6 Questions of Socrates

[Andrew tubbs]

I'm collecting information for a project for my college scholars class, if you could please respond that would be great! Thank you!

 

What is virtue?
What is moderation?
What is justice?
What is courage?
What is good?
What is piety?

And how does Nerdfighteria exemplify these traits?

[Aarre, поболтать сторож [CM]]

Here is a quick summary of my view:

Virtue is an act that makes you better as human and makes the whole world a slightly better place. The argument lies in the definition of "good", which happens to be one of the questions.

Moderation is one of the virtues. Moderation is the act of not asking too much, not taking too much, the act of using only the very amount you need.

Justice is giving everyone what they deserve, no more, no less.

Courage is the act of being virtuous despite the consequences. It is the act of winning your fears.

Good is something that makes the world a better place: Something that increases happiness, joy, love, satisfaction, pleasure, peace and other virtues like justice, and decreases suffering, sadness, pain, horror, hate and things that are opposite to the virtues.

Piety? The question is not important to me. I have no trust in gods. I have faith in many things, such as the goodness of fellow humans, and the likeability of life, but I fear I have no faith in gods.

Perhaps we can have some interesting discussion to go on.

[Andrew tubbs]

but can't faith in humans be a form of piety?

 

And how does Nerdfighteria exhibit these attributes?

[Maxwell Waters]

As I said below, I think piety for atheists involves having a proper relationship to your lack of belief in a god -- it means that you don't just replace something else in your head, even subconsciously, for a god, so for instance a pious atheist won't worship intelligence in the same way that people worship deities. I love intelligence, intelligence is my absolute favorite quality for other people to possess, but if I were an atheist I wouldn't value intelligence as the *only* good quality, and so on.

I think it also involves not being a militant anti-religionist -- I think that other virtues reinforce that too, which is way Christians can't be [shouldn't be] militantly against other religions or against atheism, but piety for atheists means that you're secure enough in your own belief that you don't need anyone else to agree with you. (I guess in that sense piety also reinforces that being missionary is one thing, being militantly or radically Christian or radically Muslim etc. is another.)

[Andrew tubbs]

So if you love intelligence can't you be pious towards intelligence?

[Kaiden Munsey]

Virtue is the ability to make the right decision in tough situations, especially as it applies to choosing against vices. It's those qualities that are considered good and preferable by society,

Moderation is Never taking more that what is owed to you, never being greedy or gluttonous. It's  knowing when to stop.

Justice is what is perceived as fair to society. Nothing about the universe is fair, yet we as humans still continue to believe that it must be, in some way. It's a human created ideal, one that all societies strive for.

Courage is upholding justice & virtue in the face of overwhelming odds. It's simply a form of stubbornness, but a virtuous one.

Good is what people see as right and morally upstanding. its facing evil, it's something that everyone wants to be, wether or not they can really know what that is. If justice is what societies are all striving towards then goodness is what people strive towards.

Piety is when one has shifted all there views and ideas to apply through a religious perspective. It's trying to find virtue through moderation.

Well those are my personal ideas. I'm sorry that I'm not a better writer or I might be better able to explain what I'm saying, but I hope this helps in some way, and I really just couldn't think of a good answer to the last question.

[Sarah H]

I agree with Aarre that the meaning of "virtue" hinges radically on the meaning of "good."  I am not as sure that I understand virtue as action, however, so much as a disposition, a character or way of being which a person may develop that is displayed in actions, but does not consist in action. That said, I want to be clear that it's not clear whether good action engenders good disposition, or good dispositions engender good actions (or both). 

To me, the question "what is good?" is one of the most interesting one can ask (there is a Conan the Barbarian joke in this, but I am gonna try and be bigger than that). But only because I am interested in the variety of answers that even a "community" like Nerdfighteria may develop.  The question, as I see it, is, "in this historical moment, and for these people, what is preferable? What is better? What are considered virtuous actions and dispositions?"  I think for Nerdfighteria this includes ideas and ideals that we would be able to talk about very easily, and think of as "moral" in the sense that it is commonly used, like peaceful co-existence with one's fellow humans, a pro-intellectual and pro-educational stance, and, particularly if you base your evaluation of Nerdfighteria on vlogbrothers videos, a strong valuation of inclusiveness.  But I think an evaluation of Nerdfighterian visions of the good include less obviously "moral" evaluations.  For example, a preference for the relatively obscure over the "mainstream," a sense that is better to wonder at the world than to be cynical about it, and, I would argue, a view of "making stuff" as a virtuous kind of action. 

Ok, I didn't set out to ignore the questions, but from what little I know of Socrates, when he starts asking questions, a person should become SUSPICIOUS.  Sorry about that, but trying to construct an answer really made me think about these matters more clearly.

[Maxwell Waters]

Okay!

What is virtue: Virtue is that quality which is possessed by humans who act according to human nature. The word "virtue" is also used to refer to specific qualities that are virtuous -- so, for instance, the virtue of chastity (however you want to define chastity) is the quality of being virtuous as it relates to sexuality. (I take a wildly different approach to the word chastity than most people that use that word, fyi)

What is moderation: Moderation is the virtuous relationship to desire -- that is to say, the proper amount of consumption or activity. Moderation involves introspection and knowledge: knowledge to know what is good for a person, and introspection to discover desires that are deeper than surface appetites (for instance, a desire to not throw up is often deeper than a desire to get wasted tonight).

