Virtue Ethics and Postponing Human Extinction

Abstract

Existential ethics (extinction ethics) evokes Van Renssalaer Potter's definition of bioethics as a science of human survival that integrates biological principles, the planetary ecosystem, and wisdom. Explored here is a thesis that virtue ethics (character ethics) should supplement deontological, consequentialist, and other approaches to decision-making relevant to extinction. Advances in philosophy, social science, and neuroscience support the idea that virtues such as faith, hope, and love should complement how virtues such as wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage are expressed when deliberating about existential ethical questions in areas such as global warming, nuclear warfare, and rogue artificial intelligence applications. It has yet to be determined whether Science, as the embodiment of a mechanical force, can rule without invoking ruin…. [T]here must be a very different civilization or there will be no civilization at all. Sir William Osler1A new type of thinking is essential [in the atomic age] if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. Albert Einstein2.