in the authorised version of the English Bible the ten commandments in Exodus include 'Thou shalt not kill'.Now here there is Nothing in the word 'kill' to make this tautologically self-evident,like 'moneys owed ought to be paid'.And, of course, the difficulty arose that the old Testament is full of killings of Which God is held to show No disapproval.So in the Revised Version the commandment reads:'Thou shall do No murder.' But now what does 'murder'mean? Does it not mean those killings Which are reprehensible which ought not to be committed it might be replied that murder can Be defined as killings Which are not intentional, not carried out under legal warrant,Not in pursuance of a military duty, etc. But it is surely true that, alongside all this, 'murder' has a morally condemnatory sense And therefore the Revised Version commandment is a tautology.
It is clear, however, that some rules are not tautologies-'Tell the truth','Honour thy father And thy
'- And the problem of validating these still remains.The
for Ross is that not everyone recognised the moral rules he does. Ross meets by saying that such people have not reached a sufficient degree of maturity. 'Three threes are nine' is self-evidenty true,even though its truth is not evident to a savage Who cannot count beyond five. While this answer will explain why some men do not see the truth of moral propositions Which are self-evident to Ross, it does not explain why other men have rules of Which Ross would disapprove.The variation in moral rules from people to people And man to man seems to out a self-evidence theory.