Situationist Social Psychology and J. S. Mill's Conception of Character

¹ Doris, J., Lack of Character (Cambridge, 2002).

² Ross, L. and Nisbett, R. E., The Person and the Situation (Philadelphia, 1991).

³ Milgram, S., Obedience to Authority (New York, 1974).

⁴ Harman, G., ‘Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1998–9), pp. 315–31.

⁵ Arete is the ancient Greek word for ‘excellence’ or ‘virtue’. The related problems for the pure aretaic view are developed in Card, R., ‘Pure Aretaic Ethics and Character’, The Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (2004), pp. 473–84.

⁶ Railton, P., ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984), pp. 134–71.

⁷ This assumes that consequentialism can incorporate intrinsic moral values broader than simply pleasure itself; such an account of consequentialism is developed in Card, R., ‘Consequentialism, Teleology, and the New Friendship Critique’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2004), pp. 149–72.

⁸ Mill, J. S., On Liberty, ed. Rappaport, E. (Indianapolis, 1978), p. 57.

⁹ Mill, Liberty, p. 56.

¹⁰ Mill, Liberty, p. 64.

¹¹ Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Sher, G. (Indianapolis, 2001), p. 8.

¹² Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 9 (bracketed text added).

¹³ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, T. (Indianapolis, 1999), at 1113a30.

¹⁴ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 11.

¹⁵ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 9.

¹⁶ Mill, J. S., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Robson, J. M. et al. (Toronto and London, 1963), vol. 8, p. 869.

¹⁷ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 864.

¹⁸ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 866.

¹⁹ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 873.

²⁰ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 8.

²¹ This interpretation may give rise to tensions between Mill's professed monism in chapter 4 of Utilitarianism and his commitment to the intrinsic value of both pleasure and quality in chapter 2. I do not attempt to resolve these apparent tensions in this article.

²² Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 10.

²³ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 22.

²⁴ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 23.

²⁵ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 23.

²⁶ I have defended the appeal of this view in previous work; see Card, ‘Friendship’. I would stress that this sophisticated view is not an indirect consequentialist view in the vein of rule-consequentialism (RC), since RC is beset by the intractable difficulty that it is internally inconsistent. For an explanation, see Card, R. F., ‘Inconsistency and the Theoretical Commitments of Hooker's Rule-Consequentialism’, Utilitas 19 (2007), pp. 243–58.

²⁷ Mill, Liberty, pp. 61–2.

²⁸ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 29.

²⁹ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 20.

³⁰ Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 20.

³¹ Mill, Liberty, p. 68.

³² Mill, Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 955.

³³ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 869.

³⁴ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 958.

³⁵ Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women (Buffalo, 1986), p. 28.

³⁶ Mill, Subjection, p. 30.

³⁷ Mill, Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 868.

³⁸ Morris, E. L., Bell, E. A., Roe, L. S., and Rolls, B. J., ‘Portion Size of Food Influences Energy Intake in Adults’, FASEB Journal 15 (2001), p. A890.

³⁹ Harman, G., ‘The Nonexistence of Character Traits’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000), pp. 223–6, at p. 224.