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.

Moral virtues and intellectual virtues are very different from each other, and moral virtue has to do with motivation, not cognition. Moral virtue requires a human level of intelligence, but it doesn't require that one be an intelligent human.

If I am told my loving you had to happen because of some Freudian stuff about my childhood, that might be degrading or deflationary, but if I am told it had to happen because you are such a wonderful person that I couldn't possibly resist your charms, or because we are so incredibly compatible, then necessity seems very romantic.

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.

For those of us who want to have control over all our mental states, compatibilist substitutes - such as desiring what we desire to desire - will always be like being told, when you desperately want there to be a God, that yes, God exists, as God is simply the good within people.

Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though things are rarely equal.

I think it's ok to have wishes that conflict with each other - it's irrational to try to make them both come true, but not irrational simply to have them.