1. Action that displays the ethical character of its agent does so by virtue of the purposiveness that is operative in it. (See Nicomachean Ethics (EN) 1111b5–6.)

The category of purposive behaviour, behaviour that can be explained by giving its end, extends to brutes as well as human beings. But human beings are special among animals in having a capacity for articulable thought. Purposive behaviour in brutes is an immediate response to an opportunity for gratification of non-rational motivational impulses: its explanation draws only on those impulses and unconceptualised perception. The peculiarly human capacity for thought allows for purposiveness without that immediacy; thought can mediate gaps between project and execution. Thought that bridges such gaps is what Aristotle calls ‘bouleusis’ (‘deliberation’): see EN 111.3.

Deliberation as Aristotle discusses it seems to be a process of thinking engaged in before acting. But we can sometimes make sense of human behaviour in an importantly similar way, even though the agent did not actually deliberate. The form of deliberation is a form into which we can cast an explanation by reasons, and such an explanation can be appropriate for actions that did not issue from prior deliberation. And it is the nature of an agent's reasons, whether explicitly thought through or not, that reveals his ethical character.