INFERENCE

3.3.3 The impossibility of a 'Cartesian' moral system may be shown in another way,
closely akin to the one just explained. It is not in the least clear what could be meant by
calling any proposition, least of all a general principle of conduct, 'self-evident'. If such
a principle is to be in some sense impossible to reject, this, it seems to me, can only be
for one of two reasons. First, it might be said that a principle of conduct was impossible
to reject, if it were self-contradictory to reject it. But if it is self-contradictory to reject a
principle, this can only be because the principle is analytic. But if it is analytic, it cannot
have any content; it cannot tell me to do one thing rather than another. The term
'analytic', which we shall have occasion to use a good deal, may be defined with
sufficient precision as follows:
A sentence is analytic if, and only if, either (1) the fact that a person dissents from it is
a sufficient criterion for saying that he has misunderstood the speakers meaning or (2)
it is entailed by sentence wich is analytic in sense (1).
A sentence which is not analytic or self-contradictory is called synthetic.
These definitions are of course not exact; a full discussion of the meanings of 'analytic'
and 'synthetic' is outside the scope of this book.
Secondly, it might be suggested that a principle of conduct might be impossible to
reject, in the sense that its rejection was a psychological impossibility. But what is or is
not a psychological impossibility is a contingent matter; it may be a psychological
impossibility for me to reject a principle which the more hardened or sophisticated
have no difficulty in discarding. We could never have any justification for asserting that
no one could ever reject a principle, unless that principle were analytic. Moreover, the
psychological impossibility of rejecting a principle would be a fact about the
constitution of people's psyches; and from a fact, or the indicative sentence recording it,
no imperative can be derived.
A third kind of interpretation is sometimes canvassed, which rests upon the
introduction of a value-word. It might be suggested that, though a principle was both
logically and psychologically possible to reject, it might be not rational to reject it (it
might be impossible for a rational person to reject it). Sometimes instead of 'rational' we
have other expressions, such as 'a morally developed or morally educated person' or 'a
competent and impartial judge'. These are all value-expressions. We therefore have to
ask 'What could be the criterion for deciding whether a person falls into one or other of
these classes?' Clearly we cannot say that the rejection of the principle is itself evidence
that the person who rejects it is not qualified in these ways; for in this case our criterion
of self-evidence would be circular. There must therefore be some other means of
finding out whether a person is rational But the question whether a person is rational
must be either a factual question or a question of value (or a combination of the two). If
it is a purely factual question, then we cannot get imperative conclusions out of factual
premisses such as 'So-and-so is rational' and 'So-and-so finds it impossible to reject the
principle that. . .'. But if it is wholly or partly a question of value, then either the answer
to it is self-evident in some sense (in which case again our criterion of self-evidence
would be circular), or else we have at least one constituent in our reasoning which is
neither factual nor self-evident. This third possibility, therefore, must be ruled out.