Below you’ll find one of two abstracts submitted for presentation at the Phronesis in Theory and Practice conference at the University of Gdańsk. Both were accepted. I chose to present this one, as it drew explicitly on my proposed PhD research.
This abstract essentially offers a critical book review. In Phronesis: Retrieving Practical Wisdom in Psychology, Philosophy, and Education (2025), the authors explain that their project is best understood as an attempt to solve the famous “gappiness” problem in moral psychology – that is, to bridge the perennial gap between moral knowledge and moral action. In the abstract, I argue that they fall short for several reasons, the main one being this:
The authors attempt to solve the gappiness problem by defining phronesis as including moral action. But individual virtues already include action (behaviour) as a component. The only remaining task for phronesis would be to adjudicate between conflicting virtues. Yet not all moral inaction stems from such internal struggles. Often, we know exactly what we ought to do – and still fail to do it.
The gap persists…