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What is the Virtue of ‘Virtue’?

I was listening to NPR and the speaker said something to the effect ‘let the market decide the value of our higher education system¦and the market appears to think that our higher education system is doing a fine job’. Who or what determines values in our society?

“There is a tendency to use the term ‘virtue’ in an abstract “moralistic sense—a way that makes it almost Pharisaic in character.--John Dewey My first thought after reading this and ‘looking up’ the word ‘Pharisaic’ (self-righteous) turns to William Bennett, gambler, ideologue, czar, and author of “The Book of Virtues.

John Dewey wrote the above quote about virtue in his book “Ethics. He further identifies the concept ‘virtue’ to mean a talent turned toward enhancing social values. Dewey says “every natural capacity, every talent or ability, whether of inquiring mind, of gentle affection, or of executive skill, becomes a virtue when it is turned to account in supporting or extending the fabric of social values.

When I read recently that Warren Buffet had given thirty billion dollars to the Gates charitable foundation I thought immediately of Dewey’s conception of the word ‘virtue’. I remembered having discussed Dewey’s concept of virtue in a Great Books Discussion Group decades ago.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have manifested for us the Dewey concept of virtue. Two individuals who have used their respective talents to make scads of money have then turned that money into a virtue by placing that wealth toward “extending the fabric of social values.

I will include George Soros with Buffet and Gates. Soros, philosopher/tycoon in my judgment, started many decades ago The Open Society Foundation. This foundation began in 1979 when Soros’ foundation provided scholarships to African students for their enrolment to the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Money is not the metric of value here but is a medium for converting the unique and wonderful talents of these three men into a virtue. I never before thought of these men as being exemplars of virtue but I certainly do now.

Is it wise to allow the market to set the standard of value for our colleges and universities?

It seems to me that the only value the market knows is ‘cash value’.

Does there exist in our society any other means for determining the value of anything? Is the market our ‘default’ position for determining value for most everything?

I love it when your questions at the end of a post have absolutely nothing to do with the content of your post.

Aren't those values of society merely perspective anyways? Is there really such a thing as good or bad? Isn't the concepts of good or bad really just human opinion of whats positive or negative as it relates to them?

coberst - You ask a great question in this "Does there exist in our society any other means for determining the value of anything? Is the market our ‘default’ position for determining value for most everything?"

As of now. Yes. The world uses money as their main value system but are the coins/bills really valuable in themselves? No. They consist of common metals and paper.

It's the promise behind the images that gives the perspective of wealth. But even wealth does not have a true definition for the masses. "One man's junk is another's gold." and all that.

:o

Little U.S Dreamer;991398 wrote: Aren't those values of society merely perspective anyways? Is there really such a thing as good or bad? Isn't the concepts of good or bad really just human opinion of whats positive or negative as it relates to them?

coberst - You ask a great question in this "Does there exist in our society any other means for determining the value of anything? Is the market our ‘default’ position for determining value for most everything?"

As of now. Yes. The world uses money as their main value system but are the coins/bills really valuable in themselves? No. They consist of common metals and paper.

It's the promise behind the images that gives the perspective of wealth. But even wealth does not have a true definition for the masses. "One man's junk is another's gold." and all that.

:o




Such ideas as good, bad, evil, etc. are abstract ideas. They are subjectively created both consciously and unconsciously without the direct input from the senses. We can call ideas created through sensuous experience as being concrete concepts.

I think that we can develop an ultimate value that all other values are dependent upon. Some people accept religious dogma as that ultimate value. I have thought about the matter and have consciously chosen life on this planet as my ultimate value.

I like your value. In the end of the day it's also mine.

Life is a rather precious thing... it only seems to happen on one currently known place. Earth. But I'm sure there are others... somewhere in this HUGE amount of space and abyss.

Such ideas as good, bad, evil, etc. are abstract ideas. They are subjectively created both consciously and unconsciously without the direct input from the senses.


I'd suggest that ideas such as "good, bad, evil etc" are instead actually tied much more closely to what you concluded was correct: An ultimate value that all other values are dependant upon. Something is only Good or Bad insofar as it supports or opposes the ultimate values to which you subscribe. If obeying God and living according to the 10 commandments are your ultimate value system, you only call things bad that oppose that system, and you call things good that support that system. The same seems to me to be true for basically all such systems.

You made reference in another thread to the idea of a gestalt, well it seems significant here as well, since one could see a sort of gestalt morality and value system being formed in a given family/culture/nation that combines to form just such an overarching ultimate value. Whether that tends to be expressed as "Loyalty to the country" as in places like China, or "Loyalty to individual success and freedom" as generally purported to be the case in places like the United States, which concepts and actions are called "good or bad" in that culture are tied directly into their ultimate value on which rests all the other values in the collective value system.

I'm also curious, when you say that 'life on this planet' is your overarching value...do you mean ensuring the survival of all life on the planet? Intelligent life? Human life? Simply ensuring its survival, or ensuring that it continues to grow in numbers?

How seriously are you willing to take that belief? Is individual life part of the value, or just the collective "Life" on the planet? Would you kill 10,000 innocents if it would ensure the gurenteed long-term survival of the species? Or are individual cases sacred in their own right?

