Abstract:Mark Alfano’s book Character As Moral Fiction[1] presents a clear and precise reflection on the situationist view promoted by Gilbert Harman and John Doris, and three of, what he claims to be, virtue ethic’s failed responses to their critique.  After a brief overview of virtue ethics, situationism, and their current debate, this paper will argue that Mark Alfano’s objections to one of the responses to situationism, the “dodge,” are insufficient, and thus virtue ethics in its traditional form survives.  Once it is shown that the evidence from situationism does not in fact disprove virtue ethics, ideas for ways forward will be proposed since if virtue ethics need not fear situationism, then it ought to embrace potential benefits from its findings.

[1] Alfano, Mark. Character As Moral Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.


(a PDF can also be found in the Academic Section).

Abstract:
It is the aim of this paper is to show that Allen Wood’s compatibilism should ultimately be rejected since his view suffers from two major challenges, 1) the necessity of Intelligible causality for Empirical causality and 2) timeless agency.  To do so this paper is comprised of two major sections: a survey of Kant’s stated position on how the third antinomy is actually an illusion since both freedom and determinism can both viably exist in Part I, and then a critique of Allen Wood’s theory on how best to interpret the compatibilism Kant achieves in Part II.  This will show that the compatibilism Wood promotes, while not necessarily dissatisfactory as a coherent perspective, is ultimately unsatisfactory since it essentially disengages freedom from the natural world.
(a PDF can also be found in the Academic Section).