Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/128

128 think it to be so: the former is an assertion, which, according to this view, I can never know to be true, whereas the latter is an assertion which I obviously can know to be true. The tenable view, therefore, that we can never know whether an action is right or wrong, does not in the least support the untenable view that for an action to be right or wrong is the same thing as for it to be thought to be so: on the contrary, it is quite inconsistent with it, since it is obvious that we can know that certain actions are thought to be right and that others are thought to be wrong. But yet, I think, it is not uncommon to find the two views combined, and to find one and the same person holding, at the same time, both that we never know whether an action is right or wrong, and also that to say that an action is right or wrong is the same thing as to say that it is thought to be so. The two views ought obviously to be clearly distinguished; and, if they are so distinguished, it becomes, I think, quite plain that the latter must be rejected, if only because, if it were true, the former could not possibly be so.