Proposing an Islamic virtue ethics beyond the situationist debates

Abstract

Proposing an Islamic Virtue Ethics Beyond the Situationist DebatesOver the span of any day, our senses are bombarded in a way that can subtly shift our moods. Social psychologists argue that unbeknownst to us these changes in mood can influence our moral activity. Baron (1997) shows compellingly that smelling freshly baked cookies or cinnamon buns significantly increases female shoppers helping a stranger when compared to female shoppers who were in a scent neutral area. While there has been a replication crisis in this field of psychology, the effect of pleasant fragrances has been shown repeatedly as something that can affect people's helping behaviour 1 . Beyond the sense of smell, Christian Miller shows moods such as embarrassment can get more people to help people do a small task for others (2013, 62). Shifts in the environment considered not morally relevant can influence people to help more such as pleasant weather, being on a winning team, imagining oneself taking a vacation in Hawaii. Disagreeable environments can also significantly reduce people's willingness to help others whether by increasing the noise level, varying the temperature, watching unpleasant slides or even lowering the light quality (Miller 2009, 150).How do these external factors have this kind of affect on our behaviour? Miller (2013, 67-70) offers two main types of explanations, the mood maintenance hypothesis and the concomitance hypothesis. The former sees mood as a direct cause of helping behaviour because the person put in a good mood wants to maintain it and helping others is an opportunity to prolong their good mood. But it's also been shown that mood can enhance other cognitive processes. In the concomitance theory, the elevation of pro-social behaviour isn't directly caused