  Another area where Moore's ethical theory is problematic is his account of ethical knowledge. Because of his hostility to ethical naturalism Moore denies that ethical knowledge is a matter of empirical enquiry. But, as we have seen, he is equally hostile to Kant's rationalist thesis that fundamental ethical truths are truths of reason. Instead he holds that ethical knowledge rests on a capacity for an intuitive grasp of fundamental ethical truths for which we can give no reason since there is no reason to be given. The trouble with this is that if we can say nothing to support a claim to such knowledge, those who disagree with it can only register their disagreement and pass on; hence ethical debate is liable to turn into the expression of conflicting judgements which admit of no resolution. In the light of this, it is not surprising that Moore's ethical theory was regarded as undermining the cognitive status of morality, and thus that it led directly to the development of ethical non-cognitivism by those who were influenced by Moore, such as A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson. Yet there was another side to Moore's discussion of ethical issues, in which he found himself arguing against the hedonist thesis that pleasure is the only thing with positive intrinsic value, despite the fact that officially he held that no such arguments could be given. When engaged in this kind of ‘indirect’ method of argument, Moore sees himself as seeking to obtain agreement rather than to establish the truth, though he also acknowledges that from a first-person point of view there is little difference here. Because this indirect method is not integrated into his official method of ethical inquiry, he says little about its presuppositions. But it seems to me that one can find here the beginnings of a ‘common sense’ approach to ethics which is distinctly preferable to his official appeal to intuitive judgments concerning the relative intrinsic value of situations of arbitrary complexity.