Charlie Kurth

Email: charles.kurth [at] wmich [dot] edu

Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00-3:30 pm, and by appointment

Office Location: Moore 3010

Course Overview

According to the received wisdom, what distinguishes us—as mature moral agents—from children and brutes is that we, but not they, can do things like form and assess intentions, resist acting on our strongest desires, and engage in rich forms of deliberation about how to act and what to value. Moreover, this thought underlies the further claim that there’s a tight connection between virtuous agency and the development of certain rational capacities.

Yet whatever intuitive plausibility this picture of human virtue might have, the core details remain badly incomplete. For instance, what are the relevant capacities and must they be consciously engaged in order for an action to be virtuous? If not, what role are these capacities supposed to play? Additionally, how are we to make sense of empirical observations indicating that non-rational capacities (emotions, automatic processes, etc.) often deliver better decisions than what we’d get through explicit reasoning?

Until we have answers to questions like these, it’s impossible to assess the claim that there’s an intimate link between being virtuous and engaging one’s rational capacities. But according to a prominent line of skepticism, the problem actually runs deeper. If reasoning, reflection, and the like have little (positive) impact on our thoughts and actions (as much empirical work suggests), then shouldn’t we just reject the received wisdom?

To assess plausibility of this skepticism—and to see what a viable, non-skeptical proposal might look like—we will examine Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of virtue. These proposals are interesting because they seek to specify an essential role for rational engagement in an account of virtuous agency. But, as we’ll see, Aristotelians and Kantians develop very different proposals for what reason’s role is, and so come to interestingly different conclusions about things like what virtue is, why it’s valuable, and how we might cultivate it. So by looking closely at these proposals, we will come to a better understanding of human virtue and its development.

Texts

Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (available via Amazon and the like)

Matt Stritcher, The Skillfulness of Virtue (available via Amazon and the like)

Anne Margaret Baxley, Kant's Theory of Virtue [Recommended]

Selected readings available on the course web site

Assignments and Grading

This course will have three graded components.

1) Class participation (15%). This course is structured as a seminar. So you will be expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings. To give you some guidance, I will provide weekly reading questions. While you are not required to write up answers to these questions, you should come to class prepared to talk about them.

2) Reading responses (40%). Throughout the course, you will write four brief critical response essays. More specifically, you need to write one response for each of Parts 1-4 of the course (the readings for Aug 29 and Dec 5 are not eligible for reading responses). Those constraints aside, you are free to choose which reading you write about and you can use the reading questions as guide for your response papers. These essays should be approximately 500-600 words long (standard formatting).

In your response paper, you should focus on just one of that week's assigned readings. Having picked a reading, you should then do two things. First, you should summarize one argument from the reading you selected (not the entire paper) by putting it into standard form. That is, explicitly lay out your understanding of the argument's premises and conclusions. Second, you should raise an objection to the argument you've presented. As a rough guide, presenting the standard form version of the argument should 30-40% of your discussion with the balance left for your objection.

The essays are to be emailed to me by noon on the Wednesday before the relevant Thursday class meeting.

3) Long paper (45%). The longer paper assignment invites you to explore one of the topics that we will be discussing in the course. Your paper should be approximately 15 pages long (double spaced, standard formatting). Though you are free to choose the topic for your long paper, you must get it approved by me before you start working on your draft. I strongly recommend that you begin thinking about you paper topic early; you should aim to have a proposal signed off on before Thanksgiving week (preferably, before).

You will need to turn in a draft of your paper by noon on Sunday, December 8. I will provide you with feedback by Thursday, December 12 (hopefully earlier). The final version of the paper will be due at noon on Saturday, December 14. You should email both your draft and your final papers to me.

While your draft needn't be a highly polished piece, the more developed it is, the better the comments I will be able to give you. Turning in a cursory draft may result in a grade penalty.

Grading: Final grades will be calculated based on the percentages noted above (using the average for the four reading responses). Here is a tentative guide for the grading scale: A=100-92, BA=91-88, B=87-83....

