title: Virtue Ethics, Psychology and the Environmental Crisis
Creators: name: Holland, Andrew
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2027

description: Although the threat posed by major environmental problems is severe, it is unclear what people should do in response. Given the scale of problems such as climate change, there is a danger of despondence, despair and apathy. Virtue ethics, by considering human flourishing, personal integrity and the relevant virtues, has the tools to provide guidance on how to live in this crisis. This thesis is an empirically informed work in applied philosophy which articulates ways virtue ethics can provide such guidance. Although how one should live is fundamentally a philosophical question, the empirical disciplines can assist us in our answer. Our philosophy needs to be bound by our best empirical knowledge of environmental problems, such as climate change and inner city pollution. We should also pay attention to any lessons the social sciences can tell us about living a good life. 
My starting point is the question of why people should reduce their individual greenhouse gas emissions in response to climate change when these are so small as to be inconsequential. In response, I argue that personal integrity provides people with good pro tanto reasons for reducing their personal emissions. To live with integrity, one needs to consider a range of social and environmental problems, rather than climate change in isolation. Living with integrity will mean having some idea of what a better society would be like and of how a virtuous person could live in that society. The following three chapters then consider various aspects of the question of how we can live happy lives in a virtuous way. I discuss some theoretical issues about happiness and argue that a concept of happiness useful for environmental ethics will be eudaimonic in nature. Happiness is more than just moments of pleasurable experiences, and I emphasise in particular the role narratives play in our lives, as well as the importance of public virtue. The virtue of hope is shown to be important as it motivates contemporary people to do what they can to help future generations flourish. 
I also consider the view that increased consumption levels in the world, by the wealthy and relatively wealthy, are not increasing happiness. There is empirical support for this view. Nevertheless, when we consider both our earlier theoretical insights into happiness and problematic forms of consumption such as aviation and food, we see there is still a need for the virtues. Because the psychological evidence suggests that grateful people are happier and consume less, and some philosophers have argued that we should be grateful to or for nature, I also discuss the nature of gratitude. To assess such claims, I distinguish targeted gratitude and dyadic gratitude, where the former concerns gratitude to a person for a benefit, and the latter does not involve a benefactor. It is dyadic gratitude that is mostly considered in the psychological literature. I argue that although dyadic gratitude may be different from gratitude as a virtue, it is something that the virtuous person should aim to cultivate. 
Whilst previous chapters referred to psychological evidence to support my case, some believe that social psychological evidence undermines the plausibility of virtue ethics. In the final substantive chapter I consider the situationist attack on virtue ethics and the relevance it has for environmental virtue. Many studies in the social psychological literature emphasise the importance of social norms. The virtues provide us with guidance on what norms we want to see in place. They also help facilitate the abandonment of harmful practices and the development of new progressive norms.