Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/102

 consequence is sufficient to condemn it. It is surely plain matter of fact that when I assert an action to be wrong, and another man asserts it to be right, there sometimes is a real difference of opinion between us: he sometimes is denying the very thing which I am asserting. But, if this is so, then it cannot possibly be the case that each of us is merely making a judgment about his own feelings; since two such judgments never can contradict one another. We can, therefore, reduce the question whether this theory is true or not, to a very simple question of fact. Is it ever the case that when one man thinks that an action is right and another thinks it is not right, that the second really is thinking that the action has not got some predicate which the first thinks that it has got? I think, if we look at this question fairly, we must admit that it sometimes is the case; that both men may use the word “right” to denote exactly the same predicate, and that the one may really be thinking that the action in question really has this predicate, while the other is thinking that it has not got it. But if this is so, then