DECISIONS OF PRINCIPLE

4.7.5 The subjectivist, on the other hand, says 'But surely, when it comes to the
point -- when I have listened to what other people say, and given due weight to
my own intuitions, the legacy of my upbringing -- I have in the end to decide for
myself what I ought to do. To deny this is to be a conventionalist; for both
common moral notions and my own intuitions are the legacy of tradition, and -apart from the fact that there are so many different traditions in the world -traditions cannot be started without someone doing what I now feel called upon
to do, decide. If I refuse to make my own decisions, I am, in merely copying my
fathers, showing myself a lesser man than they; for whereas they must have
initiated, I shall be merely accepting.' This plea of the subjectivist is quite
justified. It is the plea of the adolescent who wants to be adult. To become
morally adult is to reconcile these two apparently conflicting positions by
learning to make decisions of principle; it is to learn to use 'ought'-sentences in
the realization that they can only be verified by reference to a standard or set of
principles which we have by our own decision accepted and made our own. This
is what our present generation is so painfully trying to do.