GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE SCOPE OP ETHICS 147
Difficulty of Ethical Questions. They are, it is obvious,
exceedingly difficult to answer; so difficult, that it seems
improbable that they will ever be answered in a manner
which commands universal assent. It is certainly the case
that up to the present no agreed answers have been pro-
pounded. If they had, human life would be a simpler
affair than it is.
A number of obvious difficulties immediately suggest
themselves.
(x) THAT IT is NOT POSSIBLE TO PROVE ETHICAL PRO-
POSITIONS. There is the difficulty of giving any answer
to an ethical question which can be proved to be true to
those who challenge it. In this respect ethics is at a dis-
advantage as compared with mathematics or with science.
A mathematical statement which is true can be proved
to be so to anyone who has sufficient intelligence to grasp
the proof. Thus, if I assert that any two sides of a triangle
are greater than a third, or that a 1 -b l
=(a+b)(a~b), I
should expect to be able 'to show that my assertion was
true, aild also why it was true, to anyone who possessed
normal intelligence. If, supposing that my demonstration
were both clear and correct, I found at the end that I
had failed to convince him, I should judge that his intelligence
was not such as is proper to, or customary among,
adult human beings. It is, of course, true that my demonstration
would entail the acceptance of certain undemon-
strable principles.
It would entail, for example, acceptance
of the laws of logic and of the processes of inference
and deduction, the truth and legitimacy of which are
intuitively perceived. 1 But the acceptance of these laws,
the performance of these processes, are common to all
normally intelligent human beings. Similarly with science;
if I wish to show that HO is the chemical formula for
water, I have only to associate two parts of hydrogen and
one of oxygen, to demonstrate to anybody who cares to
1 See my Gbufr to Philosophy, Chapter V, for an account ofundemonstrabk
logical law.