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Finding Virtue in the Virtual

16 points by freddyym 6y ago

ReadEvalPost 6y ago
Wonderful essay. I strongly recommend After Virtue as an introductory text to why virtue ethics is so important in the modern world. I find it very unfortunate that telos, the end-directed nature of people and our tools, has been wiped out by a focus on Darwinian evolutionary explanations.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Nature does not have telos, but human creations very much do! Evolution does not contradict teleology, BTW; you can use genetic algorithms in an attempt to reach a well-defined outcome.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    nature can have telos without a supernatural explanation. I would argue that evolution is itself a teleological process: it optimises organisms to a fitness function over time. It's purpose-driven without an entity in control. Reality is full of teleological processes.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  I feel like the main barrier to teleological thinking is an overreliance on generalisations and statistical thinking to navigate hard problems, which inherently erase important details rather than highlighting them.
FrankLloydRight 6y ago
First Design Purpose is the beginning and ending reality; That there is an apparent evolution to it's teleological process is an observation, and as such the apparent end purpose changes as further points of information come to light. To highlight this point, and, to gather relevant insight from the article, one only needs to understand what technology's First Design Purpose was/is: 'To make our life better', and, the author makes this point very clear, to the extend that technology makes our life better, to the end technology will survive (in a equitable fashion that is). Throughout history, all inequities of all stripes have been countered by nature, if by none other than the ingrained natural will of humans to survive in a equitable fashion with their peers as a First Purpose. Without this First Design Purpose of humans to survive, in an equitable fashion, the human species would self-annihilate, and since annihilation serves no good purpose, the brutal force of nature is set loose to decisively deal with the inequities.

16 points by freddyym 6y ago

Wonderful essay. I strongly recommend After Virtue as an introductory text to why virtue ethics is so important in the modern world. I find it very unfortunate that telos, the end-directed nature of people and our tools, has been wiped out by a focus on Darwinian evolutionary explanations.

nine_k 6y ago
Nature does not have telos, but human creations very much do! Evolution does not contradict teleology, BTW; you can use genetic algorithms in an attempt to reach a well-defined outcome.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  nature can have telos without a supernatural explanation. I would argue that evolution is itself a teleological process: it optimises organisms to a fitness function over time. It's purpose-driven without an entity in control. Reality is full of teleological processes.
beaconstudios 6y ago
I feel like the main barrier to teleological thinking is an overreliance on generalisations and statistical thinking to navigate hard problems, which inherently erase important details rather than highlighting them.

FrankLloydRight 6y ago

First Design Purpose is the beginning and ending reality; That there is an apparent evolution to it's teleological process is an observation, and as such the apparent end purpose changes as further points of information come to light. To highlight this point, and, to gather relevant insight from the article, one only needs to understand what technology's First Design Purpose was/is: 'To make our life better', and, the author makes this point very clear, to the extend that technology makes our life better, to the end technology will survive (in a equitable fashion that is). Throughout history, all inequities of all stripes have been countered by nature, if by none other than the ingrained natural will of humans to survive in a equitable fashion with their peers as a First Purpose. Without this First Design Purpose of humans to survive, in an equitable fashion, the human species would self-annihilate, and since annihilation serves no good purpose, the brutal force of nature is set loose to decisively deal with the inequities.