 Premise (3) is crucial. Moore takes it for granted that the meaning of a predicate is the property for which it stands. Hence, if there were no property of goodness corresponding to the word “good”, “good” would be meaningless. Since “good” is quite obviously not meaningless, the corresponding property is guaranteed. Thus we move from an obvious semantic fact—that “good” is plainly meaningful—to a much more contentious metaphysical claim—that there is a corresponding property of goodness. What greases the wheels of this transition is the apparently innocuous assumption that if a word like “good” is to mean something, there must be some thing (or at least some property) that it means. If this doctrine were true, then the objections to objectivism discussed in the last section would fall to the ground. The very fact that we can talk meaningfully about goodness would show that there must indeed be such a property. It might be causally impotent and metaphysically queer, but the fact that we can discuss it would entail that we were stuck with it anyway.