¹ Olin, L. and Doris, J. M., ‘Vicious Minds’, Philosophical Studies 168 (2014), pp. 665–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 665.

² I concentrate on ‘virtue ethics’ as opposed to virtue theory in general, although most of what I have to say applies, mutatis mutandis, to any ethics which presupposes character traits saliently like those presupposed by virtue ethics.

³ In this article I focus on situationism as a philosophical, as opposed to psychological, position. Whereas situationist psychologists, such as Ross and Nisbett in Ross, L. and Nisbett, R. E., The Person and the Situation (New York, 1991)Google Scholar, posit the primacy of situations in explaining behaviour on the basis of experimental evidence, philosophical situationists, such as Doris in e.g. Doris, J. M., Lack of Character (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Harman in e.g. Harman, G., ‘Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999), pp. 315–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, concentrate on the implications of such work in psychology for philosophical theories like virtue ethics.

⁴ I shall ignore differences between ‘character’ and ‘personality’ traits since I take the situationist challenge, under the strong interpretation which I will presently develop, to pertain, as Doris puts it, ‘not so much [to] what distinguishes character and personality traits as what they have in common: behavioral consistency as the primary criterion of attribution’ (Doris, Lack of Character, p. 20).

⁵ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 19.

⁶ See Doris, Lack of Character, p. 22.

⁷ See Doris, Lack of Character, ch. 4 and Adams, R. M., A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

⁸ See Hartshorne, H. and May, M. A., Studies in the Nature of Character, Volume I: Studies in Deceit (New York, 1928)Google Scholar.

⁹ Milgram, S., ‘Behavioral Study of Obedience’, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963), pp. 371–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Miller, C., ‘Social Psychology, Moods, and Helping: Mixed Results for Virtue Ethics’, The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), pp. 145–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Isen, A. M. and Levin, P. F., ‘Effects of Feeling Good on Helping: Cookies and Kindness’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21 (1972), pp. 384–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² J. M. Darley and D. C. Batson, ‘From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (27), pp. 100–8.

¹³ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 23.

¹⁴ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 28.

¹⁵ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1998), pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See e.g. Sreenivasan, G., ‘Disunity of Virtue’, The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), pp. 195–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Adams, A Theory of Virtue, ch. 10.

¹⁷ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 22.

¹⁸ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 23.

¹⁹ Although, as I have suggested, it is not the widespread existence of the virtues and vices per se that is best seen as the main situationist target, occasional remarks in the debate seem to invite such a reading, such as Doris's comment that the exceptions to situationist findings in experiments such as those mentioned above only ‘prove the rule’ (Lack of Character, p. 60). Moreover, more often than not, situationists will remain silent concerning the few subjects who, for instance, do stop to help while in a hurry, refuse to administer shocks, help whether or not they find a dime, and so on.

²⁰ Sabini, J. and Silver, M., ‘Lack of Character? Situationism Critiqued’, Ethics 115 (2005), pp. 535–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially at 537, 545, 561–2, also seem to suggest that this is the only pernicious reading of situationism.

²¹ Since Doris's and Harman's challenges appeared, situationism has developed, so it is important to bear in mind that I am not refuting, and cannot here refute, all versions of the challenge. Recently, for instance, Merritt, M. W., Doris, J. M. and Harman, G., ‘Character’, The Moral Psychology Handbook, ed. Doris, J. M. and The Moral Psychology Research Group (Oxford, 2010), pp. 355–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, took issue not with people's lack of cross-situational consistency and temporal stability of traits, which they claim is no longer ‘much in dispute’ (p. 358). Instead, Merritt et al. targeted the assumption that the conception of practical rationality built into certain Aristotelian conceptions of virtue ethics is empirically viable. Though this is an important question in its own right, I think that my arguments here leave it open for the most part. For the question of whether there exist global traits (understood as traits meeting conditions (i) and (ii) above) is largely orthogonal to whether or not such traits are the result of (conscious) practical reasoning, or largely unconscious affective-cognitive dispositions.

²² This claim, in turn, can be understood in different ways. It may be that global traits are psychologically impossible. However, since situationist arguments rely on experiments in empirical psychology, it is unclear how these could establish psychological impossibility. Alternatively, it may be that human psychology, for the most part, is infertile soil for the cultivation of global traits, since most people lack global traits. But since virtues and vices are global traits, most people lack the psychological resources for virtue.

