ABSTRACT
ALL the discussion in the previous two chapters has been concerned with our individual notions of good and bad, and right and wrong. What does a man mean when he says that he attaches ethical value to something? Or, as the linguistic philosophers would say, in what manner are the words of ethical connotation used? These are important and interesting questions whose solution, I have argued, is to be looked for in the main in the field of psychology. But I have suggested that we would be more interested in some method of adjudicating or choosing between the different notions which come to our attention. What we want to be able to do is to discover some method of discussing, in a rational manner, whether, for example, an ethic which attaches high value to every individual life is preferable to one which condones or approves head-hunting. What I shall attempt to provide is a criterion for judging between ethical values. This criterion is not by any means the same thing as a new ethical value. We must pass on now from the discussion of ethics to Ethics; or to put it in another way, from ethics to wisdom.
