, Harman cites the Milgram experiment, in which participants were

"given the task of administering an increasingly intense electric shock to a second person", and

around two thirds of them went "well past the point at which the [second person] had stopped

responding in any way" (GH, 321-322). Harman contends that while we might be inclined to

attribute some kind of serious character defect to the two thirds of the participants who

administered the maximum shock, such as that they were 'cowardly' or 'sadistic', Harman finds

this number to be unusually high for such a negative character trait, and, as such, thinks that

we should examine other explanations before making this kind of attribution too hastily. While a

high number by itself does not disprove the existence of character traits, Harman argues that if

we instead examine the "relevant features of the situation", such as the "stepwise character of

the shift from relatively unobjectionable behaviour to complicity in a pointless, cruel, and

dangerous ordeal", we can offer a more accurate account of why an alarmingly high number of

people administered the maximum shock without assuming that the fault lay principally in some

kind of defective character traits that they all possessed (HG, 322-323). Presumably, this is

achieved by drawing causal connections between the actions that were generally taken, and

the situational stimuli that produced them.

To further illustrate what is at stake, Rachana Kamtekar, in her paper "Situationism and

Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character", summarizes the difference in approach

between a character traits based model of human decision making, and a more situational

based theory like Harman's. She states that a situational theory claims that character trait

based accounts, in positing character traits to explain decision making, are thus committed to

the view that those who have been ascribed a particular character trait will act consistently

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according to this character trait across many different situations (Rachana Kamtekar, 458). For

example, if we ascribe to someone the character trait of being honest, we would expect

him/her to act honestly across a variety of different situations in which he/she may feel

impelled to be honest.

By contrast, a situational theory claims that this prediction fails empirical testing, and one

example that Harman cites in support of this is the "Good Samaritans" experiment. In this

experiment, run by John M. Darley and C Daniel Batson, a group of Princeton Theological

seminary students were first asked to explain whether their interest in religion was just as a

means to an end, such as for the sake of salvation, as an end in itself, or as part of their

search for the meaning of life, the assumption being that these different self-characterizations

signify a variable in the different character traits of the test subjects. Next, they were asked to

either read a passage about alternative vocations to ministry for seminary students, or the

parable of the "Good Samaritan" from the New Testament1, which constitutes the first

situational variable in the experiment. After this, the students were asked to walk over to

another building to give a talk that was to be recorded; some were told that they were late,

some that they should head over right away, and others that they had a few minutes to spare,

this being the second situational variable. Along the way, the students encountered a man in

the doorway who seemed to be in some distress, coughing, groaning, and with his head held

down. Now, according to a character trait based model of human decision making (as it is

characterized by Harman), we would expect that a difference in whether the people helped the

distressed man would correlate strongly with the character trait variable in the experiment.

However, this was not the case; rather, it correlated more strongly with the situational

variables, and, in particular, the time constraint variable. It is therefore concluded from these

experiments that, given a character based account of decision making lacks predictive

success, it is one's situation, rather than one's character, which has the strongest influence on

the decisions that one makes (RK, 464), and, therefore, we should talk about one's situation,

1 In this parable, a traveller is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on a road. Both a priest and a Levite overlook him, but a Samaritan (member of an Abrahamic ethonoreligious group) stops and helps him. Hence, the implication within the context of the experiment is that the participants who read this parable will be more disposed to help the suffering man, and hence their actions would be more the result of this aspect of their situation, rather than some static character trait.

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and do away with attributing character traits, when offering an account of decision making.

III.II Explanatory Limitations of Harman's Account

While Harman is correct in observing that the Milgram experiment demonstrates how one's

situation can influence one's decisions2, and that in the Good Samaritan experiment there is

empirical evidence that suggests that this is the case, I do not think that it follows from this that

we should therefore do away with talking about character traits in trying to explain behaviour.

For, given that all the participants in the Milgram experiment were exposed to essentially the

same external situation, the fact that one third of the participants acted very differently must be

accounted for by some differing factor that is internal to them. The same applies for the Good

Samaritan cases, as it is suggested by the fact that the decisions strongly correlated with the

situational factors, rather than entirely, that there were cases in which participants acted

contrary to the situationally prescribed decision. Harman himself, possibly inadvertently,

assents to this position; he points out that "to have different character traits, [two different

people] must be disposed to act differently in the same circumstances" (GH, 317), and it

seems like that is exactly what is occurring in both experiments.