²³ Compare: ‘(1) If behavior is typically ordered by robust traits, systematic observation will reveal pervasive behavioral consistency. (2) Systematic observation does not reveal pervasive behavioral consistency. (3) Behavior is not typically ordered by robust traits’ (Merritt et al., ‘Character’, pp. 357–8).

²⁴ Harman, G., ‘The Nonexistence of Character Traits’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000), pp. 223–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 224 (emphasis added).

²⁵ Adams, A Theory of Virtue, pp. 126–31.

²⁶ Adams, A Theory of Virtue, p. 127.

²⁷ Doris, J., ‘Heated Agreement: Lack of Character as Being for the Good’, Philosophical Studies 148 (2010), pp. 135–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 138–9.

²⁸ Compare Sabini and Silver, ‘Lack of Character?’.

²⁹ See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, e.g. p. 38.

³⁰ This approach to traits echoes the CAPS approach (see e.g. Mischel, W. and Soda, Y., ‘A Cognitive-Affective System Theory of Personality: Reconceptualizing Situations, Dispositions, Dynamics, and Invariance in Personality Structure’, Psychological Review 102 (1995), pp. 246–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar), which, according to Miller, C., Character and Moral Psychology (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 5, provides a sophisticated framework for our folk-psychological trait discourse, and has recently been employed by philosophers building their own, empirically informed theories of virtue, as witness Russell, D., Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Snow, N., Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (New York, 2009)Google Scholar. Although I take what I say here to be compatible with such views, my aim is not to construct a new theory of character traits, but rather to rely on current personality psychology to undermine situationism, on the one hand, and possibly rekindle trust in virtue ethics, on the other. The CAPS model itself is compatible with the five-factor model discussed below, and often thought to simply elucidate different aspects of personality rather than articulate a distinct conception of traits (see McAdams, D. P. and Olson, B. D., ‘Personality Development: Continuity and Change Over the Life-Course’, Annual Review of Psychology 61 (2010), pp. 517–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed). Much of what I say here, then, will predictably be compatible with that view.

³¹ Sosa, E., ‘Situations against Virtues: The Situationist Attack on Virtue Theory’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, ed. Mantzavinos, C. (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 274–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² See Nettle, D., Personality (Oxford, 2007), p. 30 Google ScholarPubMed. See also Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, p. 130 (including notes) for numerous references to the same effect.

³³ Jayawickreme, Compare E. et al., ‘Virtuous States and Virtuous Traits: How the Empirical Evidence Regarding the Existence of Broad Traits Saves Virtue Ethics from the Situationist Critique’, Theory and Research in Education 12 (2014), pp. 283–308 Google Scholar, who also offer a favourable assessment of the FFM's prospects in addressing situationism, focusing on the model of traits as density distributions, developed by Fleeson, W., ‘Toward a Structure- and Process-Integrated View of Personality: Traits as Density Distributions of States’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80 (2001), pp. 1011–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Debate is ongoing concerning whether more dimensions should be added. For example, the HEXACO model is like FFM with the addition of ‘honesty/humility’. See, e.g. Ashton, M. C. and Lee, K., ‘Honesty-Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model’, Journal of Personality 73 (2005), pp. 1321–54CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and Saucier, G., ‘Recurrent Personality Dimensions in Inclusive Lexical Studies: Indications for a Big Six Structure’, Journal of Personality 77 (2009), pp. 1577–1614 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

³⁵ McCrae, R., ‘The Place of the FFM in Personality Psychology’, Psychological Inquiry 21 (2010), pp. 57–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 59.

³⁶ Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R., ‘Domains and Facets: Personality Assessment Using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory’, Journal of Personality Assessment 64 (1995), pp. 21–50 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at 28.

³⁷ Table adapted from Nettle, Personality, pp. 28, 209.

³⁸ Nettle, Personality, p. 41.

³⁹ Nettle, Personality, pp. 6-9.

⁴⁰ Buss, D. M., ‘Selection, Evocation and Manipulation’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (1987), pp. 1214–21CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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⁴³ Nettle, Personality, pp. 27–32.

