situation ism

8/3/2019 Situation Ism

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Is Situationism All Bad News?LUKE RUSSELL

University of Sydney

Situationist experiments such as the Milgram experiment and the Princeton Seminaryexperiment have prompted philosophers to warn us against succumbing to fear ofembarrassment and sliding down slippery slopes. Yet it would he a mistake to concludethat situationism is all bad news for moral agents. Fear of embarrassment can oftenmotivate right actions, and slippery slopes can slide us away from wrongdoing. Thereason that philosophers have seen situationism as bringing all bad news is that theyhave focused on the very demanding moral goals of virtuous and autonomous action,while ignoring important moral goals that are less demanding. Fear of embarrassmentdoes undermine virtuous and autonomous action, but that very same fear can help us toact resolutely and rightly, and allows us to manipulate would-be wrongdoers into doingthe right th ing. This is good news.

I. T H E S I T U A T I O N I S T E X P E R I M E N T SJoh n Doris ha s argue d th at a group of exp erim ents conducted by socialpsychologists have deep implications for ethics. The most significantof these experiments is Milgram's obedience experiment, in whichsubjects were instructed by an authority figure to administer painfulelectric shocks to a person in an adjoining room. The overwhelmingmajority complied, and roughly 65 per cent of subjects continued toadm inister shocks up to the m axim um of 450 volts despite the ap par en tscream s of pain from the ir victim.^ M ilgram's original resu lts hav e beenwidely replicated in different cultures and over time, which suggeststhat most of us would administer the shocks were we placed in theexperimental scenario.

Several other experiments focused on helping behaviour have beengrouped by Doris with the Milgram experiment. In the bystanderexperiment conducted by Latan and Rodin, subjects who were fillingin a questionnaire were led to believe that a person in the next roomhad become trapped under a fallen object and was in pain. Seventyper cent of subjects who were alone when filling in the questionnaireoffered to help the victim, but when the subjects were filling in thequestionnaire in the presence of a nonplussed confederate who did notoffer to help th e victim , only 7 per cen t offered to help.^ In th e Pr ince tonSeminary experiment conducted by Darley and Batson, seminarians


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444 Luke Russellwere also given the opportunity to help a person who appeared to bein need. When the seminarians believed that they had no reason tohurry, many stopped to help. Yet when the seminarians believed thatthey were run nin g late for a pre sen tatio n th e overwhelming majority ofthem offered no help.^ The mood-effect experiments conducted by Isenand Levin showed that subjects who were in a good mood because theyhad found a small amount of money were much more likely to assistpeople who ha d dropped articles th an we re subjects who mad e no luckyfind.^ Similarly, the noise-effect experiments conducted by Matthewsand Cannon show that subjects are much less willing to help others ifthere is a high level of background noise.^According to Doris, this collection of social psychology experimentssupp ort s ituation ism , a position t ha t co nsists of th re e cort claims:

(A) Moral differences in behaviour across a population owe 'moreto situational differences than dispositional differences amongpersons' .(B) People behave inconsistently, and any behavioural consistency'may be readily d isrupted by situationa l variation' .(C) Character is not 'evaluatively integrated' because a person can

possess some good and some bad behavioural dispositions, andthe one disposition might be good in some situations and bad inothers.^Several philosophers have claimed that the situationist experimentshave important implications for ethics, while others have downplayedtheir significance. Thus far, this dispute has been focused primarilyon issues concerning the viability of traditional virtue ethics. Dorisand Gilbert H arm an argue that the experiments undermine tradit ionalvirtue ethics by showing either t ha t we do not possess character tra itsat all,^ or that we do not possess the kind of stable and integratedcharacter traits that reliably produce only right actions.^ RachanaKamtekar, Christine Swanton, John Sabini and Maury Silver, and

^ John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, '"From Jerusalem to Jericho": A Study ofSituational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behaviour', Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology 27 (1973), pp. 10 0-8.* Alice M. Isen and Pa ula F. Levin, 'Effect of Feeling Good on H elping: Cookies an dKindness', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21 (1972), pp. 38 4-8 . There aredoubts as to wh ether thes e resu lts have been adequately replicated. See John Doris, Lack


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 445Jonathan Webber have claimed that Doris fails to show that we donot have the kind of character traits posited by Aristotle or by neo-Aristotelians.^However, the situationist experiments do not bear merely onissues concerning the status of traditional virtue ethics, but onmore fundamental questions concerning moral practice. Ethicistsare required to offer a psychologically informed recommendation asto how we should go about attaining our practical moral goals, arecommendation that should be both morally apt and useful. All ofus m ust consider whether we should change the way we deliberate andact in light of situationist experiments. As we shall see, the consensusamongst philosophers is that situationism merely identifies a threatto be guarded against. I shall argue that these philosophers haveoverlooked the practical opportunities tha t come with situationism.

