Relative to the perspective of the individual.
— praxis

So when a child feeds their cat antifreeze because it looks like a fun drink. Cats love antifreeze too. Is it thus truly good for the cat to drink antifreeze because all the individuals in question think it is so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

They'll both think it good until they learn that it's not.

The tiger enjoys a satisfying monkey hunt and meal—which is good.
— praxis

This is simply changing the subject to what is good for the tiger. Again, is it false that is "bad for the monkey to be eaten?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, I'm sure monkeys dislike being eaten.

Monkey consumption is still good or bad relative to the perspective—whether one is the eater or the eaten.

Cats love antifreeze too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

this is good to know, because i have several cats and abhor the thought of any of them drinking anti-freeze. Interestingly enough, cats do not like beer, which is a good thing because it's also bad for them. Luckily, i do not have any anti-freeze (what would i use it for, and aren't there alternatives?), but i do like beer, so this is the perfect combination!

They'll both think it good until they learn that it's not. — praxis

Ah, what a joy. FINALLY someone sunk that Titanic of a mind (or perhaps ego) of yours like a direct, apocalyptic final hit in Battleship. Of course it would be the noble Count. I knew it would happen. I've waited 5 years and played two long agonizing games of chess resulting in defeat after defeat for this moment. Victory is indeed sweet. Even if all glory doth indeed belong to another.

No, I'm sure monkeys dislike being eaten.

Monkey consumption is still good or bad relative to the perspective—whether one is the eater or the eaten. — praxis

So, you admit, with hands wringing, and one's once noble tail tucked shamefully between one's once-triumphant legs, that, if we lived in a world where monkeys were the larger, more dangerous prey, tigers being eaten would be mere "relevance to the individual" and acceptable, par for the course, if you would. Therefore, the nature of all your truth, all your validity, is hinged on not fact, not logic, not what's right or wrong. but pure and simple juvenile circumstance. Happenstance. A mere toss of the cosmic die.

And here I thought I was defeated by a greater person. No, just greater odds, it would seem and now remains self-evident. :grin:

This is a good example. The philosopher character is an extreme comic example of indecisiveness. It is not excellent to have this level of indecisiveness; that is what makes the character humorous. One need not "blame" him to think he could benefit from a change. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm glad you responded to the show I mentioned. I even remember his name...Chiri. Quite a silly philosopher character, i am assuming the moral is a jab at the extent arguments can really move anyone forward...i guess ill have to ask AI about the scanlin book.

It's absolutely vital to know one's place in society, and to actually internalize it. The criticism whispered quietly to the side with one's face down is a sign that one hasn't accepted one's place in society.
Those below have no business criticising those above. — baker

however, i think this would be too self-limiting, to think of this in absolute terms: it's rather easy to "punch up" in some circumstances, it doesn't even always get met with retaliation. There's also a big difference between criticizing what someone does/says (for example, i do it all the time on here, as i think it's necessary for philosophy), and criticizing them as a person, the latter often being counter-productive. I think a discussion on revenge and punishment could be interesting, yet I'm not so interested in the technicalities of that due to the emotional affect of it, and the one who punishes tends to entrench themselves in their own justifications (i think as the Joshs post shows), so it doesn't make for great discussion...

Likewise, is it not a fact that it is—at least all else equal—better for human to be strong rather than weak, agile instead of clumsy, intelligent instead of dim witted, courageous instead of cowardly, knowledgeable rather than ignorant, prudent instead of rash, possessing fortitude instead of being weak of will, healthy instead of sick, etc.? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can give at least one example where it's not necessarily better for a person to be strong: For example, if your community is taken over by another, the strong are more likely to be killed or sent to the quarry than the weak. Similarly, a clever person will overconfidently leap over a chasm and is more likely to die than a clumsy one. Similarly, a "smart" person, relying on their intellectual superiority, will boldly (trusting their knowledge) rush to do what a fool would hesitate to do. Although the concept of "smart" isn't as simple as it seems—perhaps a smart person doesn't trust their knowledge.

Here I would like to conclude that the more universals there are, the more opinions there are, and the more differences there are. Some will say that prostitution is a good thing (especially considering how many rapes are prevented thanks to prostitution), while others will say it's a bad thing (especially considering how many diseases are transmitted).

In my opinion, the aesthetics of ethics lies in our ability to constantly choose different approaches, change our perspectives, and rethink.