Devovin

Life on this planet is my consciously chosen ultimate value because I can think of nothing developed by humans or by Mother Nature that is more wonderful than the development of life out of chemical elements. I think that we must have a transcendent ultimate value if we wish to be moral creatures that can through our brain power prevent our ultimate self destruction. We must have a moral North Star to serve as our ideal value.

Good, bad, evil, affection, arithmetic, nations, flags, religion, etc. are abstract ideas. I would say that there are concrete ideas (concepts) and abstract ideas (concepts). Concrete concepts are those developed in sensational experience, i.e. experience grounded in experience due to inputs from our senses.

Abstract concepts are constructed from concrete concepts. Conceptual metaphor is the means for such constructions. Structures from concrete concepts are mapped into subjective abstract concepts and thereby become part of the abstract concept.

Metaphors can kill and metaphors can heal. Metaphor can be a neural structure that provides a conscious means for comprehending an unknown and metaphor can be a neural structure that is unconsciously mapped (to be located) from one mental space onto another mental space. There is empirical evidence to justify the hypothesis that the brain will, in many circumstances, copy the neural structure from one mental space onto another mental space.

Linguistic metaphors are learning aids. We constantly communicate our meaning by using linguistic metaphors; we use something already known to communicate the meaning of something unknown. Many metaphors, labeled as primary metaphors by cognitive science, are widespread throughout many languages. These widespread metaphors are not innate; they are learned. “There appear to be at least several hundred such widespread, and perhaps universal, metaphors.

Primary metaphors have this widespread characteristic because they are products of our common biology. Primary metaphors are embodied; they result from human experience, they “are part of the cognitive unconscious.

Metaphor is a standard means we have of understanding an unknown by association with a known. When we analyze the metaphor ‘bad is stinky’ we will find that we are making a subjective judgment wherein the olfactory sensation becomes the source of the judgment. ‘This movie stinks’ is a subjective judgment and it is made in this manner because a sensorimotor experience is the structure for making this judgment.

CS is claiming that the neural structure of sensorimotor experience is mapped onto the mental space for another experience that is not sensorimotor but subjective and that this neural mapping becomes part of the subjective concept. The sensorimotor experience serves the role of an axiom for the subjective experience.

Physical experiences of all kinds lead to conceptual metaphors from which perhaps hundreds of ‘primary metaphors’, which are neural structures resulting from sensorimotor experiences, are created. These primary metaphors provide the ‘seed bed’ for the judgments and subjective experiences in life. “Conceptual metaphor is pervasive in both thought and language. It is hard to think of a common subjective experience that is not conventionally conceptualized in terms of metaphor.

The neural network created by the sensorimotor function when an infant is embraced becomes a segment of the neural network when that infant creates the subjective experience of affection. Thus—affection is warmth.

An infant is born and when embraced for the first time by its mother the infant experiences the sensation of warmth. In succeeding experiences the warmth is felt along with other sensations.

Empirical data verifies that there often happens a conflation of this sensation experience together with the development of a subjective (abstract) concept we can call affection. With each similar experience the infant fortifies both the sensation experience and the affection experience and a little later this conflation aspect ends and the child has these two concepts in different mental spaces.

This conflation leads us to readily recognize the metaphor ‘affection is warmth’.

Cognitive science hypothesizes that conceptual metaphors resulting from conflation emerges in two stages: during the conflation stage two distinct but coactive domains are established that remain separate for only a short while at which time they lose their coactive characteristic and become differentiated into metaphorical source and target.

I find that this ‘conceptual metaphor’ paradigm is a great means for comprehending the human condition. But, like me, you will have to study the matter for a long time before you will be able to make a judgment as to its value. This book “Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson, from which I derived these ideas and quotes, is filled with ideas that are new to the reader and thus studying it will require a good bit of perseverance.

Have you ever, before reading this post, thought that the brain unconsciously copies the neural structure from one mental space onto another mental space? Those who find this idea compelling will discover, in this new cognitive science paradigm, a completely new way of thinking about philosophy and human nature.

The first three lines of your response were an actual response to my post. For that I thank you. The rest of your post was a once-again 100% word-for-word copy pasted block of text that was your previous thread "Affection is Warmth--Bad is Stinky--Category is Container" and had nothing to do with my response.

As to the actual portion of your post that was an actual response, you still didn't answer my question as to just what life you actually hold the existance of as the highest ultimate value...from what you said, it seems as though "any and all" life is your ultimate value.

If such is the case, I suppose that can help justify your earlier thread where you said that if you had the ability to basically extinguish humanity, that you'd seriously consider doing it.

But I'll say to you here what I said there: Any human who wants to actually, seriously, legitimately claim that their overall goal is the survival of all life, not just human life, and that humans are in many cases detrimental to the overall success of life on the planet, then you should go on a murder spree and then kill yourself, to attempt to remove as many humans as possible from their role in helping destroy the thing you hold apparantly higher than anything else.

I mean...do the killing at a factory that produces toxic waste or something if you really want to be helpful.

I just can't understand how a member of a species with such a finely honed survival instinct can actually sit here and say that the survival of life in general is more important than the survival of humanity in general, but not then also be fighting to remove humans from the planet.