Can virtue be taught?

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Clinias
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by Clinias »

@reasonvemotion,

"virtue ethics and how they are created"

You need to read Werner Jaeger's Paidea. It is a big, famous work and the first three chapters deal with "Arete". There is NO such thing as "Virtue ethics". That is just stupid! Virtue is Virtue.

"Arete" is a Greek Aristocratical thing! It was part of their culture. Virtue stems from Greek Aristocratical Culture which then migrated throughout the population. Virtue is Aristocratical! Aristocracy and Arete have the same root word! Virtue is the values of the Aristocracy! It is the invention of the Aristocratical class!

No person has their own "virtue ethic"; that is supersilly nonsense. Virtue is objective. Manliness, Prudence, Temperance and Righteousness are OBJECTIVE. They are excellencies.

Have you read the psuedo-Aristotle's "Virtues and Vices"?

Have you read any of Aristotle?

If Virtue lies in the Golden Mean, which is a Natural Law, how can it be "personal"? The Golden Mean is central to Virtue! That means it is scientific and objective!

Virtue is NOT acted on!!!

Virtue is a Habit! A habit of conduct! That is from Aristotle!

Ohh, good lord, is everything of modernity so convulted! Why do moderns seek to re-engineer the wheel to look like a bloody square for? Why do moderns seek to rewrite Classical Antiquity! Why Do Moderns seek to rewrite definitions! Why can't they JUST ACCEPT the Classical Tradition! What is wrong with you people?
reasonvemotion
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by reasonvemotion »

Clinias
@reasonvemotion,

"virtue ethics and how they are created"

You need to read Werner Jaeger's Paidea. It is a big, famous work and the first three chapters deal with "Arete". There is NO such thing as "Virtue ethics". That is just stupid! Virtue is Virtue.

"Arete" is a Greek Aristocratical thing! It was part of their culture. Virtue stems from Greek Aristocratical Culture which then migrated throughout the population. Virtue is Aristocratical! Aristocracy and Arete have the same root word! Virtue is the values of the Aristocracy! It is the invention of the Aristocratical class!

No person has their own "virtue ethic"; that is supersilly nonsense. Virtue is objective. Manliness, Prudence, Temperance and Righteousness are OBJECTIVE. They are excellencies.

Have you read the psuedo-Aristotle's "Virtues and Vices"?

Have you read any of Aristotle?

If Virtue lies in the Golden Mean, which is a Natural Law, how can it be "personal"? The Golden Mean is central to Virtue! That means it is scientific and objective!

Virtue is NOT acted on!!!

Virtue is a Habit! A habit of conduct! That is from Aristotle!

Ohh, good lord, is everything of modernity so convulted! Why do moderns seek to re-engineer the wheel to look like a bloody square for? Why do moderns seek to rewrite Classical Antiquity! Why Do Moderns seek to rewrite definitions! Why can't they JUST ACCEPT the Classical Tradition! What is wrong with you people?



Recently some philosophers have claimed that work in social psychology undermines virtue ethics by showing that it rests on a false conception of our moral psychology. I argue that these attacks misconceive what virtue is and that a more accurate understanding of virtue shows that the philosophers' attacks fail and that virtue ethics can welcome the pyschologists' findings, said Julia Annas. An extract from a paper written by her presenting her view of virtue being a fixed habit.

"Virtue ethics has never, over more than two thousand years, told us to develop characters which will determine our behaviour in fixed and lumpish ways, getting us to go ahead blindly without attention to situations. We have seen why this is so: virtue is not a matter of mindlessly building up habits, but of developing flexible and intelligent responses to the wide variety of complex situations that life faces us with. Doris says things like, ‘Our duties may be surprisingly complex, involving not simply obligations to particular actions but a sort of "cognitive duty" to attend, in our deliberations, to the determinative features of situations’.
But this is not an indictment of virtue ethics, as he supposes it to be. This is something which virtue ethicists can cheer all the way; it is something which the virtue ethics tradition has always emphasised. It remains something of a mystery to me why opponents of virtue ethics should so persistently represent virtue as a fixed habit built up by mindless repetition."
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

reasonvemotion wrote:Plato does suggest the idea that virtue exists from birth. To some extent, this is true, some people seem to be born with a large capacity for virtue such as compassion, others seem to have little or no moral conscience, (which would make virtue very difficult to have in that situation).
I see that what you seemingly see is not conclusive, as it cannot be definitively stated that in fact the conveyance of these virtues weren't learned in the first place, as I have yet to see them conveyed at birth or anytime soon after, yet their learning could start from day one. Can you give me an instance where a newborn conveys compassion?

This would not mean virtue cannot be learned, only that its basic knowledge is inborn. One can be "instructed" in virtues but fail to apply them, or want to apply them. Also there is the converse: people are capable of refining their views of virtue, that people become more virtuous by thoughtful practice and it also does happen where a person's view of how to act changes dramatically over time.