It's funny, but I just criticized the idea of ​​the good and then involuntarily proclaimed a new good, which consists in becoming.

They'll both think it good until they learn that it's not. — praxis

Everyone agrees thoughts are relative to individuals though, the question is about truth (vis-á-vis values).


Something truly being good for you (or your cat) is not necessarily the same thing as merely thinking it is good, right? Or is it as Hamlet says: "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so?"

If the truth of what is good for any individual is simply relative to what they currently think is good for them, then we are collapsing any distinction between reality and appearances. Whatever appears good simply is good. Thus, it is good for us to drink poison any time we think it looks appetizing. (Presumably , the same "good" event "becomes bad" when we start to get sick, because our thoughts about it change. But if we don't recognize the source of our sickness, the poison remains "good for us" and so it seems we ought to drink more.)

In that case, it is impossible for anyone to ever be wrong about what is good for them. Now, what good is philosophy and reason if it is definitionally impossible to ever be wrong about what is best for us? Second, how do we explain the ubiquitous phenomena of regret and internal conflict?

You can think up such scenarios for any of the virtues. A rash person will tend to act impulsively and in some cases this might allow them to save their own, or others' lives. An unwise person who gives up on a misleading riddle and picks an answer at random might, by sheer luck, just happen to pick the right answer, while the wise are mislead by assuming the challenge in fair, etc.

One can do this just as easily with consequentialism (any event can plausibly lead to great benefits or evils given a long enough time horozon) or with any deontological rule that isn't incredibly vague and abstract. Perverse counterexamples are easy to generate because we generally deal with incomplete information, and because our moral choices are framed by fortune, which is outside of our control.

Hence, the "all else equal" and "on average" framing. The situations we face, and the information we have when we face them, is determined by fortune and fortune can conspire to make an enemy of vice. It normally doesn't though. More to the point, virtue is what allows us to be relatively self-determining at all, such that we have any control in how we respond to fortune. Those who are easily coerced by hardship or seduced by pleasures become more a bundle of warring appetites driven on by external causes, less a self-determining rational whole driven on by the desire for what is truly best. It is the rational appetites, the desire for what is "really true" and "truly good" that allow us to transcend our finitude, going beyond current beliefs and desires, and so to transcend the given of what we already are. Someone who just pursues whatever desires they just so happen to have, and who does not seek truth, will be wholly determined by fortune.

Note that we could just as easily flip your example. Perhaps the attacking forces are slave takers who will kill the weak and take the strong because only they will survive and make good laborers. What remains constant is that the virtuous will tend to be best prepared to weather any such eventuality. You can weight the dice in the other direction too, by just imagining a man of tremendous strength, a Beowulf or Achilles, who simply slays all 100 raiders who have had the misfortune to stumble across the village of a demi-god, or a super-genius who has built their village a Maxim gun, etc. At the extremes, it is always insufficient virtue that is the problem. No mere mortal can beat up Superman or Goku.

Virtue insulates us from fortune. Saint Francis, Laotze, and the Desert Fathers flourish in the wilderness with nothing. Saint Paul, Boethius, and Socrates are sublime in prison awaiting death and cannot be coerced or seduced. By contrast, some people are ruined even by "good fortune," by wealth or fame, such that they become miserable and morally reprehensible.

One could say that Socrates' case shows the evils of virtues because being poisoned is bad and his virtue leads to him being poisoned. I think this would be a bad way to look at things. Ultimately, beings (people most of all) are what are good or evil. The goodness of actions or events is parasitic on the goodness of beings. So the question with Socrates is not whether being executed is good, it is whether it is better for us to be someone like Socrates, or to be someone who is easily cowed, such that they cannot bring themselves to stand up for principles even if they think they should, because they value their security more.

No, I'm sure monkeys dislike being eaten.

Monkey consumption is still good or bad relative to the perspective—whether one is the eater or the eaten. — praxis

This doesn't imply that "for a monkey it is bad being eaten" is 'relative'. At best, it might show that the what is good for the tiger is bad for the monkey and this leads to conflict between the two animals.

That "the same event might be good for a being and bad for another" hardly implies that "there are no objective statements about what is good for a given being". Indeed, even this 'relativistic statement' ( i.e. "the same event might be good for a being and bad for another") seems to be a truth that is independent for any given perspective on the matter.

