In defence of Aristotle on character: toward a synthesis of recent psychology, neuroscience and the thought of Michael Polanyi

Abstract

In the United States, various forms of character education have become popular in both elementary and professional education. They are often criticised, however, for their reliance on Aristotle, who is said to be problematic at several points. In response to these criticisms, I argue that Aristotle’s ancient account of character and its formation remains viable in light of work over the last decade in psychology and the neurosciences. However, some lacunae remain that can at least be partially filled with insights drawn from the work of Michael Polanyi, a scientist-turned-philosopher whose larger philosophical project was launched by a desire to see Western society flourish. Insights from these varied sources can provide the building blocks with which to construct an account of character and its development that preserves Aristotle’s best insights in ways that answer the concerns voiced by the critics.

Notes

1. See van der Ven (1998), Power, Higgins and Kohlberg (1989) and MacIntyre (1984).

2. Interestingly, MacIntyre later recants of his attempt to develop a biologically-uninformed account of the virtues (1999).

3. Some might question the helpfulness of bringing Polanyi into the discussion because, as with any seminal thinker, his work has been subject to criticism and debate. For instance, he has been charged with promoting a telos within evolution and with setting forth a dualism of body and mind. Indeed, in charting the impressive rise of human consciousness within the evolutionary process, Polanyi did suggest the possibility of a telic aspect to emergence, a suggestion not supported by contemporary evolutionary theory (Clayton, 2004). However, this suggestion does not invalidate his many other fruitful ideas (Gulick, 2005). Second, although Polanyi was an eminent physical chemist, one major aim of his philosophy was to combat several of the scientistic or reductionistic theories of his time, notably positivism and behaviourism. Thus at some points he does indeed state that body and mind are separate entities, which suggests he holds a problematic dualistic position that contradicts his other insights—at least that is the worry of Grene (1977); for more on this debate, see Scott (1995) and Mullins (2010). Even so, Polanyi never subscribes to a Cartesian substance dualism. Rather, Polanyi advances a pluralistic, hierarchical worldview in which body and mind are to be understood as separate but interdependent levels of reality subject to different sets of rules. Indeed, Polanyi’s pioneering advocacy of dynamic emerging levels of reality—a view convergent with contemporary complexity theory—provides a platform on which a theory of character development can be constructed that actively seeks contributions from multiple domains, including neuroscience, biology, psychology, philosophy, sociology and theology.

4. In this respect, I am in broad sympathy with others who think that Aristotle’s ethics, modified in light of the findings of contemporary science, can continue to provide a fruitful way of pursuing ethics. See for example, Arnhart (1998) and Casebier (2003).

5. See Sherman (1989) for an extensive treatment of Aristotle on the perception of particulars.

6. As regular readers of the Journal of Moral Education know, the September 2008 issue (37:3) commemorated Lawrence Kohlberg’s dissertation on moral development by calling for the development of an integrated model of moral functioning that goes beyond Kohlberg. Essays in that issue were intended to suggest the foci, or base points, that such a model must incorporate: neurobiology, personality, interaction and culture (Reed & Stoermer, 2008). That such a quest is controversial is clear from the responses generated and published a year later in the September 2009 issue of the Journal (38:3). Regardless, this quest for integration is consistent with the spirit of Aristotle’s ethics, for his work represents an integration of the best knowledge available in his day.

7. The latter qualification is worth comment, for when engaging any field of inquiry, one must recognise that there are significant points of debate between thinkers who may well differ significantly in their interpretation of data, let alone on what counts as data in the first place. This is as true of the neurosciences as any other discourse. Take, for example, Libet’s oft-cited experiment in which he finds that neurons are ready to activate muscles before subjects are consciously aware of intending to move. Such a view, reductively interpreted, might suggest that the free will associated with Aristotelian deliberation (or moral responsibility more generally) is a fiction. Libet himself resisted such an interpretation since conscious awareness preceded actual movement. This fact led him to redefine free will as ‘free won’t’, such that what we call ‘will’ really refers to our conscious ability to inhibit some possible actions that bubble up out of the neurological cauldron (see Schwartz & Begley, 2002). Frith, in yet another treatment of this data, argues in a manner reminiscent of Hume, that ‘all we can actually experience is the contingency between thought and action’ and that the resulting sense of agency is evolutionarily adaptive (2002, p. 483). Regardless of which side one might take in these interpretive debates, the lesson to be learned is that all appropriation of data is selective and that one’s conclusions must therefore be held rather circumspectly, along the lines of what Polanyi calls ‘universal intent’ (1966/1983, p. 78).On the matter of free will, for what it is worth, I would argue that the experience of free will is so complex that we need many different levels of investigation in order gain a better understanding. My claim is inspired, in part, by Chapter 4 of Clayton (2004), Nancey Murphy (2006) and Jonathan Edwards (1754/1957), whose oft-forgotten, but profound treatment of the issue, demonstrates how free choice is indeed compatible with what he calls both natural and moral causes. Unfortunately, this paper is not the place to pursue that line of thought in any depth.

8. Interestingly, the literature suggests that it takes upwards of ten years of practice to become an expert in fields as diverse as chess, mathematics, painting, or music composition. Moreover, practice seems to counteract the declines in brain function that one expects to come with aging (see Gladwell, 2005; Goldberg, 2005; Narvaez, 2005; Sternberg et al., 2000). If the development of virtues can fairly be construed as the development of moral expertise, these findings only reinforce Aristotle’s claim that developing the virtues takes time and practice such that young people cannot really be considered virtuous.

9. Left unexplored in this article are other points where Polanyi’s ideas intersect with psychology. Here I suggest three places of resonance. First, Polanyi’s view about the limited use of rules echoes at least some investigations into the role that heuristics plays as ‘rules of thumb’ in human cognition (e.g., Gigerenzer, 2007). Additionally, Polanyi’s idea that at least some knowledge is fully tacit is comparable in spirit to some intuitionist theories (e.g., Haidt, 2001), although I suspect that Polanyi is closer to the dual-processing view advocated by Lapsley and Hill (2008). Finally, Kim and Sankey’s treatment of moral development as a dynamic and emergent process (2009) might provide both a stronger ground for Polanyi’s views of emergence and an intriguing new way of conceptualising Aristotle’s virtues as ‘attractor states’. My suspicion is that there is much that can be learned by letting Polanyi and the contemporary sciences interrogate one another, but such a task would be the subject of another paper. An example of what such a conversation might look like can be found in Tradition and Discovery, 29(3), 2003, an issue devoted to the work of Philip Clayton.