Policies

In order to help ensure a successful class, please heed the following rules and policies:

• Due Dates. Baring unusual circumstances, the due dates on the syllabus are non-negotiable. If you think you have reason to miss an assignment, it is best to inform me well in advance.
• Classroom Environment. Please arrive to class on time. All cell phones must be turned off during class. Texting, web surfing and the like is not permitted. Abuse of these courtesies may lead to penalties.
• Academic Honesty. As a student at WMU, you are responsible for making yourself aware of the University policies and procedures that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism, complicity, and computer misuse. In this class, you will be expected to abide by these obligations. This means that all work presented as original must, in fact, be original; the ideas and contributions of others (be they quotes, summaries, or paraphrases) must be appropriately acknowledged. More information about the WMU Academic Honesty rules as well as the rights of accused students can be found here.

Resources

• Accommodations for Disabilities. I am happy to make accommodations to assist students with documented disabilities (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, hearing, etc.). Those wishing to arrange reasonable accommodations must contact Disability Services for Students. A disability determination must be made by this office before any accommodations are provided by the instructor. More information can be found here.
• Mental Health. WMU’s Mental Health Services’ professional staff members work with students to resolve personal and interpersonal difficulties, many of which can affect the academic experience. These include conflicts with or worry about friends or family, concerns about eating or drinking patterns, and feelings of anxiety and depression.

Tentative Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Course Introduction & Overview

August 29. Virtuous Agency: Two Extremes

• Read syllabus
• Kant, selections
  • Qs: What do the passages from Kant suggest about his understanding of the nature of virtue and agency? For instance, what role does he think reason, inclination, and feeling should play in moral thought and action?
• John Doris, "Skepticism about Persons"
  • Qs: What, in a sentence, is Doris’s skeptical thesis? What does Doris mean by ‘person’ and what’s its relation to ‘reflectivism’? Do you agree with Doris’s contention that reflectivism represents a (if not the) dominant take on (virtuous) agency? What does Doris mean by ‘impoverished self-awareness’? What do you see as the main upshot of Doris’s review of the empirical literature on automaticity and the like? Which of the four responses to Doris’s skepticism do you think is most forceful? Why?
• Nomy Arpaly & Tim Schroeder, "Deliberation and Acting for Reasons" [recommended]

Part 1: Aristotelian Proposals, Version 1

September 3. Annas: Virtue as Intellectual Skill

• Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue, Chap 2-4 (pp 41-51 can be skimmed)
  • Qs: How does Annas understand virtues and their relation to a person’s character? How do virtues differ from habits and routines? What are the central features of the virtue/skill analogy as Annas understands it? In what way is the development of virtue/skill an intellectual endeavor? Why does Annas think that articulacy and explanation are essential features of virtue and its development? Explain. What kind of distinction does Annas seem to be making between automatic, skilled action and sub-rational actions (e.g., p 26, 29)? Explain the “virtue is too conservative” worry (Chap 4) and why Annas thinks her account avoids it. In what sense is virtue an ideal on Annas’s account?
• Yannig Luthra, "Non-rational Aspects of Skilled Agency"
• Charlie Kurth, The Anxious Mind, excerpts [recommended]

September 12. Annas: Virtue as Intellectual Skill (con't)

• Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue, Chap 5-6 [recommended: Chap 8-9]
• Kate Abramson, "Affective Conflict and Virtue: Hume's Answer to Aristotle"
• Karen Stohr, "Moral Cacophony: When Continence Is a Virtue" [recommended]
• Thaddeus Metz, "Virtue in African Ethics as Living Harmoniously" [recommended]
  • Qs: What is encratic action—how does it differ from, say, virtuous or akratic action? In what way is being virtuous pleasant? What does the pleasure of courage consist in and how does Annas think the skill analogy helps us understand the sense in which virtue is pleasant? How do “flow” experiences differ from routine/automatic actions? How do these differences enrich our understanding to the connection between virtue and enjoyment? How does Annas explain the difference between internal and external obstacles to acting virtuously? On Annas’s account, does the pleasure of acting virtuously provide a reason or motivation for acting in that way? Explain. What is practical intelligence and how is it related to virtues and their unity? How is the skill analogy supposed to help substantiate Annas’s claims about unity and practical intelligence? What is the “too demanding/too ideal” objection and how does Annas deal with it? What’s the distinction between the circumstances of life and the living of a life? Does Annas’s use of this distinction make her account of virtue objectionable relativistic or contextual?

