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.

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.

Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because of that, it is absolutely wrong to be culturally intolerant". This student, if she believes what she writes, believes a contradiction. She ought not to believe the contradiction - it's a basic epistemic norm. This is true even if she can't avoid believing it - no amount of studying will show her the light.

Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he doesn't care much about the truth or about me, and his self interest, which he worships, tells him to lie, and so it comes about that given his psychology, it is a forgone conclusion that he will lie to me. I think in this case he is still blameworthy, and that implies, among other things, that he did something he ought not do.

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.

For those of us who want to have control over all our mental states, compatibilist substitutes - such as desiring what we desire to desire - will always be like being told, when you desperately want there to be a God, that yes, God exists, as God is simply the good within people.

I am not committed in any way to the traditional concept of character - the concept of "character trait" as involving predictable behavior. I am committed to a view in the neighborhood - the view that the moral worth of one's actions depends on the quality of will expressed in them.