Character Project Summer Seminar
“Character: New Perspectives and Empirical Discoveries”June 17-29, 2013
Wake Forest University
Seminar Leader:
Dr. Christian Miller
Director, The Character Project
One of the leading topics in contemporary ethics has been the existence of character and virtue in light of various results in psychology. Some have taken these results to call into question whether human beings possess any traditional virtues such as compassion and honesty (Gilbert Harman, John Doris). Others have tried to defend Aristotelian accounts of character from this challenge (Julia Annas, Rachana Kamtekar). Still others have articulated their own positive accounts of character which are informed by the cognitive-affective personality system approach in psychology (Nancy Snow, Daniel Russell). The goal of this seminar is to look closely at the relevant empirical literature and philosophical discussions of it in order to decide for ourselves what the most promising account of character proves to be and what relevance these issues have for ethics more generally.
Potential Readings:
- Articles by Gilbert Harman, Rachana Kamtekar, Gopal Sreenivasan, John Sabini and Maury Silver, and Jonathan Webber.
- John Doris, Lack of Character, Cambridge University Press, 2002 (selections)
- Robert Adams, A Theory of Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2006 (selections)
- Dan Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues, Oxford University Press, 2009 (selections)
- Christian Miller, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory, Oxford University Press, 2013
Participants will receive a stipend of $1,500 for attending, plus have their travel, meal, reading materials, and lodging costs covered. The seminar meetings will conclude on Thursday, June 27, so that all participants can attend the Character Project final conference on June 27-29. Seminar meetings are expected to last roughly three hours per day.
We expect to have several leading philosophers working in this area visit the seminar to each lead one meeting.