September 19. No Class

Sept 26. The Situationist Challenge

• John Doris, "Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics"
• Rachana Kamtekar, "Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character"
  • Qs: What’s the difference between using empirical work to challenge the descriptive adequacy of an ethical theory and using it to challenges the normative adequacy? What does it mean to say that behavior is driven by situation? What does Doris take the central elements of the Aristotelian account of character/character traits to involve? What does it mean to say that “trait attribution requires substantial cross-situational consistency in behavior” (508)? What are the three elements of the situationalist’s account of personality? What are local traits? What is Doris’s response to the observation that (some) people seem to behave in regular, trait-like ways? What is Doris’s response to the “intellectulist” reply to situationism? What’s the reply to the Aristotelian retort that virtue is rare? In what way is Doris’s view conservatively revisionary? What normative implications does Doris think his proposal has for our moral discourse and practice—what, for instance, does he suggest we do to become better people?

Part 2: Aristotelian Proposals, Version 2

October 3. Stichter: Virtue as Expert Skill

• Matt Stichter, The Skillfulness of Virtue, Chap 1-2
• John Doris, "Making Good: Virtues, Skills, and Performance Science"
  • Qs: What’s the principle of minimal psychological realism and why is it important? According to Stichter, what are the principle elements of self-regulation? In what ways can we fail to self-regulate and what strategies can we employ to guard against these failures? How does Stichter think about expertise and its acquisition? What limitations do you see in our ability to acquire expertise (as Stichter is understanding it)? In what sense does Stichter’s account of moral virtue make moral skills distinctly moral? How are moral skills developed and what conditions contribute to our ability to develop them? What does being a moral expert involve and is it something we can achieve on Stichter’s account? What are moral intuitions on Stichter’s account? Why (and when) are the reliable? What is Stichter’s take on our ability to explain why we acted as we did? Do you find it plausible? How do we individuate virtues and are vices skills? What do you see as the principle differences between Stichter’s account and what we saw from Annas?

October 10. Stichter: Virtue as Expert Skill (con't)

• Matt Stichter, The Skillfulness of Virtue, Chap 3 (108-119 can be skipped), Chap 4, Chap 5 (176-179 can be skipped)
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, pp. 232-237
• Jason Swartwood, "Wisdom as Expert Skill"
• Susan Wolf, "Moral Psychology and the Unity of the Virtues" [recommended]
  • Qs: What is the motivation objection(s) to the virtues as skill model? Do you think Stichter is taking on the strongest form of these objections? Explain. How do Stichter’s replies to the motivation objections change (or enrich) our understanding of what it means to say that virtues are skills (e.g., do skills/virtues become more intellectualized?)? What is practical wisdom (e.g., is it a skill; how does it differ from cleverness)? How is practical wisdom connected to moral virtue on Stichter’s account? Is the connection he posit in tension with some of the concerns he voices about (e.g.) Annas’s account of virtue as skill? What implications does Stichter’s account of practical wisdom have for our understanding of what being virtuous involves and our understanding of the unity of the virtues?