II. SITUATIONISM AS ALL BAD NEWSThe philosophers who have written about the practical implicationsof situationism tend to see situationism as all bad news, not inthe sense that it would be better if we never found out about thesituationist effects, but in the sense that there is nothing good aboutour susceptibility to situational forces. The disagreements betweenthese philosophers are usually disagreements over exactly how badthe news turns out to be and over the appropriate m ethods to mitigatethe situationist effects.Traditional virtue ethicists such as Kamtekar suggest that thesituationist effects might well produce wrong actions in some peoplesome of the time, but that truly virtuous people are not susceptible tosuch effects. The appropriate m oral ofthe story, Kam tekar would claim,is that we should be aware of the situationist effects and inculcatevirtues that will allow us to resist them.^ Similarly, psychologistPhilip Zimbardo responds to the situationist experiments by settingout a 'ten-step program for resisting the impact of undesirable socialinfiuences an d . . . promoting personal resilience and civic virtue'. ^Webber suggests that the situationist effects might well disrupt manytraditional virtues, but that we can still cultivate the virtue of placingourselves only in those situations that are conducive to right action.


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446 Luke RussellFrom bis perspective, tbe appropriate m oral of tbe situationis t story istb at we be aware of tbe situationist effects and make it a babit to stayout of situations in wbicb sucb effects move us to act wrongly. ^

Dana Nelkin sees tbe situationist experiments not as posing a'monolitbic tbreat to eitber freedom or responsibility', but as posingmany specific tbreats to freedom and responsibility tbat must beassessed 'on a case-by-case basis'. ^ Sbe too, it seems, tb inks of tbesituationist effects not as sometbing positive or useful, but as adangerous tbreat tbat often can be overcome. At one point, Nelkindoes bint at tbe view tbat tbe situationist effects migbt sometimes beuseful. Sbe notes tbat tbe mood effect detected in tbe Isen and Levincoin experiments can increase tbe likelibood of our performing belpfulactions, yet Nelkin is also worried tbat people wbo perform belpful actsbecause tbey are in a good mood are not acting for morally admirablereasons. Moreover, if sucb people are not aware of tbeir real reasonsfor acting, Nelkin suggests tba t tbey migbt tbereby fail to count as freeand responsible agents.^*Doris is comparatively even-banded in bis comments on tbeimplications of situationism for moral practice, yet even be tendsto treat tbe situationist effects as a tbreat to be overcome. Heclaims tbat it is better tbat we know about tbe situationist effects,and tbat by avoiding tbe kind of global cbaracterological evaluationtypical of virtue etbics we will be able to predict bebaviour moreaccurately. ^ Doris also main tains tbat 'refiection on situationist moralpsycbology can belp us to judge and act better in etbically trjdngcircumstances'^^ and goes on to suggest tbat we do so by 'changingor avoiding problematic situations', just as a recovering alcobolicsbould avoid a relapse by staying out of bars.^^ Along witb Nelkin,Doris tbinks tbat tbe situational forces tbat sbape our bebaviour aredisparate. Tbe environm ental conditions tbat led people to act wronglyin Milgram's obedience experiment are different from tbos! tbat causedtbe Princeton Seminarians not to belp tbe person in need, and differentagain from tbe conditions in tbe bystander experiment and. mood-effectexperiments. It seems tbat tbe practical conclusion to be drawn fromsituationism is tbat we ougbt to keep watcb for a diverse range ofenvironmental conditions tbat typically lead to moral failures.

Sabini and Silver argue tbat Doris bas drawn tbe wrong practicalconclusion from tbe situationist experiments. Tbey claim tbat tbe


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 447apparently heterogeneous phenomena observed in situationistexperiments are produced hy a single psychological mechanism: fearof emharrassment.^^ The suhjects in the Milgram experiment wereunw illing to confront and disobey the a uth orit y figure du e to their fearof embarrassment, and this led them to act in ways that conflictedwith their own moral judgements and values. Rather than sufferthe embarrassment of arriving late for their talk, the Princetonsem inarian s hurrie d by the person who appea red to he in need. Ra therth a n suffer the e m ba rra ssm en t of spea king out in a room of nonp lussedconfederates, the subjects in the hy stan de r exp erim ent stood by quietlyinstead of responding to the cries for help. It is far less plausihle toclaim that fear of emharrassment was the motivation force in some ofthe other s ituationist ex perimen ts, yet Sabini and Silver dismiss thoseexperiments as being of trivial significance for morality.'^^ It is notclear tha t such a dism issal is warra nted , but, for curre nt pu rposes, letus gra nt t h a t th e single psychological mechan ism of fear of em ba rra ss-ment explains some of the most significant situationist phenomena.

