"wrong," I mean that my judgment is based upon a complete survey of the situation, or, at all events, that a more complete survey would make no difference in my opinion. Partial views may be mistaken for complete ones in ways that can be easily imagined. The immediate effects may alone be considered by one person, the remote effects, in addition, by another; again, the interests of the community which are affected by the actions of its members may be overlooked in one case, or apprehended with varying degrees of accuracy in other cases.
In the third place, the moral judgment claims to be the expression of our ideals of conduct as they are when worked out into a consistent system. Hold up before a person two of his moral judgments that appear to contradict each other. He will at once either assert that there is really a difference between the two situations under consideration, or he will proceed to modify one or the other of his judgments. The moral judgment no more tolerates the contradictory than does the judgment of which logic treats.
These three principles, so obvious and withal so well known as to sound like platitudes, are those upon which the objectivity of moral distinctions rests. For of any particular judgment we may ask: Does it represent accurately the moral ideal when this ideal is what it claims to be? This is a question of fact. Accordingly the judgment which does represent the ideal accurately is entitled to the designation 'true.' The words 'true' and 'false,' however, when used in this connection, are liable to prove misleading, as is shown by the history of Rationalism in ethics. For this reason I should prefer to use the term 'valid.' For validity in an argument means, not necessarily that it is true, but that it possesses just that measure either of truth or of probability which it claims to have. In morality, therefore, 'validity' is the most accurate and least misleading term by which to mark the fact that a profession has been matched by performance.
An important point, however, has been left unconsidered. Whose ideal must the judgment represent in order to be entitled to the designation 'valid'? Primarily, I reply, the ideal of the person judging. If A's judgment, whether upon his own action
