Aristotle VIII & "Persons, Situaions, and Virtue Ethics"

Doris undermines Aristotle’s position by first attacking the consistency of character in each person. He states that a person will act differently with different situations. He says that a person can not always be good or know good. He does not think that you can predict character because people lack a rigid character. He believes behavior is situational. He uses experimental research and common scenarios (the dropped paper) to explain behavioral inconsistency.
Doris would say that a person that is “virtuous” is not virtuous all the time. He would say that this person just acted virtuous because the situation was in favor of a person acting in a virtuous way. He would say that all circumstances allowed for the person to behave in a way that people thought favorable. He would then say that a person who is “vicious” is in fact not vicious by nature. He would say that the situation changed how the person reacted. Since Doris claims that behavior cannot be predicted, he believes that you cannot name a person virtuous or vicious. He believes that the character changes with situations.
Doris’s virtuous and vicious person would differ from Aristotle’s in the fact that Doris would not name a person virtuous or vicious. Doris believes that your actions can be virtuous or vicious, but that your actions change with situations which in turn makes your character instable and unpredictable. Aristotle, on the other hand, believes that the good always know how to do good and always know what it good. By this definition, Aristotle believes that character can be predicted quite accurately.
I believe that Doris’s views and Aristotles views are the same. They both agree with which situations are good or bad. They agree that people’s actions can be classified as beneficial to society or harmful to others. They agree that people are influenced by others. But, Aristotle had to proof of this consistency. He used observation. But, Doris used experimentation and furthered Aristotle’s findings and tweaked them to fit a more applicable model (we all know that we have done both good and bad).
Evidence to back up Doris:
He used the paper dropping experiment to show that people who are seen as “impassionate” will help others in certain situations.
The Milgram experiment showed that people who were thought to be kind and compassionate “shocked” a man to serious injury just because a man in a white lab coat was urging them to continue with the experiment.
Evidence to back up Doris:
He believes that people who are good will always know the good thing to do. You can look to your conscious for evidence for this. I believe that everyone has a conscious that knows what is right and wrong for the situation, but some people choose to suppress the voice until it is a quiet whisper. This would add to the fact that people know what to do.
The way that Aristotle talks about friendship, and the longer existence of the friendship based off goodness makes people believe that people with good intentions will perform better things for each other. He talks about how these friendships are fruitful and bring pleasure and usefulness to both parties. He says that only good people can get into these relationships, which creates an existence of a person who performs good all the time.