But there is one very serious objection to such a view, which I think
that those who take it are apt not fully to realise. If this view be
true, then when I judge an action to be wrong, I am merely making a
judgment about my own feelings towards it; and when you judge it to
be wrong, you are merely making a judgment about yours. And hence the
word "wrong" in my mouth, means something entirely different from
what it does in yours; just as the word "I" in my mouth stands for an
entirely different person from what it does in yours--in mine it stands
for me, in yours it stands for you. That is to say when I judge of a
given action that it was wrong, and you perhaps of the very same action
that it was not, we are not in fact differing in opinion about it at
all; any more than we are differing in opinion if I make the judgment
"I came from Cambridge to-day" and you make the judgment "_I_ did not
come from Cambridge to-day." When _I_ say "That was wrong" I am merely
saying "That sort of action excites indignation in me, when I see it";
and when you say "No; it was not wrong" you are merely saying "It
does not excite indignation in _me,_ when _I_ see it." And obviously
both judgments may perfectly well be true together; just as my judgment
that I did come from Cambridge to-day and yours that you did not, may
perfectly well be true together. In other words, and this is what I
want to insist on, if this view be true, then there is absolutely
no such thing as a difference of opinion upon moral questions. If
two persons think they differ in opinion on a moral question (and it
certainly seems as if they sometimes _think_ so), they are always,
on this view, making a mistake, and a mistake so gross that it seems
hardly possible that they should make it: a mistake as gross as that
which would be involved in thinking that when you say "I did not come
from Cambridge to-day" you are denying what I say when I say "I did."
And this seems to me to be a very serious objection to the view.
Don't people, in fact, sometimes really differ in opinion on a moral
question? Certainly all appearances are in favour of the view that they
do: and yet, if they do, that can only be if when I think a thing to
be wrong, and you think it not to be wrong, I mean by "wrong" the very
_same_ characteristic which you mean, and am thinking that the action
possesses this characteristic while you are thinking it does not. It
must be the very _same_ characteristic which we both mean; it cannot
be, as this view says it is, merely that I am thinking that it has to
my feelings the very same relation, which you are thinking that it
has not got to yours; since, if this were all, then there would be no
difference of opinion between us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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