"Behavioral variation across a population owes more to situational differences than dispositional differences among persons. Individual dispositional differences are not as stongly behaviorlly individuating as we might have supposed; to a surprising extent we are safest predicting, for a particular situation, that a person will behave pretty much as most others would." (Doris p. 5)
This quote says a great deal to me overall to the comparison between Doris and Aristotle. Doris is making a psychological study of actual human behavior, whereas Aristotle is merely reflecting on what a virtuous person aught to be, not what a person (good or bad) actually is. This is one thing I disliked greatly about Aristotle, and I didn't notice it until now, is that he is focusing on an ideal, believing that a virtuous person acts accordingly in every way to a specific standard, "when they should, as they should..." He leaves no room to err, his moral ideal seems wholly unachievable, no one could be that perfect or always act in so specified a way. And it is less about what is virtuous as opposed to what moral behavior is socially acceptable. Here Doris is saying that a human being can't be so easily categorized as Aristotle attempts to do, given different situations they don't follow such strict guidlines of moral personalities.
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Very nice choice of quote. I think this captures nicely the core of Doris' point.
Even Aristotle knows that he's putting forth and ideal. He's saying that the closer we get to being virtuous the happier we will be.
But he and Doris are disagreeing on what kind of control individuals have over their behavior.
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