⁴⁴ For philosophical objections to the FFM, see: Doris, Lack of Character, pp. 67–71; Prinz, J. J., ‘The Normativity Challenge: Cultural Psychology Provides the Real Threat to Virtue Ethics’, The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), pp. 117–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 120–2; Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, ch. 6; Miller, C., ‘Lack of Virtue and Vice: Studies in Aggression and their Implication for the Empirical Adequacy of Character’, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 4, ed. Timmons, M. (Oxford, 2015), pp. 80–112 Google Scholar. Alfano, M., Character as Moral Fiction (New York, 2013), pp. 52–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, basically dismisses it as irrelevant to virtue ethics within two pages. However, in his more recent Alfano, M., Moral Psychology: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 130–2Google Scholar, Alfano is less pessimistic concerning the prospects for the FFM, suggesting that evidence for the model highlights the need to take personality into account if we are to offer any adequate explanation of human behaviour.

⁴⁵ See Doris, Lack of Character, pp. 71–5 and Vranas, P. B. M., ‘Against Moral Character Evaluations: The Undetectability of Virtue and Vice’, The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), pp. 213–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 221–4.

⁴⁶ Epstein, S., ‘The Stability of Behavior: I. On Predicting Most of the People Much of the Time’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), pp. 1097–1126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Mischel, W., Personality and Assessment (Mahwah, NJ, 1996), p. 78 Google ScholarPubMed.

⁴⁸ Nettle, Personality, pp. 44–5.

⁴⁹ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 74.

⁵⁰ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 73.

⁵¹ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 74.

⁵² Doris, Lack of Character, p. 74. This, by the way, seems to me to be another passage where it seems like the situationist challenge has moved from targeting global traits to virtues.

⁵³ Ross and Nisbett, The Person and the Situation, pp. 114–15.

⁵⁴ See Badhwar, N. K., ‘The Milgram Experiments, Learned Helplessness, and Character Traits’, The Journal of Ethics 13 (2009), pp. 257–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ E.g. Adams, A Theory of Virtue, pp. 122–5 construes virtues probabilistically: more or less virtue concerns probabilities of exhibiting virtuous behaviour under given circumstances.

⁵⁶ See Doris, Lack of Character, pp. 67–72 and Prinz, ‘The Normativity Challenge’, p. 121.

⁵⁷ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 38.

⁵⁸ E.g. Kelly, E. L. and Conley, J. J., ‘Personality and Compatibility: A Prospective Analysis of Marital Stability and Marital Satisfaction’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987), pp. 27–40 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

⁵⁹ E.g. H. S. Friedman et al., ‘Psychosocial and Behavioural Predictors of Longevity: The Ageing and Death of the “Termites”’, American Psychologist 50 (1995), pp. 69–78.

⁶⁰ E.g. Slutske, W. S. et al., ‘Personality and Problem Gambling: A Prospective Study of a Birth Cohort of Young Adults’, Archives of General Psychiatry 62 (2005), pp. 769–75CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Swendsen, J. D. et al., ‘Are Personality Traits Familial Risk Factors for Substance Use Disorders? Results of a Controlled Family Study’, American Journal of Psychiatry 159 (2002), pp. 1760–6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

⁶¹ Watson, D. and Clark, L. A., ‘Positive and Negative Affectivity and their Relation to Anxiety and Depressive Disorders’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97 (1988), pp. 346–53CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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⁶³ Kelly and Conley, ‘Personality and Compatibility’.

⁶⁴ Friedman et al., ‘Psychosocial and Behavioural Predictors of Longevity’.

⁶⁵ Boggs, T. and Roberts, B. W., ‘Conscientiousness and Health-Related Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis of the Leading Behavioral Contributors to Mortality’, Psychological Bulletin 130 (2004), pp. 887–919 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁶ I should note that any correlations in the .30 ballpark mentioned in this section are not subject to the criticism that correlation coefficients for personality measures stagnate at around .30, which mainly concerns single-item behavioural measures (as Doris, Lack of Character, p. 72 acknowledges), since the correlations cited herein concern meta-analytic results for predictions of major life outcomes (almost inevitably containing a wide range of results if they are any good), as well as moment-by-moment behavioural predictions. Questioning the importance of .30 correlations for such measures manifests insensitivity to our subject matter, namely human psychology.

⁶⁷ Conner, T. S. et al., ‘Experience Sampling Methods: A Modern Idiographic Approach to Personality Research’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3 (2009), pp. 292–313 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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⁶⁹ Fleeson, ‘Toward a Structure- and Process-Integrated View of Personality’.

