- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Character in Ethics
- 1 Morality and Aristotelian Character Excellence
- 2 Aristotle on the Person-Situation Debate
- 3 Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond
- 4 Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- 5 Character and Consequences
- 6 How One Becomes What One Is
- Part II Character in Moral Psychology
- 7 Moral Psychology’s Drinking Problem
- 8 Autonomy, Character, and Self-Understanding
- 9 Virtue and Cognition
- 10 Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons
- 11 Character in Action
- 12 Two Senses of “Why”
- Part III Character in Psychology and X-Phi
- 13 Promises and Consistency
- 14 Do Broad Character Traits Exist? Repeated Assessments of Individuals, Not Group Summaries from Classic Experiments, Provide the Relevant Evidence
- 15 A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of Psychology
- 16 The Psychology of Character, Reputation, and Gossip
- 17 Scrupulous Characters and Mental Illness
- 18 Character and Emotional Phenomenology
- Part IV Character and Society
- 19 Character and History
- 20 The “Character” of Profit and Loss
- 21 Justice and the Intellectual Virtues
- Part V Character in Art
- 22 Fictional Characters as Social Metaphors
- 23 Character, Social Psychology, and the Cognitive Value of Literature
- 24 Fiction in the Brain
- 25 Character and Character Swapping in Mozart’s <i>Così fan tutte</i>
- 26 A Miscast of Character
- Index
Virtue and Cognition
Virtue and Cognition
- Chapter:
- (p.147) 9 Virtue and Cognition
- Source:
- Questions of Character
- Author(s):
Alison Hills
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Discussions of virtue often center on the non-cognitive aspects of virtue. But as this chapter argues, there is something special about the virtuous person’s cognition as well. How is this special element is to be understood? One common suggestion is that the virtuous person has knowledge of what to do. But a person can have knowledge by testimony. Intuitively, such a person lacks virtue. The chapter argues that what is characteristic of the virtuous person’s way of making moral judgments is not knowledge but moral understanding. Hills gives a number of reasons for this: moral understanding helps the agent who has it do the right thing reliably; a grasp of the morally relevant factors helps an agent in a complex situation achieve her goals without violating any moral norms; the agent with moral understanding is better able to justify her actions and give advice.
Keywords: virtue, moral judgment, do the right thing, moral norms, moral understanding, knowledge by testimony
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Character in Ethics
- 1 Morality and Aristotelian Character Excellence
- 2 Aristotle on the Person-Situation Debate
- 3 Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond
- 4 Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will
- 5 Character and Consequences
- 6 How One Becomes What One Is
- Part II Character in Moral Psychology
- 7 Moral Psychology’s Drinking Problem
- 8 Autonomy, Character, and Self-Understanding
- 9 Virtue and Cognition
- 10 Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons
- 11 Character in Action
- 12 Two Senses of “Why”
- Part III Character in Psychology and X-Phi
- 13 Promises and Consistency
- 14 Do Broad Character Traits Exist? Repeated Assessments of Individuals, Not Group Summaries from Classic Experiments, Provide the Relevant Evidence
- 15 A New Approach to Character Traits in Light of Psychology
- 16 The Psychology of Character, Reputation, and Gossip
- 17 Scrupulous Characters and Mental Illness
- 18 Character and Emotional Phenomenology
- Part IV Character and Society
- 19 Character and History
- 20 The “Character” of Profit and Loss
- 21 Justice and the Intellectual Virtues
- Part V Character in Art
- 22 Fictional Characters as Social Metaphors
- 23 Character, Social Psychology, and the Cognitive Value of Literature
- 24 Fiction in the Brain
- 25 Character and Character Swapping in Mozart’s <i>Così fan tutte</i>
- 26 A Miscast of Character
- Index
