Positive Psychology, Virtues, and the Problems of Normativity and Adjudication

Kristján KristjánssonProfessor of Character Education and Virtue EthicsJubilee Centre for Character and VirtuesSchool of Education, University of BirminghamEmail: k.kristjansson@bham.ac.uk

Further reading: Kristjánsson, K. (2010). Positive psychology, happiness, and virtue: The

troublesome conceptual issues. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 296–310

Kristjánsson, K. (2012). Positive psychology and positive education: Old wine in new bottles? Educational Psychologist, 47(2), 86–105

Kristjánsson, K. (2013). Virtues and vices in positive psychology: A philosophical critique. Cambridge: C.U.P.

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Psychological content: The pillars

Main pillar: A theory of happiness (well-being/flourishing) = the “ungrounded grounder” of all human strivings

Three sub-pillars:1) the study of positive traits: 1a) moral virtues and character strengths; 1b) mental-health trait of resiliency2) the study of positive emotions: 2a) flow; 2b) pleasant emotions3) the study of positive institutions, such as democracy, strong families, and free public inquiry

My focus: 1a) moral virtues and character strengths

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Pursuing “the social science equivalent of virtue ethics”....

2004 (Peterson & Seligman) = the virtue ethical turn of positive psychology => program of virtue education

MY PLAN:

• Intro to virtue program

• The pros

• Some slight concerns

• The two major concerns (problems of normativity and adjudication)

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The “shocking discovery” of the “reluctant moralists”…

Peterson & Seligman (2004): It so happens that for most people well-being involves virtue

“Shocking discovery” for them

that the same virtues are

championed from Azerbaijan

to Zimbabwe! (75 nations, confirmed)

Empirically true that virtuous character is “what parents look for in their children, what teachers look for in their students, what siblings look for in their brothers and sisters, and what friends look for in each other”

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A “manual of sanities”…

Six universal core moral virtues,

The “High Six”:

Each virtue has 3-5 different manifestations => 24 empirically measurable character strengths

Derived via conceptual and empirical (historical, social scientific) considerations – comparing and contrasting different virtue traditions in philosophy, religion, etc.

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Virtues on a standard virtueethical conception

Virtues are settled (stable and consistent) traits of character, concerned with morally praiseworthy or blameworthy conduct in specific (significant and distinguishable) spheres of human life. Each character trait of this sort typically comprises a unique set of attention, emotion, desire and behaviour, but also a certain comportment or style of expression, applicable in the relevant sphere. The compassionate person thus notices easily and attends to situations in which the lot of others has been undeservedly compromised, feels for the needs of those who have suffered this undeserved misfortune, desires that their misfortune be reversed, acts for the relevant (ethical) reasons in ways conducive to that goal and exudes an outward aura of empathy and care

Virtues as a sub-set of personality traits and as the main ingredients in character (“personality evaluated” á la Allport)

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The pros (from the perspective of current, Aristotle-inspired virtue ethics)

• Contributes to the ongoing cross-fertilization of (naturalistic) virtue ethics and social science

• Builds bridges to character/virtue education• Empirical evidence strengthens naturalistic foundation of

virtue ethics (link between well-being and virtuous living) • Empirical evidence helps fend off relativism• Grounded (increasingly so!) in an objective conception of

well-being as flourishing (eudaimonia) – Seligman’s Flourish• Overcomes “the moral gap” in some previous accounts of

“prosocial” psychological functioning, e.g. EQ/SEL & SDT• Takes seriously the idea of intrinsic value = anti-

instrumentalism (very rare in social science!)

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Some slight concerns…

• Unavailability of empirical data on how the 24 character strengths were arrived at

• Unclear conceptual distinction between “virtues”, “character strengths” and “situational themes” (“under-theorised, under-conceptualized, under-researched”???) and between moral and (amoral) performance virtues

• Factor analyses of the 24 by non-PPs not does seem to yield the 6 virtues + the incremental validity of the character strengths above the Big Five has yet to be demonstrated (Bob McGrath: 5 or 3 factors)

• The tension between the idea of emotion virtues such as gratitude as being intrinsically valuable (and irreplaceable) and positive emotions such as gratitude as being instrumentally valuable (and in principle replaceable)

• The tension between the virtues and the other type of “positive strengths”, esp. resiliency. Aristotle/virtue ethics versus Stoicism/CBT!

