- Aristotle
- Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived over 2,000 years ago and is one of the most influential thinkers in Western history. He studied nearly every subject—from animals and plants to politics and ethics—and developed practical ways of thinking that shaped how people understand the world. His ideas on logic, nature, and how to live a good life are still taught and debated today because he focused on observing the real world rather than just abstract theories.
- Character virtues(contrasted with intellectual virtues in this statement)
- Excellence in how you act and behave toward others, like kindness or courage—virtues shown through your actions and habits.
- Forms (or Ideas)(knowledge of forms is what Plato believed true knowledge was about)
- Plato's theory that perfect, eternal, unchanging templates for all things exist in a non-physical realm—for example, the perfect idea of 'justice' or 'beauty' that all real-world examples imperfectly copy.
- Intellectualism (in Plato's ethics)(Plato's explanation of why people act badly)
- The view that wrongdoing happens because of ignorance or lack of knowledge, not because of weakness of character—if you truly knew what was good, you would do it.
- Plato(the person whose decision to write is being analyzed in this example)
- An ancient Greek philosopher (around 428-348 BCE) who wrote famous dialogues exploring big questions about knowledge, justice, and reality.
- Post-Aristotelian(describing when the intellectual vs. character virtue distinction became common)
- Referring to ideas, distinctions, or developments that came after Aristotle's time (he lived 384-322 BCE).
- Premise
- A premise is a statement or fact that you assume to be true as a starting point for reasoning or making an argument. Think of it as the foundation or building block you use to reach a conclusion—for example, "All dogs are animals" and "My pet is a dog" are premises that lead to the conclusion "My pet is an animal." Premises are essentially the evidence or claims you offer before drawing a final conclusion.
- akrasia(Used to motivate the pluralism debate: pluralists claim only pluralism can adequately explain this phenomenon.)
- Weakness of will; the condition in which an agent knowingly chooses a less good option over a better one.
- intellectual virtues(Realistic conception)
- Real properties of thinkers understood as dispositions to think in particular ways in particular circumstances.
- knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
- Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.
- virtue(Valla's voluntarist account of virtue)
- A quality that resides in the will, governing actions to which moral qualifications are assigned.