A Heuristic Explanation Of Aristotle's Virtue

In recent years,situationism has launched a fierce attack on virtue reality based on psychological experimental results.Situationism holds that psychological experiments show that the environment has a great influence on human behavior.We do not need virtue to explain human behavior,so virtue is actually redundant.Philosophers and psychologists have pointed out many errors of situationism,however,pointing out the errors of Situationists cannot prove the reality of virtue.Aristotle's theory of virtue is the most famous systematic theory of virtue.The premise of virtue ethics is that human beings can possess virtue.As an empirical fact,this premise can be confirmed by the empirical research of psychology.This paper will analyses the text of Nicomachean Ethics and try to explain Aristotle's virtue with psychological theory,and then defend the virtue's reality.This paper tries to do the following work:Introduction combs the controversy between situationists and virtue advocates,also points out that reality of virtue needs psychological empirical support with higher validity.Chapter one analyses Aristotle's virtue and investigates the heuristic judgment theory of psychology.Through comparative study,I point out that virtue is the ability to make heuristic judgment with high accuracy.Chapter two analyses Aristotle's virtue cultivation and the cultivation of expert skills with the theory of dual-processing and long-term memory in psychology.Through comparative study,I point out that cultivating virtuous persons is to cultivate virtuous experts who can make heuristic judgement with high correct rate.Chapter three summarizes the previous analysis results and points out that virtue realism can be supported by psychological theory.With this achievement,we can respond more forcefully to situationism.Finally,this paper points out that psychology will promote the development of ethics,however,psychology can't replace ethics.