 Why did Prichard reject all such appeals to value? I think his main point is similar in style to the main ‘argument’ of Berkeley’s Principles §3. ‘Suppose we ask ourselves whether our sense that we ought to pay our debts or to tell the truth arises from our recognition that in doing so we would be originating something good … We at once and without hesitation answer “No”’ (10). But he does try to support this claim by argument. For instance, it might be held that the reasoning that runs ‘This would be the repayment of a debt, and one which I voluntarily incurred; so I ought to do it’ is actually enthymematic, and properly runs ‘This would be the repayment of a debt, and one which I voluntarily incurred; such a result would be good; so I ought to do it’. But Prichard says that there is nothing much wrong with the original reasoning, and that the expanded version is actually worse, since it appeals to an unsound principle, that what is good ought to be. The principle is unsound because the idea of ‘ought to be’ does not make sense; what makes sense is ‘I ought to do it’. But we can only derive ‘I ought to do it’ by means of a principle that what is good ought to be, and another that if something ought to be, then we ought to do whatever would have it as a consequence. But these principles require us to think of the good as somehow imperatival (nowadays we would say ‘deontic’), because otherwise there would be no explanation of our ability to extract an ‘ought’ from a ‘good’ – and nobody thinks of the good as imperatival in that way. Further, it does not follow that if some state of affairs would be good, and I am able to bring it about by acting in some way, then I ought to act in that way. Suppose, for instance, that it would be good if you gave money to a hospital, and that you would do this if I wrote you a letter asking you to make some contribution. Does it follow that I ought to write you a letter? Not at all. What follows is not even that my writing you a letter would be good. (Prichard rejects the very notion of the ‘instrumentally good’.) All that we get is that my writing you a letter is something that would have a good result, which is just what we had at the beginning.