Character Traits in Explanation

Abstract

i. Suppose you have four colleagues, one of whom is in trouble. The other three each want to help. Of these three would-be helpers, one wants to help out of kindness, one wants to help to gain favour, one wants to help simply out of a general desire to aid the distressed. Since kindness may be considered a trait of character the first of the three, the one who wants to help out of kindness, wants to help due to a trait of character. How, if at all, does motivation based in a trait of character differ from the other two types of motivation in this example, that is from desiring to help to gain favour or from desiring to help simply out of a general desire to aid the distressed? It's odd that a clear answer isn't readily at hand. Traits of character, such as kindness, cruelty, callousness, courage, cowardice, recklessness, impartiality, and tolerance, are indispensable parts of our common sense psychology. Without using concepts of specific character traits we would be unable to continue to talk as we do presently about our colleagues, students, relatives, friends, lovers, and pets. We would also be unable to understand most films, novels, short stories, plays, and biographies. We constantly give common sense explanations of behaviour in terms of character traits. But what exactly are traits of character and how can they serve this explanatory role? First, let me make one point concerning terminology. Many of the character traits I discuss are taken to have moral significance. Indeed, like kindness, cruelty, courage and cowardice, some are considered virtues and some vices. I am interested here in discussing character traits, however, as they might figure in explanations of motivation and behaviour in general. I am not interested in the use of virtues and vices, and hence of some traits of character, in moral justifications. I am also not interested here in considering how virtues and vices, and hence some character traits, contribute to explanations of moral motives or behaviour as such; I am not here interested, for instance, in explanations that ascribe the virtue