October 17. No Class (Fall Break)

Part 3: Kantian Proposals, Version 1

October 24. Kant, Mere Continence, and Virtue

• Anne Margaret Baxley, Kant's Theory of Virtue, Chap 2, Chap 4 [recommended background reading: Chap 1]
• Eric Wilson, "Self-Legislation and Self-Command in Kant's Ethics" [recommended critical reading]
• Lara Denis, "Kant's Conception of Virtue" [recommended background reading]
  • Qs: Baxley, Ch 2: Why, according to Baxley, does Kant need an account of moral character? How does Kant understand virtue? What is “autocracy” and how does it differ from autonomy? Can Kant’s account of virtue give adequate place to the role of emotion in moral life? Is moral action merely continent action on Kant’s account? How do Kant’s answers to these last two questions contrast with what we’ve seen from Aristotelians? What is “radical evil” and how is it relevant to Kant’s account of autocracy? What did Kant take the Stoics’ mistake about moral evil to be? What role does the idea of a “tranquil mind” play in Kant’s account and how does this notion differ from the Aristotelians’ talk of “harmony”? What role does happiness play on Kant’s account? What does virtue understood as self-governance amount to and how does it relate to Kant’s views about human nature? Ch 4: What are the three models of autocracy: how do they differ and what do they imply about Kant’s account of human moral psychology? Do you think the Kantian model is plausible both empirically and normatively? On Baxley’s reading, how is Kantian virtue different from mere continence? Do you find this proposal plausible? Does Kant think there is a morally valuable kind of desire? Explain. What is moral feeling for Kant? Is it psychologically plausible? In what sense are love and respect virtues for Kant? What about sympathy?

October 31. Kant, Virtue, and Emotion

• Krista Thomason, "A Good Enough Heart: Kant and the Cultivation of Emotions"
• Alix Cohen, "Kant on Moral Feelings, Moral Desires and the Cultivation of Virtue"
• Alix Cohen, "A Kantian Account of Emotions as Feelings" [recommended]
  • Qs: KT: What is it the cultivation view and what range of emotions does is apply to? What is Thomason’s reading of Section 35 (on sympathy)? Do you find her rendering plausible? According to Thomason, what are emotions (for Kant) and how do they relate to other categories—e.g., affect, passion? What is “mental composure”: why is it important for agency and how is it affected by emotions? Relatedly, how are emotions (as Thomason understands them) surrogates for reason—e.g., in what way are they supposed to be “reason-like”? According to Thomason, how should we understand Kant’s talk of cultivation? Stepping away from the Kant interpretation, do you find Thomason’s overall (Kantian) account of the role of emotions in moral life plausible? AC: What is Cohen’s account of non-moral willing and how does it differ from her account of moral willing? What are lower and higher feelings and what role do they play in Cohen’s proposal? How does Cohen’s account explain acts of beneficence? According to Cohen, feelings and desires are “intrinsically virtuous”. What does this mean and how does it contrast with account Baxley offers?

Part 4: Kantian Proposals, Version 2

November 7. Kant and the Role of Desire

• Barbara Herman, Moral Literacy, Chap 4 : Responsibility and Moral Competence
• Nomy Arpaly, "Duty, Desire, and the Good Person"
  • Qs: What do you take primary objective of Herman’s essay to be? Why is it significant? What is (moral) literacy? What is the puzzle that Herman thinks Kantians face given their understanding of the connection between motives and morally right outcomes? What is Herman’s complaint with the Humean account of the importance of character/motive? Do you find the worry compelling? On Herman’s preferred reading of Kant, what has priority: assessments of motivation or assessments of action? What is Herman’s proposal for how we’re to understand what motives are—how does it differ from more traditional proposals? How do questions about moral responsibility shape Herman’s thinking about moral development (look at, eg, the example of the abusive individual p 92ff)? What is Herman’s concern with Aristotelian proposals? Do you agree? What is the “minimal moral motive” and what role does it play (eg, with regard to new moral facts)?

