Character as moral fiction /

Character as moral fiction /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Alfano, Mark, 1983- author.
Imprint:	New York : Cambridge University Press, 2013. ©2013
Description:	1 online resource (IX, 226 pages)
Language:	English
Subject:	Character. Virtue. Normativity (Ethics) Character. Normativity (Ethics) Virtue.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11831515

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781139625678 1139625675 9781139208536 1139208535 9781107026728 1107026725
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 206-224) and index. Print version record.
Summary:	Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become more studious if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous. He argues that we should think of virtue and character as social constructs: there is no such thing as virtue without social reinforcement. His original and provocative book will interest a wide range of readers in contemporary ethics, epistemology, moral psychology and empirically informed philosophy.
Other form:	Print version: Alfano, Mark, 1983- Character as moral fiction. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2013 9781107026728

Table of Contents:

Introduction: tripartite naturalistic ethics
Identifying the hard core of virtue ethics
Rearticulating the situationist challenge
Attempts to defend virtue ethics
Factitious moral virtue
Expanding the situationist challenge to responsibilist virtue epistemology
Expanding the situationist challenge to reliabilist virtue epistemology
Factitious intellectual virtue
To see as we are seen: a n investigation of social distance heuristics.