At the human level there are situations that seem ambiguous but some seem obvious. For instance, indulging in a drug addiction seems good to the addict because of the pleasant feelings the consumption of a given substance might give. But when compared to the painful consequences the addiction bring, it seems to me clear that the addict acts under a deception about 'what is truly goodfor him/her'. And this isn't true only 'for me' but also for the addict himself/herself.

In a 'virtue ethics' framework what is sought is what is truly good for a human being and the reasonable assumption that is made is that a human being might misunderstand 'what is truly good for him or her'.

I'm wondering what it would take for a universal morality to be achieved, or if it's even possible. — ProtagoranSocratist

There is no way we can participate in the science and technology of today and still think as people did when Martin Luther and Nietzsche were alive. Martin Luther thought the witch hunts were necessary. Back in the day, people lacked science and were very superstitious. From 1100 to 1700, the Catholic church unwittingly prepared Europe for the information transformation. These are the years of scholasticism. AI defines scholasticism like this...

Scholasticism was a medieval philosophical and theological system that used rigorous logical reasoning to reconcile Christian faith with classical philosophy, especially that of Aristotle. In simple terms, it was a method of teaching and thinking that emphasized logic and debate to understand and explain religious and philosophical truths, rather than just accepting them. Key figures like Thomas Aquinas used this dialectical method to build a comprehensive understanding of the world based on both reason and revelation.

There was a serious backlash against Aristotle's logic. Francis Bacon, born January 22, 1561, and died April 9, 1626, turned the world of reasoning upside down with inductive reasoning versus Aristotle's deductive logic. Francis Bacon's inductive reasoning opened the way to modern scientific thinking, and that is a totally different frame of mind that leads to understanding creation as a process of evolution, taking the place of the Biblical creation story and believing the Bible is a collection of pagan stories starting in Sumer, not a supernatural revelation of God.

What it takes for a universal morality to be achieved is today's technology, especially the computer and the internet, and the continued spread of science. How do we know the truth? We begin with the participation of all nations, then ask the right questions and validate the facts. I say this in part because all religions share the same morality. The differences are not that great because humans are not that different from each other. Another reason I believe unity and consensus are desirable and possible is that the death of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and framing our minds with science instead of mythologies, would end conflicts that trouble us so much today. Some good has come from those religions, but so have bad things come from the religions. Ignorance leads to evil.

That "the same event might be good for a being and bad for another" hardly implies that "there are no objective statements about what is good for a given being". Indeed, even this 'relativistic statement' ( i.e. "the same event might be good for a being and bad for another") seems to be a truth that is independent for any given perspective on the matter. — boundless

The way many humans dealt with this moral conflict was to create a story where the hunted animal agreed to being killed and eaten in exchange for a benefit the humans would provide. However, the Christians have a different relationship with nature that is not so nice.

"nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

:lol: That is pretty narrow-minded. In fact, that thinking might lead to avoidable conflicts.

While I find your approach easily refutable (with your permission, I won't), I personally find it very relatable.

At the same time, it seems a bit outdated. It seems very sentimental and naive by today's standards. To me, these are very sound ideas, time-tested, but they're unlikely to interest anyone today. Unfortunately.

In a 'virtue ethics' framework what is sought is what is truly good for a human being and the reasonable assumption that is made is that a human being might misunderstand 'what is truly good for him or her'. — boundless

We will absolutely misunderstand — even about ourselves — so how can there be objectivity?

If you can show that, all else equal and on average, it is better to be gluttonous, slothful, cowardly, rash, unintelligent, weak, unhealthy, clumsy, weak willed, wrathful, etc., by all means. I have never had anyone take me up on that challenge so I'd be interested to see it! Rebuttals always seems to go in the other direction, contesting that the virtues can be defined.

If it is uninteresting today, I think that has more to do with the dominant notion that "freedom" is the ultimate good and that "freedom" involves a flight from all determination, such that any "virtues" necessarily present a sort of "limit on freedom" by "telling us not to act in certain ways." But, aside from misunderstanding what a virtue is by trying to define it in terms of individual actions, I think such a conception of freedom, as hegemonicly dominant as it is in modern culture, is straightforwardly incoherent on close analysis, since arbitrariness is not freedom. On any view where liberty must be defined in terms of rational second-order volitions (the desire to have the desires one has), desires must be understood, which in turn requires certain doxastic and practical virtues.

