John M. Doris ’86 has received the 2025 Joseph B. Gittler Award from the American Philosophical Association for his book “Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality,” (Oxford University Press, 2022). The award honors an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences.
Doris, the Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, SC Johnson College of Business and professor in the Sage School of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a leading proponent of interdisciplinary approaches to moral psychology exploring questions of character, virtue and agency. In “Character Trouble,” he writes about a movement to inform moral philosophy with psychological research, as well as the other way around.
His achievements at the juncture of cognitive science, moral psychology and philosophical ethics, the award committee wrote, exemplify the values of the Joseph B. Gittler Award.
“Doris engages deeply with the social sciences to sharpen his skepticism towards ‘character’ both within virtue theory and beyond,” the award committee wrote. “‘Character Trouble’ makes direct contributions to social psychology and ethics, encourages other philosophers to examine the social-scientific commitments of their theories and concepts, and includes valuable pedagogical tools for teaching students how to undertake interdisciplinary research.”
Doris is also the author of “Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior” (Cambridge, 2002) and “Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency” (Oxford, 2015). With his colleagues in the Moral Psychology Research Group, he wrote and edited “The Moral Psychology Handbook” (Oxford, 2010) and, with Manuel Vargas, edited “The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology” (2022).
His other honors include fellowships from Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities; Princeton’s University Center for Human Values; the National Humanities Center; the American Council of Learned Societies; the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received the Society for Philosophy and Psychology’s Stanton Prize for excellence in interdisciplinary research.