While one could invoke some slight difference in the situation in order to explain the

behaviour, such as fluctuations in room temperature or temperament of the test administrator,

it is unclear how one could persuasively draw a causal connection between these kinds of

seemingly unrelated background situational factors, and whether someone is willing to

administer the maximum shock, or help a man in distress. Therefore, Harman’s account of

decision making can be criticized both according to the predictive success criterion, as people

often act counter to the situationally prescribed action, hence not matching what is predicted of

them, and as a consequence of this, the explanatory scope criterion, as a superior theory will

also offer an account of the internal factors at play in decision making which is necessitated by

the fact that different people can react differently to the same situation.

2 “The problem of obedience, therefore, is not wholly psychological. The form and shape of society and the way it is developing have much to do with it” (Stanley Milgram, 11).

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III.III Harman's Social Strategy Theory

One explanation that Harman offers that could potentially increase his account’s

explanatory scope and predictive success is that these differences in behaviour are caused by

people "pursuing [different] consistent goals using [different] consistent strategies, in the light

of [different] consistent ways of interpreting their social world" (GH 320-321). To see whether

this reconciles his theory with my objection, I shall examine whether developing and

implementing a social strategy is a conscious decision, an unconscious one, or both. First, it is

unlikely that a social strategy must always be consciously developed and implemented;

otherwise, the participants who administered the maximum shock in the Milgram Experiment

would not have been surprised to learn that they were being tested on their obedience to

authority in a morally problematic scenario. For if they held the 'obedience to authority despite

moral reservation' strategy, it would be evident in their conscious experience of the experiment

that they held this strategy, and therefore the experiment would not have revealed new

information to them about themselves. Because this was not always the case3, if Harman's

social strategy idea is correct, at least some of these social strategies must be developed and

implemented unconsciously.

However, if we accept this conclusion, then in what significant way are unconscious social

strategies distinct from character traits? For if you unconsciously use a social strategy to

navigate the world, then your tendency to act in a certain way functions like a disposition that

influences the decisions you make, and is not just a consciously implemented way of acting for

the sake of an end. To better elucidate this distinction, let us compare one who unconsciously

uses the social strategy of using sophistry (i.e. cheap logical tricks) to win arguments, with one

who consciously employs this social strategy for the same end. In the first case, his rational

faculty is "tainted" by sophistic argumentative techniques, as he does not realize that the

arguments that he makes are illogical, but rather has developed bad argumentative techniques

that have become reinforced due to their success in making his interlocutors agree with him.

3“A year after his participation in the experiment, he affirms in the questionnaire that he has definitely learned something of personal importance as a result of being in the experiment, adding: “What appalled me was that I could possess this capacity for obedience and compliance to a central idea..I hope I can deal more effectively with any future conflicts of values I encounter” (SM, 54).

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When we examine the second case, however, the fact that she consciously uses sophistry —

and understands it as such — to win arguments has no bearing on the 'health' of her reasoning

faculty. By recognizing that they are sophistic, she must have at least some idea of the

distinction between a sophistic argument and one that (at least) attempts to be logically sound.

Thus, because it would be incorrect to say that in the second case that her use of sophistry is

the direct result of some kind of internal dispositional state, as she regards it merely as a

means to an end, it would be correct to label her use of sophistry as a conscious strategy in

Harman’s account. Conversely, because in the first case he uses sophistry to win arguments,

but is not aware that what he is doing is sophistic, this inclination towards a particular kind of

action functions more like a disposition than a conscious strategy, and if we were to talk about

this inclination in terms of a character trait, we might want to ascribe to him the character trait

of being 'illogical' in order to explain his argumentative decisions.

Given this distinction, it therefore seems arbitrary why one would be willing to refer to

unconscious social strategies in order to explain decision making, but exclude talking about

character traits, as both refer to some kind of internal dispositional state that influences how

one acts in a particular manner. Additionally, many character traits could be characterized as

social strategies. For example, it is often socially advantageous to be courageous, and

because one could unconsciously develop this social strategy of being courageous after its

past implementation led to social success, it is unclear what the significant advantage would be

in referring to this as an 'unconscious social strategy', rather than a 'character trait'.