For example, experience can change a person's sense of virtue. Someone who is boastful or exaggerates his or her capabilities may be confronted with others who do the same, this can lead to inner contemplation on how annoying the tendency is.

Plato's question could be asked differently, instead of asking whether virtue can be taught, maybe if asked whether virtue can be learned would the answer be different.
Clinias
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by Clinias »

I have never heard of "virtue ethics" before and this lady uses it quite frequently.

Virtue is separate from psychology.

Virtue is not "situational ethics" as what I can gleam from that short abstract. Nor is it a choice.

Virtue is always presented in the context of Vices. How does this fit in? Is there a section on Vices as well? Is vices part of "virtue ethics"? Is there a "vice ethics"?
reasonvemotion
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by reasonvemotion »

Spheres
I see that what you seemingly see is not conclusive, as it cannot be definitively stated that in fact the conveyance of these virtues weren't learned in the first place, as I have yet to see them conveyed at birth or anytime soon after, yet their learning could start from day one. Can you give me an instance where a newborn conveys compassion?

Babies from birth to around one year are essentially 'ego centric", which means the baby has concerns only for his or her own needs, this changes as the child develops. There are I think, three or four stages of development and this stage, the first, is essentially 'sensory'.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

reasonvemotion wrote:Spheres
I see that what you seemingly see is not conclusive, as it cannot be definitively stated that in fact the conveyance of these virtues weren't learned in the first place, as I have yet to see them conveyed at birth or anytime soon after, yet their learning could start from day one. Can you give me an instance where a newborn conveys compassion?

Babies from birth to around one year are essentially 'ego centric", which means the baby has concerns only for his or her own needs, this changes as the child develops. There are I think, three or four stages of development and this stage, the first, is essentially 'sensory'.

Exactly! I would say that virtue is learned, of course! There is no other way.
reasonvemotion
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by reasonvemotion »

Spheres

Quote:
I see that what you seemingly see is not conclusive, as it cannot be definitively stated that in fact the conveyance of these virtues weren't learned in the first place, as I have yet to see them conveyed at birth or anytime soon after, yet their learning could start from day one. Can you give me an instance where a newborn conveys compassion?




Reasonvemotion

Babies from birth to around one year are essentially 'ego centric", which means the baby has concerns only for his or her own needs, this changes as the child develops. There are I think, three or four stages of development and this stage, the first, is essentially 'sensory'.


Spheres

Exactly! I would say that virtue is learned, of course! There is no other way.



Spheres, I anticipated you would come back with that reply, hence my careful choice of words.

As the child "develops".

The meaning of develop is "a specified state of growth or development".

The meaning of learn is "Gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught".

An infant's development is a specified state of growth, a natural process and empathy/compassion is developed at a later stage from birth.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

reasonvemotion wrote:
Spheres

Quote:
I see that what you seemingly see is not conclusive, as it cannot be definitively stated that in fact the conveyance of these virtues weren't learned in the first place, as I have yet to see them conveyed at birth or anytime soon after, yet their learning could start from day one. Can you give me an instance where a newborn conveys compassion?

Reasonvemotion

Babies from birth to around one year are essentially 'ego centric", which means the baby has concerns only for his or her own needs, this changes as the child develops. There are I think, three or four stages of development and this stage, the first, is essentially 'sensory'.


Spheres

Exactly! I would say that virtue is learned, of course! There is no other way.
Spheres, I anticipated you would come back with that reply, hence my careful choice of words.

As the child "develops".

The meaning of develop is "a specified state of growth or development".
I see that "to bring out the capabilities or possibilities of; bring to a more advanced or effective state; to bring into being or activity; generate; evolve," is more correct.

The meaning of learn is "Gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught".
I concur, "to acquire knowledge of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience." Thus 'experience' is what we're talking about. infant feel/sense, infant exude.

An infant's development is a specified state of growth, a natural process and empathy/compassion is developed at a later stage from birth.
I see that all one can truly say is that the signs of an infant displaying empathy/compassion is usually seen at age x. As it is impossible to track any particular external stimulus of the many, of experience, as it enters a subjects senses, is acknowledged by the mind and stored in memory, along with other similar reinforcing instances, which eventually manifests, what it is, and later the ability to convey, compassion or other such learned virtues. I say that it starts from day one as long as the infant has loving caring nurturing parents, that exude copious amounts of love and compassion, and other such virtuous behavior.
osgart
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Re: Can virtue be taught?

Post by osgart »

it all starts with love, the experience of it, and then the desire for it.

To love is to care, all virtue stems from it.

The nature of how one loves is either good, evil, or indifferent to good.

I suppose loving nothing, and hating evil leads to a life no better than an automaton.

Virtue requires love of good.

unTil you love something, or someone you won't understand virtue, nor love. You will live by necessity, and solely in the mind.
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