Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Technology and the Virtues: a Response to My Critics

  • Book Review
  • Published:
Philosophy & Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. For example, in Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, a foundational and highly influential work in the rapidly growing field of applied machine ethics, it is proposed that we look further than top-down, rule-based ethical theories to “a very different conception of morality that can be traced to Aristotle, namely, virtue ethics” (Wallach and Allen 2009, 10, emphasis added). My own early articles in applied technology ethics, through their omission of the broader context offered in Technology and the Virtues, unwittingly reinforce the perception that virtue ethics just is an Aristotelian view (see Vallor 2010, 2012). Such strong identifications of virtue ethics with Greek, and especially, Aristotelian provenance are also reinforced by many commonly searched online reference sources such as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states in the opening of its entry on Virtue Ethics (http://www.iep.utm.edu/virtue/) that “Most virtue ethics theories take their inspiration from Aristotle…,” and Wikipedia, which asserts in its entry on Virtue Ethics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics) that “the theory of virtue ethics was born with Plato and Aristotle.”

References

  • Aristotle. (2011). Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vallor, S. (2010). Social networking technology and the virtues. Ethics and Information Technology, 12(2), 157–170.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vallor, S. (2012). Flourishing on Facebook: virtue friendship and new social media. Ethics and Information Technology, 14(3), 185–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vallor, S. (2016). Technology and the virtues: a philosophical guide to a future worth wanting. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wallach, W., & Allen, C. (2009). Moral machines: teaching robots right from wrong. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Walzer, M. (1974). Civility and civic virtue in contemporary America. Social Research, 41, 593–611.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor, Department of Philosophy, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, 95053, USA

    Shannon Vallor

Authors
  1. Shannon Vallor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shannon Vallor.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Vallor, S. Technology and the Virtues: a Response to My Critics. Philos. Technol. 31, 305–316 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0289-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0289-8

Search

Navigation