Furthermore, it seems incorrect to label this kind of action as a strategy, as in what sense can

a social strategy be "unconscious" anyway? Because the word strategy suggests at least some

degree of conscious agency on behalf of the person who develops and/or employs the

strategy, to speak of an "unconscious social strategy" unduly stretches the meaning of this

word, as one is using it to refer to a tendency to act in a certain way which lacks this quality. It

seems, then, that if one is speaking of an unconscious social strategy, the use of the word

'strategy' could only be used analogously; referring to an internal disposition that guides our

behaviour in various situations (hence functioning like a strategy), but ultimately lacking in

conscious agency which would be required in order to properly refer to it as a strategy. Hence

our use of character traits to explain decision making is to be preferred for this reason as well,

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as it better accounts for the lack of complete conscious agency in the formation and

maintenance of the disposition states that influence the decisions that we make.

Therefore, Harman's argument that different social strategies can account for how people

react differently to the same situation is unsatisfactory, as he must posit that they can be

acquired and utilized unconsciously or else he offers an account that conflicts with the

empirical data he has presented. Because it is unclear how unconscious social strategies differ

from character traits, they would thus have to be rejected as well in order to maintain his

theory. However, since this would then leave us unable to explain how people can react

differently to the same external stimulus, it is evident that this explanation is therefore still

deficient with respect to both its predictive success and explanatory scope, and hence, a

superior theory will also be able to explain the actions of those who acted in opposition to the

situationally prescribed action.

III.IV Possible Responses

One could respond to my arguments by countering that those who administered a lethal

shock in the Milgram experiment did not have a social strategy, and instead reacted solely

according to how their situation disposed them to do so. This response has the advantage of

harmonizing with the position that Harman takes, as it suggests that for some people, the

decision one takes is almost completely dictated by factors of their situation, and that only

conscious social strategies can supervene on the situationally prescribed action. Hence this

argument commits itself to the view that the one third of people who did not administer a lethal

shock all employed some kind of social strategy which caused them to act differently from the

behaviour that the experiment naturally directs one towards. However, this position is

untenable. For amongst those who did administer a lethal shock, there was still variety in the

way that they reacted to their situation; some experienced deep moral doubt whilst

administering higher and higher levels of shocks, while others did not even consider the moral

implications of their actions4. Hence this amended theory would also be deficient with respect

4“Some subjects were totally convinced of the wrongness of what they were doing but could not bring themselves to make an open break with authority” (SM, 10), “When Mr. Braverman states that he considered “not going

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to the predictive success and hence explanatory scope criteria, and therefore this difference

too would also have to be accounted for by appealing to some kind of internal factor.

While one could account for this by arguing that there were differences in the social

strategies that they implemented, this stance is also untenable. For within these two groups of

people who may be characterized as using two different kinds of social strategies, not all of

their reactions can be accurately characterized as conscious social strategies. For while they

reacted to their situation in different ways, many were equally stunned by their actions after

discovering the nature of the experiment, therefore learning something new about how they

respond to authority5. Therefore, to argue that there is a default reaction that certain situations

naturally elicit is still going to be unable to account for the fact that people differ in their

response, and hence my critique about the "social strategy" option is still a live objection.

Harman might also appeal to 'innate aspects of character', which he distinguishes from

character traits, as being an internal factor that could account for why people can react

differently to the same situation. Thus, on this account we could explain why one person went

farther than another during the test as being the result of, say, their 'shyness', explaining that

they were too shy to speak their mind about any moral reservations that they might have had.

However, Harman's account of innate aspects of character is extremely brief and unclear in his

paper. For he neither defines specifically what exactly he means by "innate aspect of

character", nor why "shyness" should be characterized as an innate aspect of character, while

a quality like "talkativeness" should be characterized as a character trait. Furthermore, even

the label "innate aspect of character" refers in some sense to the existence of one's character,

and as such it is further unclear why we would want to do away with talking about the ‘traits’ of

one's character, but maintain talking about its ‘innate aspects’. As such, for this defense of my

critiques to be viable, one would need to offer a more robust account of what is meant by

‘innate aspects of character’, and how they differ from character traits.

While Harman does not specifically do this in the work I explicated in section III.I, in one of

his other papers he lists various internal qualities which he thinks play a role in decision

through with it”, he does not mean that he considered disobeying but rather that he considered modifying the manner of teaching the victim” (SM 54).5“Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority” from “Obedience to Authority” by Stanley Milgram.

