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Print Price: $59.50

Format:
Hardback
320 pp.
6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190498511

Publication date:
October 2016

Imprint: OUP US

Technology and the Virtues

A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting

Shannon Vallor

The 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.

Readership : General readers with an interest in the moral hazards and challenges that accompany new technologies. Philosophers and ethicists of technology, as well as academics in other tech-related disciplines. The book will also appeal to tech professionals, especially those interested in the intersection of philosophy, computing, engineering, law, robotics, ethics and futurism.

Reviews

"Vallor bursts virtue ethics into 21st century relevance with her technomoral analyses. This is a wonderfully written and engaging tour de force that leaves few technological stones unturned. You certainly don't need to be a philosopher to understand Vallor's persuasive account of how to lead the good life in a world littered with ever new techno-pitfalls. It is a must read for everyone involved in the creation and governance of new technology."

--Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and of Public Engagement, University of Sheffield

Introduction: Envisioning the Good Life in the 21st Century and Beyond
PART I: Foundations for a Technomoral Virtue Ethic
1. Virtue Ethics, Technology and Human Flourishing
2. The Case for a Global Technomoral Virtue Ethic
PART II: Cultivating the Technomoral Self: Classical Virtue Traditions as a Contemporary Guide
3. The Practice of Moral Self-Cultivation in Classical Virtue Traditions
4. Cultivating the Foundations of Technomoral Virtue
5. Completing the Circle with Technomoral Wisdom
6. Technomoral Wisdom for an Uncertain Future: 21st Century Virtues
PART III: Meeting the Future with Technomoral Wisdom, Or How to Live Well with Emerging Technologies
7. New Social Media and the Technomoral Virtues
8. Surveillance and the Examined Life: Cultivating the Technomoral Self in a Panoptic World
9. Robots at War and at Home: Preserving the Technomoral Virtues of Care and Courage
10. Knowing What to Wish For: Technomoral Wisdom and Human Enhancement Technology
Epilogue
References

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Shannon Vallor is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, with a research and teaching focus on the philosophy of science and technology. She is President of the International Society for Philosophy and Technology, and recipient of the 2015 World Technology Award in Ethics from the World Technology Network. Her current research examines the impact of emerging technologies on human moral character and virtues.

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Special Features

Applies classical philosophical traditions of virtue ethics to contemporary challenges of a global technological society.
Argues for the unique value of virtue ethics as an ideal moral framework for the 21st century human condition, in which the future of the human family is increasingly clouded by uncertainty, instability, complexity and risk.
Develops and applies a moral framework that is informed by a culturally diverse group of philosophical virtue traditions, including Aristotelian, Confucian and Buddhist perspectives.
Applies the framework to specific ethical challenges from emerging technologies: military and social robotics, new social media, digital surveillance and self-tracking, and biomedical enhancement.
Addresses risks and opportunities facing an increasingly networked and interdependent human family, challenges that demand an unprecedented cultivation of collective moral wisdom on a newly global scale.