Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

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HASSE HÄMÄLÄINEN
this particular question: a community that is as small as to provide everyone
an opportunity to attempt to see whether everyone else is practically
wise or not.
Although it might be debated what size of community best meets this
requirement, at least one thing is seems to be clear: most contemporary
nation states are too expansive to fulfi l this purpose. Most of us are not in
epistemic position to even attempt knowing whether they who claim to be
virtuous are so. Maybe this is the reason why there are so few people within
any contemporary nation state, whom the people of the state can unanimously
endorse as their ethical exemplars.
But this all is worth of a separate study. Th e task I set for this paper was
only to refute both the view that VE cannot avoid VEE without abandoning
the view that the virtue is the source of ethical value and the alternative
view that VE does not need to avoid VEE. And that task seems to be
concluded.
Let me summarise. Despite a practically wise person sees what would
appropriate with 1/n probability; despite anyone who is not that wise see
that with probability