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making. "People have different innate temperaments, different knowledge, different goals,

different abilities, and tend to be in or think they are in different situations. All such differences

can affect what people will do" (Harman, 245). However, Kamtekar correctly observes that the

line between counting and not counting these various internal qualities as character traits is

vague, as "we might think that character includes patterns of perception and reasoning, values,

goals, and beliefs" (RK, 471). For example, Kamtekar remarks that Plato, in detailing the

oligarchic character (Plato, 554a-55a), includes goals in his description of character, stating

that one with an oligarchic character steals not because of some "robbing disposition", but

because of his "single-minded pursuit of wealth" (RK, 472).

One distinction that she offers that might resolve this tension plays off of Harman's notion

that character traits must be distinctive (i.e. a common quality that some people share and

some do not), and must be long term, stable dispositions (RK, 471). However, even this

solution is problematic, as the properties listed by Harman above can also possess these

qualities. For example, two people can both possess the ability of ‘being good at athletic

activities’, and this quality (barring an injury, and hence loss of ability) can indeed be fairly long

term. Thus, since ‘being good at athletic activities’ can match both criteria for calling an internal

trait a character trait, it is therefore unclear how a situational account of decision making can

distinguish between character traits and other internal qualities that it does not wish to do away

with, and that, therefore, a more detailed account of this distinction is necessary for it to be a

viable response to my objection.

IV.I Gigerenzer's Theory of Ecological Rationality

Given, then, that Harman's account of decision making is strong in that it takes into account

situational factors, yet deficient with respect to its explanatory scope and predictive success as

a consequence of lacking a robust account of the inner factors that contribute to this process, I

will now examine a paper by Gigerenzer, called “Is the Mind Irrational or Ecologically Rational?

The Law and Economics of Irrational Behavior", which improves on Harman's theory by

offering an account of decision making which takes into account both internal and external

factors. However, it must be mentioned that Gigerenzer might disagree with this

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characterization of his theory; in his paper, he questions the kind of internal-external language

which characterizes our decision making process as containing two distinct sets of

constraining factors - the first being internal factors such as character traits and dispositions,

the other being external factors such as how well a situation enables certain actions. In

contrast to this, he instead proposes that "the two sets of bounds may actually be linked”, a

view he refers to as "ecological rationality" (Greg Gigerenzer, 38-39). Gigerenzer offers an

analogy to explain this new way of talking about decision making, comparing it to a pair of

scissors, where "one blade is human cognition; the other is its environment". For if we try to

understand our decision making process without making reference to relevant situational

factors, such as in the case where one claims that the Milgram participants who administered a

lethal shock were simply 'sadistic', it would likewise be like trying to understand "how scissors

cut" by just looking at “one blade” (GG, 39). Hence while character traits still play an

explanatory role in this account, they must always be made with reference to some situational

factor that the rational agent is 'coupled' with.

To argue for this view, he cites an experiment where twenty-four physicians were asked to

give the "posterior probability p(H/D) that a women who tests positive [for breast cancer]

actually has breast cancer" (GG, 53). When given the statistical information in terms of "base

rate", "sensitivity", and "false positive rate", "only two of the physicians reasoned correctly"

(GG, 53). Gigerenzer explains that the majority reasoned incorrectly because the "base rate

[was] ignored" (GG, 53). Gigerenzer then contrasts these results with those of another group of

physicians who were instead offered the statistical information in "natural frequencies". This

experiment produced very different results, as the "physicians' estimates clustered around the

correct answer" with only five of them reasoning incorrectly (GG, 55). What, then, accounts for

this change? If we just look at the internal factors, we would have to conclude that this was just

a more rational group of physicians. While this is possible, Gigerenzer argues that a more

accurate explanation is that because natural frequencies "carry information about base rates,

whereas normalized frequencies and probabilities do not" the physicians in the second

experiment were more rational because they were coupled with a situation which better

facilitated "Bayesian computations" than the first one (GG, 55). Therefore, Gigerenzer

concludes from this that because one's rational decision making process cannot be fully

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understood separately from one's situation, one's rational decision making faculty is thus

constituted both by internal factors, and external factors of their situation.