Indeed, even critics of such a view regularly default to it when they accuse others of a lack of intellectual humility, engaging in bad faith argument (i.e., being motivated by desires other than truth), possessing poor reasoning capabilities, being close-minded or "dogmatic," leaping to judgements, etc. These are all criticisms of intellectual or practical habits (vices). And correcting these deficiencies seems to require something like Plato's notion of the establishment of the "rule of the rational part of the soul, as a sort of "meta-virtue" required for the consistent seeking of the virtues.

Or as Alasdair MacIntyre puts it more broadly, "the good life for man must involve those virtues required to discover the good life for man."

During my university years, Aristotle's Rhetoric was my go-to book. Discussions about virtues literally remind me of it.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, today's society is such that pronouncing something like this publicly will invite ridicule and misunderstanding. And you have to be a fairly accomplished rhetorician to explain these values ​​to a contemporary audience through various techniques, appealing to the listeners' personal values, conveying ideas about "kindness," "honesty," and "caring."

Today, I was having a lunch conversation with a colleague of mine, born in 1995, who completely misunderstood my remarks about proper care for parents or simply human cooperation. The conversation went on for a long time, and eventually, of course, he agreed with me, recalling how he himself suffered from Covid alone in an apartment in a city of millions, with no one to give him water, simply because he chose individualism as a virtue (discourse does its job). And then, he agreed, almost in a whisper, hesitantly, so no one would hear. After all, it seemed rather strange, in his opinion.

It was a light conversation about "involvement," and I noticed how contradictory it fit with his ossified individualism, where the core value and highest good is "success at any cost."

Hence my words about how naive it all seems today. Although, of course, you were talking about something quite different, nonetheless, this experience struck me as a colorful example.

The way many humans dealt with this moral conflict was to create a story where the hunted animal agreed to being killed and eaten in exchange for a benefit the humans would provide. However, the Christians have a different relationship with nature that is not so nice. — Athena

Well, I would not say that about all Christians... anyway, I believe that even the most radical vegan would recognize that, in order to live, we have to kill some animals (e.g. the insects that would destroy our crops).

Also, note that Christians actually recognize that this world is not (at least now) 'what is meant to be', so perhaps e.g. the inevitability of conflict with other species would be better understood in that light.
This is not to say that, of course, that many Christians didn't have a 'not so nice' relationship with nature.

In a more general viewpoint, it seems to me right to say that a human being should seek 'what is truly good' for herself or himself. At the same time, it is also obvious that, even within a 'secularist' viewpoint, that (most? all?) human beings often act against their own good, are confused about what is 'better' or 'worse' for them and so on. This is to say that 'virtue ethics' is IMO applicable even within a purely naturalistic view of human beings. In fact, it seems the only view to me that avoids a 'legalistic' reason to consider some intentions, behaviors etc 'right' and others 'wrong'.

We will absolutely misunderstand — even about ourselves — so how can there be objectivity? — praxis

I would say that, yes, it seems that it is inevitable for human beings to misunderstand and act against our own good.

Regardless, I do not see how even if all human beings misunderstood what is 'truly good' for them or even what is 'better for them' and what is 'worse for them', this would falsify the possibility, in principle, of making objective statements about 'what is truly good for human beings' and so on.

There was a time when most people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and all celestial bodies revolved around the Earth. Yet we know that geocentrism is 'objectively false'. So, it would be not surprising that we might in a condition that we do not know what is truly good for us and nevertheless, in principle, we could know it.

And I do not see a contradiction between what I said above with the claim that philosophy might help us to improve our understanding of 'what is truly good for us' (in general or in a particular situation) etc.

Also, note that Christians actually recognize that this world is not (at least now) 'what is meant to be', so perhaps e.g. the inevitability of conflict with other species would be better understood in that light.
This is not to say that, of course, that many Christians didn't have a 'not so nice' relationship with nature. — boundless

:vomit: I am sorry, I am strongly opposed to using the God of Abraham religions to understand reality. It stood in the way of science and stopping, or at least slowing down, the destruction of our planet. It continues to stand in the way of science, and this has divided the US. I feel no mercy for those who bring this upon us.

:lol: There are people here who want to ban AI. If I had the power to ban something, it would be the God of Abraham religions. Starting out one's thinking with Christian mythology is problematic.

