Re your cooking example. A virtue ethicist (Aristotle, Augustine, Confucius, ...) might say that you still have work to do. The idea is that knowing how to co

Re your cooking example. A virtue ethicist (Aristotle, Augustine, Confucius, ...) might say that you still have work to do. The idea is that knowing how to cook, and even being good at cooking, are not enough. You're not "perfected" in a particular virtue until you actually experience the value of the practices that the virtue involved. One way to go about "perfecting" a virtue, from a subjective perspective, is to look at those people you know who do enjoy cooking. These people are exemplars, and you have to be charitable, trusting that there is something to cooking that they see that you do not. You then try again, trying to emulate their approach to cooking - not just the recipes or even the procedures they follow, but also their attitudes toward it. That is how you come to experience the full excellence of cooking. In other words, in the virtue ethicist's view, cooking well doesn't by necessity make you a good cook.