After unifying the p heno m ena in th is way Sahini and Silver concludethat Doris's suggestion that you ought to 'he sensitive to situationalfeatures th a t may affect your behaviour in su btle ways' is not only vaguehut misleading. In its place, Sabini and Silver offer a more focusedrecommendation:We suggest instead tha t people should stay away from slippery slopes, that theyshould be very wary when their moral perceptions seem to clash with others',and tha t they should understand both th at it is hard and th at it is possible toconfront other people who are doing wrong. ^Sabini and Silver admit that this advice is narrow, but claim thatit is 'quite practical' , and that the greater generality of Doris'advice is 'apparent, not real' . In their words, 'when the situationistposition is distilled, the remaining substance is exactly as narrow asour prescription'.^^ Sabini and Silver clearly express the view thatsituationism brings nothing but bad news, and the situational forcesare purely a thr ea t to be guarded against.

' Sahini a nd Silver, 'Lack of Ch ara cter? ', p. 559.'^ It is very unlikely that the results of the Isen and Levin mood-effect experimentor the Matthews and Cannon noise-effect experiment can he explained through fear of


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448 Luke RussellAs we have seen, there is significant disagreement over the unityor disparity of the underlying causes of the situation ist effects. Yet wehave also seen that there appears to be a rough consensus amongst

philosophers who have commented on the practical m oral implicationsof situationism. The rough consensus is that the situationist effectscan pull us off the rails , and th at awareness of the situationist effectsshould prompt us to guard against their infiuence in our lives and thelives of other m oral agents.What is missing from the rough consensus, though, is acknow-ledgement of the fact that situational forces can also put us backon track, and can produce many important kinds of moral success.In the remainder of this article I will argue that the particularrecommendations made by Sabini and Silver are deeply unsatisfactory,and that the more general recommendations made by the otherphilosophers also neglect the good news that comes with situationism .While they portray the situational forces as threats to morality, I willargue that such forces are much closer to being morally neutral. I willthen attem pt to explain why philosophers have focused only on the badnews that comes with situationism, and finally defend the claim thatwe should put situational forces to good use.III . SLIPPERY SLOPES ARE MORALLY NEUTRAL

Sabini and Silver criticize Doris for offering advice that is so vagueas to be useless. Unfortunately, part of the advice offertid by Sabiniand Silver themselves appears to be useless. According to Sabini andSilver, the incremental increases of voltage in the Milgram, experimentconstitute aperfect slippery slope, and there is no doubt that the subjects slide down it:at each shock level that they are tempted to quit they must face the question,'If it is wrong to administer the next shock, then was it really right to haveadministered the last one?' . . . To some degree then, obedience is attributableto a slippery slope.^^Thus, Sabini and Silver advise us to 'stay away from slipp(;ry slopes'.^^Yet the existence of this kind of moral slippery slope requires only aseries of incremental steps that stretch between a permissible actionand an impermissible action. These slippery slopes yawn on all sides ofus almost every time we act, simply because there are almost alwaysimpermissible a lternatives to our right actions, and those alternatives


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 449promise, but there is a slippery slope between a gentle reprimandand an impermissible violent reprisal. Similarly, it is permissible togive many kinds of preferential treatment to our own children at theexpense of other children, but there is a slippery slope between thispermissible preferential trea tm en t and impermissible disregard for thewell-being of othe r children. In mo st cases the imm ediate proximity ofthe se slippery slopes is no obstacle to our ac ting a s we should. Yet, evenif it were such an obstacle, it is not clear that we could stay away fromsuch slippery slopes. In telling us to stay away from slippery slopesSabini and Silver have not offered practically applicable advice.

Perh aps w hat Sabini and Silver m ean is not tha t we should stay awayfrom slippery slopes, but that we should avoid sliding down slipperyslopes. Alternatively, they might mean that we should stay away fromsituations in which other people try to push us down slippery slopes.The problem with these suggestions is that most slippery slopes thatstretch betw een rig ht and w rong actions are slippery in both directions,and, of those that are not, many slide us exclusively towards rightactions.Many so-called slippery slopes that appear in moral arguments areslippery purely in that there are incremental steps stretching betweena permissible action and an imp ermissible action. Since the se steps areincremental in both directions, there is no reason to suppose that allpeople who find themselves on such so-called slopes will slide towardswrong rather than right actions. In effect, these so-called slopes arenot inclined one way or the other. In contrast, some slippery slopes aresteeply inclined in one direction. In the literal case, for instance, inwhich we step onto a muddy hill, gravity will slide us down but notup. Similarly, some political slippery slopes are steeply inclined. Forinstance, we can imagine scenarios in which granting a limited degreeof power to a hitherto disenfranchised political group would enablethe m to use th at power to gain m ore power, and th is self-reinforcingstru ctu re would very likely lead to a sha rin g of power between politicalgroups. As this example illustrates, some steeply inclined slipperyslopes can slide us towards good states of affairs.Given that slippery slopes can also slide individual people towardsright actions, should we stay away from slippery slopes? Let us supposeth at J oh n is inclined to perform an action 0 th a t is actually wrong, bu tthat he mistakenly judges as being right. Further, let us suppose thatthe re are a series of incre m enta l steps between t b at action 0 and an


