John M. Doris has been a leading proponent of interdisciplinary approaches to moral psychology since their rise to prominence in the 1990's. His work has helped foster a methodological reorientation in the field, and has had a transformative effect on the way philosophers approach questions of character, virtue, and agency. This volume collects a selection of Doris' work spanning 20 years, focusing on the ways in which human personality orders (and fails to order) moral cognition and behaviour. It also presents two new chapters, which together form an in-depth assessment of recent developments in the moral psychology of character, as well as a closing commentary outlining methodological recommendations for those aspiring to do empirically responsible moral psychology. Together, these works present a distinctive vision of moral psychology which will engage both philosophers and psychologists.
Preface 1: Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics 2: Evidence and Sensibility 3: Out of Character: On the Psychology of Excuses in the Criminal Law 4: John M. Doris, Joshua Knobe, and Robert L. Woolfolk: Variantism about Responsibility 5: John M. Doris and Dominic Murphy: From My Lai to Abu Ghraib: The Moral Psychology of Atrocity 6: Heated Agreement: Lack of Character as Being for the Good 7: Doing Without (Arguing about) Desert 8: Santiago Amaya and John M. Doris: No Excuses: Performance Mistakes in Morality 9: Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency 10: Making Good: Virtues, Skills, and Performance Science 11: The Future of Character Edouard Machery and John M. Doris: Appendix: An Open Letter to Our Students: Doing Interdisciplinary Moral Psychology
John M. Doris is Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life at Cornell University. His many contributions to the field of moral psychology have appeared in leading philosophical and scientific journals, such as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Cognition, Scientific American, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He has been awarded fellowships from Michigan's Institute for the Humanities; Princeton's University Center for Human Values; the National Humanities Center; the American Council of Learned Societies; Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He authored Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge, 2002) and Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency (Oxford, 2015), and is co-editor of The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford, 2010) and The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (Oxford, forthcoming).
