How Virtues and Institutions Limit Practical Thought

This paper develops a broadly neo-Aristotelian account of how virtues and institutions shape practical thought, focusing in particular on which options virtuous agents consider in deliberation. The central claim is that virtues and institutions render some options what I call “practically impossible” for an agent. Options are practically impossible if the agent is disposed not to consider them (invisible options) or disposed to reject them immediately when they are pointed out (options that are out of the question). I argue that some virtues and some social institutions are partly constituted by certain options being invisible or out of the question for the agents who possess those virtues or participate in those institutions, respectively. Along the way, I contend that practical rationality is not a matter of choosing the most supported option from among all (objectively) available options. A further upshot is that participation in a social institution is, at least for some agents, not merely a matter of following certain norms but a matter of (not) perceiving the world, and in particular one’s options, in a certain way.