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450 Luke Russellwhen he does i/^to be acting immorally, or acting against his own betterjudgement. Sometimes, at least, it is good to slide down or be pusheddown slippery slopes. A recommendation that we always should avoiddoing so would be morally bad advice.Perhaps what Sabini and Silver should have recommended wasthat we should avoid sliding down slippery slopes that end in theperformance of wrong actions. This is sound advice, but part of it issuperfluous. We should avoid performing wrong actions in general,whether or not we are led to perform them by sliding down slipperyslopes. Since slippery slopes run towards right actions too, thedistinguishing feature that we should be advised to avoid is not theslope, bu t th e wrong act at one of its en ds.In this case Sabini and Silver have focused on particular examplesin which a certain force or process causes us to fail morally, and haveconcluded th a t we should avoid succum bing to th e force; in effect, th a tthis force is all bad news. Instead, they should have noticed that thisforce can also be used to produce moral successes, and hemce that, insome circumstances, it is a good thing that we are suscei)tible to thisforce.IV. FEAR OF EMBARRASSMENT IS MORALLY NEUTRAL

According to Sabini and Silver the most important moral ofsituationism is not that we stay away from slippery slopes, but thatwe recognize th e da ng ers of failing to act ri gh tly du(3 to fear ofembarrassment. Situationism teaches us that all too eiisily we areswept along w ith the crowd or intim idate d by auth ori ty figures. Hence,Sabini and Silver recommend that people 'should be very wary whenthe ir m oral perceptions seem to clash with othe rs', and thai, they shouldunderstand both that it is hard and that it is possible to confrontother people who are doing wrong'.^^ Sabini and Silver claim that thisrecommendation, and nothing more general, is all that is warrantedby situationism. In fact, even if their unified interpretation of thesituationist phenomena were correct, the conclusion that we oughtto draw would differ in two respects from that drawn by Sabini andSilver themselves, and the second of these differences has importantimplications for ethics.

The first mistake in the explicit conclusion drawn by Sabini andSilver is comparatively superficial. They conclude that it is hard to


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 451tbat we are in a room full of people, all of wbo are confronting awrongdoer, and we are asked our opinion of tbe wrongdoing. In tb is caseour fear of embarrassment would make it bard for us to refrain fromconfronting tbe wrongdoer. Perbaps wbat tbe situationist experimentsactually suggest is tbat it is difficult to confront people wbo are doingwrong wben tbose wrongdoers make up an overwbelming majorityof tbose present, or wben tbe wrongdoers are lone, uncontradictedautbority figures wbo are perceived to be 'institutional experts'.^^ Ifwe want to state Sabini and Silver's conclusion more carefully wbilesticking to tbe spirit of tbeir argument, we sbould say tbat it is bardyet possible to confront overwbelming majorities or lone institutionalautbority figures wbo are doing wrong.

Tbe second, deeper problem witb tbe conclusion drawn by Sabiniand Silver is tbat it is framed in terms of actions tbat arewrong. At first glance tbis framing seems appropriate, because tbemost important situationist experiments involve subjects performingmorally wrong actions. Yet tbe psycbologically and morally significantpbenomenon observed in tbe situationist experiments is not tbat ofpeople performing actions tbat are actually wrong, or even of peopleperforming actions tbat tbey are justified in believing to be wrong. Tbesignificant pbenomenon is tb at of people performing actions tbat tbeytbemselves ordinarily would judge to be wrong and tbat confiict witbtbeir own values.^^ Tbere is no reason to believe tbat tbe facts aboutwbetber tbeir judgements are correct or justified are relevant to tbepsycbological effects in question. For instance, it is plausible tbat peoplewbo bave made unjustified and false moral judgements can be led toact in violation of tbose judgements by a fear of tbe embarrassmenttbat would arise from contradicting overwbelming majorities or loneinstitutional autbority figures.As we bave seen, tbe explicit conclusion tbat Sabini and Silverdraw from situationism is 'tbat it is bard and tbat it is possibleto confront otber people wbo are doing wrong'.^^ Tbis suggests tbatsituationism brings only bad news: tbat situational forces are capableonly of disrupting morality and leading to moral failures. We caneasily be led astray, Sabini and Silver suggest, so 'people sbould bevery wary wben tbeir moral perceptions seem to clasb witb otbers'.^^

25 S abini and Silver, 'Lack of Char acte r?', p. 550.


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452 Luke RussellThe proper conclusion to be drawn from situationism, though, isthat it is hard yet possihle for a person to confront overwhelmingmajorities or lone institutional authority figures whom that personjudges to be doing wrong. Because people are sometimes mistaken intheir moral judgements and overwhelming majorities and institutionalauthority figures often judge correctly, the proper conclusion is notwholly negative, hu t is much closer to heing morally neutral . The newsthat comes with situationism is that our fear of emharrassment, justlike our susceptihility to slippery slopes, leads to many moral successesas well as failures.

