Episode 41, Christian B. Miller and 'The Character Gap' (Part II)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

Euthanasia, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Existentialism, Marxism, Kant, Ethics, Davidpapineau, Dennett, Marx, Evilgodchallenge, Cosmological, Mind, Consciousness, Courses, Nagasawa, Education, Johnstuartmill, Jeremybentham, Aristotle, Ocr, Camus, Josephfletcher, Conscience, Society & Culture, Kantianethics, Philosophy

4.8 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bringing together contemporary psychology and moral philosophy, the work of Christian B. Miller in character education has been tremendously influential. Christian Miller is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University and the Director of the Character Project funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. As well as publishing over 75 papers, Professor Miller is the author of Moral Character: An Empirical Theory, Character and Moral Psychology, and The Character Gap: How Good Are We? Links to all of which can be found on our website. In today’s interview, we’ll be talking to Professor Miller about his latest book, The Character Gap. In his own words:

Here is the predicament that most of us seem to be in. We are not virtuous people. We simply do not have characters that are good enough to qualify as honest, compassionate, wise, courageous and the like. We are not vicious people either – dishonest, callous, foolish cowardly, and so forth. Rather, we have a mixed character with some good sides and some bad sides. This, I have claimed, is the most plausible interpretation of what psychology tells us. It is also true to our lived experience in the world. Those are the facts as I see them. Now comes the value judgement – this is a real shame. . . Excellence of character, or being virtuous, is what we should all strive for.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Part 2. Further analysis and discussion. In the book you mentioned this problem of informational overload, and this is kind of
0:21.7	similar to, you know, people's problem with a direct democracy. There's just the kind of too much
0:26.4	I need to know and too much I need to do to be able to kind of address these issues. And similarly
0:31.0	with this, right, there's too much I need to know and maybe I've got to have it all in my head at
0:35.1	once. And that's just, you know, it's unreasonable for any normal person to be able to accomplish. So, I mean, how do you think we address that issue? Is it we just have to be kind of more mindful or something like this or just kind of be more generally aware? It's a real challenge. And I don't have any great response to it. I'll be honest with you.
0:55.7	Now, I will say this though.
0:57.3	Here's a concrete way to navigate these waters.
1:01.0	If we're trying to become virtuous across the board,
1:05.3	then this information overload problem is going to hit us in the face.
1:09.2	Because there are many virtues, and with respect to each virtue, we're going to have to keep track of lots of information
1:14.6	to try and become more like that particular virtue and more like that particular virtue.
1:18.6	So I would say that's not perhaps the right way to go about it, trying to just hit the ball out of the park from the very beginning.
1:26.6	My preferred approach would be to say, let's focus on one or two areas of our moral lives.
1:32.2	Let's kind of narrow our aspirations here and think about what areas do I really struggle with
1:37.9	the most?
1:39.0	I might be doing pretty well and these areas, but when it comes to it comes to my pride or my, you know, my self-focus
1:47.4	or something like that, I need to make some more progress.
1:51.3	And so compartmentalize it to one or two areas and then think of, you know, a handful of
1:57.5	specific pieces of information or specific practices that I can implement in my life
2:03.6	to try and move the needle gradually over time.
2:07.5	Because character change doesn't happen overnight.
2:09.3	You can't flip a switch, you can't just snap your fingers and magically make yourself
	...

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