Page:Principia Ethica 1922.djvu/175

IV] between existents; and pointed out that the assimilation of ethical propositions either to natural laws or to commands are instances of this logical fallacy (72—76). And finally (4) I discussed the epistemological doctrine that to be good is equivalent to being willed or felt in some particular way; a doctrine which derives support from the analogous error, which Kant regarded as the cardinal point of his system and which has received immensely wide acceptance—the erroneous view that to be ‘true’ or ‘real’ is equivalent to being thought in a particular way. In this discussion the main points to which I desire to direct attention are these: (a) That Volition and Feeling are not analogous to Cognition in the manner assumed; since in so far as these words denote an attitude of the mind towards an object, they are themselves merely instances of Cognition: they differ only in respect of the kind of object of which they take cognisance, and in respect of the other mental accompaniments of such cognitions: (b) That universally the object of a cognition must be distinguished from the cognition of which it is the object; and hence that in no case can the question of whether the object is true be identical with the question how it is cognised or whether it is cognised at all: it follows that even if the proposition ‘This is good’ were always the object of certain kinds of will or feeling, the truth of that proposition could in no case be established by proving that it was their object; far less can that proposition itself be identical with the proposition that its subject is the object of a volition or feeling (77—84).