The practical conclusion drawn hy Sabini and Silver is moredeeply flawed than the interpretations of situationism offered hyDoris and the other philosophers we have considered. Nonetheless,the negativity of Sahini's and Silver's conclusion is emblematic of ahroader failure to acknowledge and explore the positive implicationsof situationism. Kamtekar and Swanton are not particukirly troubledby the situationist experiments, but that is hecause they think thatthe effects can be overcome by proper moral training, rather thanbecause they think that situationism hrings good news as well as had.Webber and Nelkin suggest that it is better that we know ahout thesituationist effects, hut not that we have any reason to be glad thatwe are susceptihle to them. Even Doris is surprisingly conservative,failing to set out a systematic account of when and how we mightexploit those effects in order to pursue our moral ends. Why havephilosophers tended to see situational forces merely as threats to heguarded against? In the following sections we shall see how eitheran inappropriately narrow conception of the situationist effects or aninappropriately narrow conception of our moral goals could give rise tothe illusion that situationism is all bad news.

V. INAPPROPRIATELY NARROW CONCEPTIONSOF SITUATIONISMIf we focus too closely on the actual situationist experiments, it m ightseem that people can he led to act wrongly by situational forces butnot that people can act rightly due to such forces. While the Isenand Levin mood-effect experiment suggests that finding a coin m akespeople more likely to offer help, the Milgram experiment, the bystanderexperiment and the Princeton Seminary experiment all show people


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 453freeloading hehaviour in a university coffee room if a picture of apair of watchful eyes is placed over the 'honesty box' into whichpayments are supposed to be made.^^ It is plausible that imaginedshame or the fear of embarrassment prevents these wrong actions,and that, as situationists would predict, this imagined shame or fearof embarrassment is triggered by variable environmental conditionsra th er t h an reliably produced in all conditions by the a ge nts' respectivecharacters.

Even if we grant that fear of embarrassment can prevent moralfailures, it could be argued that, by definition, situational forces arethose tbat produce rather than prevent moral failures. There are agreat variety of social psychology experiments and a variety of forcesthat shape behaviour in those experiments. If these forces do not fallneatly into a natural group, we could simply stipulate tbat situationalforces are tho se th at lea d people to perform wron g actions th a t conflictwith their own values or judgements. On this definition, fear ofem ba rras sm en t w ould count as a situatio nal force only in those cases inwbicb it produced wrong action, and situa tionism would bring only badnews. Yet this ad hoc classification of situational forces runs counterto the psychological literature, which groups the Milgram experimentand the bystander experiment witb other experiments involving non-moral judgement, such as Asch's group effect experiments concerningjudgements as to the length of lines.^' ' According to the most naturalclassification of situational forces, those forces can lead to moralsuccesses as well as failures.

V I. S I T U A T I O N I S T E F F E C T S U N D E R M I N E V I R T U E A N DA U T O N O M YAnother reason for which people have failed to notice the good newsth at comes with situationism may be th at they bave an inappropriatelynarrow conception of our moral goals. For instance, tbat conceptioncan be too narrow if it is focused exclusively on tbe acbievementof virtue or autonomy, tbereby ignoring other less demanding goals.Another way in which that conception can be too narrow is by beingfocused exclusively on tbe first-person synchronie deliberation tbatimm ediately precedes action, thereb y ignoring the second-personal anddiachronic considerations that should be part of moral deliberation.

First, let us consider tbe implications of focusing only on tbe mostdemanding of our moral goals. Suppose tbat our sole moral goal were


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454 Luke Russellto be fully virtuous and nothing less than fully virtuous, in the sensedescribed by trad itional virtue ethics. We can be fully virtuous in th isAristotelian or neo-Aristotelian sense only by possessing stable andbroad good character traits that are integrated by practical wisdomso as regularly and reliably to produce rigbt judgement, feeling andaction rather than wrong judgement, feeling and action.^' How wouldour susceptibility to situational forces affect our capacity to be fullyvirtuous? In some contexts, such as that occupied by the subjects in theMilgram experiment, situational forces reliably lead us to act wrongly.Our disposition towards such failures strongly suggests that we do notpossess full Aristotelian virtue, and hence do not achieve our moralgoal.^^ In other contexts in which overwhelming majorities or loneinstitutional authority figures approve of actions that ai-e right, ourfear of embarrassment might push us towards right actions that wewere not otherwise inclined to perform. Yet, if we are moved to actrightly by fear of embarrassment rather than by courage, generosity,honesty, or other virtues, then it seems that we will not have achievedour goal of possessing virtues and acting virtuously. Thus, it seems tha tsituational forces cannot lead us to be virtuous and can prevent us frombeing virtuous. If our only moral goal were to be virtuous, situationismwould be all bad news.Traditional virtue ethicists might reject this argument for a coupleof reasons. They could point out that, on Aristotle's account, childrendo not act out of virtue, but acquire virtue by repeatedly being madeto do what a virtuous person would do. Thus, traditional virtuetheorists could argue that a child's fear of embarrassment can actas the motivating force behind that child's right actions during theprocess of her acquisition of virtue. If this were the case, fear ofembarrassment might be a useful stepping stone to virtvie, and eventraditional virtue ethicists might have some reason to believe that thesituationist results are not all bad news with respect to our goal ofbeing virtuous. Unfortunately, though, situationism does not supportthe claim that fear of embarrassment is a stepping stone to virtue.Our fear of embarrassment appears not to be merely a juvenile motivethat typically is replaced by more adm irable motives in m ature adults.Rather, it remains a deeply inuential motive throughout adulthood,and hence a persistent obstacle to the possession and exercise ofvirtue.


