A virtue is a positive characteristic of a person. Such characteristics can range from how they feel *(compassion)*, the actions they take *(honesty)*, the actions taken with respect to feeling *(courage, resilience)*, how they think about themselves *(modesty)*, and their ability to make good judgements *(wisdom)*. One of the [[Purpose of education|purposes of education]] is the development of virtues, which often defines the individual in the most fundamental sense of who they are. This makes it a very difficult area within education, where you need to consider: * **The conflicting desires of who should direct virtue education**, such as the household, religious organisation, schools controlled by the state, universities or otherwise. * **The difficulty of measuring the [[Types of knowledge|type of knowledge]]**, where it is not simply the acquisition of declarative or procedural knowledge, but the way they see the world, feel and more. * To what extent is it right to intervene in the development of a someone's identity and who they are? --- Virtues are shaped through non-traditional systems such as social media algorithms, which expose us to ideas, and through reinforcement teach us what to feel, think and value. --- With the increasing automation occurring through artificial intelligence (as of date 22/8/2025), it becomes increasingly important as to how we govern our society to direct the use of efficiency increases in a way that can improve people's quality of life and the state of the world. In this pursuit, the notion of [[Civic participation|civic participation]] becomes increasingly important. However, the development of reason and explicit forms of knowledge with not solve our problems. It is not solely about [[Utilitarianism|utilitarian]] actions where we judge by the consequence of actions to come to some optimisation ideal. Rather, given the subjective and loose grounding of value ([[Alchemy exists!|see this]]), along with the necessity to not worry so excessively about efficiency, leads to generosity and other virtues becoming increasingly important. The virtues of the individuals form society and the results of civic processes. --- TODO: * Make this last part on AI, efficiency and civic participation into a separate page, and actually explain it properly