Episode 136: Christian Miller discusses virtue and character
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What is virtue and how does it differ from everyday moral behavior?
Yeah, no.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations. An unexpected philosophy podcast. I'm Matt Tykman. I'm Yojan Lee. And with us today is Christian Miller. A C Reed Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. His book The Character Gap, How Good Are We, is out from Oxford University Press. And he's here to discuss virtue and character. Christian Miller, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me on your show.
So virtue is kind of an old fashioned word. You know, you when you hear the word virtue you kind of It doesn't really feel like something the kids would say, you know, it feels more like something maybe you'd read in like an old Dickens novel or something. Um so I thought maybe we could like talk a bit about what virtue is and maybe just start with some examples. What would be like an everyday example of like virtuous behavior or a virtuous person?
Sure. Uh so I think that we want to distinguish between a virtuous person. Virtuous behavior and a virtue. Uh an example of a virtue would be honesty. An example of a virtuous behavior is telling the truth, say on the stand in the courtroom. And an example of a virtuous person who is honest. Would be Abraham Lincoln. So I like to distinguish between the person Who's honest? Uh the trade itself, honesty. And then the behavior exhibiting honesty in a particular moment, particular time and place, uh, say in the example of the courtroom. In a larger context, uh, when we step back from a particular example, we can talk just what is a virtue in general? What's the contrast with that? A vice. What is a vice in general?
And then I can be happy to give you some more examples as well. So character comes in these two components, virtue and vice. A virtue I think of as a disposition to think, feel, and act in a certain morally positive way. or appropriate way. And I think of a moral vice as the opposite a disposition to think, feel and act in a morally inappropriate or vicious way. So what does that mean? Is that that's a rather abstract characterization of these traits? L take the uh example of honesty again and let's unpack what that virtue involves. We have a disposition to think a certain way. So think honest thoughts. Think for example that telling the truth is important and that cheating is wrong. feel a certain way, have certain motivations and emotions.
In a case of honesty might be a desire to tell the truth, uh a lack of desire to cheat for no good reason. And then we have behaviour. the upshot of the thinking. So we have someone who acts in an honest way by telling the truth and not cheating on a test or on their taxes. So to sum it up, that's how I think of virtues, as dispositions to think feel and act in a certain way. And then when it comes to vices you just invert it. All the same apparatus is in place, all the same structures in place. It's just that now we're thinking about bad things. We're thinking about desires to cheat, desires to steal, desires to uh lie, and then thoughts as well and behavior as well.
Okay, good. So the point of drawing a distinction between all these things then is to say that you can have one without the other in principle, right? So you could have somebody on one occasion do something virtuous without generally being a virtuous person. Maybe that was the only time they did anything virtuous, and vice versa, right? Maybe you could have a bad person just I don't by accident or something or or whatever. Or or just th there was a I don't know, the planets were in alignment and that one time they did something great, but generally they're bad. And so the because these things don't always gr go together, uh we draw a distinction.
That's right. Yeah, that's very well put. It's not just on in one instance either. You can actually see a pattern of behavior. And you can wonder, well, what's going on behind that behavior? What was the cause of that behavior? So you could have morally appropriate behavior. That arises from less than admirable motivation. Similarly, you can have morally inappropriate behavior that might have been for good reason or with good good a good heart and good intention.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is virtue and how does it differ from everyday moral behavior?
0:15–4:49
2
How do philosophers distinguish between a virtue, a virtuous act, and a virtuous person?
4:49–9:43
3
What does psychological research reveal about how virtuous (or vicious) most people actually are?
9:43–14:51
4
How can we nudge ourselves toward more honest, brave, or compassionate behavior?
14:51–19:16
5
What role do moral reminders (like honor codes or scents) play in shaping honesty?
19:16–24:32
6
How can role models and moral exemplars inspire personal character improvement?
24:32–30:40
7
Why should we be cautious when praising or blaming people’s character?
30:40–36:40
8
Can the same strategies used to build virtue be twisted to cultivate vice?
36:40–42:00
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