Grice is especially interested in proving Stoutians (like Hampshire and Hart) wrong by drawing from Aristotle's prohairesis-doxa distinction, or in his parlance, the buletic-doxastic distinction. Grice quotes from Aristotle: "[prohairesis] cannot be opinion [doxa]; for opinion is thought to relate to all kinds of things, no less to eternal things and impossible things than to things in our own power; and it is distinguished by
its falsity or truth, not by its badness or goodness, while choice is distinguished rather by these. Now with opinion in general perhaps no one even says it is identical. But it is not identical even with any kind of opinion; for by CHOOSING OR DECIDING (prohairesis) what is good or bad we are men of a certain character, which we are
not by holding this or that opinion (doxa). And we choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it
is good for or how it is good for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or avoid anything. And choice is praised for being related
to the right object rather than for being rightly related to it, opinion for being truly related to its object. And we choose what we best know to be good, but we opine what we do not quite know; and it is not the same people that are thought to make the best choices and to have the best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good
opinions, but by reason of vice to choose what they should not. If opinion precedes choice or accompanies it, that makes no difference;
for it is not this that we are considering, but whether it is identical with some kind of opinion. What, then, or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have mentioned? It seems to be voluntary, but not all that is voluntary
to be an object of choice. Is it, then, what has been decided on by previous deliberation? At any rate choice involves a rational principle and thought. Even the name seems to suggest that it is what is chosen before other things."
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