virtues and vices virtues and vices list

The intellectual virtues are like these-they help us be better thinkers and to think well with others. Artistic virtues make one a good artist social virtues make us likeable to others, and ethical virtues help us to promote flourishing in our own lives and the lives of others. Virtues are character traits or dispositions about a person that help them be a good overall person. Good judgment requires combining our reasoning abilities and the techniques we learn in this class with a practice of building up in ourselves intellectual virtues while avoiding intellectual vices. So how do we become people of good judgment? Thinking well means learning when particular patterns apply and when they don’t. We learn how to map arguments and understand validity to discover basic patterns that generally lead towards truthful beliefs. How we reason in one context might not make sense in the next context when new information or methods of investigation arise. In most situations thinking well is a matter of good judgment, where we have to decide what makes the most sense to believe given these particular facts and values in this particular situation. We learn rules of reasoning primarily to train our brains how to think clearly and carefully, not because the rules will be always applicable.

It can seem that way, especially when we get to our later chapters on deductive logic, but in reality only a small number of situations are appropriate for deductive reasoning.

As much as we might wish, good thinking is not ultimately about following rules. As long as we evaluate our evidence in the right way, make sure our premises support our conclusions, and don’t make mistakes, then we’ll be good thinkers.īut this actually isn’t the case. It can be tempting to suppose that thinking well is simply a matter of following the right rules.

Virtues and vices virtues and vices list