IV.II Implications of Ecological Rationality

Even though this account of decision making avoids the problems of both explanatory

scope and predictive success that Harman's view encountered, as instead of claiming that

external factors largely dictate one’s decision making process, one's subjective input into the

decision making process is accounted for as always being coupled with one's situation, this

theory encounters issues of its own. One consequence of this account is that we shall have to

count any situational factor which affects your decision making process as being coupled with

you (GG, 40). For instance, given that one cannot perform visual calculations without a source

of light, this means that we would have to talk about ourselves as being coupled with the sun

or some other light source when we make such calculations. However, this is a very counter-

intuitive way of talking about personhood, as we normally do not talk about one's personhood

as being the kind of thing that can include a sun. Furthermore, another consequence is that if I

were better at math when discussing it with a friend rather than trying to do it on my own, on

Gigerenzer's account we would have to say that my friend is coupled with my intellect.

However, this is certainly a very counter-intuitive way of talking about the situation, and my

friend would have no experience of being coupled with my intellect, and hence would find this

account to be very counter-intuitive with respect to his experience as well.

In addition to offering a counter-intuitive account of personhood, Gigerenzer’s theory also

offers a counter-intuitive account of rational decision making; for we also do not normally feel

the need to invoke the factor of the sun when explaining how to perform many visual

calculations, such as how to properly throw a football at a moving target. In fact, with this kind

of calculation, we would usually only talk about the influence of the sun or a similar kind of

situational factor when it proves to be a detriment to visual calculations, such as when

someone blames their inability to accurately throw a football at a moving target on the sun

being in their eyes, or we talk about it as though it were a tool, such as how one can use the

position of the sun to determine the time of day.

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Given, then, how we normally like to talk about how situational factors relate to our

rationality (i.e. as an external constraint to calculation or as a tool of calculation), and

personhood (as being distinct from our situation and other people), Gigerenzer’s account is

very counter-intuitive. While being counter-intuitive, by itself, should not merit the total

dismissal of his theory, because we naturally want to draw a distinction between how one uses

an aspect of one’s situation as a tool of reasoning, and when the situation constitutes part of

the decision making process itself, by appealing to Rule 4 established in section II, a superior

theory will take these intuitions into account, while also responding to Gigerenzer's concern

about how greatly our situation affects our decision making process, hence (at least) matching

it with respect to its predictive success and explanatory scope.

IV.III A Possible Response

While Gigerenzer might respond by suggesting that, in the case of the football example, the

sun is not a direct situational factor, and is rather more of a background influence, this

distinction is very vague. For, given that there are innumerable situational factors that could

influence our decision making, just how many do we need to take into account and say we are

'coupled with' in order to have a fully satisfactory account of rational decision making? Because

it stands to reason that the most comprehensive account (and hence the one to be preferred)

would take into account as many situational couplings as possible, it is evident that

Gigerenzer's theory by its very nature explodes our notion of personhood, and, as such, this

critique is by no means uncharitable, but rather takes the theory to its logical conclusion.

V.I A Virtue Ethics Account of Decision Making

To summarize what has been established so far in this paper, while in section III.I we might

agree that Harman is correct to suggest that we need to pay more attention to situational

factors when talking about decision making given his analysis of various empirical studies, in

section III.II it was demonstrated that his suggestion that we should do away with talking about

character traits is too hasty. It leaves us unequipped to discuss an individual's internal

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contributions to the decision making process, a facet of an account of decision making which is

necessitated by the predictive failure of his situational based account. We then examined

Gigerenzer's theory in section IV.I, which does indeed attempt to incorporate our situation into

how we discuss the decision making process without doing away with also talking about

internal factors by suggesting that we talk about people as being coupled with their

environment. However, in section IV.II it was demonstrated that this account of decision

making is very counter-intuitive, as it both expands our notion of personhood to include almost

anything, and causes us to talk about situational factors as though they were like internal

aspects of our rationality, when we both experience them, and thus would rather characterize

them, as either tools or external constraints to rationality. While being counter-intuitive is not,

by itself, a problem, a more intuitive theory with equal (or greater) predictive success and

or/explanatory power is to be preferred, as per Rule 4 established in section II.

I will argue that Virtue Ethics' notion of character traits, which I have derived from Alasdair

MacIntyre's After Virtue and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accomplishes this. First, however,

it is important to clearly state what is meant by a 'virtue ethics' account of decision making.