November 14. Kant and the Development of Virtue

• Barbara Herman, Moral Literacy, Chap 5 : Can Virtue be Taught
• Karen Jones, "Toward a Trajectory-Dependent Model of (Human) Rational Agency"
• Barbara Herman, Moral Literacy, Chap 6: Training Autonomy [recommended]
  • Qs:
    • BH: What are new moral facts (NMFs)—give an example of your own? What does Herman mean in saying that the “‘business as usual’ is integral to the place of morality in a good life” and why are NMFs an issue with regard to this (109)? Explain the pornography example and the lessons Herman draws from it. Eg, what is the new wrong in pornography that feminist critiques draw out? In what way does recognizing it change the moral landscape? What’s a “moral time out” and why is it relevant to the pornography discussion? In what way do NMFs pose a challenge to traditional (Aristotelian) views of character? How is “moral hysteria” relevant? Why are rules central to morality (in contrast to the rules of performance)? What’s the distinction between following rules and relating to reasons? What requirements does Herman think fall out of her understanding of NMFs? Why does she think this favors a Kantian account (over Humean or Aristotelian alternatives)?
    • KJ: What are the three empirically motivated objections to rationalism? Why does Jones think that rationality must be given center stage in an account of agency? What’s her distinction between a reason tracker and a reason responder—e.g., what distinctive cognitive capacities are needed for the latter? How does the tracker/responder distinction support rationalism? Explain the difference between the expert and judge accounts of the authority of rational judgment. What is the constitution argument for the judge model and why does Jones think it’s mistaken? What is the monitor model and in what way is it dependent on “trajectory” (contrast: “history” dependent)? According to Jones, can future events change whether a past action was rational? Explain.

November 21. The Relevance of Moral Rules: Empirical Perspectives

• Peter Railton, "Moral Learning: Conceptual Foundations and Normative Relevance" [sec. 5.5-6.0 can be skimmed]
  • Qs: How does Railton understand moral learning—eg, how does it contrast with moral development and social learning? What is distinctive of moral learning? What is ‘expectation-based action-guidance’? How is ‘expectation-based action-guidance’ related to Humean projection and what might it suggest about moral nativsim? What’s distinctive of ‘deep learning systems’? What should moral learning look like if it’s the product of domain-general, deep learning mechanisms? What evidence supports this picture? What is the distinction between empathetic distress and empathetic concern, and why does it matter for Railton’s account? What do “moral intuitions” amount to on Railton’s account and how does his account of their authority differ from what dual-process accounts say?
• Shaun Nichols, "Moral Learning and Moral Representations "
  • Qs: What are the core issues that Nichols is investigating in his paper? What’s the contrast between low-level (value-based) and structured (rule-based) accounts of mental content? What is the point of the scuba diving example (3.1)? What is Nichols’ concern with Cushman’s model-free account? How does Railton’s account differ from Cushman’s (e.g., how does it explain judgments of wrongness)? Why is Nichols nonetheless dissatisfied with Railton’s proposal? How does Nichols’ proposal capture the connection between moral judgment and motivation? Do you find it plausible? What is the rule learning challenge and how does Nichols address it? What lessons for debates between rationalists and sentimentalists does Nichols draw from his observation about statistical learning?

November 28. No Class (Thanksgiving)

Part 5: Skepticism Redux?

December 5. Feminist and Skeptical Perspectives

• Claudia Card, The Unnatural Lottery, Chap 3: Women's Voices and Female Character
• John Doris, Talking to Our Selves, Chap 6: Agency
• Thaddeus Metz, "The Virtues of African Ethics" [recommended]
  • Qs: What are the characteristic features of Gilligan’s care and justice voices? What does Card’s tour through the history of ethics suggest about the accounts of virtue we have been looking at this semester? What does it mean to say that a capacity for love is a part of moral character, one on par with a Kantian capacity to act from principle? What is Nietzsche’s objection to care ethics? What are the rosy and skeptical perspectives and what is Card’s take on them—specifically, in what sense does she think each gets something right? Explain Card’s move to understand care as a focus on informal and personal relationships—what does this mean and why is it significant? What are the three critical features of families (68ff) and how do the highlight the importance of women’s voices for our thinking about ethics and virtue?

December 8: Drafts Due at Noon

December 14: Final Papers Due at Noon