Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/122

 involve the absurdity that no two men ever differ in opinion as to whether an action is right or wrong, and will thus contradict a plain fact. While in the other two forms, it will involve the conclusions that no man ever thinks an action to be right, unless he thinks that his society thinks it to be right, and that no man ever doubts whether an action is right, unless he doubts whether any man at all thinks it right—two conclusions which are both of them certainly untrue.

These objections are, I think, sufficient by themselves to dispose of this theory as of the last; but it is worth while to dwell on it a little longer, because it is also exposed to another objection, of quite a different order, to which the last was not exposed, and because it owes its plausibility partly, I think, to the fact that it is liable to be confused with another theory, which may be expressed in exactly the same words, and which may quite possibly be true.

The special objection to which this theory is exposed consists in the fact that it is in all cases totally impossible that, when we believe a given thing, what we believe should