Those who uphold what is commonly called the “emotive” theory of ethics are apt to maintain, as a consequence of that theory, that at least some moral disputes, if not all, may be in principle unresolvable, no matter how much time is allotted to the disputants to enable them to try and come to an agreement. The reason is this: Moral judgments, according to the emotive theory, in its most extreme form at any rate, do not assert anything but merely express attitudes of approval and disapproval. When two people apparently affirm contradictory moral judgments—Smith, for example, saying “Divorce is wrong” and Jones saying “No, divorce is not wrong”—they do not, in the last analysis, disagree in belief, they disagree in attitude.

It is one of the objects of what is sometimes called “general theory of value” to study all sorts of value judgments or (what would be a better name for them) evaluational judgments. But what the sorts of evaluational judgment are is a question that has so far by no means been settled. There are only two kinds of evaluational judgment that are universally recognized and that have well–established names, the ethical or moral, and the aesthetic. Another pair that have sometimes been mentioned are the prudential and the economic. The object of this paper is to direct attention to still another, quite distinct, sort of evaluational judgment which we commonly make, to give judgments of this sort a name, and to characterize them in a provisional way.