Philosophers provide excellent resources for developing a science of virtues, and an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers and psychologists seems ideal. This suggestion is not new, but there has been little guidance for psychologists about how philosophical work can be useful in developing a science of virtue. This article provides some guidance by dividing the contributions of philosophers into three categories. First, many philosophers provide theories of virtue’s nature or value, but these are generally not useful for psychological scientists and can be safely ignored. Second, awareness of the range of philosophic positions can enable scientists to recognize contentious theoretical assumptions that they are making. Psychologists need not try to resolve these debates; they can choose to only identify which position(s) they are taking. Third, awareness of the range of philosophic positions and the competing conceptual analyses of various virtue concepts and traits can help psychologists to identify and test new empirical hypotheses.

哲学家为发展美德科学提供了极好的资源，哲学家和心理学家之间的跨学科合作似乎是理想的。这个建议并不新鲜，但对于心理学家来说，关于哲学工作如何有助于发展美德科学，几乎没有指导。本文通过将哲学家的贡献分为三类来提供一些指导。首先，许多哲学家提供了关于美德本质或价值的理论，但这些理论通常对心理学科学家没有用，可以安全地忽略。其次，对哲学立场范围的认识可以使科学家能够识别他们正在做出的有争议的理论假设。心理学家不需要试图解决这些争论;他们可以选择只确定他们所采取的立场。第三，对哲学立场范围的认识以及对各种美德概念和特征的竞争性概念分析可以帮助心理学家识别和检验新的实证假设。