PEA Soup

The Morality of Library Fines

My local library fines its patrons ten cents per overdue book per day. They will let you continue to borrow books as long as your fine balance is less than $10. As an academic, I sort of think of library fines as a cost of doing business, and I frequently carry a balance in library fines of a few dollars. (To be clear: I mostly incur these fines on books taken out for pleasure reading. What I mean is that I don’t have a moralistic attitude about my library fines.) Since there are no interest charges or time limits, I can carry such a balance for months on end. I’m following the rules, not cheating anyone, and I have never felt bad about my habit of being a few bucks in debt to the library.

New Videos on Character and Virtue

As one of the final outputs of the Character Project at Wake Forest University (www.thecharacterproject.com), we have produced a number of new videos featuring researchers in philosophy, theology, and psychology.

One set of videos is from our final conference in May, 2015. Speakers include Neil Levy, Valerie Tiberius, Gopal Sreenivasan, Tanya Chartrand and Korrina Duffy, William Fleeson, Dan Batson, Christian Miller, Andrea Glenn, Daryl Cameron, and Jen Wright and Thomas Nadelhoffer. See http://www.thecharacterproject.com/videos.php?y=2015

Personal Identity and Moral Change

Many of you are probably familiar with the story of Phineas Gage. He was widely regarded as a kind and generous man, but he suffered from a freak accident during his work on a railroad, and the result was that a railroad spike ended up entering his brain. After the accident was over, the person who remained was not a kind or generous man. He was impulsive, callous, and clearly lacked all of the moral virtues that Phineas had previously shown. 

Now, let's consider this case as a problem of personal identity. In particular, let's ask yourself whether the following sentence is correct: 

•  The original man named Phineas does not exist anymore; the man after the accident is a different person. 

Many people have the intuition that this sentence is correct. It might seem, then, that our intuitions conform to an approach to personal identity that emphasizes psychological similarity. Since the man after the accident is not sufficiently similar to the original Phineas, we conclude that they are not the same person. 

In a new paper in Analysis, Kevin Tobia make an incisive criticism of this interpretation. As he points out, it is indeed the case that the man after the accident is dissimilar in certain respects from the original Phineas, but there is also another quite salient fact about him. Specifically, he is morally worse than the original Phineas. That is, it is not just that he differs psychologically in some way; he specifically differs by lacking some of the original Phineas's moral virtues. Might that be the explanation of our intuitions here?

New Videos on Character

The Character Project at Wake Forest University (http://thecharacterproject.com/) is pleased to announce five new videos by researchers in philosophy, psychology, and theology describing their latest work on character as part of our "In Character" series. In philosophy specifically, Professors Jessica Wolfendale and Matthew Talbert discuss situationism, moral responsibility, and war crimes. Professors Nathan King and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij discuss several important issues in virtue epistemology.

The Self, Motivation & Virtue Project

(Posted on Behalf of Nancy Snow)

Request for Proposals: The Self, Motivation & Virtue Project

Marquette University, with a generous grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, is pleased to announce a new research initiative on the topics of the self, motivation, and virtue. Approximately ten research proposals at $190,000 each will be funded through this initiative.

Questions about Supererogation

Supererogatory actions are those which are (1) morally meritorious or praiseworthy, but (2) not the fulfillment of a moral obligation or duty.  I was having a conversation about this with a colleague today and upon reflection, it seems to me that both clauses in the definition are vague.  This means that whether an action is supererogatory is sometimes vague, possibly for more than one reason.  I am curious if others share my intuitions/diagnosis about this.

Announcing the Developing Character Project

Thanks to a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Developing Character Project. The project builds on the work during the past three years of the Character Project based at Wake Forest University. The primary goal of the Developing Character Project is to disseminate the results of our previous work to a larger academic and popular audience. More details can be found here:

http://news.wfu.edu/2013/11/05/character-study/
http://www.thecharacterproject.com/

Please feel free to send any questions or comments to [email protected].

Character Project's Essay and Book Prize Winners

The Character Project (www.thecharacterproject.com) is happy to formally announce the winners of our Essay and Book Prize Competition. In philosophy the winners included Tom Hurka and Iskra Fileva. Please be sure to congratulate them!

http://news.wfu.edu/2013/06/18/a-good-character-summer-reading-list/

 

Character Project Summer Seminar: “Character: New Perspectives and Empirical Discoveries”

June 17-29, 2013 - Wake Forest University

Seminar Leader: Christian Miller
Director, The Character Project

The goal of this seminar is to consider the existence and nature of character and virtue in light of various results in psychology. Participants will receive a stipend of $1,500 for attending, plus have their travel, meal, reading materials, and lodging costs covered. We expect to have several leading philosophers working in this area visit the seminar to each lead one meeting. The seminar meetings will conclude on Thursday, June 27, so that all participants can attend the Character Project final conference on June 27-29.

The application deadline is December 15, 2012. For more details please visit: http://www.thecharacterproject.com/summer.php

Announcing the Character Essay and Book Prize

The Character Project at Wake Forest University is pleased to announce The Character Essay and Book Prize. This prize is aimed at essays or books on character which are accessible to non-academic audiences in venues with a wide readership. The competition will award $3,000 to each winning submission. We aim to make nine awards total. Three awards will be for submissions which address themes related to the psychology of character, three for submissions related to the philosophy of character, and three for submissions related to the theology of character. Winners will be invited (all expenses paid) to the Character Project’s Final Research Conference in June 2013 at the Graylyn International Conference Center in Winston-Salem, NC (http://www.graylyn.com), and awards will be presented at this event. Deadline for submission is February 1, 2013. For further details, please visit: http://www.thecharacterproject.com/prizes.php . The Character Project is funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.