Material quoted here is drawn from the paper by Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at The University of Notre Dame, which was published in “Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology and Psychology” edited by Nancy E. Snow, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Narvaez approaches the question of cultivating virtue from a very different perspective from those we’ve seen in other papers in this collection. She notes the influence of both inherited traits and situational context.
“The effects of co-construction of the self in early life go all the way down to gene expression and the function of immune and neurotransmitter systems. All these can influence one’s morality later because physiological function affects the nature of being and being influences morality.”
To the extent that these genetic and other physical issues influence morality they presumably make it more difficult, if not impossible, for us to successfully cultivate virtues by way the kind of conscious, directed behaviors we’ve seen discussed elsewhere.
That perceived complication is compounded by the author’s view of the uniqueness of moral situations.
“Science is either about pattern description (biology, anthropology) or about predictive laws (physics) and repeatable, lawful application. Yet, virtue application is neither following a pattern nor applying a law. When virtue is conceptualized as doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, as understood here, situatedness is critical. In this case, science cannot guide implementation because “Situations do not come in duplicates.”
I think this is wrong. While it is true that no situation is exactly the same as any other, if only because they occur at different times and different environmental conditions, the fact that one situation occurs on a rainy day in September and another on a sunny day in June, does not constitute so great a difference that the action of the individual cannot overcome it.
“Applied ethics requires noticing the uniqueness of the situation, interpreting the landscape of implications and possibilities for those circumstances, dramatically rehearsing options, prioritizing the best option for that situation, implementing the option in the appropriate way for those circumstances, and following it through to completion.”
This seems to be a reasonable outline of the steps of the process of determining how one should act. But is it really so complex an activity? In the case of certain types of actions or decisions the process would certainly be both unconscious (or nearly so) and immediate (or nearly so). But Narvaez disagrees, as she writes:
“There is no law of action that one can follow to know which principles to apply and how to apply them in a virtuous way for a particular situation. Though one may hold conscious general principles (e.g., compassion, honesty), they are too general and too narrow to guide specific action. If it’s virtuous, the specific action taken in a particular situation will be unique, tailored to the entities and circumstances at hand. Virtue is not about repetition and doggedness but about variation and agility.”
I think, in fact, that Narvaez outlined the very process she now says is unavailable to the one seeking to decide on which action to take. And that the qualities of doggedness and repetition are being undervalued in her conclusion. It is within, and as a modulation of, the action suggested by repetitive and dogged application of general principles that variation and agility can provide the adjustments to general principles that each situation might warrant.
If we were to say that variation and agility are the dominant requirements in all decision making we invite paralysis. For most of the decisions we make, an underlying general principle is critical in moving toward a real-time solution.
“The agile mind can shift among representations, from concreteness to abstraction, from controlled (intentional) to automatic (spontaneous) functioning, as needed. Those with cognitive, emotional, or psychopathological limitations tend not to display an agile mind. An agile mind is a necessary component of a virtuous moral life, but so is a wide range of capacities. As one moves through shifting moral contexts, one needs a host of flexible application skills, skills that allow one to be socially and practically effective and for which one has built confidence through frequent appropriate deployment.”
“Humans have 75 percent of the brain left to develop over a lengthy period of maturation (over 20 years) but most of it by age 5. As a result, the early caregiving environment has enormous effects on all of a child’s systems, including the development of the self, sociality, and capacities for self-regulation.”
Narvaez devotes much of the body of her paper to two topics: 1) the influence of early childhood nurturing on the development of morality in later life, and 2) the correspondence between the effects of certain early childhood nurturing practices and the apparent characteristics of humans in early hunter-gatherer cultures.
Much of the material Narvaez brings to the discussion is quite interesting but our aim is to understand how virtue can be cultivated in those well beyond early childhood. And it is a question that we must address equally for those with all types of early childhood nurturing experiences. The population of those who have not benefitted from the most morality-inducing early experiences might well be greater than that of those who have. But, that does not matter for our purposes. The aim remains the same.
So, I will not present those elements of the Narvaez paper.
Of interest in her conclusion, however, is this (composite) statement:
“Western traditions tend to misshape evolved human nature because of young-child undercare. They undermine the development of the Engagement ethic and instead explicitly emphasize emotionally detached Imagination and implicitly promote the Safety ethic.
Thus, a degraded early life (lacking the EDN) leads to a diminishment of humanity.
Although an individual’s moral perceptions and action capabilities can be handicapped by prior experience, the individual can author the community and the self toward greater virtue.”
This is the key issue for our purposes: even if early childhood experience has quite negative effects, those effects can be overcome in later life. The task might be much more difficult for some than for others because of the need to overcome destructive early experience. But as long as that handicap can be overcome, the issue of how it can be overcome, which is our concern, remains an open and important one.
My omission of much of the material in Professor Narvaez’s paper only reflects its lack of relevance to our specific topic.
©Charles R. Lightner