Abstract
This paper argues that the question, ‘where are virtues?’ demands a response from virtue theorists. Despite the polarizing nature of debates about the relevance of empirical work in psychology for virtue theory, I first show that there is widespread agreement about the underlying structure of virtue. Namely, that virtues are comprised of cognitive and affective processes. Next, I show that there are well-developed arguments that cognitive processes can extend beyond the agent. Then, I show that there are similarly well-developed arguments that affective processes can extend beyond the agent. I then introduce three cases to establish that these cognitive and affective processes are relevantly similar to the cognitive and affective processes countenanced by plausible theories of virtue. Finally, I conclude that virtue theorists must abandon default internalism, the (often implicit) view that the cognitive and affective processes comprising virtues are internal to the agent.
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Notes
Following Bernecker (2014), I distinguish here between claims about extended mind and cognition. I will use the latter in a narrow sense to refer to specific cognitive processes (e.g. reasoning, problem solving, remembering, etc.), and the former more broadly to refer to claims about extended cognition and extended emotion.
A veritable who’s who list of recent virtue theorists—Williams (1985: 8–9), Flanagan (1991: 282), Annas (1993: 50), Hursthouse (1999: 108), Swanton (2003: 19), Slote (2003: 4), MacIntyre (2007: 219), and Russell (2009: 13–4)—all cast virtues in terms of dispositions. Doris (2002: 174) and Miller (2013: 7) have collected another forty or so references to this effect.
Borrowing terminology from Dynamical Systems Theory, Palermos makes the following argument for the ontological postulation of the kinds of tightly coupled systems which underwrite arguments for extended cognition:
‘(I)n cases where two nonautonomous systems mutually interact on the basis of feedback loops, there is an ongoing causal amalgam between the two units that disallows their decomposition into two separate systems on the basis of distinct inputs and outputs… The reason is that the way each component is affected is not exogenous to the component itself, and so cannot be properly thought of as its input. Likewise, the way each component affects the other is directly and synchronically related to the component to be affected and so cannot be properly conceptualized as output of the affecting component…We can call this the ‘ongoing feedback loops’ argument for the (ontological) postulation of coupled systems…In other words, ongoing mutual interdependence on the basis of feedback loops is the criterion by which we can judge whether two seemingly distinct systems constitute an overall system, consisting of both of them’ (2014: 33–4).
Heersmink (2015: 591) argues that the representational structures of language and mathematics are paradigm examples: ‘During ontogenetic development, we interact with public representational systems such as language and mathematics. By so doing, we soak up and learn to think in terms of those systems and the brain takes on the representational properties of those systems.’ He also provides a more colloquial example: ‘after navigating a city with a map for a certain period of time, the interaction with the map and the city has changed our internal spatial representation, i.e., our cognitive map, of parts of the city. At a certain point, we no longer need the actual map to navigate and we have to a certain degree internalized the information of the map’ (2015: 592).
Wagman and Chemero (2014) provide one example of how this might be accomplished. They show that both proponents and opponents agree that the debate over the existence of extended cognition is an empirical one. Then, after marshalling a range experimental evidence in support of extended cognition, they conclude that the debate is, as a matter of empirical fact, over.
However, Varga (2016) argues that the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC), as it is usually understood, is inadequate to capture the unique dynamics of synchronic dyadic interactions. He thus introduces two varieties of the Hypothesis of Emergent Extended Cognition (HEEC) to deal with this problem, though he contends: ‘rather than being a rival to the HEC, it will be argued that the HEEC should be understood as complementing it. More precisely, the HEEC may be understood as a version of the HEC that explains cases of socially extended cognition, in which cognitive properties are sometimes irreducibly emergent properties of coupled systems’ (Varga, 2016: 2472).
