But both of them are nevertheless exposed to another objection, equally fatal, to which that view was not so obviously exposed. The objection is again merely one of psychological fact, resting upon observation of what actually happens when a man thinks an action to be right or wrong. For, whatever feeling or feelings we take as the ones about which he is supposed to be judging, it is quite certain that a man may think an action to be right, even when he does not think that the members of his society have in general the required feeling (or absence of feeling) towards it; and that similarly he may doubt whether an action is right, even when he does not doubt that some man or other has the required feeling towards it. Cases of this kind certainly constantly occur, and what they prove is that, whatever a man is thinking when he thinks an action to be right, he is certainly not merely thinking that his society has in general a particular feeling towards it; and similarly that, when he is in doubt as to whether an action is right, the question about which he is in doubt is not merely as to whether any man at all has the required
