ABSTRACT
OF the objections that I stated at the end of the last chapter, the most sweeping was the fourth. The notions of approval and disapproval are, it was said, far too vague to bear the weight I have placed upon them. There is no denying that there is a good deal in this complaint. And since as well as being the most sweeping, it is also the most fundamental, for I have used the notion of approval at the basic point in the argument, we must spend this chapter in some attempt to meet it and leave the first three objections until we come to the next. We shall not even then, I fear, find ourselves with a sharp and rigorous definition of ‘approval’. But, it is worth saying at the outset, we should not be too depressed by the difficulties we may find in the way of providing a satisfactory analysis. Certainly, it is always wise to be as clear as one can be about the terms that one uses. But we need not think that unless we know how to answer all possible questions about either approval or description, we can have no idea at all of how to distinguish between them. After all, to take a similar instance, we may well find it impossible to say exactly what is involved in being bored on the one hand and being interested on the other; but this in no way means that we are always liable to confuse the two.