Luckily, i do not have any anti-freeze (what would i use it for, and aren't there alternatives?) — ProtagoranSocratist

Where there are cars and other motorized vehicles and machines with internal combustion engines, there is antifreeze. Cats sneak into people's garages and sheds, and find all kinds of things there, some of them not safely stored. To say nothing of cars leaking antifreeze.

Saint Francis, Laotze, and the Desert Fathers flourish in the wilderness with nothing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If that's flourishing ...

however, i think this would be too self-limiting, to think of this in absolute terms: it's rather easy to "punch up" in some circumstances, it doesn't even always get met with retaliation. There's also a big difference between criticizing what someone does/says (for example, i do it all the time on here, as i think it's necessary for philosophy), and criticizing them as a person, the latter often being counter-productive. — ProtagoranSocratist

It's not sustainable to ascribe to and abide by a moral system that disregards how the world really works. Idealism like that drives people crazy.

I think a discussion on revenge and punishment could be interesting, yet I'm not so interested in the technicalities of that due to the emotional affect of it, and the one who punishes tends to entrench themselves in their own justifications (i think as the Joshs post shows),

so it doesn't make for great discussion...

This strange idea that philosophy should be cut off from real life ...

There was a time when most people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and all celestial bodies revolved around the Earth. Yet we know that geocentrism is 'objectively false'. So, it would be not surprising that we might in a condition that we do not know what is truly good for us and nevertheless, in principle, we could know it. — boundless

This is clearly a bad analogy. Scientific truths are a different category of knowledge than moral truths or values.

This is clearly a bad analogy. Scientific truths are a different category of knowledge than moral truths or values. — praxis

But do they not claim the lion's share of one's cultural or social "zeitgeist" depending on their popularity? Especially in times when perhaps, unlike today, the lines or understandings of "truth" and "morals" and "virtues" were less clearly drawn, if even visible? :chin:

Basically, there was a time when the two were one and the same. Naturally they became distinct for a reason, but can we really sit here in all honesty and pretend like the then-system didn't lay the foundation for what is the now-system and perhaps is only just another stepping stone toward a greater system? Why, who could say! Those before surely doubted, perhaps they were the most popular, and yet, here we are. So fancy that, eh?

I won't deny that it is, for many, unaccessible. In part this is because, beliefs to the contrary, we absolutely do still indoctrinate children into ethical systems; it's just that the current hegemon is one of therapeutic individualism (with an irreducible plurality goods).

I don't think it is naive though. To have stepped into the frame with a strong teleology is, in the modern environment, virtually always to have step out of the hegemonic paradigm, which means that one knows that opposing paradigms exist. The naive view assumes that one is absolute (e.g., that it stands alone as the fruit of "dispassioned reason" now that "superstition" has been paired back). By contrast, people often seem to think that even the most trivial sorts of relativism must be fatal to moral realism, so that millennia of past thinkers across the West and the East must have somehow been blind to the fact that "stealing seems good to the thief," or that cultural norms vary, etc., which denotes a sort of global naivety about past (and non-Western) theorizing on values.

This is certainly true for philosophers who advocate for any sort of metaphysically robust "virtue ethics", who are always aware that their justification requires challenging dominant assumptions in metaphysics and epistemology. I would say that the "naive view" thus tends to be more along the lines of: "'science says' the world is meaningless and valueless, or at least that values cannot be observed, except perhaps as some sort of occult 'emergent' property." Or, even for those who are aware of the many "deconstructions" of the prior view, and all the genealogical treatments that make it appear historically contingent and bound up in prior theological commitments, there is still a strong naive belief that rejecting the empiricist-naturalist metaphysical and epistemic frame is simply equivalent with abandoning "science and technology," i.e., that such a frame is "necessary for doing science," or at the very least, that it played a crucial, dominant role in the "scientific revolution" and "Great Divergence" that has led to modern technology.

I think such a view is "naive" because it is inculcated in the culture as a sort of default. I don't think it is unsupportable, but I also don't think it is particularly robust to sustained criticism either. The "Great Divergence" by which Europe pulled ahead of the rest of the world starts before the "New Science" and the trend is steady and doesn't really change until centuries after the New Science has become dominant (due to the Industrial Revolution). The metaphysics dominant in an area don't seem to track with differences in military or economic power, and at the individual level there are tons of examples of great scientists and inventors who went against the grain here. But more to the point, core epistemic starting points like "human reason is wholly discursive and never finds direct union with its objects" clearly have little to do with the practical methodologies of technological development.

