Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/155

Rh set of beings whatever—no matter what attitude of mind we take to be the one in question, whether one of feeling or thinking or willing, and no matter what being or beings we take, whether human or non-human: and that hence no proof to the effect that any particular being or set of beings has or has not a particular attitude of mind towards an action is sufficient to prove that the action really is right or wrong.

But there are many philosophers who fully admit this—who admit that the predicates which we denote by the words “right” and “wrong” do not consist in the having of any relation whatever to any being’s feelings or thoughts or will; and who will even go further than this and admit that the question whether an action is right or wrong does depend, in a sense, solely upon its consequences, namely, in the sense, that no action ever can be right, if it was possible for the agent to do something else which would have had better total consequences; but who, while admitting all this, nevertheless maintain that to call one set of consequences better than another is the same thing as to