| Epistemology
studies how you use your mind to handle life. Ethics, or morality, applies
the insights of epistemology to the actions of everyday life. Virtues are
actions which improve man's life. If you live by the use of your mind,
then the basic virtue is using your mind in a way that conforms to your
nature in reality, thus improving your life. As a method, that is called
objectivity. As a virtue, it is called rationality.
What are the
everyday ways of being rational? To figure that out, you can analyze the
basic virtue of rationality into the kinds of actions that add up to it,
and the skills needed. That will also show how any lack of skill here can
be made up there to keep full rationality. To ignore skill when considering
the virtues would be to pretend that virtue requires only intent, and not
method.
Productiveness
is earning your own way. It is easy to see that a genius inventor and his
janitor are not equally productive, but they are equally moral if each
earns his own way.
Pride is moral
ambitiousness, so one skill involved is the skill of identifying and heading
off moral slips. The proud man might say, "I know I tried to tell the truth,
but did I fully succeed? Did I lose my nerve, and if so how can I avoid
losing my nerve next time?"
Independence,
making up your own mind, is equally a virtue for the novice and for the
expert epistemologist. The novice is helped to learn this skill by being
productive, and by having pride.
Integrity,
loyalty to your convictions, is an especially useful virtue if your convictions
are mistaken. Integrity means you will act on the convictions, with whatever
skill you have, and thus discover any mistakes involved.
Honesty, the
rejection of unreality, involves the skill of detecting unreality. It is
a skill many find hard to learn. But independence and integrity will help
in learning it.
Justice is
rationality in judging people. Many fall down badly on this one, not knowing
how to detect unreality soon enough. But integrity leads one to find, and
pride leads one to correct, such mistakes.
When you practice
on purpose the various virtues that add up to rationality, using whatever
skills you have, then the emotional result is moral certainty - confidence
that your actions improve your life as a rational being. You know you are
able to live, and worthy of living.
The purpose
of being virtuous is to be happy. Since happiness tends to breed more happiness,
it also can be thought of as a virtue. In the same way, certainty can be
thought of as a virtue, since mental confidence results in applying reason
to life. |
