ABSTRACT
The arguments of Chapter 1 suggest that the contradictions of ethics are insurmountable. It seems that traditional ethical concepts are incoherent and that this incoherence cannot be eliminated. This conclusion is difficult to accept and seems to leave us caught between the philosophical inadequacy of ethical concepts and the almost indispensable role they play in our lives. Although we may reject ethics as incoherent, most of us will find abandoning it difficult and will, like Williams, run the constant risk of lapsing into objectivist judgements. Before taking this step, therefore, it is worth reconsidering the problem. The contradictions we have discussed arise from a recognition that judgements about how we should act are different in kind from judgements about how things are. This seems to imply that in relation to the former there is no room for the notion of correctness. In logical terms, different assessments of an action seem to be on the same level. If one person says that it is right to act in a certain way and another denies this, there is no obvious way of settling the matter. No truth about the world can resolve the issue and there seems to be nothing independent for either party to appeal to. The inescapable conclusion seems to be that all judgements on human actions are expressive of a particular point of view and that, since there is no way of independently arbitrating between the innumerable points of view that are logically possible, none of them can claim to be objectively correct.
