ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author came now to a series of objections to prescriptivism. They can all be met, and showing how they can be resisted will help to strengthen our understanding. The last objection, however, which is the most difficult to meet, does show, the author think, that prescriptivism cannot, as hitherto understood, account for quite everything that can count as a morality, though it still accounts for nearly all that is important. An essential feature of any rational attitude, whether theoretical or practical, is (as Hume noted) that it abstracts from a particular concrete situation and classifies one situation with another in respect of this or that common feature. The distinction between U-type and E-type evaluations is most easily formulated in terms of logic: E-type evaluations necessarily contain proper names or some other singular mode of reference, while U-type evaluations necessarily contain only predicates.
