Abstract

We consider two versions of the view that the person of good sense has good sensibility and argue that at least one version of the view is correct. The version we defend is weaker than the version defended by contemporary Aristotelians; it can be consistently accepted even by those who find the contemporary Aristotelian version completely implausible. According to the version we defend, the person of good sense can be relied on to act soundly in part because, with the guidance of a fine-tuned and wide-ranging ability to directly sense what is called for, she is regularly drawn, even pre-reflectively, to actions that are supported by reason. As we explain, this position does not imply that one's reasons exist independently of one's ends and that one must therefore detect reasons with the help of some value-detecting perceptual capacity that reveals some ends as valuable and others as not worth pursuing.