Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth WantingThe 21st century offers a dizzying array of new technological developments: robots smart enough to take white collar jobs, social media tools that manage our most important relationships, ordinary objects that track, record, analyze and share every detail of our daily lives, and biomedical techniques with the potential to transform and enhance human minds and bodies to an unprecedented degree. Emerging technologies are reshaping our habits, practices, institutions, cultures and environments in increasingly rapid, complex and unpredictable ways that create profound risks and opportunities for human flourishing on a global scale. How can our future be protected in such challenging and uncertain conditions? How can we possibly improve the chances that the human family will not only live, but live well, into the 21st century and beyond? This book locates a key to that future in the distant past: specifically, in the philosophical traditions of virtue ethics developed by classical thinkers from Aristotle and Confucius to the Buddha. Each developed a way of seeking the good life that equips human beings with the moral and intellectual character to flourish even in the most unpredictable, complex and unstable situations--precisely where we find ourselves today. Through an examination of the many risks and opportunities presented by rapidly changing technosocial conditions, Vallor makes the case that if we are to have any real hope of securing a future worth wanting, then we will need more than just better technologies. We will also need better humans. Technology and the Virtues develops a practical framework for seeking that goal by means of the deliberate cultivation of technomoral virtues: specific skills and strengths of character, adapted to the unique challenges of 21st century life, that offer the human family our best chance of learning to live wisely and well with emerging technologies. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Foundations for a Technomoral Virtue Ethic | 15 |
Cultivating the Technomoral Self Classical Virtue Traditions as a Contemporary Guide | 59 |
Meeting the Future with Technomoral Wisdom Or How To Live Well with Emerging Technologies | 157 |
Other editions - View all
Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting Shannon Vallor No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
21st century action activity Analects appropriate Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's become bioconservative biomedical enhancement Buddhist ethics capacity carebots caregivers challenge chapter character civic classical virtue traditions cognitive concept Confucian contemporary context Cooper and James courage cultivated person cultural desires dignity emerging technologies emotional empathic concern empathy ethicists example excellence exemplary existential risks Facebook flexibility friendship future global technomoral habits of moral honesty human enhancement human flourishing Ibid ideal increasingly individual junzi justice Kongzi living Mahāyāna means Mencius Mengzi moral attention moral concern moral development moral habituation moral perspective moral practice moral self-cultivation moral virtue motivated nature networked norms notes one’s ourselves philosophical Philosophy of Technology political practical wisdom practice of moral prudential judgment reason relational understanding reliably require risks ritual shared śīla social media social robots sousveillance specific surveillance tech Technomoral Wisdom technosocial tion transhumanist virtue ethics virtuous person vision