What is justice: Justice is proper order. That isn't to say that justice is having a clean room; what it means is that, in a just system, for instance the legal system, there is a proper hierarchy of relationship -- so that if, for instance, the relationship of the defendant to, in criminal cases, the assumption of innocence in the face of further proof is more important than the relationship of the judge to the defendant's husband, the court system is just. Or if a classroom's relationship to the truth is more important than its relationship to not hurting anyone's feelings during discussion, the classroom is just. Or, in an individual, if their relationship to virtue is more important than their relationship to alcohol, they're just. (Not saying that alcohol is wrong -- I love the stuff.)

What is courage: Courage is a virtue that relates to one's actions in the face of fear. Having courage doesn't mean that one doesn't fear, but rather that one has one's actions under fear are just. One's fear should only be one factor in how one acts, and not as important as whether it is the virtuous action, or whether the action is likely to succeed, even, etc.

What is good: Goodness is the ultimate end of all that a virtuous person does, and the motivation for everyone (the non-virtuous still have goodness as a goal, but because they lack virtue they lack the knowledge of how to achieve good). Goodness is distinct from virtue because while virtue is a quality of actions (and thoughts etc.), goodness is a quality of condition; goodness is rather like happiness, but not merely in the emotional sense. Goodness is both the ultimate end, real or desired, of all actions, and the state which allows humans to flourish.

What is piety: Piety is the virtue relating to a proper relationship with one's god. For atheists, this piety is not necessarily defunct: rather, they must have a proper relationship to their lack of belief in a god, which involves, for instance, not making fun of those of us who do (other virtues reinforce this). For everyone else, other virtues require us to be respectful of others' right to have different beliefs then our own, including, often, religious ones.

You can tell I've read a Greek philosophy text or two.

[Em Chonofsky]

I belive courage is the strength to do something you're very afraid of, be it going to high school or saving a princess from a dragon.  Good is the intent to try your best to be your best, be it to people, or at things.

[Mark Andrew Maben]

Virtue: not necessarily lacking taint of heart, but refusing to act on it and never exhibiting it
Moderation: enjoying doing in minor amounts what isn't enjoyable in excess
Justice: when crime is met with just punishment and is applied as often as is possible. when it is not possible, doing the most that can be done without abusing the power of law.
Courage: when one can act like a lion, feel like worm, and still crawl forward undaunted
Good: being able to overcome one's in individual evils, and do what is right, even when the choice is comparable to lifting a mountain, or walking away
Piety: allowing yourself to be open to your blessed nature, hold off your malice and taint, and use your control encourage others to do better

 

[Rem]

...Um, are you asking for people's interpretations of the words, or an interpretation of Socrate's philosophy? Because he didn't really speak English, as best I can tell. Those are translations. He wasn't talking about word definitions, the words he originally used were just conveniently similar to what he was talking about.

[Bill Kong]

"Virtue" is a subset of "Characteristics", and it is distinguished by being viewed as favourable by the majority of a population. How favorable a virtue is with respect to a single individual might be obtained by weighing each response with the degree of influence of the surveyed individual on the target individual. For example, I might quantify each unweighted "favourable" as 1, and "unfavourable" as -1, and create a coefficient of influence based on time which the target individual spends interacting with surveyed individual, divided by total time of social interaction  of target individual, averaged over 1 week. 

Moderation might be defined as a statistical measure of central tendency. For any parameter q which applies over a population S, I would define moderation as the absolute value of the T-score of q(i) with respect to E(q) and s(q) over the population, S.

Justice: to be honest, I don't have a good quantification for this. I'd probably base it on correct identification rate of causal agents in a finite set of phenomena.

Courage: No idea. 

Good - I'll refer to the definition of Virtue, but such that "good" is a subset of "actions" rather than characteristics. 

Piety might be described as the confidence with which religious devotion can be ascertained. Therefore, select a point in time, t0, at which piety will be evaluated. Then, if after a time, dt, the person is asked a standard, binary test of religious affiliation, executed in a hypothetical, consistent way that would eliminate any bias, let piety be the probability of positive response when evaluated from t0. 

I'm not very familiar with Nerdfighteria, so I will not address the last question. 
 

[John Eric Tiessen]

Been awhile since I have been on nerdfighters, but I will do my best to answer your question succinctly and to the best of my ability!

Virtue:

Serving other morals/values in the face of adversity. For example, Aristotle would say that it is virtuous for a soldier to stand and fight. Why? He is protecting culture and knowledge, he is committing a virtuous act by defending that which is good. (Or the societies/personal definition of good)

Moderation:

This is looking for the middle route. The one that balances the two extremes as Aristotle would put it. An example would be that at a party you aim for the mean amount of food. Not so little as to seem like you dislike it, but not so much that you are a glutton. (Again this is all highly subjective)

Justice:

In many respects, the opposite of mercy. Justice is punishing an individual for committing an action which was either not virtuous or threatened the greater good of society.

Courage:

Having the emotional fortitude to enact actions that are virtuous.

Good:

Err.... This one is really hard and extremely subjective. I would have to say that, that which is good is that which is seen as best for everyone in every possible situation.

Piety:

Being consistent in ones servitude towards whatever one considers to be virtuous/good. To the point that one neglects his/her own desires.

How does that hold up for ya?