The fact that only humans above a certain age can be morally virtuous, rather than babies or cats, means that that being moral requires some cognitive ability. If virtue is about desires, it is worth remembering that you can't desire some things without being able to conceive of them. Suppose a virtuous person will desire to make people happy and desire to tell the truth. You can't desire to make people happy without having the concept "happy" and you can't desire to be truthful if you don't have have the concept "lie", so a cat or a baby cannot desire these things.

Incompatibilists will tell you that a work of art has no meaning unless the artists could have chosen to create a different one, but actual artists often say things like "the book chose me" - that is, the work had to be. Some philosophers would call it "volitional necessity", and a similar case that's discussed is the case of Luther saying "here I stand, I can do no other".

I think that if your tenure case depends on your proving what you thought was a mathematical theorem and the proposed theorem turns out to be false just before your tenure decision, and you want to get tenure very badly, there is a sense in which it's perfectly understandable and reasonable of you to wish the proposed theorem were true and provable, even if it's logically impossible for it to be.

When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and think "there, I'm so irrational!". But your reluctance to sit on a probably rickety chair is not irrational - you think it's irrational because you have a false view of what irrationality is.

A very tall man once asked a question after my talk. Before beginning his question, he explained that the reason he was standing up is not to be intimidating but rather to make eye contact. His question was essentially "are we really interested in moral motives? Isn't it all about action?". I pointed out to him that it was not enough for him to do the right thing - stand up - but he also wanted me to know that he is doing it from the right motive or for the right reason - to make eye contact, rather than to be intimidating. Voila, moral psychology.

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.

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.