⁷⁰ Ching, C. M. et al., ‘The Manifestation of Traits in Everyday Behavior and Affect: A Five-Culture Study’, Journal of Research in Personality 48 (2014), pp. 1–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ Wrzus, C., Wagner, G. G. and Riediger, M., ‘Personality-Situation Transactions from Adolescence to Old Age’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13 (2015)Google Scholar, no pagination specified.

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⁷³ Netter, Personality, pp. 69–70.

⁷⁴ Nettle, Personality, pp. 121–2; see also pp. 99–101, 151–2, 177–81, 201–7, where Nettle puts forward equally credible hypotheses for the fluctuating selection of the remaining traits.

⁷⁵ Whittle, S. et al., ‘The Neurobiological Basis of Temperament: Towards a Better Understanding of Psychopathology’, Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 30 (2006), pp. 511–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Nettle, D., Happiness: The Study Behind Your Smile (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

⁷⁶ Depue, R. A. and Collins, P. F., ‘Neurobiology of the Structure of Personality: Dopamine Facilitation of Incentive Motivation, and Extraversion’, Behavioural and Brain Sciences 22 (1999), pp. 491–517 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Canli, T., ‘Functional Brain Mapping of Extraversion and Neuroticism: Learning from Individual Differences in Emotion Processing’, Journal of Personality 72 (2004), pp. 1105–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ See Nettle, Personality, pp. 141–3.

⁷⁸ Nettle, D., ‘Empathizing and Systematizing: What Are They, and What Do They Contribute to Our Understanding of Psychological Sex Differences?’, British Journal of Psychology 98 (2007), pp. 237–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ Nettle, D. and Liddle, B., ‘Agreeableness is Related to Social-Cognitive, But Not Social-Perceptual, Theory of Mind’, European Journal of Personality 22 (2008), pp. 323–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 325.

⁸⁰ Gurrera et al., ‘The Five-Factor Model in Schizotypal Personality Disorder’, and Nettle, Personality, pp. 191–3.

⁸¹ Nettle, Personality, p. 70.

⁸² Slutske et al., ‘Personality and Problem Gambling’; Swendsen et al., ‘Are Personality Traits Familial Risk Factors for Substance Use Disorders?’.

⁸³ Claridge, G. and Davies, C., ‘What's the Use of Neuroticism?’, Personality and Individual Differences 31 (2001), pp. 383–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watson, D., Gamez, W. and Simms, L. J., ‘Basic Dimensions of Temperament and their Relation to Anxiety and Depression: A Symptom-Based Perspective’, Journal of Research in Personality 39 (2005), pp. 46–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸⁵ Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, p. 136 (emphasis in the original).

⁸⁶ This remark may require some clarification, for someone who has a mean score on a given dimension may be thought to not have a trait. For instance, consider the dimension of Neuroticism; someone may be on the high or low end; but someone may also be in the middle, thereby seeming to be neither neurotic nor the contrary. Hence, it may be said, such a person might appear to be trait-less at least vis-à-vis Neuroticism. But to think so would be a mistake. On the FFM (as on Aristotelian ethics) someone who has a mean score may be said to have an affective-cognitive disposition to behave, etc. in a way that lies somewhere in between those of the person who is very high and the one who is very low in Neuroticism. To illustrate, on pain of oversimplification, someone with a mean score on neuroticism will probably be neither insensitive to all danger and threat (as someone exceptionally low might), nor interpret every difficulty as a hint of impending doom (as someone very high might). But this does not mean that one with the score in question would not be disposed (i.e. have a disposition) to respond in certain characteristic ways in trait-relevant situations, even if we lack a term for this trait.

⁸⁷ Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, pp. 140–1.

⁸⁸ See Prinz, ‘The Normativity Challenge’, pp. 121–2.

⁸⁹ Even McCrae, ‘The Place of the FFM in Personality Psychology’, pp. 58–61.

⁹⁰ E.g. Terraciano, A., Costa, P. T. and McCrae, R., ‘Personality Plasticity after Age 30’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38 (2006), pp. 999–1009 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹⁴ E.g. McCrae, R. and Costa, P. T., ‘Toward a New Generation of Personality Theories: Theoretical Contexts for the Five-Factor Model’, The Five-Factor Model of Personality: Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Wiggins, J. S. (New York, 1996), pp. 51–87 Google Scholar. Srivastava, Compare S. et al., ‘Development of Personality in Middle Adulthood: Set Like Plaster or Persistent Change?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84 (2003), pp. 1041–53CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

⁹⁵ Helson, R. et al., ‘The Growing Evidence for Personality Change in Adulthood’, Journal of Research in Personality 36 (2002), pp. 287–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 293.

