On the Analysis of Moral Judgements

Abstract

‘Most of us would agree’, said F. P. Ramsey, addressing a society in Cambridge in 1925, ‘that the objectivity of good was a thing we had settled and dismissed with the existence of God. Theology and Absolute Ethics are two famous subjects which we have realized to have no real objects.’ There are many, however, who still think that these questions have not been settled; and in the meantime philosophers of Ramsey’s persuasion have grown more circumspect. Theological and ethical statements are no longer stigmatized as false or meaningless. They are merely said to be different from scientific statements. They are differently related to their evidence; or rather, a different meaning is attached to ‘evidence’ in their case. ‘Every kind of statement’, we are told, ‘has its own kind of logic.’