For Monday, March 17

Read and annotate chapter 2 of Eyal Press's Beautiful Souls. Write one or two well-developed paragraphs in response to each of the following question: Press writes,  "[W]hat ultimately determines moral conduct are not character traits, personal beliefs, or political attitudes but situational factors ... 'Studies designed to test whether people behave differently in ways that might reflect their having different character traits have failed to find relevant differences,' the philosopher Gilbert Harman has argued. 'It may even be the case that there is no such thing as character.'" (29) Do you agree with this position? What do you think determined moral conduct?