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456 Luke Russellfor and against tbe action and be moved by tbose reasons.^^ Tbisdiversity in conceptions of autonomy is mirrored by a diversity ofopinions regarding tbe proper role of autonomy in moral tbeory.Perb ap s auton om y is a prere qu isite for m oral agency and responsibility,and bence a prerequisite for any kind of moral success or failure.Alternatively, perbaps moral success requires autonomy, but non-autonomous actions can count as moral failures for wbicb tbe agentsbould be beld responsible. In any case, autonomy is widely consideredto be a necessary component of moral success, and tbe ricber, reason-responsive conceptions of autonomy migbt be seen as botb necessaryand sufficient for tbat success.

For current purposes we need not determine wbicb is tbe mostplausible account of autonomy. We simply sbould note tbat on a broadrange of sucb accounts, tbe situationist explanation of our actions intbe experim ental scenarios tbrea ten s to underm ine our autonomy. Forinstan ce, actions tba t are caused by fear of em ba rra ssm en t or by moodeffects migbt count as less tban autonomous because tbe agent wasmoved by forces tbat confiict witb ber own second-order desires, orforces from wbicb tbe agent was alienated, or forces tbat did not andwould not survive rational scrutiny, or forces tbat were not tbe causeof tbe agent's judgement as to wbat sbe sbould do, or forces tbatwould not provide moral reasons in favour of tbe action. People wboare moved to act by situational forces are often internally confiictedand are not appropriately connected to tbeir reasons for acting or totbeir own processes of reasoning.^^ If our actions regularly are causedby situational forces, it seems tbat we are not autonomous agents.If we are not autonomous agents, tben eitber we fail to qualify asmorally responsible agen ts a t all, or we are fiawed moral a gen ts wbo areincapable of real mo ral success. Even in tbose cases in wbich situa tion alforces cause us to do wbat an autonomous and well-informed moralagent would do, if we bave not acted autonomously, our acbievementm igbt a ppe ar to be negligible.

Doris bimself is worried tba t situa tionism will un derm ine autonomy.His response is to defend a less demanding account of autonomy,according to wbicb an action is autonomous if it tbe product of motivestbat can be integrated into tbe narrative of tbe agent's life. In somecases, Doris suggests, people wbo are moved by situationist forces areacting on motives tbat can be narratively integrated, and bence tbosepeople sbould be beld responsible for tbeir moral failui'es. In cases


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 457least have mixed feelings ahout holding agents responsihle.'* WhetherDoris' argument is convincing or not, it is clear that people who givecom paratively rich accounts of autonom y will judge t h a t the situa tion alforces can only hlock us from acting autonomously, and that they do soin ma ny cases. If they also believe tha t our only m oral goal necessarilyincludes our acting autonomously, then, along with traditional virtueethicists, they will conclude th a t s ituatio nism is all had new s.

VI I . MO RA L G O A LS BELO W VIRTU E A N D A U TO N O MYThe fact that several philosophers have seen situationism as being allbad news might well he explained by the fact that those philosophersassu m e th a t our only m oral goal necessarily includes our heing virtu ousor our acting autonomously. However, these are not our only moralgoals. We also have several goals th a t are less dem anding , all of whichregularly will be achieved hy traditionally virtuous or autonomousagents, hut all of which might also be achieved by people who arenot virtuous or autonomous.

The first and second of these extra moral goals are that we besynchronically and diachronically resolute. We are synchronicallyresolute when we perform actions that we ourselves, at the time ofacting, judge to be right. We are diachronically resolute when we actin accordance w ith our long-term m oral plan s and hence in accordancewith our long-term m oral values.*^ The se two goals can come apa rt. Forinstan ce, a person can be synchronically hu t not diachronically resolu te,as in circumstances in which she changes her moral judgement justprior to acting, acts in accordance with that new judgement, hut thenreg rets h aving done so because t h a t jud gem ent conflicts with h er long-term values.*^ In pursuit of these goals we guard against akrasia,coercion and wantonness, all of which can lead us to abandon ourplan s a nd to act in w ays th at we judg e to be wrong. An action's beingsynchronically and diachronically resolute is necessary for its beingtraditio nally virtu ous a nd, on m any acco unts, for its being autonom ous,but it is not sufficient for its being traditionally virtuous or for itsbeing autonomous. Actions might be synchronically resolute hut notvirtuous because they are the product of a whimsical judg em ent rat he rthan stable character, and actions might be diachronically resolute hutnot virtuous because they are not backed by the right kind of feeling


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458 Luke Russellor by correct reasoning. Similarly, actions might be syncbronicallyand diacbronically resolute but not autonomous because the agent'sjud gem ent was not connected to tbe action in the r igh t kind of way.

