Page:Ethics (Moore 1912).djvu/90

 these judgments, but a peculiar sort of liking and dislike, which might perhaps be called a feeling of moral approval and of moral disapproval. Others, again, might, perhaps, say that it is not a pair of opposite feelings which are involved, but merely the presence or absence of one particular feeling: that, for instance, when we call an action wrong, we merely mean to say that we have towards it a feeling of disapproval, and that by calling it right, we mean to say, not that we have towards it a positive feeling of approval, but merely that we have not got towards it the feeling of disapproval. But whatever view be taken as to the precise nature of the feelings about which we are supposed to be making a judgment, any view which holds that, when we call an action right or wrong, each of us is always merely asserting that he himself has or has not some particular feeling towards it, does, I think, inevitably lead to the same conclusion—namely, that quite often one and the same action is both right and wrong; and any such view is also exposed to one and the same fatal objection.

The argument which shows that such