Personality Zone

Towards a Virtue Ethic of Cognition

In one of my earlier blog posts (I think it was "Heuristic Psychology") I mentioned that I wanted there to be a psychological discipline that I didn't think yet existed. Since then, I've made some progress in defining what it is that I want to build, and decided that I might as well post what I've found.

Let Sensing, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling be certain capacities of mind. Some people are better at using these capacities than others; their skill constitutes a form of excellence. If it is possible to acquire such excellence through training, then the cognitive functions can be used as the core 'virtues' in a virtue ethic, like that of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Two important questions about the matter are as follows:

1) Whether excellence in the use of cognitive functions is a habit?
2) Whether excellent habits increase capacity?

(The format of the questions and answers below is drawn from Thomas Aquinas' book, the Summa Theologica -- a format which, I have found, is excellent for teasing apart complicated problems.)

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(1) Whether excellence in the use of cognitive functions is a habit?

OBJECTION 1: It seems that excellence in the use of cognitive functions is  a habit. For people of one personality type can come to display the traits of another type if they spend a long time working at a job where the use of latent functions is required. It is plausible to suggest that repeated activity of a certain kind resulted in the habitual use of the appropriate cognitive functions, which led to improved skill in their use. Therefore cognitive excellence is a habit.

OBJECTION 2: It seems that excellence in the use of cognitive functions is not a habit. For certain people display excellence in the use of a particular function practically from birth, before such habits can reasonably be assumed to have formed. Excellence from nature is not excellence from habit, so cognitive excellence is not a habit.

I REPLY: Each person is born with a certain degree of skill in the use of various cognitive functions, but further skill can be developed through practice and the formation of habits; for example, one might become better at Thinking after a rigorous course of study in logic. This is analogous to the physical virtues, where some children are born better athletes than others, but all can grow stronger through physical exercise.

RESPONSE TO OBJECTION 1: In order to become better at using a cognitive function by the formation of habits, one must first have some native facility with the function, which can be developed. To use a physical example, a bird may become more skillful at flying if it practices flight, but a platypus cannot form the habits of good flight because a platypus cannot fly.

RESPONSE TO OBJECTION 2: That there is some excellence from nature does not preclude that there is some excellence from habit. Further, the division between habitual and natural excellence may be plastic, as when a habit becomes so well established that it becomes second-nature.


(2) Whether excellent habits increase capacity?

OBJECTION 1: It seems that forming excellent habits in the use of cognitive functions, increases one's capacity to use the function. For those who have formed good habits with respect to their feelings are more able to sympathize with others, which would also be the case if their capacity to feel had increased.

OBJECTION 2: It seems that forming excellent habits does not increase capacity, since capacities are a quality of nature and not of design. A person is born with certain capacities, which may be developed and refined but never increased.

I REPLY: The capacity is not, of necessity, increased, but rather the use of the native capacity is made more efficient, as is the case with an art. The formation of good habits may not make a person feel emotions more strongly, but can allow the person to respond to those emotions appropriately and better understand the character of each emotion as it comes.

RESPONSE TO OBJECTION 1: Improvement in the use of capacities may come as much by economy as by plenitude.

RESPONSE TO OBJECTION 2: The distinction between nature and habit is not necessarily a sharp one, as was mentioned before. Many strong habits, once formed, can constitute a sort of second nature. We observe the reverse to be the case with small children, who begin life with an abundance of capacities, some of which receive special attention or are neglected as they age. Second nature takes a more prominent place with respect to original nature as life progresses, making the cumulative effect of habits on an older personality more and more pronounced. In this way, a wealth of excellent cognitive habits may eventually amount to excellent capacity in the second nature.


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Important open questions remain:

1) Whether there is a method of training proper to each cognitive function?
2) Whether there is a metacognitive faculty capable of surveilling and ruling the functions?
3) Whether we can consciously command the use of a specific function?