In March 2023, Josh participated in a Virtues & Vocations workshop with the inaugural cohort of Integrating Virtue Together. A version of this reflection originally appeared in his weekly newsletter, The Absent-Minded Professor.

The recent rise of artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has renewed the conversation about the value and purpose of education. Is the college experience about vocational training or personal formation? I think the answer is both.

Over the past few weeks I have been reflecting on my experience of the Integrating Virtue Together workshop. As I was ruminating on some of the themes that emerged from the conversation, I was reminded of this talk given by Richard (Dick) Olsen, a former faculty member in the HSA department at Harvey Mudd. The talk, given as the keynote speech for Harvey Mudd’s Presentation Days in 2016, focused on articulating the purpose of a liberal arts education. In it, Dick argues that it is critically important for a STEM education to be grounded in the context of a liberal arts education that puts it within the broader context of ideas like responsibility, citizenship, and compassion.

While Dick was specifically focused on the Harvey Mudd curriculum, his ideas more broadly articulate the value of an education grounded in virtue. In a world where we are frequently facing burnout and disillusionment in our work, it is more critical than ever to consider the purpose of our work and how it connects to our deepest human needs.

As I approach this conversation, I’m acutely aware that I’ve bitten off more than I could ever hope to chew in a short article like this. Conversations about the purpose of education have been going on for several millennia and continue to be debated. While I find it hard to imagine that I will cover any new ground, I hope that in some way, however small, I might provide a unique reflection of my vision of education and its importance.

Education is for cultivating character and skills
Broadly, I see two major schools of thought on the purpose of education in the 21st century. One is focused on cultivating character and the other is concerned with developing skills.

Without a doubt, both are important. We need skilled workers who can produce and maintain the resources needed to sustain our basic human needs for food, water, and shelter. At the same time, humans are not machines with the sole purpose of using our skills to generate value. While we need to care for our physical needs, we also must attend to our deeper needs for belonging, meaning, and purpose.

An education, therefore, should be directed toward the pursuit of both of these aims but with a clear understanding of their relative importance. An education focused on the development of skills without a firm grounding in the development of character is a recipe for a life of toil. I fear that this divorce between the why and the what and how is at the root of much of our current epidemic of burnout, loneliness, and relative dissatisfaction.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
-Martin Luther King, “The Purpose of Education“

Education for flourishing
I am increasingly drawn to the language of flourishing. Flourishing resonates with me for many reasons, but what I am appreciating most about it lately is the way it paints a picture of fruitfulness, like a tree planted in nutritious soil that grows from a small seed into a large tree that provides fruit and shade.

To flourish we need to build skills and develop our character. The skills give us an outlet for our character to be explored, tested, and refined. The exercise of our skills also enables us to have an impact on humankind and the world. However, our skills alone are dangerous if they are not guided by strong moral character to ensure that their impact is good for others and the world.

The quote below from James Hutton, a Scottish polymath who made contributions across several fields of science and medicine and is credited with establishing the field of geology wrote supports this integration. While skills in a domain like science can effect change, they need to be directed toward the appropriate aims to promote flourishing. He says:

Science, no doubt, promotes the arts of life; and it is natural for human wisdom to promote these arts. But, what are all the arts of life, or all the enjoyments of the animal nature, compared with the art of human happiness—an art which is only to be attained by education … Man must learn to know himself; he must see his station among created things; he must become a moral agent … This is what he has to learn, but it is only through studying things in general that he may arrive at this perfection of his nature.
James Hutton, Dissertation upon the Philosophy of Light, Heat and Fire, pp. v-vii

Virtue shows us how to flourish
So, what does virtue have to do with it? I like how my colleague and friend Francis Su writes about the concept of virtue in his book Mathematics for Human Flourishing. Pursuing virtue acts as a conduit for human flourishing.

A basic question, taken up by human beings throughout the ages, is: How do you achieve human flourishing? What is the well-lived life? The philosopher Aristotle said that flourishing comes through the exercise of virtue. The Greek concept of virtue is excellence of character that leads to excellence of conduct. So it includes more than just moral virtue; for instance, traits like courage and wisdom and patience are also virtues.

To flourish, we need to pursue virtue and engage in the never-ending journey of aligning who we are, what we do, and why we do it. While different cultures have different definitions of virtue, there is a broad consensus that they include traits or behaviors like beauty, love, generosity, courage, creativity, honesty, integrity, discipline, and justice. Pursuing these virtues promotes flourishing by deepening our character and enriching the lives of those around us.

Virtue is foundational in a world with complex problems
Virtue is important not just for abstract reasons related to finding personal meaning. It also has a direct practical impact through the skills we develop and exercise in the world. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently given the vigorous conversation over whether we should halt the development of artificial intelligence tools like the GPT models that are being developed by OpenAI.

While many of the questions being raised are technical (e.g., how does the way that these models are trained shape the bias they exhibit? How might A.I. either in a current or future form lead to extremely harmful outcomes?), the deeper questions are philosophical and ethical. Questions like:

• What role does A.I. play in human flourishing?
• Why should we continue, pause, or ban its further development?
• How do we weigh the tradeoffs between potential benefits (e.g., medical breakthroughs) and harms (e.g., making it easier to write convincing phishing messages or create super realistic impersonations)?
• Who bears responsibility for the potential harms of A.I.?

These are questions in the domain of philosophy and relate to virtue, not technical skill. Knowing how to program a better algorithm, by itself, does not answer them.

The integration of technical skills and virtue within the individual is critical
However, technical skills are also deeply relevant to answering these questions well. The challenge of the debates around these cutting-edge technologies is that they require a combination of breadth and depth in both the technical and philosophical domains. And while composing interdisciplinary teams of technical experts and philosophers can be part of the solution, to solve these problems I’m convinced that we need individuals at the table who themselves have breadth.

As the world becomes more complex, we grow ever more in need of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians who understand how to grapple with the deep ethical questions of the impact of their technology. Simultaneously, we need philosophers with technical depth in science and engineering to enable them to understand technology and integrate it with their philosophical training.

Should we jettison the language of virtue?
At the workshop last week there was some conversation about whether we should ditch “virtue” as a word to describe the character traits worth pursuing. I understand the rationale of avoiding potential misconceptions and the extra conversations that might be needed to explain the concept. It costs time to disentangle virtue from potential negative connotations connected to “virtue signaling” or what we see as outdated, Victorian notions of chastity.

However, even though it may cost some time and foster some disagreement, I find myself unwilling to jettison the term virtue. The umbrella of virtue helps us to see the connection and synergy of the concepts underneath it. Love, beauty, and courage are not independent concepts or pursuits, but are deeply interrelated. For example, one’s deep love for a field and desire to see its beauty maintained may help to reinforce your courage to speak up when you feel that it is being taken in the wrong direction.

Getting rid of the language of virtue also serves to fragment our understanding of these concepts over time. Philosophers throughout many generations have used and explored this concept. Discarding the language may serve to disconnect us from the historical development of these ideas.

My vision for education and calling at Harvey Mudd

Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.
The Harvey Mudd College Mission Statement

I will close by saying that this vision of an education rooted in virtue is a big part of the impact I hope to have at Harvey Mudd. I want to be a professor, mentor, and colleague who helps my students not only to master their technical discipline but also to foster virtue.

Harvey Mudd is not perfect. There is always more work to be done. But as we labor together, I am proud to stand beside my colleagues and on the shoulders of those like Dick Olson who have come before me to play a part in helping my students grow their skills and virtues to promote flourishing