Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/124

. . . ad infinitum. Always, when I try to state, what it is that the somebody believes, I shall find it to be again merely that somebody believes. . ., and I shall never get to anything whatever which is what is believed. But thus to believe that somebody believes, that somebody believes, that somebody believes. . . quite indefinitely, without ever coming to anything which is what is believed, is to believe nothing at all. So that, if this were the case, there could be no such belief as the belief that A is B. We must, therefore, admit that, in no case whatever, when we believe a given thing, can the given thing in question be merely that we ourselves (or somebody else) believe the very same given thing. And since this is true in all cases, it must be true in our special case. It is totally impossible, therefore, that to believe an action to be right can be the same thing as believing that we ourselves or somebody else believe it to be right.

But the fact that this view is untenable is, I think, liable to be obscured by the fact that we often express, in the same words, another view, quite different from this, which