The third and fourth of our additional moral goals are that we makecorrect moral jud gem ents and t h at we ma ke good mo ral plans. Clearly,it is m uch be tter to act in accordance witb our correct moral judgem entsand plans tban merely to be resolute, because judgements can bemistaken and plans ill-conceived. Judging and planning correctlyare necessary conditions for traditional virtue and for rich, reason-responsive autonomy, but tbe possibility of akrasia implies tbat tbeyare not sufficient for eitber.Eacb of tbese four goals plays a role in our ordinary practical moral

deliberations. We aim to mak e correct m oral jud gem en ts and effectivelong-term plans, and to act in accordance with tbose judgements andw itb tbose plan s. Arguably, tbou gh, th ere is something good abo ut ouracbievement of any one of these goals, even if it is the only one of ourmoral goals that we achieve, and even if we do fall short of virtue orautonom y. I t is good to jud ge correctly, even if we fail to ac t in accord ancewith tb at judg em ent, and the re is som ething good about being resolute,even if we ba ve judg ed incorrectly.'*^Tbere is anotber a kind of moral success tbat can be acbievedind epe nd ently of all of tb e goals tb a t we bave considered so far. In m an ycases, people jud ge incorrectly, pla n poorly, and fail to act in accordancew itb tbose jud gem ent s and plans , but still perform actions tb a t areactually rigbt. Huckleberry Finn, as described by Jonathan Bennett,judges incorrectly tha t he ought to turn in the run aw ay slave Jim to tbeau tho ritie s and pla ns to do so, bu t be fails to act in accordiince witb bisown moral judgement and plan, tbereby performing tbe right action ofnot turning Jim in. There is something good about Huck's motives andhis action, even though he has failed to be resolute and failed to makecorrect judgements and plans about wbat morally be ought to do.*^ In

Some people will reject the claim th a t t he achiev em ent of any one of the se goals onits own is good, claiming instead that the value of the various goals forms some kindof organic unity. It could be argued th at correct judg em ent is good only when the agen tresolutely acts in accordance with that judgement, although this does not fit well withthe common view that the akratic person is better than the vicious person who not onlyacts wrongly but m akes false m oral judg m ents (Aristotle, Nicomachean E thics, 1150''29).More plausibly, it could he argued that synchronie resoluteness is good only when theagent has judged correctly. After all, it is worse, all things considered, when someone


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Is Situationism All Bad News? 459other cases people do the right thing but act from motives that are notadmirable at all, or even from motives that are deplorable, as whensomeone gives to charity purely in order to be admired. Obviously,it would be better if such people acted from admirable motives, butregardless of the quality of their motives, they achieve some kind ofmoral success when they do the right thing for the wrong reason.There is a significant limitation on our ability to aim for the goal ofactually right action. To judge that an action is right is to judge thatit is actually right. From a first-person perspective, it is impossible forme to judge that 'I judge that my possible action 0 is right, but 0 isactually wrong.' This suggests th at the only way in which we can aimto perform acts that are actually right is to judge correctly and to actin accordance with our judgements, in which case it seems misleadingto say that we have an extra practical goal of performing actions thatare actually right. Yet even if we were to admit tha t th is is not a goalat which we can aim independently of the others, actually right actionremains a target that we can succeed in hitting independently of theothers. Moreover, we can judge retrospectively that we ourselves havehit this target while having missed all of the others. For instance, anolder and wiser Huck might look back on his failure to turn Jim in tothe authorities and judge that back then he was irresolute and judgedincorrectly, but that he did what was right.

Importantly, though, when we plan which actions we ought toperform in the future, as opposed to which actions we should performright now, the goal of right action can come apart from the goalsof judging correctly and being synchronically resolute. By way ofcomparison, let us consider Odysseus. Hewants to hear the S irens' songwithout dying, and he plans to perform the action that is practicallyright: namely, to keep sailing past the island. But Odysseus knows thathe cannot achieve this goal via judging correctly and being resolute atthe time of acting, because he knows that the Sirens' song will renderhim incapable of judging correctly at the time of acting. Thus, Odysseusties himself to the m ast so that he cannot leap overboard and instruc tshis oarsmen to ignore his future requests. He plans to be synchronicallyirresolute, and thereby manages to be diachronically resolute and toperform the action that is practically right.There are moral analogues to this case in which we are awareof our own tendencies to make false moral judgements when inparticular situations, such as when we face certain strong temptations,


