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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    321,452
    Perspectives
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    Topics
    42
    It is in our power to be either virtuous or vicious. — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    It is in our power to be either virtuous or vicious.

    Free Will & Foreknowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Mature humans make choices after deliberating about different available means to their ends.
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    • 2.Choosing consistently well results in a virtuous character forming over time, and choosing consistently poorly results in a vicious character forming over time.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Neuroscientific evidence (Libet et al.) indicates that neural activity initiating action precedes conscious awareness of the intention to act.
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    • 2.If conscious deliberation is epiphenomenal to causally sufficient brain states, then the 'choice' between virtue and vice is determined prior to reflective awareness.
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    • 3.An agent cannot be genuinely responsible for outcomes determined by processes outside conscious control, making virtue and vice matters of constitution, not power.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Aristotle himself concedes in Nicomachean Ethics III.5 that character, once formed through early habituation, constrains the range of choices available to the agent.
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    • 2.If the formative conditions of character—childhood environment, education, social circumstance—are not themselves in our power, then the resulting dispositions toward virtue or vice are not fully in our power.
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    • 3.This undermines the claim's universality: for agents raised under vicious or severely deprived conditions, the path to virtue may be practically unavailable regardless of deliberative effort.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    An agent cannot be genuinely responsible for outcomes determined by processes ou...Aristotle himself concedes in Nicomachean Ethics III.5 that character, once form...Choosing consistently well results in a virtuous character forming over time, an...If conscious deliberation is epiphenomenal to causally sufficient brain states, ...
    +4 moreShow less
    If the formative conditions of character—childhood environment, education, socia...Mature humans make choices after deliberating about different available means to...Neuroscientific evidence (Libet et al.) indicates that neural activity initiatin...This undermines the claim's universality: for agents raised under vicious or sev...

    Similar

    Choosing consistently well results in a virtuous character forming ove...71%God's lack of freedom to do evil precludes God's being perfectly moral...71%By representing our immoral act as rational, we fail to exercise our p...71%The power to act is always accompanied with the power to exert that po...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: freewill
    View source passageHide passage
    While Aristotle shares with Plato a concern for cultivating virtues, he gives greater theoretical attention to the role of choice in initiating individual actions which, over time, result in habits, for good or ill. In Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that, unlike nonrational agents, we have the power to do or not to do, and much of what we do is voluntary, such that its origin is ‘in us’ and we are ‘aware of the particular circumstances of the action’. Furthermore, mature humans make choices after deliberating about different available means to our ends, drawing on rational ...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises are clearly stated in the passage and together they rationally support the conclusion: if we have the capacity to deliberate and choose (premise 1), and consistent choices shape character for good or ill (premise 2), then it follows that forming a virtuous or vicious character is in our power.

    Confidence: Explicit argument in the passage linking deliberate choice to character formation.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit