Character Virtues: Toward a Functionalist Perspective on Character Virtue Science

Contemporary psychology often reduces virtue to stable traits or observable behaviors, overlooking the motivational core that has long been central to classical virtue ethics. However, focusing narrowly on behaviors without considering intent is insufficient for virtue assessment because similar behaviors can stem from vastly different intentions, and both the behavior and its intention is definitional to what behaviors are considered virtuous. We draw on Aristotle's five character types-beastly, vicious, incontinent, continent, and virtuous-in this paper. In doing so, we ultimately argue that a functionalist approach to character research is not only a useful alternative to the trait approach, but necessary to more fully capture the character virtues construct. At the same time, we recognize an epistemic boundary: psychology can only observe manifestations and reports of virtue, never virtue itself. We therefore distinguish carefully between descriptive evidence and the normative judgments required to label any act 'virtuous'.