It is particularly striking that, without any reference to the extended mind research program, Finkel et al. (2016: 3) straightforwardly anticipate and defuse a Rupert-style objection: ‘Why must we consider a challenge to the pervasive (if implicit) assumption that goal-related processes predominantly reside within a single individual?’ The answer, they contend, is that: ‘If the goal of self-regulation research is to develop models of goal-relevant processes that emerge within prototypical laboratory experiments…then the individual unit of analysis may well be optimal. If, in contrast, self-regulation researchers want to understand how people set, pursue, and achieve goals in their everyday lives, then a predominant focus on individual-level processes is likely to yield an incomplete, perhaps even inaccurate, understanding of goal dynamics.’
See also Besser’s discussion (2017: 513ff) of how the framework of self-regulation bears on specific virtues such as generosity.
Lest the reader think this is still the stuff of dystopian sci-fi: Security cameras in Moscow have already deployed this technology, resulting in multiple arrests (McGoogan, 29 Sept., 2017). Indeed, the ability to link facial recognition with criminal record and propensity to violence seems a likely outcome from the trove of data collected using Taser’s Axon body cameras, which have been adopted by an estimated one-third of American police departments (Kofman 30 Apr., 2017). Thanks to Mark Alfano for calling these sources to my attention.
This argument can be understood as an iteration of Sutton’s (2010: 193–4) complementarity principle or Menary’s (2007) notion of cognitive integration, both of which have enjoyed broad support in the extended mind literature. It should also be noted that many critics rightly worry that AR interfaces will lead to less effective responses, such as increased hostility toward citizens with a criminal background. A full treatment of this important issue is beyond the scope of this paper. However, my arguments are perfectly compatible with the claim that the bearer of the vice of rashness could be the hybrid Officer-AR system.
This case can be supplemented by Palermos’s (2016) account, which examines group dynamics through the lens of distributed cognition. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
My account is agnostic on whether agent-smartdevice coupled systems do, in fact, promote curious inquiry. As before, there is nothing which would preclude the possibility that such coupled systems are bearers of intellectual vices such as close-mindedness or intolerance.
In this vein, Miller and Record (2013: 121; 2017: 6ff) have explored how to conceptualize our epistemic interactions with internet search engines, including possible harms (e.g., filter bubbles, echo chambers, epistemic injustice, etc.) It is worth noting, if only in passing, that the account of extended cognition and its relationship to virtue theory developed in this paper is well-positioned to respond to their worries about extended varieties of reliabilism or responsibilism.
Alfano (2014: 84) has similarly argued that virtues inhere not so much inside individuals as ‘in the interstices between the person and her world. The object that possesses the virtue in question would be a functionally and physically extended complex comprising the agent, her social setting, and her asocial environment.’
For example: ‘situationism speaks against skindividualism’ (Howell, 2016: 148) and ‘the situationist challenge thus offers us an argument for extended virtues and against skindividualism.’ (156).
To cite just one example, Walter Mischel, a pioneer of the situationist critiques of personality psychology argues that the most promising approaches in social and personality psychology: ‘bridge the classic partitioning most unnatural and destructive to the building of a cumulative science of the individual—the one that splits the person apart from the situation, treating each as an independent cause of behavior’ (2009: 289). Philosophers would do well to take note that among psychologists, ‘nowadays, almost everyone is an interactionist’ and the debates are no longer about whether dispositions or situations are better predictors of behavior, but instead, ‘the major issues in contention center on the type of interactionism espoused’ (Bandura 1999: 157).
Though Sneddon’s (2011: 157ff) discussion of psychological situationism and philosophical externalism is more nuanced and historically informed, this same criticism - overselling the situationist evidence and downplaying or ignoring the interactionist consensus - will apply.
‘We can take the situationist critique as essentially making the point that the skindividualist way of cutting things up does not jibe with personality and trait talk. The extended persons approach does much better on this score. This suggests that in the case of the extensions of persons, we have reason to speak of constitution instead of mere coupling’ (Howell 2016: 158).
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Many thanks to Santiago Mejia, Nicolae Morar, and Sungwoo Um for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Skorburg, J.A. Where are virtues?. Philos Stud 176, 2331–2349 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1128-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1128-1