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Let’s give virtue a hand

 

In our high schools and colleges you will often find that the BMOC (Big Man on Campus) is a student engaged in the central attraction of that institution. On the campus where football is king the BMOC is a football player, on the campus where basketball is king the BMOC is a basketball player, on the campus where scholarship is king the BMOC—wait a minute, who ever heard of a campus where scholarship is king. This is, perhaps, a slight exaggeration, I am sure such a campus must exist, somewhere.

 

In the 1920s the campuses where “the most far-reaching revolution of the twentieth century was born in an idyll: a picturesque park in Copenhagen, a quiet side street in Berne, the shore of the island of Heligoland, the meadows and tree-shaded river at Cambridge, the…” In these European campuses the young geniuses of physics, the BMOCs of the century, gave birth to “the tremendous transformation of the scientific view of Nature could only be compared with the change of outlook brought about by Copernicus.” The age of the atom was midwifed by this small group of geniuses.

 

If a high school or college were to shift emphasis from football to basketball, over night the BMOC would change. I think that we Americans, and probably others, need to shift emphasis from what Kuhn identified as Normal Science to those domains of knowledge that are commonly called the Social Sciences. Physicists have been our BMOC but I claim that we need to develop a climate that fosters public concern upon matters that are identified as virtue.

 

Virtue, according to John Dewey, is “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”. In other words, the virtuous person is s/he who directs a personal talent toward the betterment of the community.

 

I am informed by Ernest Becker that many social scientists have accepted the notion that ‘value judgments’ or ‘moral questions’ are rationally undecidable. As such, most social theorists “simply assume that any agent, who acts on the basis of a moral principle, or a social norm, is not rationally justified in doing so. This is what underlies the widespread tendency among social theorists to assume that instrumental action is the only form of rational action, and that norm-governed action must have some kind of nonrational source, such as conditioning, socialization, or habit.”

 

I am not schooled in the social sciences but I have spent some time trying to learn these ideas about which the social sciences deal. I know enough about these matters to conclude that our society needs to put much greater emphasis in these domains of knowledge. Our focus seems to be entirely on the natural sciences and that emphasis is reveled in the success of these sciences. However I think we overemphasize the natural sciences at the expense of the social sciences.

 

I think that society needs to reevaluate our value systems in order to create a consensus about how to reevaluate our value systems, i.e. we need to make social scientists our new BMOCs. What do you think?

Posted
Virtue, according to John Dewey, is “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”. In other words, the virtuous person is s/he who directs a personal talent toward the betterment of the community.

 

IMHO this is wishful thinking, and is deeply flawed.

 

What happens to the rights of the individual if you “extend the fabric of social values”? Who is going to decide what is the “betterment of the community”? in China, people who disagree with the communist party’s views on the “betterment of the community” end up in jail. Is putting dissidents in jail a virtuous act?

 

On the other hand, belief in the right of the individual to own firearms is, arguably, a contributory factor in the incidence of firearms related deaths and woundings in the United States.

 

Hence, I would suggest that neither extolling free will nor extending the fabric of social values is, of itself, virtuous.

 

Another flaw is the implicit idea that merely by wishing to “do good” one will do good, and hence are acting virtuously. In many circumstances, “do gooders” can exacerbate the problem they are trying to solve. Why? By intervening to ameliorate a need, without thought for the effects of their actions. Arguably, a lot of third world aid has been tantamount to dumping of surplus food, and destroyed the economy of the recipient countries. Leaving them even more dependent on handouts. And if you need reminding of the political fallibility of “doing good”, just think of Iraq.

 

I think that society needs to re-evaluate our value systems in order to create a consensus about how to re-evaluate our value systems, i.e. we need to make social scientists our new BMOCs. What do you think?

 

Who says that social scientists are any better equipped than anyone else to tell us what is virtuous and what is not? It is the role of politicians to pick a path through these moral minefields, and it is the responsibility of the electorate to appoint those politicians that they feel are most able to do so.

 

I think that the idea of promoting the importance of social scientists (or any group of self-appointed “experts”) is a very dangerous one.

 

IMHO you need to think through these ideas a lot more than you appear to have done. Being virtuous and actually “doing good” just isn’t that easy.

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