Moral character Totally Explained

Everything about Moral Character totally explained

Moral character or character is an evaluation of an individual's moral qualities. The concept of character can imply a variety of attributes including the existence or lack of virtues such as integrity, courage, fortitude, honesty, or loyalty or of good behaviors or habits. When someone is a moral character, it's primarily referring to the assemblage of qualities that distinguish one individual from another.Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as '“a disposition to behave expressing itself in consistent patterns of functioning across a range of situations”' (External Link

)

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals…We must remember that intelligence isn't enough. Intelligence plus character — that's the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate…

We define character as the sum of those qualities of moral excellence that stimulates a person to do the right thing, which is manifested through right and proper actions despite internal or external pressures to the contrary.

Overview

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines the word character, as derived from the Greek word charaktêr, which was originally used of a mark impressed upon a coin. Later and more generally, character came to mean a distinctive mark by which one thing was distinguished from others. There are two approaches when dealing with moral character: Normative Ethics –involves moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. It’s a test of proper behavior and determining what’s right and wrong. Applied Ethics- involves specific and controversial issues along with a moral choice Marx was interested in attending to smaller democratic workplaces. Marx's early Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is famous for the discussion of how the organization of work under capitalism alienates workers and encourages them to accept the values of capitalist society. Workers who are committed to capitalist values are only interested in advancement for themselves and are distrustful of others' seemingly good intentions, and they view others primarily as competitors for scarce positions. Given these attitudes, they're prone to a number of vices, including lack of generosity, cowardice, and intemperance. (External Link

)

Experiments

The Milgram experiment was a study done in the early 1960’s that helped measure a person’s moral character. Subjects from different socioeconomic groups were tested on their willingness to press a buzzer that caused the subject in another room to experience great pain and distress for giving a wrong answer to a test question. When the subjects raised questions about what they're being asked to do, the experimenter applied mild pressure in the form of appealing to the need to complete the experiment. The Milgram experiment caused a huge amount of criticism among individuals.In post-experiment interviews with subjects Milgram noted that many were completely convinced of the wrongness of what they were doing. Although the subjects may have had moral values, many were criticized on whether they were a truly moral character. (External Link

) In one experiment that was done, the moral character of a person was based on whether or not a person had found a dime in a public phone booth. The findings were that 87% of subjects who found a dime in a phone booth helped somebody in need, while only 4% of those who didn't find a dime helped. It is very troubling that people would be influenced by such morally trivial factors in their choice whether to provide low-cost assistance to others. Doris raises the issue of ecological validity—do experimental findings reflect phenomena found in natural contexts. He recognizes that these results are counterintuitive to the way most of us think about morally relevant behavior. (External Link

) Another experiment that was done that asked college students at Cornell to predict how they'd behave when faced with one of several moral dilemmas, and to make the same predictions for their peers. Again and again, people predicted that they'd be more generous and kind than others. Yet when the time came to put their money where their mouths were, most kept their wallet in their pockets. In psychological terms, the experimental subjects were successfully anticipating the base rate of moral behavior and accurately predicting how often others, in general, would be self-sacrificing. (External Link

)

Criticism

Recently, a number of philosophers and social scientists have begun to question the very presuppositions that theories of moral character and moral character traits are based on. Due to the importance of moral character to issues in philosophy, it's unlikely that the debates over the nature of moral character will disappear anytime soon. (External Link

) Situationism Situationism can be understood as comprised of three central claims (External Link

):
Non-robustness Claim: moral character traits are not consistent across a wide spectrum of trait-relevant situations. Whatever moral character traits an individual has are situation specific. Consistency Claim: while a person’s moral character traits are relatively stable over time, this should be understood as consistency of situation specific traits, rather than robust traits. Fragmentation Claim: a person’s moral character traits don't have the evaluative integrity suggested by the Integrity Claim. There may be considerable disunity in a person’s moral character among her situation-specific character traits. According to Situationists, the empirical evidence favors their view of moral character over the Traditional View. Hugh Hartshorne and M. A. May’s study of the trait of honesty among school children found no cross-situational correlation. A child may be consistently honest with his friends, but not with his parents or teachers. From this and other studies, Hartshorne and May concluded that character traits are not robust but rather “specific functions of life situations” (External Link

) Moral Luck A second challenge to the traditional view can be found in the idea of moral luck. This idea is that moral luck occurs when the moral judgment of an agent depends on factors beyond the agent’s control. There are number of ways that moral luck can motivate criticisms of moral character. It is similar to “the kind of problems and situations one faces” [Nagel,Thomas (1993). "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck, ed. Daniel Statman (State University of New York Press): 57-61].If all of an agent’s moral character traits are situation-specific rather than robust, what traits an agent manifests will depend on the situation that she finds herself in. But what situations an agent finds herself in is often beyond her control and thus a matter of situational luck. Whether moral character traits are robust or situation-specific, some have suggested that what character traits one has is itself a matter of luck. If our having certain traits is itself a matter of luck, this would seem to undermine one’s moral responsibility for one’s moral character, and thus the concept of moral character altogether. As Owen Flanagan and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty write [[http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/moral-ch.htm]:
It [themorality and meaning of an individual’s life] will depend on luck in an individual’s upbringing, the values she's taught, the self-controlling and self-constructing capacities her social environment enables and encourages her to develop, the moral challenges she faces or avoids. If all her character, not just temperamental traits and dispositions but also the reflexive capacities for self-control and self-construction, are matters of luck, then the very ideas of character and agency are in danger of evaporation Impossibility of Being Responsible for One’s Character A moral character trait is a character trait for which the agent is morally responsible. If moral responsibility is impossible, however, then agents can't be held responsible for their character traits or for the behaviors that they do as a result of those character traits. A similar argument has also recently been advocated by Bruce Waller According to Waller, no one is “morally responsible for her character or deliberative powers, or for the results that flow from them.… Given the fact that she was shaped to have such characteristics by environmental (or evolutionary) forces far beyond her control, she deserves no blame [norpraise]”(External Link

):
Further Information

Get more info on 'Moral Character'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://moral_character.totallyexplained.com">Moral character Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.