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The first of the two major concerns: The problem of normativity

We refrain from making normative moral claims...

Background: The uneasy relationship of social science to issues of normativity, e.g. Weber’s value-free social science, Allport’s personality as “character devaluated”, adherence to Hume’s two major distinctions between facts and values (moral anti-realism) and descriptions and prescriptions (moral anti-prescriptivism)

(Anti-realism: Moral facts only reside in the human mind and have no objective,

external grounding)

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So is positive psychology morally anti-realist?Unclear…

No: a) Anti-relativist - whereas most anti-realists are moral relativists. b) The link to virtue ethics, and virtue ethics is grounded in moral realism (namely naturalism).

Yes: One can offer empirical generalizations about individual virtues and individual pathways to well-being but any overall (prioritizing) theory of the virtuous, flourishing life will be unscientific! Oddity: Why cannot one offer such an overall theory also in the form of empirical generalizations?! If the overall theory is unscientific = prescriptive, then the individual moral judgements are also! (Some confusion here…)

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Trying to unpack the confusion…

Why would an overall theory of the morally good be prescriptive and unscientific but not an overall theory of a healthy diet or a healthy lifestyle? What is so unique about “the moral”?

I do not think the PPs are moral anti-realists at heart, witness their inherent naturalism and their flirtations with virtue ethics

What is confusing them is a common conflation, esp. in social science, between the normative as evaluative and the normative as prescriptive (and, by implication, a conflation of Hume’s two separate distinctions)

“This a good knife” does not imply “You should cut!”

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The source of the confusion: Motivational internalism

Motivational internalism (inherited from Socrates/Kant via Kohlberg) = To say that x is good is to be motivated to do => prescription!

Motivational externalism = One can say that x is a good knife without wanting to cut or recommending cutting! The same applies for moral goodness

Positive psychologist can uphold empirically derived factual values about the morally good life without violating the is–ought distinction! =>

Possible to solve the normativity problem, but it requires an explicit change in philosophical assumptions!

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The second of the two major concerns: The problem of adjudication

If we adjudicate virtue conflicts, we have started to prescribe and stepped out of the scientific frame… By refusing to adjudicate, however, the virtue program does not only become ambiguous at times, but significantly indeterminate, both morally and educationallyThe reason is that the most pressing problem about virtue for good people is not the choice between virtue and vice but an aggregation and adjudication problem: the problem of choices and trade-offs between competing virtues

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To solve the adjudication problem…

What is sorely missing: A conceptual distinction between the moral virtues and the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom (phronesis), not just one of the “High Six”. Aristotle: We cannot be “fully good” without phronesis, nor can we possess phronesis without virtue of character. For, while the moral virtues make “the goal correct”, phronesis “makes what promotes the goal correct”.

The function of phronesis is to “deliberate finely” about the relative weight of competing values, actions and emotions in the context of “what promotes living well in general”. A person who has acquired phronesis has thus the wisdom to adjudicate the relative weight of different virtues in conflict situations and to reach a measured verdict about best course of action. This mediating, overseeing and orchestrating role of phronesis gives it a clear status as a higher-order intellectual virtue.

Just philosophical speculation?! No, lots of social scientific research on wisdom (e.g. Sternberg and the Berlin Model)!

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To conclude…

Positive psychology has the potential to add much needed empirical gravitas to contemporary virtues ethics. But…

• It is conceptually under-developed (virtue, strength, theme…)

• It is not fully coherent internally (between claims, between theorists…)

• It is ambiguous (with respect to moral realism/anti-realism)

• It confuses the normative as evaluative with the normative as prescriptive (by assuming without argument the contested view of motivational internalism)

• It fails to offer help in solving virtue conflicts and misconceives the nature of wisdom (by not giving it the status of a meta-virtue)

• It has not fully overcome the psychological unease with virtue talk (dabbles in virtue talk without engaging it fully!)

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Nevertheless…

…as a naturalistic moral philosopher, who believes that all moral theorizing is in the end answerable to empirical evidence, my advice to my colleagues is to avoid the Statler-and-Waldorf syndrome and continue to engage positive psychologists in a constructive dialogue, potentially beneficial to both parties!

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