While Harman does offer a description of character traits in which he classifies them as

"relatively long-term stable dispositions to act in distinct ways" (GH, 317), this description is

somewhat misleading, as virtue ethics holds that character traits are always in flux to a certain

extent (Aristotle, 1103a14-b25). What this means is that, as an athlete will become more

disposed to successfully perform certain actions the more he practices them, but must

frequently work to maintain these dispositions or else he risks losing them, "to act virtuously

is...to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues" (Alaisdair MacIntyre, 149).

Similarly one who acts courageously does not simply possess the characteristic of being

courageous, which proceeds to influence all of his/her actions, but he/she must practice being

courageous in order to maintain this habituation, and the ease with which it is to be

courageous across various situations is determined, in part, by how habituated one is to being

courageous (A, 1103b15-25, 1104b1-3).

V.II Comparing Virtue Ethics with the Other Two Accounts of Decision Making

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In addition to providing an account of the internal factor that influences decision making,

virtue ethics also takes into account the situational factors that influence it as well; for it holds

that different situations can place higher demands on how much one must be disposed to act

in that situation according to a particular character trait. For example, one can maintain a level

of discipline in studying which allows one to easily work diligently in situations which facilitate

this behaviour, such as a library, while not maintaining a high enough level of discipline to work

in situations which discourage it, such as a comfortable living room with plenty of distractions.

This view is evident from Aristotle's description of virtues as being in a particular state that is a

mean between two extremes, offering the example of how, in regards to "feelings of fear and

confidence", too much confidence leads one to being rash, too little leads one to be a coward,

while one who exhibits the right amount of confidence is courageous (A, 1107a33-b4).

Despite this, one might be inclined to think based on his use of the word 'mean' that

Aristotle is suggesting the right amount of a certain quality is always mathematically equal,

some fixed moderate quantity, and hence that the situation does not play a role in determining

the appropriate action. However, Aristotle clarifies that the "intermediate relative to us..is not

one, nor the same for all" (A, 1106a29-b4), and while the example Aristotle uses to explicate

this claim refers not to a difference in situation but of internal characteristics, pointing out that

the right amount of food for an advanced wrestler differs from one who is new to athletic

exercises, there is good reason to think that Aristotle also holds that different situations place

different demands on what the mean response is. For example, in "Aristotle's Doctrine of the

Mean", Urmson points out the absurdity of thinking that the mean required for a certain action

is not, in part, determined by features of a particular situation. "If you are trivially rude to me,

should I be moderately angry with you, and also when you torture my wife? To be moderately

angry would be absurd on both occasions" (Urmson, 160-161).

Thus, since this accords with what Aristotle says about the need to act according to these

character traits "at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people,

with the right aim, and in the right way" (A, 1106b21-23), as in both cases the response does

not seem to be made "in the right way" given the specifics of the situation, but rather seems

excessive in the first instance and deficient in the second, it is evident that in a virtue ethics

account of human decision making, different situations can place different demands on how

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disposed one must be towards a particular character trait in order to act according to it.

This account is thus advantageous because it does not commit itself to the view that one’s

situation completely determines the decisions one makes, which as we saw in III.II is a

deficiency with respect to both predictive success and explanatory scope, and hence virtue

ethics improves on this consequence of Harman’s account. For if one sufficiently practices a

character trait, it stands to reason that one could be disposed to act in accordance with it in

more demanding situations. In fact, many of our institutions, such as the army, are organized

around this very principle, as members of the army are conditioned to be disciplined and calm

in harsh situations.

With all this in mind, let us now reexamine the cases which Harman and Gigerenzer used to

support their theories, and see how virtue ethics accounts for them. The high number of people

who obeyed authority despite their moral reservation in the Milgram experiment is explained by

the fact that the "relevant features of the situation" required a high level of, say, courage in

order to oppose authority. Thus, most people did not act courageously not because their

character is necessarily defective, but because the situation demanded too high a disposition

to be courageous for most people6. A similar account can be offered in the case of the Good

Samaritan example, as in that experiment the time constraint of being late placed too high a

dispositional demand to be, say, compassionate, for most of the experiment subjects. Similarly,

in the physician case, how the information was represented in the first scenario required a high

degree of Bayesian rationality, which most were not disposed enough to reason with, while the

second scenario required a low degree of Bayesian rationality, and hence more of the

participants were disposed enough to reason correctly at that level.

