덕 윤리에서 습관의 중요성과 노직의 경험기계를 통한 옹호

Abstract

Based on Aristotle’s viewpoint of virtue, I will represent that habituation is so important in the formation and cultivation of virtue, while discussing the nature and characteristics of habit. One may think that we seem to be able to form and cultivate virtue without habituation. If so, this will cause a serious flaw and defect of virtue ethics. I will explain that our cultivation of virtue is impossible without habituation of our character traits by clarifying the examples of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s Christmas Carol and the experience machine in Nozick’s Anarch, State and Utopia. At first glance, Ebenezer Scrooge seemed to show a change of character without long-term habituation, but we should recognize that Scrooge’s example has nothing to do with a change of character traits. Nozick tells that the experience machine lets us have experiences without direct experiences so as to change character traits. I will argue, like Nozick, that the seemed-experiences, formed by Nozick’s experience machine is not such experiences that the mankind will form voluntarily. Through an experience machine, we will have no real human experiences. It is impossible for any machine to transform our character traits without our continuous habituation. That is, without habituation, it is impossible to form and cultivate virtue.