INFERENCE

3.7.
The gravest error, however, of the type of theory which I am criticizing is that it
leaves out of our reasoning about conduct a factor which is of the very essence of
morals. This factor is decision. In both the kinds of principle which I have been
discussing, the principle falls short, in some sense, of being universal, only because in
particular cases it is left to the decision of the agent whether to act upon the principle or
not. Now to use the word 'inference' of a procedure like this is seriously misleading.
When someone says, either 'This is false, so I won't say it', or 'This is false, but I'll say it
all the same, and make an exception to my principle', he is doing a lot more than
inferring. A process of inference alone would not tell him which of these two things he
was to say in any single case falling under the principle. He has to decide which of
them to say. Inferring consists in saying that if he tells a falsehood he will be breaking
the principle, whereas if he tells the truth he will be observing it. This is a perfectly
good deductive inference, and nothing further need be said about it. The rest of what he
does is not inference at all, but something quite different, namely, deciding whether to
alter the principle or not.
Thus I see no reason to take back what I have said about the way in which principles of
conduct entail particular commands. The entailment is rigorous. What we have to
investigate is, not some looseness in the entailment, but the way in which we form and
modify our principles, and the relation between this process and the particular
decisions that we make in the course of it.