Motivational aspects of moral learning and progress

Randall Curren, Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester; The development and drafting of this article was completed at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, during my residency as the Ginny and Robert Loughlin Founders’ Circle Member for 2012–13. I owe thanks to the Loughlins and to the Institute’s School of Social Science for generously supporting this work. For valuable opportunities to present and discuss draft versions, I am also grateful to the organizers and participants in the conference on Moral Education: Ancient and Contemporary, at Northwestern University, on June 9, 2013, to my commentator at that conference, Darcia Narvaez, and to Emily Robertson, Barbara Applebaum, and the other participants in a reading group discussion of the article at Syracuse University, on December 5, 2013. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions provided by a pair of anonymous referees for the journal.

Abstract

This article addresses a puzzle about moral learning concerning its social context and the potential for moral progress: Won’t the social context of moral learning shape moral perceptions, beliefs, and motivation in ways that will inevitably limit moral cognition, motivation, and progress? It addresses the relationships between habituation and moral reasoning in Aristotelian moral education, and assesses Julia Annas’s attempt to defend the possibility of moral progress within a virtue ethical framework. Focusing on the motivational core of the puzzle, the article argues that Self-determination Theory (SDT) provides resources for better understanding how moral progress is possible and how moral education can facilitate such progress.

Keywords:

• paradox of moral education
• moral habituation
• moral autonomy
• virtues as skills
• Aristotle
• motivation
• Self-determination Theory

Notes

Randall Curren, Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester; The development and drafting of this article was completed at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, during my residency as the Ginny and Robert Loughlin Founders’ Circle Member for 2012–13. I owe thanks to the Loughlins and to the Institute’s School of Social Science for generously supporting this work. For valuable opportunities to present and discuss draft versions, I am also grateful to the organizers and participants in the conference on Moral Education: Ancient and Contemporary, at Northwestern University, on June 9, 2013, to my commentator at that conference, Darcia Narvaez, and to Emily Robertson, Barbara Applebaum, and the other participants in a reading group discussion of the article at Syracuse University, on December 5, 2013. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions provided by a pair of anonymous referees for the journal.

1. I will assume in what follows that the object of moral education is virtue or an acquired disposition to choose and act well. On this understanding of virtue, a disposition to choose and act on the basis of universal moral principles is no less a virtue than the various Aristotelian virtues. Courage, moderation, and other specific virtues will only qualify as true virtues if they are guided by good judgment.

2. I will understand the term ‘habituation’ broadly to include not just the acquisition of affective and perceptual dispositions through guided practice in doing things, identified as habituation by Steutel and Spiecker, but also exposure to models for emulation and other aspects of immersion in a value-laden social world, which they distinguish from habituation (2004, pp. 533–534).

3. The view, in a nutshell, is that people tend to internalize the norms of caretakers or social groups they perceive as acting to protect their interests.

4. What is reconstructive is the details of how the formation of moral virtues is to facilitate the flourishing of the intellect and independent moral judgment. There is no doubt that Aristotle did regard the development of the body as foundational to moral development, and moral development as foundational to intellectual development. See, for example, Politics VII.15 1334b15–27 (Barnes, 1984, p. 2117). Nor is there any doubt that Aristotle believed that ‘men do many things against habit and nature, if reason persuades them that they ought’ (Politics VII.13 1332b6–8 [Barnes, 1984, p. 2114]). What is at stake in the puzzle under discussion is the prospect of reason failing to notice and grasp the ethical import of all it should—hence failing to even make an effort to persuade—because the habituation of character made it blind to certain things.

5. What Aristotle says, in addressing the matter of ‘whether it is or is not expedient to make any changes in the laws of a country, even if another law be better,’ is that ‘men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had’ (Barnes, 1984, p. 2013 [Pol. 1268b26–27, 1269a3–4]).

6. R. Ryan, personal communication, April 10, 2014. Ryan and his collaborators have only recently conducted studies to isolate the well-being rewards of benevolence. The conceptualization of the need for relatedness as a need for mutually affirming relationships was introduced in Ryan, Curren, and Deci (2013).