The Dispositional Account of Habits and Explanation of Moral Action in F.H. Bradley

Abstract

Given the central role habits and character play in the moral philosophy of British Idealists, it is tempting to interpret F.H. Bradley as suggesting that one's moral goal in life is the development of good habits, or a certain character (the habit hypothesis). It is especially tempting given some of Bradley's claims. In his Ethical Studies (1962), Bradley says that good and bad selves result from good and bad habits. He seemingly connects the unity of the moral self to one's having a certain character and the unification of the self with habitualization. I agree that habits and character are important in Bradley's ethics. I, however, reject the idea that Bradley reduces the moral self to character or a set of habits, and that Bradley sees the goal of moral life in the development of certain character via building good habits. In what follows I will give my arguments against the habit hypothesis and I will show that admitting it represents a significant danger to Bradley's moral theory, which I believe he avoids. Based chiefly on Bradley's Ethical Studies and his works in moral psychology, I will reconstruct Bradley's account of habits and character and offer my interpretation of their role in moral life of a person. Defining character as a set of habits, I will analyse habits through Bradley's notions of disposition and tendencies. I will then show that dispositions, for Bradley, are not properties of an entity but categories (“useful functions”) used by an observer for description of the observed phenomena. Character and habits are the ways in which others capture the unity of ourselves and our integrity. They are generalizations used for prediction of an agent's actions and the establishment of their motivational reasons, from a third-person perspective.