Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/198

 we proposed, purely for the sake of brevity, to say that an agent could have done a given action, which he didn’t do, wherever it is true that he could have done it, if he had chosen; and similarly by what he can do, or what is possible, we have always meant merely what is possible, if he chooses. Our theory, therefore, has not been maintaining, after all, that right and wrong depend upon what the agent absolutely can do, but only on what he can do, if he chooses. And this makes an immense difference. For, by confining itself in this way, our theory avoids a controversy, which cannot be avoided by those who assert that right and wrong depend upon what the agent absolutely can do. There are few, if any, people who will expressly deny that we very often really could, if we had chosen, have done something different from what we actually did do. But the moment it is asserted that any man ever absolutely could have done anything other than what he did do, there are many people who would deny this. The view, therefore, which we are to consider in this chapter—the view that right and