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460 Luke Russelldeliberately leave the car a t home so th at we are not able to pu t lives a trisk by driving hom e dr un k. Som etimes we plan to sacrifice th e goal ofbeing synchronically resolute in order to do what, in moments of calmrefiection, we recognize to be morally right.Thus, we have five moral goals that we would hope to achieveregularly, even if we fail to be virtu ou s or to act autonom ously : we hopeto be synchronically and diachronically resolute, to judge correctly, toplan w ell, and to perform acts th at are actually rig ht. As we have seen,th e possible conflict betw een some of these goals add s comjjlexity to ou rmoral enterprise. That enterprise is further complicated by a parallelset of additional goals regarding the moral qualities of other peopleand the ir actions. We also should strive to ma ke o ther people jud ge andplan correctly an d act resolutely an d rightly. It is even be tter if we canhelp those people become virtuous and autonomous.

Often we succeed in reaching some of these second-personal moralgoals without reaching others. For instance, we use threats ofpunishment to make people act rightly without leading them to makecorrect moral judgements or without making them virtuous. As withthe goals concerning our own behaviour, our goal of making otherpeople resolute can conflict with our goal of making those people actrightly. These goals concerning the moral qualities of other people areconnected in some way to the original set of goals we have considered.For instance, the fact that my action causes another person to actrightly coun ts in favour ofth e rig htn ess of my own action. Non etheless,it is possible to m eet our goals concerning the m oral q ualities of otherswh ile ours elves failing to act righ tly or jud ge correctly an d failing to bereso lute or virtu ou s. Conversely, we often m eet our first-personal m oralgoals while failing to meet any of our second-personal goals.

With respect to most of our moral goals beyond our own virtuousand autonomous action, situationism does not bring only bad news.Situationism teaches us that our resolve to act in accordance withour own moral judgements easily can be destroyed by fear ofembarrassment. Yet situationism also reminds us that, in somesituations, we can exploit our own fear of embarrassment so as tom ake ourselves perform planned right actions th at otherwise we wouldabandon when the time comes to act. For instance, we can makepublic commitments to perform acts of charity, knowing that fear ofembarrassment at breaking these commitments will make us followthrough. Similarly, we can use this fear to prevent ourselves from


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462 Luke Russelland harms being inflicted on innocent people, concerns about respectfor the autonomy of the would-be wrongdoer should be overridden byconcern for the well-heing of those who otherwise would he wronged.'*^M anip ula ting people into acting rightly via situatio nal forces is far fromthe ideal means of moral persuasion. If we were to adopt this methodun think ingly as a default or as a first port of call, th er e is a dan ger th atwe would come to neglect higher goals such as virtue and autonomy.Nonetheless, sometimes the hest we can do in practical circumstancesis to emharrass a would-be wrongdoer into performing a right action.

V I I I . C O N C L U S I O NOn traditional accounts of virtue and autonomy, people whose fear ofem har rassm ent leads them to act rightly do not thereby act v irtuouslyor autonomously, nor do they therehy acquire virtue. If our only moralgoals were to he fully virtuous or autonomous and to make otherpeople virtuous or autonomous, then situationism would hring onlyhad news for morality. Yet, as we have seen, our moi'al goal doesnot merely concern traditional virtue or autonomy. By keeping thecomplexity of our moral goal in mind, we see that Sabini and Silverwere wrong to suggest that situationism hrings only bfid news. Oursusceptibility to slippery slopes and our general and powerful fearof embarrassment can frustrate some of our moral aims, yet, in theright social contexts, slippery slopes and fear of emharrassment helpus achieve other important moral goals. It is very hard to confrontoverwhelm ing majorities or lone ins titutio nal a uth orit y figures who aredoing wrong, bu t it is equally ha rd to confront overwhelm ing ma joritiesor lone institutional authority figures who are doing right. We shouldbe grateful for th e second of the se facts, and sho uld ta ke it into a ccountas we attempt to shape our own hehaviour and the behaviour ofothers.

On balance, should we be glad about the situationist effects, and, inparticular, our fear of embarrassment? This depends on the relativeimportance of our various moral goals and on the actual consequencesthat have flowed from the influence of situational forces. People whothink that vir tue and autonomy are much more important than mererigh t action prohahly will jud ge th at situation ism hring s more bad ne wsthan good, as will those who think that situational efl'ects underliethe compliance with Nazi authority flgures that made the Holocaust


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7s Situationism All Bad News? 463comes w itb situation ism goes some way to coun terbalanc ing tb e bad. I tis not only possible but likely tbat fear of embarrassment regularlybrings many of tbe stray sbeep in our society into line. In actingout of tbis fear, sucb people do not acbieve tbe bigbest kind of moralsuccess, bu t, impo rtantly, nor do tbey fall into tbe wo rst kind of m oralfailure.^^[email protected]


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