ABSTRACT
Few features in regard to our moral judgements have proved more distressing to philosophers, or have seemed more hopelessly to obstruct their efforts to build up a science of ethics, than our plain inability to reach agreement on many moral questions. We may, in fact, attribute the despair of many moral philosophers to their forgetfulness of the Aristotelian warning: that we should never seek for a higher degree of exactness in a science than is appropriate to its subject-matter and the type of its inquiry. It seems therefore plainly to be incumbent on the moral philosopher, before he poses a problem or considers an answer, to probe into the ways by which we settle ethical arguments, as well as the ways by which we test our moral judgements. A philosopher of language may, however, do intentionally and consciously what the philosophers of essence have done unconsciously and unintentionally.