Hence, since virtue ethics offers a satisfactory account of both the internal and external

factors at play in decision making, as it can explain why some people obeyed authority in the

Milgram experiment while others resisted, it is superior to Harman’s account with respect to

explanatory scope, and hence (as we saw) predictive success. Concerning Gigerenger’s

account, however, given that he also provides an account of both the internal and external

factors at play in decision making, his account therefore is at least equal with a virtue ethics

6“Time and again in the experiment people disvalued what they were doing but could not muster the inner resources to translate their value into action” (SM, 10).

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account with respect to the explanatory scope criterion. Additionally, Gigerenger’s account also

seems to be at least equal with a virtue ethics account with respect to the predictive success

criterion. For while it seems reasonable to suggest that virtue ethics makes the successful

prediction that, generally speaking, less people will be able to act according to a disposition in

a situation that places a higher demand on acting according to that disposition than in a

situation that places a lower demand, Gigerenger’s account can simply re-characterize the

situations predicted by a virtue ethics account as being cases where the situation one is

coupled with places a higher or lower dispositional demand of performing certain kinds of

actions.

V.III The Success of Virtue Ethics with the Conforming to Our Intuitions Criterion

Given, then, that it was demonstrated that virtue ethics is superior to Harman’s situational

account with respect to both the predictive success criterion and the explanatory scope

criterion, but is (at least) equal to Gigerenger’s account in both categories, we shall thus have

to turn, as per Rule 4, to the conforming to intuitions criterion in order to decide between

Gigerenger’s account, and a virtue ethics account. In this respect, it is clear that virtue ethics is

the superior theory, as it was already established in section IV.II that Gigerenger’s theory is

very counter-intuitive, while a virtue ethics account more closely matches our experience of

decision making, and thus our intuitions about decision making. To return to the library

example, many people specifically study in the library so that they can escape a poor work

situation which they know they lack the disposition to work effectively in, in favour of a situation

that requires a much lower disposition of discipline in order to work effectively in — although

they may not think about it in these terms. To offer another example, while it might be easy to

not cheat on a test if it is not worth too much, one might feel more of a struggle to not cheat on

a test that has higher stakes, and hence virtue ethics can account for this experience as being

the result of the fact that the second situation places a higher dispositional demand on one to

be honest than the first situation. Given, then, that we have more experience of the difficulties

of acting according to a certain character trait in certain situations, but not of being coupled

with these situations, it is thus clear that virtue ethics offers a more intuitive account of decision

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making, and therefore improves on Gigerenzer’s account according to the conforming to

intuitions criterion.

VI. Conclusion

In examining the theories presented by Harman and Gigerenzer, both challenge our notion

of how we should attribute decision making to persons by demonstrating how prominently our

situation plays a role in our decision making process. However, it is evident from what has

been argued in this paper that the accounts of decision making they suggest are ultimately

deficient, and that we should instead favour virtue ethics' account decision making. For it takes

into account the effects that our situation has on our decision making process, while neither

reducing our notion of personhood to the point of being unable to talk about our internal

contributions to decision making, which, as we saw with Harman’s account, comes at the cost

of both predictive success and explanatory scope, nor expanding our notion of personhood too

much, and hence offering an unintuitive account of our situation’s relationship to our rationality,

as we saw with Gigerenzer’s account.

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Works Cited Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics”. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Trans. W. D. Ross. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Print. Darley, John M, and C. Daniel Batson. “‘From Jerusalem to Jericho': A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Volume 27 (1973): pp. 100–108. Harman, Gilbert. “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Volume XIV. (1999): pg. 315-331. ______________. "Virtue Ethics without Character Traits". Fact and Value: Essays on Ethics and Metaphysics for Judith Jarvis Thompson. Eds. Alex Byrne, Robert Stalnaker, and Ralph Wedgwood. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. pp. 117-127. Gigerenzer, Greg. “Is the Mind Irrational or Ecologically Rational?” The Law and Economics of Irrational Behavior. Ed. Francesco Parisi and Vernon Smith. Stanford University Press, 2004. Kamtekar, Rachana. “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character”. Ethics. Volume 114, no. 3 (2004): pp. 458-491. MacIntyre, Alasdair. “After Virtue”. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1985. Print. Milgram, Stanley. “Obedience to Authority”. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Print. Plato. “Republic”. Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997. Print. Urmson, J. O. “Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean”. American Philosophical

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