The Philosophy of Aristotle: Applied to the Systemised Self - Part 21, Masters Series.

Abstract

Aristotle’s account of flourishing begins not with a profile but with activity: what a life does, which capacities it develops, and the ends that give its practices meaning. This essay brings his ethics, natural philosophy, and politics into conversation with the Systemised Self, a proposed condition in which algorithmic mediation recursively shapes identity, preferences, and agency. The essays fictional character Mateo, is a bicycle mechanic using a repair work platform, finds that recommendations favour rapid, familiar jobs over complex restoration and teaching. Aristotle’s distinctions among ends and means, production and action, habit and judgment, and potentiality and actuality clarify what a throughput metric may leave out. They do not prove that algorithmic assistance alienates, nor make Aristotelian teleology a machine learning theory. Empirical studies establish bounded findings about data inference, platform practices, and ranked feeds; they do not validate the Systemised Self or the proposed Algorithmic Alienation Index. The essay argues conditionally that tools can support skilled activity, yet become alienating when their objectives acquire authority over the goods a practice serves and those affected cannot contest them. Aristotle therefore offers a demanding question: does mediation help people act well, together, or merely make selected outcomes easier to count?

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