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⁹⁸ Roberts, B. W. and DelVecchio, W. F., ‘The Rank-Order Consistency of Personality Traits from Childhood to Old Age: A Quantitative Review of Longitudinal Studies’, Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000), pp. 3–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also recall the study noted earlier, which found that engaging in simple tasks can increase Openness even in old age.

⁹⁹ Roberts, B. W. and Mroczek, D., ‘Personality Trait Change in Adulthood’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2008), pp. 31–35 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at 33. Compare Roberts et al., ‘Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality Traits across the Life Course’, p. 20.

¹⁰⁰ This should be interpreted with caution, for it would be a gross oversimplification to think that however high one scores on these dimensions, it is always for the better. Indeed, the links between extreme scores on FFM dimensions and pathologies should seriously undermine our confidence in such scenarios.

¹⁰¹ See e.g. M. D. Blonigen et al., ‘Stability and Change in Personality Traits from Late Adolescence to Early Adulthood: A Longitudinal Twin Study’, Journal of Personality 76.2 (2008), pp. 229–66, at 256.

¹⁰² See McAdams and Olson, ‘Personality Development’.

¹⁰³ Roberts et al., ‘Goal and Personality Trait Development in Emerging Adulthood’.

¹⁰⁴ Noftle, E. E., ‘Character Across Early Emerging Adulthood’, Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, ed. Miller, C., Furr, R., Knobel, A. and Fleeson, W. (Oxford, 2015), pp. 490–521 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Some situationists (e.g. Olin and Doris, ‘Vicious Minds’; Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, pp. 111-80) have recently targeted the epistemic virtues. But I take my requirement here to amount to something weaker than a requirement for epistemic virtue, something, moreover, discrediting which would require independent argument on the part of situationists.

¹⁰⁶ Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, pp. 147–50; Prinz, ‘The Normativity Challenge’, p. 121.

¹⁰⁷ Olin and Doris, ‘Vicious Minds’, p. 665.

¹⁰⁸ E.g. McAdams, D. P., ‘The Five-Factor Model in Personality: A Critical Appraisal’, Journal of Personality 60 (1992), pp. 329–61CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Miller, Character and Moral Psychology, pp. 138–40.

¹⁰⁹ Doris, Lack of Character, p. 26.

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¹¹⁷ Lee and Ashton, ‘Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissism in the FFM and the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure’.

¹¹⁸ To put this differently, my arguments so far point to the importance of the FFM in the debate between situationists and virtue ethicists, as well as the potential of this model for an empirically informed virtue ethics. However, the story I offer is compatible with such views as Miller's, for instance, according to whom most people have ‘mixed traits’, comprising some features that we would describe as virtuous and others which seem vicious. See Miller, Character and Moral Psychology.

¹¹⁹ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 36–40.

¹²⁰ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 43–4.

¹²¹ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. 40.

¹²² This is liable to mislead in the way indicated at the beginning of this section, namely to seem as though Agreeableness was empathy and the like. But the suggestion is only that Agreeableness is the FFM dimension that pertains to these virtues, not that the higher one scores on it, the more virtuous one will be.

¹²³ Bègue et al., ‘Personality Predicts Obedience in a Milgram Paradigm’.

¹²⁴ Schmitt, ‘The Big Five Related to Risky Sexual Behaviour’; Miller et al., ‘The Utility of the Five Factor Model in Understanding Risky Sexual Behavior’; Orzeck and Lung, ‘Big Five Personality Differences of Cheaters and Non-Cheaters’.

¹²⁵ See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 137–40.

¹²⁶ See e.g. Plato, Laches and Charmides, trans. R. K. Sprague (Indianapolis, 1992).

¹²⁷ See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 159–83.

¹²⁸ See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 142–3.

¹²⁹ I am grateful to Berys Gaut for encouraging me to write this article and for invaluable comments on previous drafts. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for Utilitas for their comments, and Benjamin Sachs for comments on parts of an earlier draft. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation for a scholarship which has allowed me to pursue doctoral research in philosophy.