And you'll see this in cultural products. Science fiction and fantasy will assume that, if a culture has any substantial technology and mastery over nature, they have developed an empiricist-naturalist outlook, and even a language of "natural law /obedience." Authors clearly want to make their cultures diverse and unique, and yet it seems that the imagination balks at the notion that a Taoist, Hindu, Neoplatonic, etc. culture could ever achieve a significant mastery over nature through techne. But if one understands the paradigm that emerged from Europe as both contingent and theologically loaded (even if it now denies God, it does so from a particular metaphysics/epistemology originally based on belief in God) then this seems rather naive.



Clear to whom? A great many philosophers reject the fact/values distinction. How exactly do you justify it?

Clear to whom? A great many philosophers reject the fact/values distinction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And many of them argue against objective values.

Sure, hence it would an equally hollow argument to say merely: "Clearly there are objective values, thus an analogy that implies otherwise is a bad one."

anti-realist generally cannot justify this distinction because they don't think "moral goodness" is real in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You see, this another i had with your previous discussion: anti-realism is not a coherent perspective, it's just a means of labeling a position one finds threatening. The real problem is that people are constantly what they imagine with reality, and one of the biggest ways they do this is with moral value systems.

For example, i have been having issues with social media and message boards for years. The moderators do not really care, and expect only me to behave myself. That isn't an example of anti-realism, it's just a system that makes empathy impossible.

I have tried lots of advice to deal with my nicotine and internet addictions, but none of it works better than what i have discovered. The issue isn't my anti-realism, its difficulty dealing with a reality that requires facing manipulative advocacy and facing the information super highway.

Thanks for responding to my thread everyone: enjoy what you can.

Where there are cars and other motorized vehicles and machines with internal combustion engines, there is antifreeze. Cats sneak into people's garages and sheds, and find all kinds of things there, some of them not safely stored. To say nothing of cars leaking antifreeze. — baker

I think i may figured out why my winshield wiper fluid ejector stopped working: some ice probably cracked the container. But this is false, you never strictly need antifreeze to operate a car...you don't need to mix oil with antifreeze.

Interestingly, geocentrism most definitely expressed anthropocentric values and Galileo paid the price for extracting those values from astronomy. In the end it's all about power.

:vomit: I am sorry, I am strongly opposed to using the God of Abraham religions to understand reality. It stood in the way of science and stopping, or at least slowing down, the destruction of our planet. It continues to stand in the way of science, and this has divided the US. I feel no mercy for those who bring this upon us. — Athena

It seems that you have an aversion against Christianity and apparently other Abrahamic religions. I just say that generalizations are never helpful and I think if you seek enough you'll find that there are very different ideas among Christians on a huge variety of topics.

But note that I wanted to make a general point about virtue ethics which was widely accepted, I believe by many Christians in history. But, in fact, not only Christians but you find the idea in many ancient cultures (e.g. Indian religions, Taoist texts like Daodejing and Zuanghzi and so on).

Clearly, virtue ethics assumes that there is a distinction between 'virtues' and 'vices' and the firsts are 'better' than the seconds for a given person.

This is clearly a bad analogy. Scientific truths are a different category of knowledge than moral truths or values. — praxis

I find interesting that you only quoted this part of my post. You raised the objection that, if all human beings are wrong about 'what is good for them', then 'objectivity' about ethics is impossible. I merely made an example where there has been a context where most people have been wrong.

In any way, I don't believe that one can make such a 'hard distinction' between scientific truths and moral truths. We also learn, at least in part, good and bad behaviour with experience. A coward, for instance, often lives in a tormented state due to their fear. Instead, a generous person might find solace in the acts of helping others and live a more serene life than say someone greedy who lives in either a constant fear of losing one's possessions and/or in a state of disappointment for not having all the desired riches.
I already made the example of the addict. Clearly the addict acts under a self-deception (sometimes mingled with some awareness of behaving against one's own interest) about what is 'good' and might completely ruin his or her life.

These are clearly empirical observations one could make. They perhaps do not tell the whole story about what is 'virtue' and what is 'vice' but nevertheless they are important in a context of virtue ethics. I like virtue ethics because, as I said, seems to me the only ethical framework where ethical behavior never becomes an external imposition.

I still have not find a compelling objection of the apparent objective validity of, say, the statement "an addict, while indulging in the addiction, acts against one's own good".