The problem, of course, and sadly, is that we all have some convictions that are unsettled when they ought to be settled, and others that are settled when they ought to be unsettled. To understand this problem and begin addressing it, we need to think in terms of the old Aristotelian language of virtue and vice, in which a virtue lies midway between two opposing vices. We don’t want to be, and we don’t want others to be, intractably stubborn; but we don’t want them to be pusillanimous and vacillating either.
