Research On The Reality Of Virtue Based On The Model Of Personality

In the latter half of 20 th century,the empirical sciences such as psychology,evolutionary biology,have been gaining their interest in moral topics.In the meantime,the moral philosophy has also started to quote from the empirical sciences gradually.On this background,at the end of the 20 th century,John Doris and Hubert Harman,the representatives of philosophical situationists,quote the evidence of social psychology challenging the reality of personality,to disavow the reality of virtue.The challenge undermines the foundation of virtue ethics' normativity,and jeopardizes the virtue ethics' discipline states.Facing the situation,virtue ethicists respond via the approach of conceptualized analysis,which is a passive defense strategy.Specifically,they point out the deficiencies of situationism.The responding comes from the theoretical perspective while the challenge is depending on the evidence from the empirical research.Therefore,the virtue ethicists fail to justify the reality of the virtue.Marked by the birth of moral psychology and experimental ethics,the moral research has been naturalized deeply.The empirical researches on morality have achievements while eroding the normativity of moral philosophy.And the debate about the virtue's reality is becoming the key field in which both the traditional moral philosophy and empirical sciences try to manifest its approaches' effectiveness.At this point,the virtue's reality is not only about the foundation of its normativity.What's more,it also indicates the appropriate way that how traditional moral philosophy involved in the naturalized moral research,so that the philosophy theory can realize its leading role.In this sense,demonstrating the virtue's reality from the perspective of empirical sciences,standing on the same place with situationism,getting traditional virtue ethics involved in the naturalized moral research,is becoming more and more important.According to this,in the context of the tendency of naturalization,the dissertation is trying to explore an approach to prove the virtue's reality,which takes the philosophy theory and conceptualized analysis as the tool,the empirical achievements on Five-Factor Model(FFM)as the evidence.First of all,the dissertation analyzes that whether the evidence from social psychology is appropriate for questioning the virtue's reality.That can be realized via the way of analyzing the relationship between personality character and character in virtue ethics.On this account,strip out the empirical core concept of the virtue reality,which is the virtuous character.Secondly,focusing on the research on personality in psychology,summarize and appraise the mainstream theories or models on personality in psychology.Based on the work,take the FFM as representative to prove the existence of personality.Then,prove the existence of virtuous character taking the data from evolutionary psychology,social psychology and personality neuroscience.At last,tracing back the development phases of moral judgments mechanism,take a new look at the dual-process model from the perspective of virtue ethics,and take personality as the complimentary to the dual-process model of moral judgment.Hereby,in the context of the naturalized tendency of research on morality,facing the fact that the virtue ethics fails to prove the reality of virtue,the dissertation realizes a new approach to prove it.The approach follows the guidance of virtue theory,uses the conceptualized analyzing methods,starts from virtue's core empirical object,and bases on the empirical study about FFM in psychology,neuroscience and evolutionary.Furthermore,the dissertation provides a promising alternative for traditional philosophy incorporating in the naturalized research on morality.The contents can be divided into four parts:The first part includes the introduction and Chapter 1.The introduction starts from the overview of the naturalized research of morality,summarizing the topics and empirical sciences that involve in the research of morality.Then it demonstrates the vital role that the debate on virtue character plays,and elucidating the necessity of proving the existence of virtue character based on the empirical research.Chapter 1 discusses the requirement,necessity and the legitimacy of naturalized research on morality.The second part includes chapter 2,chapter 3,chapter 4,and chapter 5.Chapter 2 traces back the challenge from the situaitonism,and the response from virtue ethics,dissects the key of the debate.Chapter 3 compares“personality character” and “virtue character”,combing the study about virtue scales and personality scales,confirms that the personality character contains the virtue character.Thus it forms the strategy of proving the virtue character exist based on the theory on personality.Then combing the mainstream personality theories and models in psychology.Chapter 4 makes its argument based on the evidence from personality psychology,evolutionary psychology and neuroscience on FFM,which is,the personality character exists.Chapter 5 proves that the virtue character——agreeableness exists,through the discussion of several possible mechanisms that the altruism evolves,and the evidence of the neurophysiology bases of agreeableness.The third part includes chapter 6.It traces back the development phases of moral judgments mechanism,takes a new look at the dual-process model from the perspective of virtue ethics,and takes personality as the complimentary to the dual-process model of moral judgment.The fourth part includes chapter 7 and the conclusion.In the process of proving the virtue character and examining the development of moral judgments' mechanisms,the empirical sciences show its advantages and limits,and philosophy finds its way to realize its leading role.Based on the approach in this dissertation,it comes up with the idea that the naturalized research on morality should follow the frame of liberal naturalism.