ABSTRACT
One takes care to found his moral theory on judgments which express 'built-ins'. norms or values or imperatives which are parts of the equipment all normally-formed human beings have, and asks for some reason to 'refuse' to use them. One uses these judgments, then, as 'presumptively' valid, meaning merely that the burden of proof lies with the sceptic. This chapter describes several features of human life which can reasonably be taken as 'givens', and which may be used as 'presumptive value criteria'. Human beings, within the range called 'normally formed', are purposive as long as they are alive, awake, and do not choose to change. When discursive descriptions are attempted for purposiveness, personalness, and the aesthetic disposition, as they must be if we are to use these features of life as criteria in reasoned argument, the result inevitably seems pathetically static and dry and for those reasons inadequate.
