“Characters in Hollywood movies encounter a lot of car chases. Characters in novels rarely wash their hands or do their laundry. And in the work of moral psychologists, people deliberate and reflect a lot. They deliberate, one sometimes feels, whenever they perform an action, and certainly whenever they act for good reasons.” PeopleSometimesReasonCharacterActionMoralNovelPsychologyCarEthicsPsychologistLaundry Book:Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency Source: Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency
“Sometimes we deliberate - for example when we plan a long trip or - if we are not math wizards - when we solve long division problems. However, if we deliberated every time we acted we would never get through the day. Most of the time, we act for reasons without deliberation. I am not just talking about cases of simple, habitual action, like brushing your teeth, but also about more sophisticated action.” LongSometimesReasonProblemActionSimpleMathSophisticated Author:Nomy Arpaly
“Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would find it a very sad thing if it turned out that the only way a human is superior to a wolf is this: the human brain is significantly more capacious and complex.” WritingSometimesBrainPhilosopherHuman BrainVery SadPrototype Author:Nomy Arpaly
“People of relatively low intelligence can be morally wonderful if they desire the right and the good (not necessarily under the description "right" or "good"). Their low intelligence sometimes results in their accidentally doing something wrong, but doing something wrong out of low intelligence alone is like stepping on a person's foot because you are (literally) blind or missing a cry for help because you are (literally) deaf. We do not judge the blind or deaf person as morally bad.” PeopleSometimesHelpingDesireWonderfulMissingCryJudgingBlindDeaf Author:Nomy Arpaly
“If I make a stupid decision but don't execute it because I'm, say, lazy, then I'm lucky, not rational. However, at other times a person acts for good reasons just as she does what she thinks she shouldn't do, not knowing that they are good reasons. Just like sometimes we are a lot less rational than we think we are, it is also true that sometimes we are a lot more rational than we think we are.” ThinkingSometimesReasonDecisionStupidLuckyRationalLazy Author:Nomy Arpaly