Reprinted in Aristotle's Ethics, edited by T. Irwin, Garland Press, 1995; revised in Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric, edited by A. Rorty, University of California Press, 1996.

The key phrase eikōs muthos is standardly translated ‘a likely tale’, suggesting an empiricist philosophy of science quite alien to Plato’s outlook. I argue for translating, in the first instance, ‘a reasonable myth’, and focus on the point that the reason involved in world-making is practical, not theoretical. This should make a significant differenceto how we assess the Demiurgic arguments reported to us in the dialogue.

D. In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: 1) the agent does x intentionally; 2) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him; and 3) the agent judges that, all things considered, it would be better to do y than to do x.