Christian B. Miller, “The Character Gap: How Good Are We?” (Oxford UP, 2018)
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What is the central question of Christian Miller’s book *The Character Gap*?
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Hello. Thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy. I'm Robert Talese. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figdirk. She's Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. My guest today is Christian Miller. Christian is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He's a moral philosopher who specializes in character with special interest in the empirical study of the virtues and vices. He currently directs the Beacon Project, which studies moral exemplars, and he has recently completed a five-year research project called the Character Project. His latest book, which we'll be talking about today, is titled The Character Gap, How Good Are We?
It's published with Oxford University Press. Moral thinking and evaluation often occur at the level of the person. That is, we find ourselves asking not simply what ought I do, but who should I be? Similarly, in assessing others, we tend to evaluate their behavior by means of concepts that ascribe to them character traits of various kinds. These are virtue and vice concepts like generosity or untrustworthiness, honesty, and so on. Now, a long tradition going back at least as far as Aristotle takes the person's character to be a fundamental item of moral evaluation. But an equally long tradition wonders what exactly character is. More recently, experimental studies of human behavior have given some reason to wonder whether there is such a thing as a person's character at all.
Now, in The Character Gap, Christian Miller reviews the philosophical and psychological material pertaining to character. He defends the thesis that although there is such a thing as character, most of us lack both the virtues and the vices. So there's a lot to talk about. But why don't we start as we normally do by greeting our guest. Hello, Christian. Hello, Christian. Hello. Thank you for having me on today. Well, thank you for joining us. Why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I was born on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, grew up there for about seven years. But my parents moved down to Florida, where I would really say that was my childhood. I had a great time living near the beach in Florida, going out and surfing and boogie boarding and skimboarding and snorkeling, and just very special memories of that time when I was growing up. Then I was off to college at Princeton, where I majored in philosophy, followed by graduate school at Notre Dame, where I focused for my PhD in philosophy on the topic of the foundations of morality. Where does morality come from? Is it objective or relative? And then from there, I was extremely fortunate to be hired by Wake Forest University, coming right out of graduate school, where I've been for the last 14 years.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central question of Christian Miller’s book *The Character Gap*?
0:00–7:59
2
How does Christian Miller describe his academic background and shift to studying character?
7:59–16:05
3
What is the philosophical significance of character in moral evaluation?
16:05–22:58
4
How do the Beacon Project and the Character Project investigate moral exemplars?
22:58–29:53
5
Why does Miller reject the traditional “doctrine of the mean” for virtues and vices?
29:53–37:17
6
What do the empirical studies on honesty, cheating, and the by‑stander effect reveal about our character?
37:17–44:39
7
How does Miller argue that most people have a “mixed character” rather than pure virtue or vice?
44:39–53:21
8
What practical strategies does Miller propose for narrowing the character gap and what’s his next project?
53:21–1:00:40
Speakers
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